Prey To It

This is Joann Wypijewski, writing in about 1996, when the โ€œwomen are only prey, men only predatorsโ€ narrative was just getting started, right when prudishness was beginning to ramp up again:

But what did they see in him? The question, overt or indirect, has riveted reporters and TV presenters. Itโ€™s funny how the opposite questionโ€”what did he see in them?โ€”is never asked, only implicitly answered in the assumption that he was โ€œlooking for victimsโ€ and they were easy โ€œprey.โ€ Thereโ€™s more than a touch of racism behind the media prurience, since, except that so many of them are white, the young women in this case mostly swam in the same stream of trouble as Williams. It would have been stranger if they hadnโ€™t found each other.

This is from the book What We Donโ€™t Talk About When We Talk About #MeToo: Essays on Sex, Authority and the Mess of Life.

I think itโ€™d be interesting if we let the โ€œfeministsโ€ succeed and make the age of majority for women to 30 or 35 as they seem to wish. Thatโ€™d have very fun-to-observe societal implications. Iโ€™m kind of for that just to see what happens.