MovieChat Forums > Summer of '42 (1971) Discussion > The underage issue 'debunked' (as far as...

The underage issue 'debunked' (as far as the 1940s are concerened)

posted 16 years ago by dogluver1970
6 replies | jump to latest

I got this from a website found on google (it's very similiar to what other posters stated on a similiar thread about underage sex):

"Paedophilla, on the other hand, was not that around which individual and collective identity and community building took place. There were no wide spread campaigns (until the 1960s and 1970s) for decriminalising intergenerational sex or for abolishing the age of consent; or at least, there were no campaigns waged in the name of the 'paedophile', And there were no apparent subcultural networks of individuals and groups who were united around the singularity of a paedophilic desire. Doctors came across very few cases of exclusive paedophilic desire and few individuals openly or willingly identified themselves in these or any other similar terms."

So while I appreciate the concerns of people re: this issue (I taught High School Health Ed), you HAVE to take into consideration that the film took place in 1942. Until as recently as the early 1900s, men could legally marry teenage girls (or teenage boys would marry teenage girls, which under current law, sex isn't necessarily criminal, marriage or not - esp. if very close in age, eg. 18 vs. 16).

[–] dogluver1970 16 years ago

Doesn't anyone have a response re: the underage issue in the 40s?

[–] plugpray 16 years ago

There has always been a double standard when it comes to sex between unmarried adults and teens. Society has never strongly condemned sex between an adult female and a teen boy. That's probably based on the notion that a teen boy is much less likely to be damaged by such an encounter than a teen girl might be.

[–] digiscript34 15 years ago

I beg to differ with your response. Take a look at what's been happening in the news just within these last several years, what with the rash of cases being reported involving female teachers and their students. Many of these accused teachers are getting slamm-dunked by the judicial system just for their engaging in a consential affair with one of their teenaged students. It seems the 'double-standard' aspect is getting gradually overwritten by all the new laws and punishments being created everyday by people of political power, who, by the way, are more than likely to be just as guilty, if not MORE guilty of similar demeanors than those they choose to accuse and ruin by utilization of their power.

Intimacy taking place between two consenting people who trust, honor and respect each other is NEVER to be construed as sexually offensive or even rape.

But unfortunately we live in a day in age where Society chooses to construe the depiction of intimacy among a couple of characters who trust each other as being unforgivingly obscene and pornographic while at the same time construing the depiction of two people maming and killing each other in a bloody display of blatant violence just for our childrens' eyes to behold as family entertainment. WTF?!

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] justgold79 15 years ago

It has always been happening, imho, but only now are people criminalizing adult women with teenagers. I don't have evidence, but that is what my intuition tells me. I think that no matter what the era people are still the same people and have the same desires, in spite of the rise and fall of morality and the attendant cultural norms.

[–] liscarkat (17125) a year ago

My first intimate encounter, as a teenage boy, with a woman in her early thirties is one of the best memories I have, and I'll always be happy it happened. Setting up eighteen as a line that cannot be crossed was an arbitrary legal expedient that had nothing to do with biology or psychology (although the latter is always speciously invoked). In the 21st century, we have become so mindlessly puritanical, the Victorians would laugh at us. Society was more sophisticated in 1942, and movie audiences were more sophisticated in 1971.