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When Vili Fualaau was a boy and Mary Kay Letourneau was first arrested, no one defended the relationship. She was vilified and he was seen as a victim. It was only after they remained a couple when he became an adult that some (not all) people accepted their relationship, and even then some of those people did not defend the legitimacy of their early relationship. The same has been true of men with girls. Bill Wyman was 55 when he married 18 year old Mandy Smith. They had been dating for five years and Smith says they first had sex when she was 14. Before she was 18 people were not so positive about the relationship, but because it continued after she became legally an adult, there were a lot of people who thought it was legitimate then. Even though they divorced two years later, Wyman does not get labeled as a child molester. Woody Allen famously married his step daughter. There are a lot of people who still reject the legitimacy of their relationship or, at least, how it started, but Soon-Yi is now 39 and they are still together and a lot of people accept that they really are a legitimate couple. In fact, most of the criticism of their early relationship is the "she was his step-daughter" angle, not the "she was too young" angle. So if there is a bias it is a homophobic one, not a gender bias. But even there it is not clear that the Letourneau case is different. I cannot think of a case of a man-boy relationship that continued when the boy became a man that is viewed differently from her case. The closest case I can think of the one of the first same-sex couple to win the right to marry in Canada. They were aged 31 and 17 when they first became a couple. Thirty-one years later, when they finally were allowed to get married, it was hailed as a great victory and a great love story. Now 17 ain't 13, but in a world that still vilifies homosexuality and tries to equate homosexuality with pedophilia as a way of doing that, 31 and 17 is enough of a gap to make playing that card easy. But it didn't happen. I think that in general if a relationship lasts successfully into the adulthood of the younger partner, people are willing to accept that this case is an exception to the rule, but only reluctantly and because there really is no other choice. Had Vili and Mary Kay never become a couple again after her release from prison, I doubt that anyone would be saying "the only crime was love". But since they made a go of it as (both) adults, people have no choice but to accept that maybe there was something there all along. |