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One Possible Answer to the "Disappearing Boyfriend" Question: They Might Be Men, Not Boys

Sat, 2009-11-21 21:12 — figleaf

Summary: A brief history of teen pregnancy policy and how, long before I found this domain name, it motivated me to start blogging.

Actually I can answer part of my previous question, about whether the boyfriend is likely to disappear if his girlfriend becomes pregnant. In fact it was the second issue that made me decide to try to start a political blog, back when a domain name cost $1000 a year and a “blogging platform” meant Notepad.exe and copy of HTML for Dummies.

Again I can’t remember the source nor can I find my original notes (we’re talking mid-1990s here so they might by on a floppy disk somewhere) but…

At the time teen pregnancy rather than illegal immigration was the giant bugaboo of the right, and so of necessity of the left as well.

One data point that stood out for me was that when teenage girls become pregnant, or at least became pregnant back then, the father was overwhelmingly likely to be 10 years older than she was.

In other words the “boyfriend” wasn’t likely to be an actual boy at all!

Again, I don’t have my notes but I’m pretty sure that at least when it comes to teen pregnancy the disappearance of said “boy” friends is likely to be even more complicated.

Some years later, after domain prices and other barriers to creating websites had fallen, and, sad to say, after my original attempt at a straight-up political blog had perished in obscurity, while digging through a list of recently-expired domain names I stumbled across “realadultsex.com.” And snapped it up figuring I’d figure something to do with it. It wasn’t till a year or two after that that I finally decided to, well, start doing this!

Before all that, though, when I was just an obscure straight-up wannabe political blogger, I’d already decided that it wasn’t just a good idea to discourage sex between minors and adults, it would be good policy as well. My domain name has several meanings to me. That’s a big one.

At any rate, while I didn’t yet have much of the progressive and/or “sex-positive” and/or “3rd-wave feminist” vocabulary it seemed pretty clear to me that even if teenagers couldn’t be held accountable for teen pregnancy (a bit of a myth since, in fact, they’re often amazingly solemn in actual peer-to-peer relationships) then it might be a good idea to craft policies to reach impregnating adults instead of “slut-shaming” their juvenile partners.

As far as I know it’s still never been tried.

Sun, 2009-11-22 11:08 — Daphne B (not verified) #permalink

figleaf, you’ve probably read this (on the topic of older boyfriends and teenage girlfriends), but for those who haven’t, it’s really well done:

http://www.scarleteen.com/article/crisis/why_i_deeply_dislike_your_older_boyfriend

Mon, 2009-11-23 00:41 — Eurosabra (not verified) #permalink

Virginia came up with the “Isn’t She A Little Young?” billboard and bar coaster campaign, which was in full force when I lived there in 2003-2005, and is still available at http://www.vahealth.org/Injury/sexualviolence/varapelaws/index.html. Salon.com wrote it up, and it attracted a lot of attention. The campaign came in for some criticism because it erased female offenders (no “Isn’t HE a little young?”) and because there was a class-based element in its pitch, which erased college-age males involved with teenagers, some of whom were minors, by overrepresentation of the advertisements in depressed areas of large cities rather that the less densely-populated, more affluent areas where universities (UVA, GMU, NOVA CC Annandale campus, Virginia Tech) are found. (I taught Literature in Annandale and no one knew of it except the mandatory reporters in Social Work, whereas anyone walking the streets of Richmond did.)

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