The question that you really need to answer is how does what you say apply to boys. 13 year old boys who are victims of MEN. Do you say that a 13 year old boy who is physically matured and is posing naked in a jacuzzi fair game for a man to coerce?

Do you say that men who 'fail to regulate' themselves in their attraction to 13 year old boys are also 'justified in being treated differently'?

Is that less "natural"? To you? Would a man who coerces a 13 year old boy into sex while using drink and drugs be judged more harshly by you than a man who did so with a girl?

Either men, people, are allowed to fuck physically developed 13 year olds or they are not. I just want to make sure that you aren't being sexist. Is it just as ok for men to fuck 13 year old boys if they are sprouting pubic hair and succumb to coercion?

Really, I want to know. Do the things you say only apply to girls?

Why would they apply only to one sex?

I disagree with your binary "either X is allowed or it isn't" approach. I think we're talking about several sliding scales of maturity. My argument is here: <link>

You seem WAY to obsessed with menarche and the first ages of developing secondary sex characteristics of children. Seriously, way too obsessed. A little girl, who happens to have c cups at 9 (and yes there are some) is usually MAD at her body for changing like that-- she's still a CHILD. To say that "her body is signaling others she's ready for sex" is cruel and ignores her actual thoughts and feelings to a simple matter of genetics and outward sexual characteristics, things SHE has ABSOLUTELY no control over!

He is "obsessed" with menarche because the physical status of the victim is the determining factor used to determine if there is a pathology. An adult who is attracted to a prepubescent girl OR boy is a pedophile. An adult who's attracted to a sexually developed teen is not unless this attraction exists to the exclusion of normal adult sexuality.

It is perfectly normal from both a psychological and evolutionary perspective for an adult to be attracted to a sexual mature teenager. In our society we recognize the pitfalls of acting on these impulses, so we [rightly] have legal and social taboos against such relationships. But there is a clear difference.

It is still not an either/or situation between pedophile and "normal". There are other sexual deviancies that can be in play here with regards to those who are still under the age of majority - hebephilia (attraction to young teens) and ehephophilia (attraction to older teens).

And to state the obvious again - regardless of the "normalcy" of an adult attraction to pubescent teens - it DOES matter if the attraction is acted upon.

In order to be considered hebephilia or ephebophilia, an adult must be sexually attracted to teens to the EXLUSION of normal adult sexual attraction. Shown pictures of an attractive, fully developed girl, normal males will have physiological reaction. Somone who is attracted to prepubescent children is suffering from a pathology.

No one is arguing that the law shouldn't have penalties for an adult acting on an attraction to a teenager. What we are arguing is that it is a different crime that should be treated differently by the courts, epescially if the sex is acually consensua if not legallyl.

My argument has been threefold here:

1. Unlike Saletan, I do agree with current law that the penalties for sex with a young teen should be similar as penalties for sex with a prepubescent child, without regard to the victim's behavior. You can call one of them an act of hebephilia, and the other an act of pedophilia, but both are child abuse and both do measurable harm, no matter what the victim nominally agreed to. I have detailed my arguments elsewhere, but they can be summed up as: a young teen may physically look somewhat like an adult, but by every other measure (social, emotional, intellectual) they are still a child, and their development can be damaged by sexual interactions with adults, whether "consented" to or not. That argument alone is sufficient reason for the similar penalties.

2. Unlike Saletan, I do not agree that a young teen can consent to an adult, primarily because they cannot understand the consequences of what they are consenting to, or worse, have been previously groomed to respond to adults in a sexual manner. Additionally, because of the inherent power differential between any young teen and any adult (multiplied when the adult is powerful or famous or rich), the teen is particularly susceptible to both implicit and explicit coersion, or even out and out bribery (in the Polanski case, an implied movie career in exchange for sexual favors). We do not allow young teens to consent to a legal contract with an adult, so why would be allow them to consent to a sexual contract with one?

3. While it may be argued that a "normal" adult male could find a young developed teen body attractive, he is also extremely likely to recognize that all the other aspects of her are still those of a child (again - social, emotional, intellectual). Thus a "normal" male should recoil at the idea of actually carrying out a sexual act with a young teen, precisely becuase he should be able to see that she is more than just a body. I would then argue that in those cases where sex did occur, you are looking at a hebephile (or perhaps an all purpose sexual exploiter, someone equally repellent in my book).

On a distantly related note, my personal and admittedly non-medical opinion is that Mr. Polanski is a hebephile, given his documented history of attraction to young teens (and his marriages to very young women). But that is neither here nor there. As Mr Saletan said, the Polanski case is not a good one to use for his arguments about consent.