Victims of the Id: There But for the Grace of God Go … Hey, Maybe You, Not Me!

Posted on | September 2, 2013 | 86 Comments

‘I should be telling you good girls don’t . . .’

“I took a fast right on Russell, then a left onto Maryland Parkway . . . and suddenly I was cruising in warm anonymity past the campus of the University of Las Vegas . . . no tension on these faces; I stopped at a red light and got lost, for a moment, in a sunburts of flesh in the cross-walk: fine sinewy thighs, pink mini-skirts, ripe young nipples, sleeveless blouses, long sweeps of blond hair, pink lips and blue eyes — all the hallmarks of a dangerously innocent culture.
“I was tempted to pull over and start mumbling obscene entreaties: ‘Hey, Sweetie, let’s you and me get weird. Jump into this hotdog Caddy and we’ll flash over to my suite at the Flamingo, load up on ether and behave like wild animals in my private, kidney-shaped pool . . . .’
“Sure we will, I thought. But by this time I was far down the parkway, easing into the turn lane for a left at Flamingo Road. . . .”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

You have the right to remain silent, and if any less-than-wholesome thought has ever crossed my mind, that’s between me and the Lord.

As for any depraved behaviors in which anyone might allege I ever indulged, permit me to point out that (a) heavy adolescent drug use may have rendered me temporarily insane for days or weeks at a time, (b) the statute of limitations expired long ago, (c) occasional psilocybin flashbacks cannot be ruled out, (d) some of my ex-girlfriends may have been pathological liars, (e) I used to be a Democrat, you know, and (f) I have the right to have my attorney present during questioning.

God bless the Constitution, I say, and guys who think they can avail themselves of the confessional mode favored by contemporary feminists — i.e., “the personal is political” — are apt to get a rude awakening, as Hugo Schwyzer discovered to his chagrin.

My stern disapproval of fornication and other sins of the flesh should never be mistaken for self-righteousness or a lack of empathy for the perverted souls whose transgressions are exposed before the world. Please, don’t ever tell me I’m ignorant about sin, but don’t think you can impugn me as a hypocrite, either.

We are merely discussing hypotheticals. Just because, hypothetically, I may have gotten away with something doesn’t require me to sympathize with idiots who get caught, and thank God there were no digital cameras or online social-media back in the day, eh?

You can’t prove a damned thing. And where’s my lawyer?

Does that girl look familiar to you? Honestly, I’ve never seen her before, but if she looks familiar to you, you had best not admit it:

I started having sex with adult men when I was 13 years old.
Neglected at home and ostracized at school, I found comfort in the sexual attentions of older men. Unlike boys my own age, who cruelly taunted me, older men were nice to me. Unlike my emotionally distant father, older men paid attention to me. They were grooming me, but to that chubby, attention-starved teenage girl, their attentions felt a lot like love.
And so I created Prodigy chat rooms with names like “13yo girl home alone” and spent hours chatting and having phone sex with the men who would find me there. I “dated” men in their 20s and 30s that I met at the movie theater, online or hanging around local college town with my other underage girlfriends. I pursued these relationships with Lolita-like abandon. The terrifying thing is how few adult men ever said no.
I was not coerced. I consented to all these sexual encounters in the basest sense of the world. But I was making choices that I wasn’t emotionally equipped to make. Legally, that’s why statutory rape laws exist. Because like an intoxicated person, an underage person is not truly capable of informed consent. . . .

You can read the whole terrifying thing, but let me intrude this objection: Blaming your parents — “Neglected at home . . . my emotionally distant father” — is a sort of Freudian cop-out. Anyone can, in retrospect, discern the origins of their misbehavior in the unfortunate circumstances of their youth. Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Adolf Hitler, Hugo Schwyzer — has there ever been a deviant who could not have rationalized their crimes in this manner?

Grant that the 13-year-old sexually acting out her adolescent discontents is not legally responsible for her actions, but blaming it on parents who didn’t pay you as much attention as you thought you deserved . . .

Sorry, sweetheart, I’m not buying that.

Your parents were probably busy trying to earn enough money to pay the bills, and faulting your dad as “emotionally distant”?

Nope. Sorry. darling. Go sell that to somebody gullible enough to think that what you need now is more sympathy. Debra Lafave probably deserves more sympathy, but she’ll get no sympathy from me.

‘Age Is Just a Number’ (and So Is Breast Size)

Cute chicks get away with stuff nobody else can get away with, which is why I never bought into Kaitlyn Hunt’s “cute cheerleader” act. At the risk of further offending the easily offended, there are other questionable assertions made by “Emily”:

The fact is, a 14-year-old girl may be capable of agreeing to sex with a 49-year-old man, but she doesn’t have the emotional and mental maturity to consent. I was 25 before I realized that every man I’d slept with as a teenager was a pedophile. . . .

This is something about which I’ve chastised some friends who have called Kaitlyn Hunt a “pedophile.” That is a very strong word, which has a very specific meaning. If you want to call someone a criminal, a pervert, a creep or a sex offender, OK, but “pedophile” has a diagnostic quality that is inappropriate except where there is evidence of a persistent or obsessive interest in young children. The word “ephebophile” has been used for those whose ideé fixe is adolescents, but again, this requires evidence of a persistent tendency and, in discussing these phenomena, we should distinguish between the criminal act and the perverse interest. More from “Emily”:

It seemed to me that since I’d courted the attention, that I was fully culpable. What teenager believes she is not mentally or emotionally capable of full consent? I thought I was an adult, although when I look at the picture of myself from the time period above, I see a child.
I thought I was the exception for these men, the girl so precocious and advanced that it superseded social norms. I thought that I was “older than my chronological age.”
It never occurred to me as a young sexually active teen that the adult men I had relationships with may have been manipulating me, that they had designs and motives I couldn’t see from my limited child’s perspective. . . .

Here she is exactly on target. Any two people having sex together may have different motives. At 14, quite honestly, some girls are about as emotionally mature as they’ll ever be, and more emotionally mature than any adult who wants to have sex with a 14-year-old. But the guy who flatters her by telling her she is exceptional, in order to manipulate her into satisfying his own lusts, is taking advantage of her vulnerability — and also taking advantage of his own clandestine access to her.

“Emily” says she was meeting these guys in different circumstances, but you can be sure that the one thing her adult “boyfriends” never did was to offer to pick her up at her house, meet her parents and ask them, “Do you mind if I do your daughter in the mouth?”

Once, I met a 28-year-old man online and went to his house for a “date.” He began to undress me almost immediately — I went along with it because I wanted him to like me, and our sexual encounter culminated with him holding my head down and ejaculating into my throat while I sputtered and struggled to pull away. Later, I couldn’t understand why he never called me again, why he didn’t want to be my boyfriend. . . .

Because you are a dirty, dirty girl, that’s why.

Am I “blaming the victim” here? No. Am I trying to excuse the actions of this 28-year-old who so brutally used “Emily”? No.

What I am saying is that sympathy isn’t very helpful in the kind of situation described by “Emily.” She frankly admits she was compelled by her own need to have sex with somebody, in order to assuage her own emotional insecurities. The fact that the guys who took advantage of her compulsion were selfish creeps is scarcely surprising, and adult men visiting the “13yo girl home alone” online chat room are certainly likely to be very bad men. “Emily” is actually lucky she wasn’t kidnapped or murdered. But one way or the other, she just had to be getting banged by somebody, and the fact she was “cruelly taunted” by boys her own age makes her different from other awkward adolescent girls . . . how?

Attempting to ease the emotional pain of your chubby adolescence by “proving” your attractiveness as a teenage temptress doesn’t qualify you for special sympathy, or otherwise every fat girl in seventh grade would be doing the same and claiming victimhood.

By law, indeed, she is a victim, just like Kaitlyn Hunt’s underage girlfriend is a victim. But the importance of prosecuting such criminals — and I’ve been denounced as cruelly vindictive in this regard — does not require me or anyone else to ignore the equal importance of grown-ups telling horny teenagers to keep their britches on.

And there are such things as horny teenagers, sources say.

Allegations of hot-to-trot teenage girls with large, bouncy breasts — well, according to reliable sources, freshmen flute players at high school band camp have at times failed to heed parental warnings about the kind of dangerous hoodlum boys who play trombone.

‘Why Don’t You Have a Seat Over There?’

Sigmund Freud was wrong about a lot of things, but his separation of personality into ego, id and superego is a useful analytic tool. If our ego is our conscious, rational self, the id is that anarchistic irrational impulse that grabbed hold of Hunter S. Thompson’s imagination as he watched those UNLV coeds jiggling past his Cadillac in that Maryland Parkway crosswalk. (The geography checks out, FWIW.)

Hunter S. Thompson was a man profoundly in tune with his id, but the fact that he didn’t end up in federal prison doesn’t mean that any ordinary human being who gets in touch with his id is to be pitied for suffering the usual consequences of such crimes.

Listen too eagerly to your id, and after a while your ego is likely to start trying to rationalize those deviant anti-social impulses.

Next thing you know, you’ll be logging into some online chat room and ignoring the voice of sanity, which warns you that any hot-to-trot teenager online is actually either (a) an undercover FBI agent, or (b) an assistant producer for Dateline NBC.

Hey, fool, that’s your own fault, OK? Are there real-life hot-to-trot teenagers seeking companionship online? Maybe, but if you’re fool enough to try it, don’t call me to bail you out of jail. And even if you do find a real teenager online, you still might end up in prison, and should.

If your id seizes hold of your ego that way, there will be no sympathy for you, because your superego — that is to say, your moral sense, your conscience — was telling you all along that this was not merely a risky adventure, but also profoundly wrong.

Your superego, in the Freudian view, is what compels the ego to suppress the chaotic impulses of the id, and this results in the beneficial effect that Freud called “sublimation.” Impulses which would be dangerous if we were to give free rein to them, in the manner of a hoodlum trombone player at band camp, can become the driving force of high achievement if we suppress these impulses and channel them into constructive socially-approved activity. Sexually frustrated teenagers may not be legally responsible for their actions, but teenagers are capable of heeding either id or superego, of choosing between good and evil.

As for myself, I eventually gave up the trombone, learned how to play a few chords on guitar, and am responsible for whatever evil thereafter may have hypothetically ensued.

There was no Internet back then, no cell phones or digital cameras. So I never did anything wrong, as far as you know, and if some of my ex-girlfriends were pathological liars . . . Dude, I’m a victim.

Also, I was a Democrat at the time.

My lack of sympathy for criminals and feminists may seem irrational, but trust me, it’s far more rational than you could ever imagine. These perverts and weirdos are dangerous. As a parent, I’d never want any of my kids to get mixed up with horny flute players or trombone-playing hoodlums. The reasons for this grown-up parental caution are between me and the Lord. And I have the right to remain silent.

Category: Crime, Fear. Loathing., Sex

Comments

86 Responses to “Victims of the Id: There But for the Grace of God Go … Hey, Maybe You, Not Me!”

MrEvilMatt
September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:32 pm

Victims of the Id: There But for the Grace of God Go … Hey, Maybe You, Not Me!: ‘I should be telling you good … http://t.co/RgM5WpBiTu
CHideout
September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:32 pm

Victims of the Id: There But for the Grace of God Go … Hey, Maybe You, Not Me!: ‘I should be telling you good … http://t.co/0izUHosJUK
jwbrown1969
September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:32 pm

Victims of the Id: There But for the Grace of God Go … Hey, Maybe You, Not Me!: ‘I should be telling you good … http://t.co/BRFsy5TZEi
Lockestep1776
September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:32 pm

Victims of the Id: There But for the Grace of God Go … Hey, Maybe You, Not Me!: ‘I should be telling you good … http://t.co/UyvoVYTy3x
Citzcom
September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:32 pm

Victims of the Id: There But for the Grace of God Go … Hey, Maybe You, Not Me!: ‘I should be telling you good … http://t.co/8ecl8fu1We
rsmccain
September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:34 pm

Victims of the Id: There But for the Grace of God Go … Hey, Maybe You, Not Me! http://t.co/wRpPC25Jz3
smitty_one_each
September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:39 pm

RT @rsmccain: Victims of the Id: There But for the Grace of God Go … Hey, Maybe You, Not Me! http://t.co/wRpPC25Jz3
exposeliberals
September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:45 pm

RT @rsmccain: Victims of the Id: There But for the Grace of God Go … Hey, Maybe You, Not Me! http://t.co/wRpPC25Jz3
BobBelvedere
September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:47 pm

RT @rsmccain: Victims of the Id: There But for the Grace of God Go … Hey, Maybe You, Not Me! http://t.co/wRpPC25Jz3
Regular Right Guy
September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:51 pm

Can we all have a big amen!!!
rsmccain
September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:56 pm

‘Age Is Just a Number’ (and So Is Breast Size) http://t.co/wRpPC25Jz3
Bob Belvedere
September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:57 pm

Well done.
datechguy
September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:59 pm

I read the post by the young Emily and would add the following to the last sentence:

it’s an adult man’s job to say no.and to either teach or scare his sons into doing the same.
robertstacymccain
September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:59 pm

WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL IT ‘JAILBAIT’?
rsmccain
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:04 pm

“Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Adolf Hitler, Hugo Schwyzer …” http://t.co/wRpPC25Jz3
TomKattman
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:08 pm

“Also, I was a Democrat at the time”…ROFL! RT@rsmccain: ‘I should be telling you good girls don’t …’ http://t.co/0mmNMgfnUv
rmnixondeceased
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:10 pm

Heh. Great post Stacy.
rsmccain
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:10 pm

RT @TomKattman: “Also, I was a Democrat at the time”…ROFL! RT@rsmccain: ‘I should be telling you good girls don’t …’ http://t.co/0mmNMg…
motownmutt
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:10 pm

RT @BobBelvedere: RT @rsmccain: ‘Age Is Just a Number’ (and So Is Breast Size) http://t.co/58eGdSwkF7 | Man, we should start a tabloid toge…
RMNixonDeceased
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:11 pm

Victims of the Id: There But for the Grace of God Go … Hey, Maybe You, Not Me! http://t.co/Fd7z3wHpYp
IsraelLover333
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:11 pm

RT @TomKattman: “Also, I was a Democrat at the time”…ROFL! RT@rsmccain: ‘I should be telling you good girls don’t …’ http://t.co/0mmNMg…
robertstacymccain
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:12 pm

Every parent of a teenage girl is a conservative.
thatMrGguy
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:12 pm

Victims of the Id: There But for the Grace of God Go … Hey, Maybe You, Not Me! http://t.co/VDio1bJjFv
IsraelLover333
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:12 pm

RT @rsmccain: “Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Adolf Hitler, Hugo Schwyzer …” http://t.co/wRpPC25Jz3
Colorado Alex
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:14 pm

Proof of why “slutshaming” is a social good. You can’t stop every predator or every stupid teenager, but you can make an example of one or two and hopefully convince the rest that the cost of this kind of “love” is much more than it’s worth.
rsmccain
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:14 pm

“Please, don’t ever tell me I’m ignorant about sin, but don’t think you can impugn me as a hypocrite, either.” http://t.co/wRpPC25Jz3
IsraelLover333
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:14 pm

RT @BobBelvedere: RT @rsmccain: ‘Age Is Just a Number’ (and So Is Breast Size) http://t.co/58eGdSwkF7 | Man, we should start a tabloid toge…
IsraelLover333
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:14 pm

RT @rsmccain: ‘I should be telling you good girls don’t …’ http://t.co/wRpPC25Jz3
SantaisaSMOKER
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:15 pm

http://t.co/ahM53XoecP Will the brilliance from @rsmccain ever end? I think not.
Colorado Alex
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:16 pm

Unfortunately not. I’ve known a few who decided that it was more important to be the “cool” parent, or who believed that if they somehow allowed it to happen that they could control it.
robertstacymccain
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:16 pm

“Slutshaming” = discouraging harmful behavior by stigmatizing it.

If you do something to be ashamed of, why shouldn’t people shame you? Because you’re a girl, and it would be sexist to shame you?

Oh, shut the hell up.
rmnixondeceased
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:17 pm

Exactly so. How do you think I felt about Julie and that creep David?
OwainPenllyn
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:17 pm

RT @rsmccain: “Please, don’t ever tell me I’m ignorant about sin, but don’t think you can impugn me as a hypocrite, either.” http://t.co/wR…
IsraelLover333
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:18 pm

RT @rsmccain: “Please, don’t ever tell me I’m ignorant about sin, but don’t think you can impugn me as a hypocrite, either.” http://t.co/wR…
IsraelLover333
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:19 pm

RT @rsmccain: ‘Age Is Just a Number’ (and So Is Breast Size) http://t.co/wRpPC25Jz3
joethefatman
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:28 pm

true dat
joethefatman
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:30 pm

A certain kill the babies evil femanazi blogger probably had her head explode as soon as you clicked post on that statement.
Dianna Deeley
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:36 pm

It’s always sad to read stories like “Emily’s” – the girls who need some way around feeling useless and ugly and unlovable. Not all of them end up where she did – some of them end up in a shallow grave – but enough do that there seems to be an endless supply for the men with no conscience or compassion.
Dianna Deeley
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:37 pm

Should be, anyway.
rsmccain
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:39 pm

@mVespa1 @Gabby_Hoffman @DanielleRSaul @crousselle @AM_Hoffman Good Girls Don’t http://t.co/wRpPC25Jz3
M. Thompson
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:40 pm

All on point. Overcoming temptation is a good thing, and sexual is the best.

And the idea of an irate man’s shotgun pointed at me for deflowering his daughter is scary enough.
robertstacymccain
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:44 pm

You know what you never want your own daughter to be? That Kind of Girl.

Maybe when you were a reckless teenage hoodlum, you had profoundly appreciated That Kind of Girl — hypothetically — but you never would want your own daughter to be like that.
RS
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:45 pm

Given that we know society actively encourages, celebrates and facilitates sexual behavior among minor children, it seems parents need to understand that to prevent such things from happening, they must work doubly hard to counteract society’s influences. It’s very hard work, but it pays off in the end. That’s not to blame the parents of this girl, but to point out nonfeasance of parental responsibility can be as damaging as malfeasance.
JadedByPolitics
September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:53 pm

“WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL IT ‘JAILBAIT’?” — robertstacymccain http://t.co/rHPxUHMWUX
rsmccain
September 2nd, 2013 @ 8:29 pm

RT @SantaisaSMOKER: http://t.co/ahM53XoecP Will the brilliance from @rsmccain ever end? I think not.
rsmccain
September 2nd, 2013 @ 8:45 pm

RT @thatMrGguy: Victims of the Id: There But for the Grace of God Go … Hey, Maybe You, Not Me! http://t.co/VDio1bJjFv
Wombat_socho
September 2nd, 2013 @ 8:49 pm

If only it were that easy.
DBT816
September 2nd, 2013 @ 8:52 pm

RT @rsmccain: “Please, don’t ever tell me I’m ignorant about sin, but don’t think you can impugn me as a hypocrite, either.” http://t.co/wR…
joethefatman
September 2nd, 2013 @ 9:05 pm

Exactly the position I’m in. Theoretically.
tlk244182
September 2nd, 2013 @ 9:23 pm

And nonfeasance is under the radar. My parents did not appear to be morally depraved. But they did not have a Christian world view (or the ‘equivalent,’) without which the sinful character of lust is difficult to see, let alone explain to a twelve-year-old. My parents did not realize that in rejecting a Christian world view they were unwittingly discarding the barriers which could have prevented me (and them) from tumbling into a moral abyss. I’m sure they thought Christianity was obsolete, and they were wise in their own eyes. Most crass materialists are circumspect enough not to destroy themselves through a life of debauchery. Unfortunately circumspection was not one of my strengths.