At 13, She Was Ruined

[nimerha]

I am so not questioning that these things happen. I too knew a girl who, at thirteen, dates a guy in his late twenties, and I still see sometimes a girl in our neighbourhood who got pregnant before finishing grammar school.

But I don't and can't believe this narrative. And I don't think it's okay to make up a story and present it as truth to call attention to an issue. Sure, it starts the conversation, it makes people talk about, gets them all nice and righteously indignant. But then those in the wrong get to say - hey, look at them, lying and embellishing the truth, that's not how we really are. And don't fucking tell me that you had to make up a fictional girl in a fictional situation - that's condescending, and belittling, to the real, actual girls preyed on by older men and molesters. Their lives and tragedies not dramatic enough for ya? They don't need anyone to make up fictional victims we can be sorry for and command our attention, they need some fucking attention of their own.

The only reason I can fathom between making up a fictional story like that is to call attention to oneself, to be honest, not to the injustices and issues you present. The author gets a pat on the back, their work is done - instead of saying, hey, our culture is fucked up, let's work on changing it, they condemn everybody and stamp out of the room high on their morality. I brought up Girl In Damascus - obviously this is not as extreme but the principle is the same; and the author of that, who realizes his lies lead people to risk their lives in order to help the fictional girl he posed as, is still making excuses, still believes he didn't do anything wrong.

And that's my portion of righteous moral indignation for this morning.

[clibbyjo]

I knew a girl who had a baby in 8th grade as well, she dropped out of school. Her crowd were the "tough girls" who got suspended for fighting and I think all of them quit school by 16. One sat in from of me and she once mentioned her "boyfriend" was picking her up after school on his Harley. He was 28. I asked her why she would want a "man" for her boyfriend, she just shrugged like I was naive.(I was only 14 ,I was!)

I have a 12 year old daughter, I would kill any man who looked at her sideways and she is not allowed to "date" until she is much older.

[Guest Anonymous]

This story rings so fake because it's a conglomerate of all of the "worst case scenarios" relating to pedophilic relationships, teen births, early marriage, death through pregnancy and the romantic/melodramatic tone....and there's the absurdity of anyone posting a 7th grade photo on a comatose person's wall (I guess she missed the part where the guilt-ridden mother - sorry that she'd let her child be abused/married etc - put it there "to remember how her little girl should have been" or something equally saccarine). I also call BS on anyone in the early 80's really just letting this happen (unless the author, by placing her story in Appalachia, expects us to buy it because, you know CPS, attentive teachers etc, they just don't exist there).

We've all known of people who would fit into pieces of this story. All together it reads more like a chain email than a serious blog post.

[QueenNocturne]

This story sounds a bit bizarre, but some parts are plausible in my mind.

First, the young age of pregnancy. I graduated from high school in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio and either that year or the year after, the weekly paper ran a story about how three junior-high girls (i.e. around thirteen or fourteen) became pregnant during that school year. I had a high school classmate who had her first child at fourteen: I don't know if she had any more kids as she later dropped out.

Second, while I don't personally know of any thirty-something preying on a young girl like in this story, when I was in high school it was not unheard of for some of my female classmates to date men substantially older (as in 5 years or more older). Rather than being a scandal, the general community consensus was tacit approval. In addition, I know a number of old classmates who married at young ages to men quite a bit older than them, though at least these women were around 18-19.

My point is, while I wouldn't be surprised if this story isn't at least somewhat fictionalized, a lot of it can be reasonably extrapolated from a lot of attitudes that are still happening today.

[The Archivist]

I think you all are correct to be skeptical. I just dislike moving forward on the assumption that it is a lie without any proof one way or another.

But discussing the questionable bits? Certainly.

[keen23]

The Most Wanted by Jacquelyn Mitchard, that was the name of the book that I was thinking of. Here, read the plot synopsis from Amazon and see if it strikes you as similar... http://www.amazon.com/Most-Wanted-Jacqu ... 0451196856

[perdita]

I don’t quibble with the dates. In the mid 80's you could still find huge differences between rural and urban or suburban life. But I get the idea that the story is set rural Kentucky so that it can confirm any biases we may have. (Kentucky is based on being in Appalachia and still within an hour and a half from Lexington.)

“...and there's the absurdity of anyone posting a 7th grade photo on a comatose person's wallâ€

The photo wasn't even Annie’s school picture. It was their 7th grade class picture.

“I had one just like it. It was my 7th grade class picture.â€

(from the article)

At least in my experience, class pictures are about 8 x 5 and will either be a photo of the entire class or thumbnails of the entire class. They are rather generic. To be able to “glance†into a room while weaving down a busy hallway on your way outside to smoke and spot your class picture from the hallway is more than just a bit much.

Also, to think that someone would hang a class picture from a school the person had only been at for a little over a year - as opposed to any other more personal photo they may have had - is a bit much.

We are told that Annie’s mother moved, but there is no indication that Annie or her husband moved out of the area. Somehow, we are to believe that there was no gossip about Annie in the remaining 4 years the author stayed in the area. Saying that no one talked about Annie because they blamed her for what happened also doesn’t make sense, since Annie did what was expected of her - she dropped out of school and married the father. The author made clear that this part wasn’t unusual.

I'm afraid that the internet the way it is, when there are things that, you know - make my spidey-sense tingle - my assumption is always, "not true unless otherwise verified." And this gives me that vibe.

[Guest Anonymous]

Also, be highly suspect of any anecdotal story that ends with a political statement. This is just the pro-choice/feminist version -instead of fear Obama because under him the US will go commie, it's fear conservatives because they want to take you back to a time when women were married off, not allowed to access abortion etc (although I find the idea that conservatives wanting to go back to the early 80's a bit funny - the folks we snark on here would like to go back to 1830 or so).

Anyway, the formula is the same. Tear jerking or anger inducing story followed by political warning.

[Oddeverything]

Yeah, this is horseshit. The author paints a picture of a tiny town so involved everyone knew the ins and outs of everyone else's lives but somehow the knowledge that Annie had a stroke and lost the baby didn't filter into the high school gossip filter? News that nasty would have been all over the place. How is that,according to this account, the author stayed in that town through high school but never once in four years did gossip about Annie come up? That alone is enough for me to call shenanigans.

This is bad fiction and I don't cotton to the idea that a lie told in the guise of a higher truth is worth much. There are enough true stories of horrific things done to women that making things up or embellishing stories serves no good. In fact, untrue or embellished stories only serve to harm because when people who are fighting for social justice bring up actual dreadful deeds, nay-sayers can cling to embellishments as a lie that disproves the whole premise that formal and informal justice systems fail women.

[Hane]

My parents were considered old when they got married, 22 and 26 or so. Most of their friends married in their late teens or early '20s (this is in the '60s, my folks were married in '68) and my partner's parents, from a big working-class Catholic family, married at like 19 and 21 and were considered totally normal in the mid-70s - if 18 is "normal" then 14 would seem young but not obscene, you know? Maybe 16 more than 14. I had a coworker who married at 17 in the late '60s and she talked about how looking back at her wedding-day self eating cereal and watching cartoons at her moms until it was time to put on The Dress, she was just a baby - but all her friends were getting married too, it was totally normal.

True. I graduated high school in 1970, and quite a few girls in my class got married within a year or so of graduation. I know two girls who got married during their junior year--and they weren't even pregnant (one was from a conservative Russian Orthodox family). Both went on to graduate. When I student-taught in a high school in 1973, there was a pregnant married student at the school. All of these young brides married guys their own age, or not much older.

When I was in college, I got married at the end of my junior year. When I returned to school in the fall, it seemed that every class had a couple of women asking the prof to change their maiden name to their married name when the roll was called.

Looking back, I see that a lot of this came from "legitimizing" sex. When premarital sex is taboo, society is prone to encouraging early marriages.

[Rosa]

Hane, thank you. I think that's it too - marriage "makes it all better" whatever "it" is. Hell, I graduated high school in the early '90s, and one of my classmates married a teacher because she was pregnant, a few weeks after graduation (I think he was probably only 5 or 6 years older than us, but still.) And because of *that* gossip I learned that one of the teacher pairs at the high school had been a teacher-student "romance", back in the '70s or '80s.

I don't necessarily think the story is fake - it seems like you could get the same fake feeling from some of the "information" being vague memory and some being stripped out for length/anonymity.

[duplessis3]

The story reminded me of Loretta Lynn, except you know, Loretta became a country music superstar.

[Lily]

Sounds like an episode of L&O.

I doubt it's fully true. It just has too many perfect elements to it.

[duplessis3]

There's an element,though, of LOOKHOWHORRIBLE!!!!! That you see in "warning" stories - like you take a puff of one joint and next thing you know you are naked on a roof, hooked on speedballs.