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In today's "old man yelling at clouds" news, it appears that leftist memes (e.g. on imgur) have taken to calling Trump a pedophile due to his connection with Epstein.
As someone who does not give a damn about Trump, but who cares about the language we use to describe reality, I want to object.
A pedophile, in my book, is someone who is sexually attracted to pre-pubescent kids. Often, the term might imply exclusive pedophilia, e.g. someone who is only attracted to pre-pubescent kids. This seems like the worst sexual attraction card to be dealt, while being straight, gay, bisexual, into MILFs, or into BDSM, or most other kinks means you have a decent chance of getting laid, the lack of adults who could pass as pre-pubescent means that there are no sex partners who could consent. If used as an insult, the unfortunate implication is that people are morally responsible for their sexual inclinations.
Naturally, there is an overlap with people who end up molesting children, which is rightfully considered a serious crime. It bears saying that a significant fraction of child molesters are not exclusive pedophiles but just men (mostly) with broader sexualities who use the opportunity of the power discrepancy between kids and adults.
In general, I think that power discrepancy is why we have age of consent laws. Using the age is obviously a crude approximation, I can think of situations where a 15yo having sex with an 18yo would not be problematic from a power discrepancy point of view, and also of situations where two 18yo having sex would be problematic from a power discrepancy view without being criminal. But still, one has to draw the line somewhere, and age is at least something which can reasonably be verified, while "would a judge like the power dynamics in that relationship?" is much more diffuse.
If we tie consent to age, then it makes sense to dis-emphasize physical development. After all, a woman consents with her brain, not her boobs. It might certainly make a difference if the defendant claims he was mistaken about her age or that she was the one who initiated sex (not that either defense would help much, likely).
To get back to Trump, I think it is pretty clear that he is not an exclusive pedophile. That guy paid for sex with Stormy Daniels, hosted beauty pageants and boasted about grabbing post-pubescent participants "by the pussy". Based on the women he married, "small and flat-chested" does not really seem to be his type.
He is also a sex pest. I can not imagine him going "Dear Jeffrey, this is very flattering, but I do not think it is appropriate. Look at that poor girl. She is a minor who possibly did not have a clear idea that she would be expected to do sex work here and is effectively trapped alone on an island with some very powerful people. Besides her being below the age of consent, this whole setting is intrinsically coercive. If you want me to fuck someone, please get an experienced sex worker of legal age for my next visit." Instead, he probably went "great, I will take the one with the bigger tits" and committed a particularly vile act of statutory rape.
From a culture war point of view, I can see why the left is pushing the pedo angle. It basically comes from qanon, where "oh, did I mention they also rape kids" was used as a boo light to drive home the fact that these were Bad people. MAGA pattern-matched Epstein to this, which was fair enough. Now that it looks like Trump might have been a visitor to Epstein's Island, the likely factually accurate claim "Trump is a sex pest who has no conception of consent and will happily commit statutory rape" is not going to do much damage. The American people have known that he is a sex pest with no conception of consent since 2016, and in their heart of hearts they also know that someone who is generally loose on consent will also not be a stickler for the rules as far as age of consent is concerned. By contrast, going "that pedophile world-controlling elite you were always talking about? Trump is their chairman!", or more shortly "Trump is pedophile" is obviously superior as an attack in the CW.
Still, a lot of epistemic commons are burned in the process, and I really don't like that.
Okay, second thread of thought, separate from the Trump issue below:
I'm never a fan of the 'power discrepancy' argument since 'power' is usually very hard to define in tangible terms. We know it when we see it, sure, but it comes in different forms. The person who holds financial power might not be the 'more powerful' person in a confrontation where the other party holds... a gun.
"Coercion" is a more tightly defined, and the law has pretty decent standards for recognizing where coercion has occurred. Power can be used to coerce, but it can also be used to 'persuade' in the literal "convince someone that it is good/right for them do to the thing" definition.
Should we differentiate between a rich/powerful guy saying "If you don't sleep with me I will make your life a living hell" vs. saying "If you sleep with me I'll give you a ride in my private jet"? Probably. Either one is the result of a 'power' imbalance.
And, finally, the existence of statutory rape laws can, arguably, invert that power dynamic, rather than eliminate it! A particularly sociopathic 15-17 year old can tell someone slightly older than themselves "Sleep with me/give me money or I will tell the cops you raped me."
I don't think that's a common situation, but you see the point, if we're worried about power imbalances it doesn't do to just hand more power to the alleged less powerful person in this situation.
What's my solution? Bring back literal rites of passage rather than tying things to a strict age-based formula.
Philosophically and psychologically, 'consent' is based on state of mind and understanding of the acts in question, age is only very loosely correlated with those factors. And we have the ability to measure those factors more directly. So why use the less reliable metric that is constantly being gamed anyway.
So I see the "what should age of consent be?" debates as a massive red herring. Understandable one since its the standard in place now. Yet everyone has secondary motives for what they'd prefer the age be. And there legitimately is NOT some 'one size fits all' answer!!
Just cut through that stupid knot and tie legal adulthood to some test or other obstacle that a young person must clear before they're recognized as full adults. Some will pass the test at age 15, some at 18, some at 25, and some never at all.
If you're going to consider "coersion" and power dynamics in this context, the question of whether an intern (age 22) can consent to "sexual relations" (depending on the meaning of the word "is") with the de facto Leader of the Free World is going to come up at some point. And I don't think it's a question either side really wants to dig up and grapple with deep down: Clinton mostly won the issue, but modern leftist views on the issue look a lot more like Republicans in the '90s than either side would care to admit.
Surely a 90s Republican didn't think Clinton's targets were unable to consent. Rather they thought his affairs were gross, adulterous and disqualifying.
No, ‘your intern deserves protections from being asked to have an affair with you’ is something that modern neo-morality and tradcon morality would agree on, although they would phrase it differently. Modern neo-morality is all about trying to find ways in which consent isn’t really consent when the tradcons would disapprove, because consent is a woefully insufficient standard.
The moral majority probably wouldn’t have seen it as wrong for a boss to date his intern/employee if he was single. But the idea that an extramarital affair is much worse if it’s with your employee, or with an impressionable teenager, is pretty core to moral majority views about sex.
Maybe but I definitely remember Lewinsky being villified across the political spectrum, which wouldn't make much sense if she was viewed as a a non-consenting victim by either side. Here's one example from a republican rabbi, as I remember it there was a lot of this sort of thing around: https://observer.com/2014/05/monica-should-apologize-to-hillary/
Yes, two people can both be wrong in this framework- unlike the neo-morality view that there is a victim and an oppressor.
Under classical morality, Clinton is a cad and a rake and Lewinsky is a slut and a home-wrecker.
Under classical morality, most sex is illicit, and most illicit sex has two perpetrators - rape stricto sensu is the rare case where one partner is wholly innocent because she didn't consent, not something that is only illicit because of the lack of consent.
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