Do You Really Want to Die on the "Attraction to Teenagers" Hill?

Of all the mantles to take up, why fighting the "stigma" of ephebophilia?

As more and more news comes out about the Epstein files, the debate rages over whether Epstein’s clients were pedophiles, really, because teenage girls aren’t prepubescent. Most famously, Megyn Kelly said it, differentiating between attraction to fifteen-year-olds and eight-year-olds, and since then, countless male writers and pundits have come forward to essentially say, “Enough with the woke feminist nonsense, everyone knows you aren’t a pedophile if you find sixteen-year-olds attractive,” pointing out that age of consent differs by country, and begging questions like, “So, the age of consent is fourteen in Germany, are they all pedophiles then?!” Hey, you said it, not me!

Look, I think everyone can admit that there is no fundamental, obvious visual difference between a seventeen-year-old and an eighteen-year-old. At seventeen, I could have passed for twenty. My husband’s lacrosse team photo (taken when he was in high school) shows various rows of adolescents in various stages of development, with a handsome young assistant coach in the middle (oh wait, that’s my husband when he was fifteen.) Any adult who passively, only knowing what we looked like, found either of us attractive would not have been a pedophile any more than an adult who found either of us attractive a few years later. While some people may obtusely show photos of particularly juvenile-looking high schoolers to make a point about how teenagers always look prepubescent and therefore any attraction to them is obviously the same as attraction to preschoolers, most reasonable people know plenty of teenagers can look indistinguishable from adults. That said….

It’s just not the hill anyone should be dying on. I question the motives of anyone whose big bugaboo—or even minor pet peeve—is the “vilification” of attraction to teenagers. Of all the hills to die on, why choose this one? Is it really that important that you be allowed to fuck, or even just publicly opine about your attraction to, teenagers? And if so, why?