There are still men who say they wished that an older woman gave them sexual attention when they were teenagers/underage, including men who have recently said this to me in person after a recent sexual misconduct thing with female teachers to male students. I don’t typically disclose, but I use the “I’ve heard someone say to me…” and then list one of my experiences. To that end, I also had pictures taken of me. I was told that the polaroids would be scanned and uploaded if I were to stop talking to this person, and then later, if I told anyone about the relationship. Also that no one would believe me because “men” (I was a boy, but I distinctly remember this term being used) don’t get assaulted by women. I used to make so many excuses for her, and even during this whole thing I found myself writing things like “she was deeply misunderstood by her family and very isolated” or “she was only 21, so barely out of her teens herself,” “she told me that she had really bad self-esteem and couldn’t approach people, but I was different,” and more. We met in person once for a long weekend. She got mad at me on day 2 because I expressed some concerns about sex. She said my hesitation actually was because I wasn’t attracted to her, which is a bonkers thing to tell a child.
Anyway, I think the big thing for me was that she said I was “mature for my age.” I really wanted to be taken seriously by adults back then and I was absolutely very precocious. She also complimented my writing and I desperately wanted to be a writer. It felt really good to be validated and to have someone tell me they loved me, I didn’t get much of that after my mom died. Not intended to be a piled on part of the story, just stating the facts.
A lot of competency was assumed for me by my dad. He still is very proud that I got myself up, dressed, fed myself, and took myself to school and got myself back home starting age 11. My guess is he thought I had things under control/knew what I was doing. He obviously would not think that about my sisters at age 13-14. In fact, he tells a story about the lengths he went to to prevent my oldest sister from going to a concert when she was 14 because he was worried she would get assaulted.
A kind of further note here is that I used my early MU* experiences to experiment with my sexuality since I was afraid of the bullying some of my out friends experienced. Maui is basically a giant small town and everyone finds out everything about everyone else. My dad was far more protective of me with older men when we moved to Oregon, but that was probably due to homophobia and the social expectations of what an abuser looks like. I did tell some of the men I roleplayed with my age.
By the time I was 17 and an androgene goth kid, my age became more of an enticement for the men with whom I interacted. Nothing progressed past explicit roleplay at that point, but not out of lack of trying. Things became deeply unpleasant for me at home and I left around then, someone convinced me to move to Seattle. It was a bad decision. I won’t go into detail, but I think I’ve mentioned my difficulties with substance use in the past.
