I dunno, I am of several minds on this topic. Kind of like Mister Matt looking in one of those angle mirrors in a dressing room, ie, a LOT of minds.
First of all, like BrodyBaby, in an effort at full disclosure, let me put it this way. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, if you took all the older guys I had (various, pretty minor forms of) sex with between the ages 13 and 16 and laid them end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised. And if we had been discovered, THEY would have gone to jail.
There was one guy in particular that I was very smitten with. I enjoyed spending time with him and we enjoyed each other's attention. But because of the time and location and my age when this happened, had we been "discovered," I can guarantee you that my experience would have been reframed by others as "rape," and I would have been encouraged to see myself as a "victim" and so frightened to death about the implications in my life at the time (people would know I was gay) that I would be easily co-erced into "testifying" that this was not something I wanted and that the man should go to prison forever for the horrible sin of pleasure. Which is, of course, one of the worst sins in our culture.
Which is to say, I sought the sex, I was ragingly desirous, and I found it. There was no internet for "predators" to find me, I went out and found them. There wasn't really a cultural incentive to scare the crap out of baby boomer parents as there is now: the message is CONSTANTLY reinforced that their children are in danger any time they aren't watching TV or buying the products advertised on TV. And the way the fear factor works is to subtly remind baby boomers of their
own precocious sex and drug behaviors back when they were in their teens and to FREAK THEM OUT that their own spawn are having as good a time as they did.
So, my point, and I do have one, is that it's COMPLICATED.
And I believe it's more complicated when it's male/female than when it's male/male because of the inherent power differential.
And I would caution people to beware of easy answers, whether it's Glinda's "she MIGHT have been a HO!" stance or "the law is there TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN," when, if we're honest, we have to admit that some children are more childlike than others.
There are a couple of other factors that are murky here. I do believe that the legal definition of "sodomy" in some areas includes anything that ain't the missionary position in a heterosexual marriage. Including oral/genital contact. Somebody like Plum generally steps in and corrects me when I get these points wrong.
The other thing is that age of consent laws have historically been used to prosecute male/male encounters, and have led to things like 17 year guys getting 25 years in prison for having sex with their 15 year old boyfriends and the like. Which everyone generally agrees is "too bad" but that's the way it's got to be to protect "the children" from sawed-off-shotgun-wielding hillbillies looking to do a Deliverance reenactment with a nursery school class.
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