UNDERAGE (BY MODERN WESTERN STANDARDS) SEXUALITY.

A RANT.

I have this obsession with writing honestly about cultures.

The underage (by western standards) sex in some of my cultures jars several people and I decided that perhaps the time had come to talk about it.

Child marriages were common in the Middle Ages. In one version of the lyrics to a song called "The Trees They Do So Grow" that some scholars believe dates to the Middle Ages based on internal evidence (it was first printed in 1792) the groom is twelve and the bride is twenty-four. He's a father at thirteen and dead at fourteen, possibly in war.

My own great grandmother was fourteen when she married and a mother at fifteen. She married a man ten years older than she was.

One of the main reasons for such early marriages was that war, disease, and accidents took a huge toll among the populations. So much so that people wanted to produce heirs as quickly as possible to ensure the continuation of their lineages. Boys as young as nine and ten went to war, usually to assist in routine matters at camp, yet they frequently became casualties. As late as the 18th and 19th centuries boys served as buglers to infantry regiments in both the American and British units and as powder monkeys on warships.

Children were treated the same as adults under the law and could be hanged for crimes. Girl children as young as three years old could be sold into prostitution. Queen Victoria was considered extremely enlightened in the 19th century when she raised the age at which a man could sell his daughter into prostitution from age three to age thirteen. Those were not pretty centuries.

When I created my cultures, I went for some semblence of how Medieval cultures operated. Anything else seemed to be dishonest writing to me. One of the things that most irritated me about the majority of fantasy novels that have come out in the past twenty years is the way that the authors imposed a modern western sensibility and dynamic on the cultures.

With this in mind, I made the legal age for sex, marriage, signing of contracts, and holding office fourteen for most of my cultures.

Child marriages still occur in Third World countries. One major figure in the 20th century, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, in an arranged marriage, wed a fourteen year old girl while he was in his early twenties. In places like Afghanistan reports emerge of girls as young as three being given in marriage, with consummation to take place when she gets her menses.

Reality is harsh. My novels are harsh. But I refuse to write anything wearing a pair of rose-colored glasses. As cultures actually existed at certain levels of technology and civilization, so shall I write it. They existed and exist, whether due to custom or necessity, and should not be ignored simply because they make us Westerners uncomfortable.

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articles published in:
Movieline *** Cinefantastique *** Washington Post Book World *** Los Angeles Times *** Los Angeles Drive Guide *** Black Belt *** Martial Arts Weapons *** Monsterland *** Thrust: Science Fiction in Review *** Science Fiction Review

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