ŷ������

yes.

In your essay, “Eleven�� () you say,

Morally, we know that if a man hears an eleven-year old girl say yes, what he should really hear is no...No matter who an eleven-year old is, though, there is no version of that age where a child is capable of making an informed decision about sex.

I am interested in knowing how you reconcile that view with Duras�� book in which the young girl is twelve years of age when the affair with a much older man begins; an affair which lasts for about a year and a half.

Duras' seems to be saying that, in the matter of consensual sexuality, regardless of age, the question of “morality�� is absurd, and that it does not enter into the matter. While she is definitely not giving us (rapacious men that we are) permission to declare open-season on the world's teenage girls, she does seem to be explicitly stating that a teenage girl is capable of taking charge of her own sexuality, and does not need the world to impose its rules, mores, fears, perversions, and traumas on her will to love. The girl’s mother is negligent but in that negligence something non-nefarious and patently beautiful burgeons. We can contrast this with Nabokov’s “Lolita�� in which the girl’s mother has first to be murdered in order for the step-father to get access to the daughter. That violent act pollutes the rest of the relationship so that it ends badly. (But even then, just how badly does the relationship end? Dolores runs away, seems to live a good life, gets married, has children. We are allowed to imagine that without that violent inciting act, the relationship between Humbert and Dolores might have been healthful and beautiful. Instead, Humbert self-destructs.)

Why are we so terrified of sexuality, especially that of teenage girls? The question of diseases or unwanted pregnancy is one that is easily solved by education, so what is behind the persistent terror we feel for teenage girls having sex? If we allow that some (few, many, most?) girls have the kind of awareness that Duras�� girl has, then what exactly are we trying to protect them from?

What constitutes what you call, in your essay, an "informed decision". Are girls who have attained the legal age of consent automatically able to make “informed decisions��? Or do we insist that informed or not, once they are of age, their protection is their own responsibility?

Everyone needs protection from predators but why, in the matter of a sexual act between a teenage girl and a man, do we automatically declare the man a predator and the girl an unwitting victim? Why is it implausible to assert that, “an eleven-year old child had the wiles to seduce all those men...�� Seduction doesn’t imply that the men were left bereft or their senses, agency or complicity but why is guilt a necessary result? Duras doesn’t seem to consider it implausible. Or is her novel some kind of preposterous denialist fantasy, in which case we should decry it as such?

Does Duras�� book point us towards a way talking openly and productively about teenage sexuality? If it does then why persist with a line of reasoning that insists that teenage girls have no agency where sexuality is involved?

P.S. I don't know how often you log on to GR so I've e-mailed this comment to you.

Thanks.

Did you ever answer the Lolita comment? I also love this book, but this question raised some important concerns, and, whether it involves issues of power imbalance, flawed narrator, etc., I'd love to hear your thoughts.