But what the case and the subsequent controversy surrounding it really demonstrate is something much grander. It demonstrates that Americans and Yalies have gotten sex all wrong. What I find most unsettling are the ways in which legal and quasi-legal codes, under the guise of benevolence, use these concepts to disempower sexually active people, both the alleged victim and the alleged victimizer. Legal jurisdiction over sexual behavior does not always protect people from the harmful sex. Rather, it consolidates legal and sexual power into the hands of a traditional few, namely judges, fathers, and, in Yale's case, a small, secretive kangaroo court called the grievance board.
Statutory rape is something of a misnomer.
Most states use a sliding scale of sex assault offenses which vary in severity depending upon the age of the minor. In any case, statutory rape laws are rarely applied to cases in which the participants are a younger man and an older woman. Arguably then, the law aims to protect unsuspecting young women from older, male sexual predators . In reality, statutory rape laws find their historical roots in a religious-legal system in which fathers valued virginal daughters for their high market value. In recent years, the defense of statutory rape laws has come to revolve around the idea of consent.