Political change often follows a change in consciousness; the process of defamiliarisation through which things we once accepted as fine, or hated but believed were immutable, gain sufficient criticism as to become suddenly absurd. There is nothing like the shock registered by young children today when apprised of banished norms of the recent past – smoking on planes, women needing a man to co-sign for a credit card – to remind us how quickly universal assumptions can change. Among the list of gross things that, at present, still induce widespread shrugs are relationships between adult men and teenage girls. You wonder what it would take to make that taboo, too.
Calls for new laws around the age of consent in the UK, which is set at 16, came this week in the wake of the Russell Brand revelations, and were made in the first instance by one of his alleged victims, known as “Alice”. In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Alice, who alleges she was sexually assaulted by Brand when she was 16 and he was in his 30s in an otherwise largely consensual relationship, suggested revisiting the consent laws to recognise that men “dating” girls in their teens entails a power imbalance that she considers to be abusive.
