Jail Bait. please help me articulate why is it such an offensive phrase please.

Ormirian - so you were. Sorry. I just read the posts without looking at who was saying what ...

I'm sorry I'm a bit pompous sometimes (just reread it). I suppose I thought you were saying something along the lines of 'I had under-age sex and it did me no harm', and I just leapt in. It's something that I really struggle with, because although I accept that lots of kids have under-age sex with no ill effects, kids in general do still need the protection of the law, imo.

Oh yes, still unpleasant, but different.

Orm - I think your DH was using it wrongly, TBH. I have always associated it with what madwomanintheattic and SkeletonFlowers have described. Not a child who happens to look mature but an underage girl who is deliberately going out of her way to look mature (most likely in order to drink) and might be seeking out sexual relationships.

I think the prime offensive element of the term is the supposed implications it has about male sexuality.

As others have noted it plays into the "can't help themselves" rational the says men are incapable of controlling their sexual desires and thus women are responsible for how men act in response to them.

I.e if they're raped it is their fault for wearing revealing clothing/being drunk/flirting. The men are helpless, unable to control their base desires, poor things.

Sickening.

My understanding is the same as DinahRods' explanation and also am aware of it being used for children implying the only thing that makes sex with children wrong is the risk of jail.

Not nice. :(

It's a dehumanising word, and subtly implies that the girl in question is being deliberately provocative. I hate it.

Most offensive terms are meaningless.

Ormirian whatever good or bad things that relationship brought to you, the under-age sex law is a good one, imo, there to protect children from sexually predatory adults. And because it's there, it shows people that it's unacceptable.

Clearly there's a difference between consensual sex between two under-16s and an exploitative relationship in which one person is so much more powerful than the other. (This can also happen between two people of the same age, obviously). Being aware that most people think it's unacceptable for adults to prey on young teenagers might just shame some of them into thinking again?

I'm glad the OP is asking these questions of all of us - and of her husband.

nooka i agree. when i was just turned 16 i started at college and had a few girls that were 18/19 on my course. one of them set me up with her friend. i went ahead thinking he was her age. he was 23. i obliged and went to the cinema with him and then told him that my dad wanted me home for midnight. he kept asking if we had time 'to stop along the way'. i felt sick, (bearing in mind the legal age of consent in northern ireland was 17 at the time). when i spoke to my friend afterwards asking her why she did that she said she never even considered it a problem as she had been friends with him since she was 14 and he had always dated girls around her age . when i think about it now i really do think he was disgusting. what 23 year old has an interest in a 16 year old?

I guess it depends on your definition of same age range really. I'd say that 21 and 15 were in two totally different realms. But that's more about 15 year olds really. I had a friend at university who at 22 dated a 16 year old and we thought that pretty disgusting. Just couldn't fathom why he thought of her as anything other than younger sister territory really (ie to be mentored not fucked).

oh, i dunno - a group of hot young women in a bar getting leathered, then all going off clubbing until 3am? i think i'd assume they were old enough to shag, if that was what i was after, tbh, even if not legally old enough to drink.

it's really gross when there is an obvious age difference - i'd wonder about the bloke's motives anyway. 'jail bait' has always been used to warn off those not old enough to be discerning - those who are only after a quick fumble in any case, because it's friday. etc, and are used to girls/ women looking for the same, and offering it.

i think we're talking about two different things though - much older guys perving about much younger girls, as opposed to those of much the same age who happen to be on opposite sides of a legal boundary, despite the younger party making enormous efforts to appear 'legal'.

no idea how much effort a 19yo bloke with the horn makes to check id though.

i know my 21yo friend didn't check his id, lol. but she was so mortified i don't think she dated for a year after that, and it was always someone she 'knew', never anyone she met in a bar lol.

If you are a great deal older than whoever you pick up then it is entirely your responsibility to be absolutely 100% sure they are old enough to really know what they are doing.

We used the term 'baby-snatcher' when we were students of people who had much younger girlfriends and I'd use it in the reverse too. It makes it totally clear that it is the older person fucking up the younger person and not the other way around.

There may be a few naive people out there who are totally incapable of seeing the difference between a young adult and an older child, but I think they are the minority. Most people who pick up/date those much much younger and less mature than themselves are deliberately going for vulnerability.

There's nothing new about teenagers trying to pass as old enough to drink - most of those who "just didn't know" did exactly the same thing themselves after all.

Horrid terminology.
Implies the girl is responsible for their desires.
My friends daughter has a problem with boys and men(she is 16) because she has (like her Mum)really big boobs.
She gets awful comments from men who should know better and gets very upset by them to the point where she wants to have them made smaller surgically.
This has been going on since she was about 13.
She HATES her tits and who can blame her.

mmm, i see that. but i have to say i have heard it used in a less offensive manner when the young ladies in question are deliberately dressing up in order to pass as much older teens/ twenties in order to get served alcohol in bars and pick up older guys... so the girls are going full out 'i'm 18 and i'm in this bar drinking' and flirting with guys to get sonsensual sex - and later turning out to be 14 or 15.

interestingly, it happened to a female friend of mine when she was picked up by a bloke in a bar... after two months of dating him - and several instances of consensual sex lol (although to this day she claims she didn't sleep with him on the first date)and having him drive her car several times (he said his was in the shop) she found out he was 15 and about to take his gcses... she was 21

i think she was visited by the police, although she was very quiet about it (i only know because i was out with her when they first met, and asked her how they were getting on periodically).

classic jail bait, really. i think originally the term was used because the young people genuinely were out on the pull, trying to get kudos by picking up older guys/ women. it's still a bit grim, but if you have consensual sex with a guy or girl you honestly believe to be over 18 and meet in a bar, and then get called by the police, then i sort of lose sympathy with the underage 'victim'...

i think it's 'GI bait' if you happen to live next door to an american air base though...

I remember one weekend away when I was 15 with a gang of older blokes (it was a festival) and they were constantly calling me and my friend (also 15) jail bait as some kind of compliment. We giggled and squirmed and felt uncomfortable but couldn't place why.

In Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men', Curley's wife (never named in her own right, always an appendage) is termed "jail-bait", not because she's underage, but because she is trouble waiting to happen, seeking out liaisons with other men, and her husband is a nasty piece of work. But the term now is synonymous with being under age. Implied is there not, also a critique of the parents as either they have okay-ed or even chosen the clothing. It's very loaded.

agree dittany. like prison is the only reason they shouldn't have sex with a child.