Reply #53: Dan Savage wrote a column about this once

[Withywindle]

in response to the survey quoted above that challenged the idea of all adult/minor sex being necessarily damaging and traumatic to the minor. He knew a lot of gay men who, as teenagers, deliberately sought out sex with older men--partly just for pleasure, partly to learn about gay sex and gay life from someone with experience. He'd had an experience like this himself and didn't regret it one bit.

He wasn't going to condone it and celebrate it wholesale, but he wasn't going to call cases like this "abuse" either, because the people to whom it "happened" weren't calling it that. They didn't feel they'd been harmed by it at all, so who was he to try to convince them they had, or insult them by telling them their positive feelings were "incorrect"?

That kind of aggressive sexual behavior may not be as common among girls, but I doubt you could rule out the possibility that some girls also seek out sexual gratification.

You definitely can't rule it out! I was one. And no, some 20 years later, I still don't feel I was "abused" either.

which is NOT to say I am in favor of legalizing adult/teen sex wholesale. Far from it! I am only saying I agree with you, there are complexities that the law doesn't recognize.

The term "statutory rape," for example, which is insulting both to sexually active minors AND to survivors of real, violent, nonconsensual rape.