I am cackling at a lot of the jokes being made about the Chris D'Elia situation because jokes do tend make me cackle but also!!!! Please do not act like the fetishization of young girls and grown men's entitlement to them isn't also your problem to deal with. (THREAD)

This last winter was really traumatizing for me because a lot of memories came back all of a sudden about my own experiences being groomed and molested and assaulted by adult men starting around twelve years old (!!!!) and my experience is absolutely not unique.

The women coming forward about Chris D'Elia did not have a unique experience. Chris's actions are not unique. We can laugh all day about the "hack" jokes made on here by women about older men being shitty, but IT IS HACK FOR A FUCKING REASON.

This is a nearly universal experience for the women in your life. And it isn't just because individuals are creeps. They are! But it has a whole lot more to do with the fact that our entire world enables that creepiness. Yes, even in our beautiful post- #metoo utopia!

It's insidious as fuck and seeps into our culture from all angles. It's in movies with all leading men being 50 and their girlfriends being 22. It's in porn with the #1 search result being "teen" or "young" (sometimes only 2nd to "sister" which I argue is not all that different).

It's in every single beauty standard that women are held to: bouncy, clear skin; perky tits; no gray hair; thin in a way that is normally only found naturally in.....prepubescent children!!!

It's in the way that women are not valued in a mainstream way after showing any sign of aging whatsoever. Not even just sexually, which is fucked up in itself, but in ANY WAY. I remember my mom telling me she felt herself becoming invisible when she started getting gray hair.

She also told me that with that invisibility came some relief! Because she didn't feel literally preyed upon anymore!!! Lol <3

Mind you, hair starts going gray around the same time "real" adulthood starts. Late 20s and early 30s. So let's talk about why the fuck it is that "salt and pepper" is sexy on men but it's when we discard women if they don't hide it??

Whether you personally are attracted to 16 year olds or not, you are a willing participant in the culture that makes the men YOU KNOW attracted to them. The culture that basically tells all of us that SIXTEEN is women's peak, physically.

Physically being the only thing we are valued for in a real way in the first place.

The men that groomed me and abused me when I was underage were not just powerful, famous men. They were not just deranged creeps. Most of them were regular people. They were nice. They were respectable. They were trusted by many people in my life.

You're closer to this than you think. There are people in your life involved in this stuff right now. I promise you that. Make your jokes, they're funny! Condemn his actions, cancel him, talk about how you never like him anyway.

But please be ready to talk about it when it comes knocking at your door. When it's your friend, colleague, brother, husband.... because it will be. It already is.

Sexualizing CHILDREN is normalized as fuck and it confuses me when something like this happens and the men on my TL act like it's news or an isolated incident or like this particular individual was a monster.

Much like racism is a white problem, this specific type of pedophilia between adult men and teenage girls is a man problem. Make your jokes but fix your problem.

I apologize for how heteronormative and binary this thread is, as a non binary person myself I do often struggle with the fact that womanhood informs so much of my experience on this earth, mostly against my will!

Anyway should I delete this lol

To everyone responding about the preying on young boys that happens: I am in no way denying the way this happens to young boys, too. I'm talking about the specific type of pedophilia between adult men & teenage girls. A pedophilia many men are complicit in without even realizing.

& culturally men are not expected or asked to maintain the physicality of a teenager as an adult for the mass pedophilic consumption of their sexuality. It is horrific when this happens to ANYONE, I am just speaking to the ways it informs the entire girl & woman experience.