Matt Gaetz’s appointment and the message it sends to women like me

On the dehumanization of those who are “not a girl, not yet a woman”

Illegal drugs, paying for sex, and then what is perhaps the most egregious claim: sex with a seventeen-year-old high school student in 2017 at the age of 35. No, not sex; make that statutory rape, right? Because, in the state of Florida, the age of consent without restriction is 18. Florida is actually in the minority on this. The majority of the states in the U.S. have unrestricted consent laws at sixteen and seventeen. These ages dip even lower in states that have “Romeo and Juliet” laws where the age difference between the partners is just a few years.

Another thing about these laws: Sometimes there are exceptions for people of “power or authority.” For example, in the state of Michigan, the age of consent is sixteen, unless the older party is in a position of power or authority; then it’s eighteen. And what constitutes authority or power, anyway? Is it just the high school teacher? Doesn’t money, age, gender, or any combination of these three things also prove to be advantageous and qualify as authoritative in this society?

Consider that when a girl is seventeen years old, she is still four years away from being legally old enough to decide if a Michelob Ultra or Mike’s Hard Lemonade can enter her body… We don’t trust her to be able to make that decision responsibly.

My first contribution to The Glass Maze was titled “Less Obvious Monsters.” It opened the conversation about how society views the people who groom, pick up, or abuse older girls who fit into this category. What if it was just one? What if she “wanted it?”

Doesn’t money, age, gender, or any combination of these three things also prove to be advantageous and qualify as authoritative in this society?

It’s so easy to have collective public outrage at men who had dozens (or hundreds) of victims, or if the victims were younger. And there should absolutely be outrage. But if we look at age as the deciding factor, consider that when a girl is seventeen years old, she is still four years away from being legally old enough to decide if a Michelob Ultra or Mike’s Hard Lemonade can enter her body. She’s still too young to vote. In some states, like in Iowa, a girl can consent to sex at fourteen with an eighteen-year-old, or with absolutely anyone at age sixteen, but she can’t be trusted to buy a scratch-off lottery ticket until she’s twenty-one. We don’t trust her to be able to make that decision responsibly.

So why the difference? The pleasure of men and the bragging rights of “easy prey.” The dehumanization of teenage girls and the tender flesh and warm holes they provide. I think of my own experiences. I was seventeen when a thirty-five-year-old man took my “virginity” one afternoon at a Motel Six (coincidentally, these are the same ages as the alleged incident with Matt Gaetz and the young women who is now in her 20s). I also remember that people knew, but no one intervened. Some people just get a pass. Years later, when I would ask him about it, he said to me, “You’re just always going to be mad about that, aren’t you?”

Without speaking about the political viewpoints of the cabinet picks by the future administration, I can say that the selection of Gaetz, and the lack of outrage by conservative voters (like the neighbors, colleagues, and close family members who voted red in this election), cuts deep. The message is loud and clear. “The truth is you don’t matter. We will stand on our pedestal of “pro-life,” but not, your life. We are pro-us, but not pro-you.”

There must be a reason we deserved what we got, right? Our bodies were too irresistible, our outfits too provocative, our doe-eyes a little too eager to please.

The repercussions are lasting on us. Revictimization is real, and the mind-warp takes years to heal from. Formative years are lost and cannot be regained. But I know this; we’re everywhere. And when people who are supposed to care about us stay silent on these matters, or vote to support them, or look the other way, we notice.