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Polanski, Jezebel, and the Age of Consent

The Jezebel team posted a conversation recently about the new HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. I haven't seen the doc, but I know the bare bones of the Polanski story—the director sodomized a 13-year-old girl, was charged with statutory rape, and then fled the country. While the Jezebels don't exactly excuse Polanski's behavior, they have a fairly glib conversation about the whole affair. They posit that age-of-consent laws are "a gray area"; they seem to agree that the victim's mom should have taken some of the heat for leaving her nubile daughter alone with an older man of questionable morals; and they wonder if what Polanski did is worse than the fact that Hollywood doesn't care about what he did.

Unsurprisingly, lots of Jezebel readers have found the conversation offensive. "I think being the actual pervert instead of exploiting the pervert for his talent is worse," writes one commenter. "[S]he was a 13 [year] old child it's wrong and illegal," writes another.

Part of me agrees with the commenter outrage, but I think the Jezebels have something here. This particular case is likely just plain wrong and out of the gray area (I just don't know enough about it), but in general I find myself saying, "Yeah, but ..." when it comes to the age of consent. Thirteen is young. No doubt about it. But 18 strikes me as a little old if we're talking about the youngest age at which someone can say yes and mean yes. Isn't it just a little condescending?

Full disclosure (or is it oversharing?): I entered into a relationship with an older man when I was 18. I knew what I was doing, and frankly, I would have known what I was doing at 17 or at 16. But since this wasn't a Romeo-and-Juliet situation (i.e., we weren't just a couple of years apart in age), it would've been criminal to get together any earlier. To which I say, get off my back, government!

These laws are very culture- and century-specific. What we call May-December now would have been called June-September not too long ago. Not everyone's sexual desires fit neatly into the particular mores of the time they live in.