I saw this post from Richard Hanania the other week on Twitter/X in response to an article about a woman who had sex with several 15-year-old boys and was impregnated by one of them. Hanania also linked to a post he wrote on his Substack last year: Comments – Hitler, Demi Moore, and Other “Pedophiles” (richardhanania.com)

Hanania argues that women who have sex with teenage boys should not be imprisoned due to differences in male and female sexuality. From his Substack post:

“The idea that teenage boys can be victimized by older women, like the demand that men only be attracted to women of their own age, can only exist in a culture in which many aspects of heterosexuality are repressed, if not demonized. Blank slatism is the common thread here, and it’s warped the culture in ways that I suspect are tied to the sex recession, the decline of marriage, falling birthrates, and general misery among young people.”

 Hanania also writes:

“This isn’t worth worrying about simply because it’s a great injustice that women who have sex with underage boys go to jail, even though of course it is. If you think teen boys can be victimized by adult women, it’s a sign that your views about human sexuality are so disordered that it’s bound to affect other areas of life.”

Another individual I follow on Twitter/X made a similar argument about a different case of a young woman having sex with a teenage boy a few months ago but deleted the post after getting backlash in the comments. Predictably, a similar controversy has erupted in the comments over Richard Hanania’s post.

Hanania’s argument here highlights to me an issue I have people who constantly talk about the ‘blank slate’: sex differences are used to justify certain individual’s (usually women’s) actions and any objection to the justification is met with accusations that you believe in the blank slate yourself. It’s like a black and white “you’re either with us or against us” type of mentality.

To be clear, the blank slate is wrong and should be challenged, but that doesn’t mean you can’t debate apparent differences between the sexes (within reason obviously, it would be a waste of time debating whether or not men can get pregnant for example).

Underneath Hanania’s black and white thinking and attempts to be edgy however is a point that I think men’s rights activists/manosphere guys need to accept: because of differences between men and women, most people will not respond to women having sex with teenage boys the same way they would about men having sex with teenage girls. The same problem arises when trying to argue that men can be victims in general.

It is true, for instance, that men have a higher sex drive than women and are usually physically stronger than women. You can’t talk about to what extent men can be victims of sexual abuse by women without taking these two facts into account.

Also, it is undeniably true that a sexual fantasy of a lot of teenage boys is to have sex with an attractive ‘experienced’ older woman as evident by the term ‘MILF’ – which stands for ‘Mother I’d Like to..’ well you can guess the rest. Possibly the most well-known example in popular culture is ‘Stifler’s Mom’ in the American Pie films who has sex with one of the main characters in the first film and then in the subsequent films. In this case, the character is probably 17/18 (and the actor likely older).

On the other hand, what I think Hanania, and others who make the same kind of arguments as him, overlook is that many societies in the past would not have approved of older women having sex with teenage boys either. I mentioned in a post about Louise Perry last year that previous civilisations have portrayed female sexuality in threatening ways, such as the sirens in Greek mythology. However, such civilisations would not have labelled female sexual predators with words like paedophile. They would have likely used a different word.

I’ll use a word that is now considered not only politically incorrect but also very misogynistic: whore. You could sound like a fanatical preacher if you said the word in conversation but I can’t think of another word that can explain the type of female sexual behaviour that could be viewed as the equivalent of male sexual abuse. ‘Whore’ is what I believe people in the past would have labelled women like Rebecca Joynes and it is a useful word to describe the type of older women who typically have sex with teenage boys. Note that whores can be very sexually attractive just as male sexual predators can be very handsome and appealing to women.

An even more taboo notion is to suggest that some young women and teenage girls who have had sex with older men could also be called whores and would have been labelled as such in the past.  To be absolutely clear, I am talking about women/teenage girls who willingly have sex with older men rather than women/girls who have been sexually abused by men.

As I was writing this I realised that there is a sexual double standard that complements the well-known double standard of promiscuous men being seen as ‘studs’ whereas promiscuous women are seen as ‘sluts’. While the promiscuity double standard benefits men, there is a sexual double standard that benefits women: predatory men are often seen, understandably, as dangerous, creepy and abhorrent, whereas predatory women can be viewed more positively as seductive, powerful or even admirable. I realise that neither double standard is a cast iron rule, as promiscuous men can and have been condemned by societies just as predatory women can be.

However, this realisation led me to think of labels to differentiate negative male and female sexuality: male predators and female whores. Promiscuous (i.e. whorish) behaviour from men is usually deemed less problematic just as sexually predatory behaviour from women is. This likely has its roots in biology which I won’t bother going into here.

Both predatory and whorish behaviour nevertheless have similarities. For example, here’s a list of behaviours that I believe a female whore (or, if you like, a slut/harlot/jezebel/skank/tramp) would engage in:

• Sexually aggressive

• Has lots of promiscuous sex

• Has sex with underage boys as an older (20s-40s) woman or with older men as a younger (15-20) woman

• Forces herself on men who don’t want to have sex with them using alcohol/drugs/etc

• Has unsavoury kinks and fetishes

The above examples could describe the actions of a woman who would otherwise be labelled a ‘rapist’, ‘paedophile’ or sexual abuser’. However, those words are so closely related to predatory (i.e. male) behaviour that it is hard for most people to relate to them the same way when they are used to describe female sexual predators.

There may be a better (and less loaded) word to describe negative female sexual behaviour rather than ‘whore’ but I think that using a specific word as a female equivalent to ‘male sexual predator’ would be an effective way in getting people to take sexually abusive actions by women against men more seriously. Trying to use the same terms we use to describe male sexual abuse against women for the opposite is like swimming against the tide.

In other words, instead of trying to work against double standards – e.g women can be sexual predators just like men! – it’s better to work with the double standard that benefits men – e.g. promiscuous women are sluts/whores, whores force themselves onto men, teenage boys etc.

Let’s consider a case where an attractive woman forces a man to have sex with her by incapacitating him in some way. If the man is labelled a victim, a lot of men would say “I wish it was me” or some other silly comment. Instead, if you labelled the woman a whore, and ask men who joked about it why they are defending a whore, then you put the spotlight back on the woman’s behaviour and can call it out from a position of strength instead of weakness.

To what extent whorish behaviour from women should lead to prison sentence is worthy of debate but it should be at least condemned by society if it isn’t by the law. Since women typically fear social stigma and shunning more than men, using the ‘whore’ label would be a useful way to condemn female sexual abuse.

I replied to Richard Hanania’s Twitter/X post suggesting that Rebecca Joynes was probably a narcissist or someone with borderline personality disorder (as many female whores and male sexual predators likely are) and that he shouldn’t white knight for her.

My advice to anyone who wants to respond to people defending women having sex with teenage boys is simply to say: “she’s a narcissist/borderline” or, if you’re feeling bold, “she’s a whore.”