#SurvivingRKelly has dredged up the odd & misplaced resentment many adult men still feel toward the teen girls of their youth who “dated” grown men. 🤔
I put dated in quotes bc that’s not actual dating, but grooming and predation.
But however many times we have this convo, the main sentiment is, “Man, the women (!!!) in my HS were only checking for grown men, not me 😡” not “The girls at my HS were often preyed on by grown men.”
Boys were ridiculed by girls bc teenagers all thought “dating” adults as teens was cool, rather than creepy and wrong. That it marked your maturity. 😩
Seeing girls as “women choosing” adult men only reinforces the harmful myth that pre-teen & teen girls are more mature than boys; it strips girls of their childhood, makes them targets for predatory adults.
And I hate that many don’t see teenage girls as the victim of adult men in these situations. Rather, they assign girls the same amount of culpability and anger as their very predators…for falling prey to rape culture.
No one ever resents the grown men for creeping high school girls, though. They just hate the girls. Strange how that works.
