10/10/20 the increasingly severe rhetoric of US laws about youth sexuality

Here is the link to my October 10, 2020, Twitter thread, where I list some documents I'd already studied, and some documents I haven't yet studied, that point to a transition in US law, from calling illicit youth sexuality "delinquency," to calling it "exploitation," and eventually, while still calling it "exploitation," linking it under the heading of "human trafficking" in a wide variety of situations.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

9/25/20 review of the book Jailbait, by Carolyn E. Cocca

Here is the link to my September 25, 2020, Twitter thread review of the book Jailbait: The Politics of Statutory Rape, by Carolyn E. Cocca.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

9/20/20 review of Kimberly Hamlin article on age of consent laws

Here is the link to my September 20, 2020, Twitter thread reaction to Kimberly Hamlin's Smithsonian Magazine article "What Raising the Age of Consent Taught Women About the Vote."

In this article, from as recent as August of 2020, Hamlin literally becomes the only person other than myself (sorry, but this is true), and the only authority on this subject, to discuss the connection between age of consent laws and sex work laws.

However, Hamlin makes this connection and her argument for purposes of further conservatizing sex laws -- including sex work laws.

This really highlighted for me how important it is for sex work decriminalization to recognize this historical connection between sex work laws and age of consent laws, before conservative authorities take and rewrite this history -- in favor both of high age of consent laws, the continued criminalization and stigmatization of sex work, and the continued vicious cycle of sex paranoia in the United States.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

9/15/20 the intersecting history of sex work and age of consent laws

Here is the link to my September 15, 2020, Twitter thread on why it's so important to recognize how intertwined the history of sex work laws is with the history of age of consent laws -- not just so we can critically examine those laws, but so we can try our best and undo the vicious cycle of sex paranoia in America that is underpinned by them.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

1/23/20 review of the book The Fear of Child Sexuality, by Steven Angelides

Here is the link to my January 23, 2020, Twitter thread review of the book The Fear of Child Sexuality: Young People, Sex, and Agency, by Steven Angelides.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

10/16/19 review of an article regarding European age of consent laws

Here is the link to my October 16, 2019, Twitter thread review of a 1999 article that discussed the laws about the age of legally recognized consent to sex from a European perspective.

I'm really sorry that, in 2019, I was not putting the titles of these articles into the threads. I will find the titles and post them, with the links, as I look back through my notebooks.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

10/7/19 discussion about rhetoric in FTC's 2019 COPPA workshop

Here is the link to my October 7, 2019, discussion about some rhetoric, based on the paranoia of youth sex, that came out of the FTC's workshop on the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

9/17/19 discussion about age of consent laws since the 1500s

Here is the link to my September 17, 2019, Twitter thread discussion about some of my ideas about the history of age of consent laws in the US and UK since the 1500s.

When I started researching the history of age of consent laws in 2016 or so, my initial feeling was that age of consent laws were property laws -- essentially saying that kids were the property of their parents until they could become the property of the state, and that their sexuality was part of the definition of their existence as property.

This thread explores that idea, going back to the 1500s, in order to raise a question I still feel is important. As, in the US and UK, access to wealth was increased across the population, were age of consent laws made and modified in order to control the way people in those regions generated and used wealth and property?

I haven't explored this question as much as I'd like over the past couple years. But I still think this is a valid question.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

9/7/19 discussion about sex work and age of consent laws

Here is the link to my September 7, 2019, Twitter thread discussion -- essentially about how I felt sex work theorists and activists were ignoring the role age of consent laws have played in the history of sex work laws.

This thread is horribly written. And, honestly, I'm not a fan of my opinion pieces, the threads that are all opinion, with no new research. However I wanted to include this thread in this table of contents because I definitely still believe a lot of what I'm saying here.

There are some sex worker rights groups who include youth sex workers as part of their discussion. And plenty of folks who are involved in the fight to decriminalize sex work also talk about some really important aspects of the lives of LGBTQ youth -- such as rejection by parents, homelessness, and unemployment.

However, even in 2021, there remains an absolute refusal among sex worker rights activists to recognize the very close historical connection between age of consent laws and sex work laws.

It's hard for me to stress how important I feel it is to recognize the connection between age of consent laws and sex work laws. And, as I've continued to talk about sex work over the years, I've tried to keep my focus on this one aspect of the issue.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

7/12/19 discussion on why I talk about sex work

Here is the link to my July 12, 2019, Twitter thread discussion about why my own life experiences inspired me to study sex work law, and what the history of sex laws have taught me.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

6/30/19 close reading of a passage from Delinquent Daughters

Here is the link to my June 30, 2019, Twitter thread close reading of a passage from Mary E. Odem's book Delinquent Daughters.

My goal, as my thread states, was to show that modern age of consent laws in the United States are closely tied to sex work laws.

As I think Odem's book shows plainly, the only reason the age of legally recognized consent to sex was raised in the United States was because the social purists trying to fully criminalize sex work were not getting sex work fully criminalized quickly enough. They used the age of consent to generate sex paranoia in America. That paranoia of youth sex helped raise the age of consent, pass laws like the Mann Act, and fully criminalize sex work in the United States.

Since that time, the paranoia of youth sex has been a kind of vicious cycle in the US. Each time the government decides new sex laws need to be passed, they carry out a campaign to generate more paranoia of youth sex.

This paranoia generates consensus for stricter sex laws in the US, leading from the Mann Act, to the 1970s child pornography laws, to the 1990s sex education and sex exploitation laws, to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, to FOSTA-SESTA, and, now, to attempts to restrict all kinds of freedoms of expression, for youths and adults, that we're seeing in our current laws.

This all has its roots in a very close tie between sex work laws, the paranoia of youth sex, and age of consent laws.

Nevertheless, almost no sex work decriminalization activists want to admit just how closely age of consent laws and sex work laws are to each other.

If we don't critically assess our laws about the age of legally recognized consent to sex in America, and if we keep on suppressing America's history of paranoia about youth sex, we will most likely not only always be at the whim of politicians who make whatever laws they want about our sexuality, but also in grave danger of sending our country into a bad place, because by this point, our mass psychology is, at least at times, very much driven by this one specific paranoia.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

6/25/19 discussion about young brains and consent to sex

Here is the link to my June 25, 2019, Twitter thread discussion criticizing arguments some people were promoting again around this time, that the brain of people under 18 is actually not developed enough to consent to sex.

Twitter's platform has twisted each of my threads through 2018 and 2019 out of chronological order. This thread is affected, but is still mostly coherent. My apologies.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

5/25/19 review of the book Sexual Politics, by Kate Millett

Here is the link to my May 25,2019, Twitter thread review of the book Sexual Politics, by Kate Millett.

Twitter's platform has twisted each of my threads through 2018 and 2019 out of chronological order. This thread is affected, but is still moderately coherent. My apologies.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

5/23/19 review of my previous sex scandal and sex policy thoughts

Here is the link to my May 23, 2019, Twitter thread discussion of previous threads I'd written about things like age of consent laws, moral purity, and sexual blackmail for political purposes.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

2/23/19 survey of my previous thoughts about the age of consent

Here is the link to my February 23, 2019, Twitter thread of all the threads I had written up to this point about the age of legally recognized consent to sex.

The thread also discussed how this topic came to be so important to me. And it gives some articles about kids who have gotten in trouble over the years for their sexual relationships and for things like sexting.

Twitter's platform has twisted each of my threads through 2018 and 2019 out of chronological order. This thread is affected, but is still moderately coherent. My apologies.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

2/23/19 review of the book By Birth or Consent, by Holly Brewer

Here is the link to my February 23, 2019, Twitter thread review of the book By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, & the Anglo-American Revolution, by Holly Brewer.

Twitter's platform has twisted each of my threads through 2018 and 2019 out of chronological order. This thread is affected, but is still moderately coherent. My apologies.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

1/29/19 review of the book Delinquent Daughters, by Mary E. Odem

Here is the link to my January 29, 2019, Twitter thread review of the book Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885-1920, by Mary E. Odem.

Twitter's platform has twisted each of my threads through 2018 and 2019 out of chronological order. This thread is affected, but is still moderately coherent. My apologies.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.