Age of Consent in Fiction

[gehayi]

erastes is blogging today over about age of consent in fiction. I wanted to reply, but I couldn't; Blogspot limits comments to 4096 characters. (Cripes, even LJ does better than that.) So I thought I'd post here and leave a link there.

Sometimes I wonder how George R. R. Martin got away with it in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. For those who haven't

Comments

[erastes]

I will accede to your comment about historical romance in the hetero-section, (and obviously not everyone, there are writers who work damned hard to make sure the facts are right) I can't agree in the small and burgeoning world of gay historical fiction (which is the angle I was working from, and describing the problems I have with the AoC as a writer of gay historical fiction).

99% of the writers in the gay historical market right now are dedicated, obsessive and almost anal (excuse the pun) to get the facts right in whatever era they right, and I hope that pushing and questioning the rules and restrictions laid down by years of heterosexual publishing, we can attempt to keep that standard high.

One day, I am sure, we will be in a state where the gay historicals will have just as much crap in it as the hetero market does, but I'm going to work hard as I can to prevent it!

[gehayi]

The people I know who write historicals do a hell of a lot of research. Whether that's the norm, I couldn't say, but I know they do it because they have me double-check it a lot of the time.

[gehayi]

Hooray! I'm glad that sometimes someone gets it right.

[lareinenoire]

I loved that book when I was in school. It's still one of the more genuinely accurate representations of medieval life out there.

[lareinenoire]

So I repeat what I said before: how the hell did Martin get away with it?

Because Martin doesn't give a damn about people's preconceptions? He kills off his characters even more easily than Joss Whedon does, be damned to the fans. Despite my annoyance at how long Book 5 is taking, I have a lot of respect for the man. Which is why I will buy the rest of ASOIAF, no matter how long it takes. Also because they are sheer brilliance, but that is neither here nor there.

I'm afraid it's not just America and not just historical fiction where you run into the problem of age of consent and arranged marriages. I went into a tearing rage at a biography of Queen Anne Neville that came out about two years ago and made an excruciatingly stupid remark about modern ages of consent in the context of her second marriage to Richard of Gloucester, which took place when she was sixteen and he was twenty. Not even her first marriage, two years before! And don't get me started on Margaret Beaufort who gave birth to Henry VII at age 13 and somehow managed to

[gehayi]

I'm afraid it's not just America and not just historical fiction where you run into the problem of age of consent and arranged marriages. I went into a tearing rage at a biography of Queen Anne Neville that came out about two years ago and made an excruciatingly stupid remark about modern ages of consent in the context of her second marriage to Richard of Gloucester, which took place when she was sixteen and he was twenty. Not even her first marriage, two years before! And don't get me started on Margaret Beaufort who gave birth to Henry VII at age 13 and somehow managed to wrangle an agreement from her third husband that she would never have any more children.

Dear God. I would have thought biographers were doing a better job.

I suppose not having any more children isn't quite the same as not having any more sex. Maybe she just got him to wear a condom. Condoms did exist back then.

[lareinenoire]

Dear God. I would have thought biographers were doing a better job.

To give him some credit, he may just have been trying to annoy the more militant Ricardians. But I still find it deeply irresponsible, and have elected to mock him in the introduction to my dissertation. ;)

Actually, from what I can gather, Margaret barely co-habited with her third husband -- at least not until she was accused of treason and conspiracy and Richard III made her do it as punishment! It's a good indication of how much of an exception she was to the rules of normal fifteenth-century society.

[rwday]

Martin can get away with it because he's not writing romance. SF/Fantasy does not have anywhere near the rules and taboos.

These stories aren't child pornography or depictions of pedophilia. Pedophiles have an abnormal attraction to prepubescent children. A 17 year old has a mature body that cannot be distinguished from a 20 year old - for an adult to be aroused by that 17 year old's body isn't abnormal, any more than it's abnormal for a 16 or 17 year old to desire sex. It seems that other countries are doing a better job of keeping their laws in line with biological reality than we are...

[scrollgirl]

DISNEY'S POCAHONTAS

[scrollgirl]

Canada (which has a federal law banning unmarried people under eighteen from consenting to anal intercourse; again, apparently any other kind of gay sex is fine in Canada)

Of course, if the parents give consent to underage marriage, then two 17-year-old boys *could* have legal anal intercourse! Heh.

[gehayi]

Oh, don't get me started about Pocahontas

[minkhollow]

It would not entirely surprise me if John Smith was a model for Captain Hammer. We read bits of his travel-journal thing in high school; man thought he was The Shiznit.