At some point I said I never wanted to write anything about grooming and abuse of teenage girls again. This is now a thing of the past. So: Content Warning!
A few days ago a video landed on my timeline that showed Paris Hilton. In Washington, she spoke out in favor of a bill that would give victims of AI pornography more legal protection. She said that she had been a victim of it countless times and also talked about the SCANDAL VIDEO that once made her famous. It was released over 20 years ago and showed her having sex with her then partner. He’s over 30, she’s 19.
“People called it a scandal, it wasn’t. It was abuse,” says Paris today.
There were a lot of these “sex tapes,” especially afterward because this one did so well. There were nude photo leaks of famous women, there was of course still more porn, even more related websites, revenge porn, the exposure of ex-girlfriends, the sharing of private photos of women around them, secret recordings in changing rooms and toilets, then photo montages, deepfakes and now AI. The victims are often particularly young.
This is because men like to “not see their age” when their female counterpart is under 20. If it’s over 30, they magically regain this ability, and if it’s over 50, they suddenly have Eagle Eyes 5000.
Short anger break with this smash hit from Demi Lovato.
The victim is shamed
The Hilton case is really one of the many particularly cruel cases because in the process of this abuse she was also shamed by the entire gossip public. It’s not the grown man who exploited a teenage girl who should be ashamed, no, she. Not all those who watched this and became accomplices need to be ashamed, no, they do. We, who were girls ourselves at the time, saw this and learned from it – but nothing good. Somehow it’s supposed to be right that we allow ourselves to be hit on by grown men and engage in sexual relationships with them; that’s natural, or so it was suggested. But we are shamed for it when it becomes visible. And men still jerk off to this shaming. Abuse follows abuse after abuse.
At the time the video came out I had my first boyfriend. Of course he was older than me, that’s just how it had to be. One evening he actually brought up this video, the Paris Hilton “sex tape.” (It’s always the women who are named, because they are the product that is being “fucked”, the man is the cock, the tool, the perpetrator – that’s what porn consumers know and want.) Where my friend got the video from, why, why – none of these were questions that I asked myself. That’s how it should all be with this sex. You have to try everything, you have to spice up your sex life, you have to be open, stay cool and not be a prude, you have to like porn, imitate porn. Good sex is just like in the movies. Do you sometimes have the fantasy that you are traipsing into your past and telling your past self a few beats and slapping a shoe against the head of the person next to you? Oh well!
Everything was porn
It was the noughties. I was 16. I had never seen “real” porn, nor did I want to, but everything around me had long been porn. My pop stars, also teenage girls, who crawled around on the floor, the fashion that was uncomfortable and constricting, the sex scenes in films and series, all the wishes and ideas with which men of the same age and older men approached us girls. Everything was porn, everything was violence, everything was exploitation, everything was playing with real or imagined or desired power. Nothing was our own sexuality, nothing was playful experimentation. Everything was porn.
Another song!
Oh, dear anger. About these pigs, about the public, about all the people who defend these forms of abuse. About all those who then want to blame the girls for what was done to them. You took part, said yes, maybe even initiated something. I could write 100 pages about what young girls supposedly always initiate, and about what girls want, want to believe and where they get it from.
The adult must protect the child
BUT! I won’t do that, I’d rather quote an incredibly comforting passage from the film “After the Hunt” (which almost all male critics panned, but which I thought was very good).
The protagonist Alma (philosophy professor, played by Julia Roberts) finally tells her husband Frederik (therapist, Michael Stuhlbarg) the whole story behind what she experienced as a teenager. Namely: falling in love with a friend of her father’s who “accepted” it, then of course broke up with her because it wasn’t appropriate, of course after he had sex with her, which of course always has to be appropriate first. Of course, the girls are always mature enough for sex, but surprisingly not when it comes to relationship issues. Alma defends this relationship to the end, saying that it came from her, that she wanted it, that she loved him (after we saw again and again in the film two hours earlier how much damage this story had done to her). And her husband, the therapist (whom, in return, we have previously seen struggling with all this moral relativization by philosophy students), says:
“Young girls want adult things to happen to them sooner than they’re ready for them all the time. But it’s always the adult’s job to protect the innocence of a child.”
And then she says: “No, I didn’t give him a choice.”
And then he again: “There’s always a choice. It doesn’t matter if you wanted him. It doesn’t matter if you threw yourself at him. He should have rejected you outright.”
SPEECH, Frederik. Because as an adult you can just… walk away and not sexualize and abuse a child.
Watch the film!
Men always have a choice
Jennette McCurdy’s new book “Half His Age” is about exactly this kind of story, in which a grown man has this choice. The cover image and the first few pages made me a little skeptical at first, as it plays exactly with those Lolita and Femme Fatale stories that are floating around. It comes from the girl. He’s being talked into it. She presses him. How is he supposed to defend himself against this? Besides not being into teenage girls, leaving her alone and not sleeping with her? Depending on the excuse they need, men are either wild animals or passive stumblers, and these tropes can also be found in this book.
Since I thought McCurdy’s first (biographical) book “I’m Glad My Mom Died” was so great, I knew that she wanted to drag you right onto that black ice in order to knock you out right there. That worked. The book is unpleasant and therefore very good. It’s mostly about Waldo, the 17-year-old protagonist, how she wants to be loved and what she’s been told about what you have to do to get it.
Abuse is still abuse
Because of course girls want love and sex. And in this world, where we are made so dependent on recognition, it is easy to take advantage of us and we are conditioned to believe it is right. Sometimes we actually give “consensus” on this, i.e. if you shorten the topic of consensus to a stated yes. But even if you say yes to violence, it is still violence. Abuse is abuse is abuse. Men simply cannot do it, either directly or as consumers. That’s what they have to deal with: their view of girls.
The only thing we should take away from these experiences so far was: Don’t send naked photos, if you do, then never with your face, dress this way and that, equip yourself this way and that, share your location, don’t give yourself away, but give yourself up. Make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to your daughters IF it harmed you, which is then your fault. When it comes to our real or imaginary daughters, everything suddenly becomes clear: of course you don’t want to see her at the side of a grown man, of course a “sex tape” or porn with her is not good… But men will be men.
But more is happening, at least on the side of girls and women. Paris and Demi and Sofia and Jennette and I are fighting back. And blonde!
What happened so far? Here is an overview of all the pop column texts.
