The Arbitrary Ages of Consent: The Epstein Files

Posted on December 26, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

Any belief that is based on distorted facts or on lies will eventually swallow you whole. Any weird science that has been used to perpetuate myths and half truths can get you injured or killed.

I read an abstract of an article from 2009 called Pedophilia, hebephilia and the DSM-V awhile back. DSM-V stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. This quote from its abstract stood out:

“One possibility would be to replace the diagnosis of Pedophilia with Pedohebephilia and allow the clinician to specify one of three subtypes: Sexually Attracted to Children Younger than 11 (Pedophilic Type), Sexually Attracted to Children Age 11-14 (Hebephilic Type), or Sexually Attracted to Both (Pedohebephilic Type). We further recommend that the DSM-V encourage users to record the typical age of children who most attract the patient sexually as well as the gender of children who most attract the patient sexually.”

The abstract noted in 2009 that the term “hebephilia,” which described an adult that had a sexual preference for pubescent children ages 11 to 14, had not caught on. That term still has not caught on.

Pedophilia, which describes someone who has a marked sexual preference for children who have not yet begun puberty is still the preferred term to designate adults who have a sexual preference for underage youth. I am going to play devil’s advocate here.

What is missing from these definitions is the alleged safety clauses for children aged 15 and older. What’s blatantly clear, at least it was in 2009, was that anyone aged 16 or older could be classified as a pedophile as long as their victim/s were at least 5 years younger. In other words a 16-year-old male classified as “pedophile” would necessarily be or attempt to be sexually active with a child/children 11-years-of-age or younger.

If you’re scratching your head, you should be. I can understand a grown man or grown woman looking at a 15 or 16 year old and thinking that those teenagers are awfully cute. Yet, propriety and ethics and morals and good old common sense should remind these same adults that these “teenagers” have no business climbing into bed with them for any reason. It’s called decency.

After I read the recent, pathetically weak reporting on what has been released so far from the Epstein Files, I knew I needed to revisit some of the data on pedophilia. Here’s why?

White Western science has a tendency to describe any and all rotten ass behavior as some form of mental disorder rather than defining certain behavior for what it is: the “I-do-what-I-do-when-it-suits-me-and-when-I-can-stay-in-control-when-I-do-it” syndrome. White male patriarchy, in all of its excesses and perversions, is protected by the science.

The white or Black guy that cannot get any woman to have sex with him because he doesn’t know how to talk to or court well-educated adult women might end up in a sexual tryst with a vulnerable and impressionable 16-year-old because he found her attractive because she’s physically well-developed, but mentally she’s still a kid—and his sick, predatory, control freak ass already knows it.

I am not willing to paint such men as “mentally ill” as much as I am willing to paint them as ethically and morally corrupt. In other words, they are rotten to the core.

The revelation that there is in excess of over 1.7 million documents in the Epstein Files and that there were at least 10 co-conspirators that aided and abetted Epstein and other men of his ilk ought to tell you something.

(Young Ruth Bader Ginsburg & Kamala Harris)

If the frontal cortex of your adult brain doesn’t reach full maturity until you are at least in your mid-to-late twenties, ask yourself the following questions:

Why is the average age of sexual consent across 30 states in the United States only 16-years-of-age? Why do only a handful of states place the age of consent at age 17, with a remaining 11 states placing the age of consent at age 18?

Do not tell yourself that lie that you were wise when you were between the ages of 16 and 18. It doesn’t matter if you remember that lovely moment when you and another 16 year old decided to do the deed because you were just a couple of horny teenagers. It does matter if that 35-year-old guy that you thought was so cool for being interested in you ran his hand up your dress and coerced you into a sexual scenario that you were not ready for.

The Supreme Court was established in March of 1789. Yet, it wasn’t until Ruth Bader Ginsberg (long before she was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993), argued in 1977 in “Sex Bias in the U. S. Code” that she co-authored for the Commission on Civil Rights, that boys and men could be and often were raped and/or sexually exploited. So many men were so damned caught up in patriarchy and male sexual prowess that they didn’t even know to look out for themselves. They still don’t.

The young prosecutor Kamala Harris remembered her high school best friend as having been molested by her father. She pressed her friend to tell her what was going on. Young Kamala remembered that her friend often did not want to go home.

Kamala told her mother what was going on with her friend; they took this girl into their home. When Kamala made the decision to become a prosecutor she specialized in prosecuting pedophiles and rapists. Do you think if she were president we would be getting Epstein updates in dribs and drabs? I think not.

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work and research with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp or become a paid subscriber to me on Substack to help me sustain my research.

All blogs written by Leslye Joy Allen are protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: https://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. Postings or blogs placed here by other writers should clearly reference those writers. All Rights Reserved.

A Quick Word to Millennial (and Younger) Protesters and Activists

Posted on March 20, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

The photo below is of a creation titled “The World is Watching.” The artist is not known. It is located at the Library of Congress which has a long history of collecting Protest Art and Protest Photography. Visually stunning and a reminder that protests and activism change with the technology of the times.

I was born during the last years of what was called the Baby Boom. As a Baby Boomer, I did not grow up from Childhood to Early adulthood with a Personal Computer, the Internet, and definitely not Social Media or a cellphone with a camera.

I learned of protest marches and various forms of activism via word-of-mouth, letters, signs on school and church bulletin boards, and via Black-owned newspapers. Sometimes these protests were featured on the 6 O’Clock News.

Fast forward to the late 20th and early 21st centuries and you have young adults who grew up with everything we Baby Boomers grew up without. Millennials get messages out there in cyberspace in a matter of seconds. They can rally thousands (even millions) of people with brief blurbs and blogs in a matter of a couple of days and occasionally a couple of minutes. There are, however, a few drawbacks.

In addition to creating mediums that make it seem as if a few “likes” on social media has resolved the problem, it also exposes certain tactics that should not be seen by everyone. Social Media exposes protest tactics to our enemies as much as it exposes those tactics to our friends. So let me share the following history. Ignore it; modify it; and/or adapt this in any way you see fit.

The Black American Civil Rights Movement typically had a 3-pronged approach.

Back in the day, you had a set of individuals who could not physically participate in protest marches because they were the folks who were designated to bail you out of jail if you were arrested. The folks who were part of the Black community who had a degree of affluence and wealth were often in this position. Although many of them were out there in the streets protesting.
Another group was the observers. These were individuals who lined routes of marches who watched and recorded what they saw. Sometimes they would stand on sidewalks and pretend to be window shoppers or they would sit near the windows inside places of business so that they could see what was going on outside in order to report what they saw. There were no cellphones with cameras in them back then. Their hardest role was to not intervene when they saw any physical violence. They had to record what they saw.
Finally, there were the Black protesters themselves who were trained in non-violent resistance in order to highlight the sheer brutality of their oppressors. They were trained to endure and not fight back.

Now, I am not at all advocating for any of you to quietly endure any form of brutality and violence as you fight against this onslaught of abuse from the administration of Felon 47. What I am suggesting is that you create a 3 or even 4 or 5-pronged approach to how you protest and advocate for the causes you believe in.

Right now, activism is highly tied to how much press and social media presence one can generate. That’s not a bad strategy, but the limitations of that approach is that almost anyone can see it. You win most against enemies when enemies do not know EXACTLY what is coming at them all the time. And that is not my original idea. It actually comes from Sun Tzu, a Chinese General and Strategist born around 544 B.C.E. Some ideas stand the test of time. Study those ideas. Onward!

©️Leslye Joy Allen

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

Pawns and Queens: Analogies For a New Era

Posted on January 21, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

We historians often find data in some file in an obscure archive, in letters written by someone’s grandmother, in photos, newspaper clippings, legal records. Our discipline demands that we dig, analyze, rethink and revise, constantly. I liken our work to studying the function of each piece in a Chess game. We get different perspectives about the same set of circumstances depending on which Chess piece we examine.

I was a mediocre Chess player. I had a few friends who played like champions. So, I often just watched them play. I remain, however, fascinated by the game’s objectives and, specifically, the roles of Pawns and Queens.

Pawns are the most numerous pieces in Chess; they are the foot soldiers. Each player has eight Pawns. A Pawn can move one or two squares forward if that move is its first move. After the first move, a Pawn can only move one square forward unless the square is blocked by some other piece. A Pawn can capture or attack another piece, however, by moving diagonally to the left or right.

The Pawn is the only piece in a Chess game that can change ranks. Depending on the skill of a Chess player, a Pawn can become a Bishop, a Rook or a Queen. In spite of a Pawn’s ability to advance to a higher rank, it is still considered the lowest ranking piece in the game. It is only worth one point.

The objective of the game is to capture your opponent’s King where that King has no way out, which means Checkmate. While the King is considered the most important piece in the game, it is the Queen that is considered the most powerful piece.

Queens are the only pieces that can move across the board in any manner as long as they are not successfully blocked by other pieces. If you lose, it is highly likely that you lost because your opponent’s Queen checkmated your King. Chess players feel much more confident when they have successfully captured or blocked her.

You can still win the game without capturing the Queen, but you have to be extremely strategic and precise to do so. You can also win without making good moves with your Pawns, but it is highly unlikely.

Chess is now over 1,500 years old. While there is some skepticism about its precise origins, many Chess historians believe that the Indian board game called “Chaturanga” was the earliest predecessor of Chess. There were many other versions that followed, but are too numerous to mention here.

In early versions of Chess, there was a piece called “Vizier” or “Advisor” for centuries. In the 1500s, in the era of great and powerful Queens in Europe, like Spain’s Isabella and England’s Elizabeth, “Viziers” or “Advisors” were redesigned and renamed “Queens.” You can learn an awful lot of world history just by examining Chess.

So here’s the deal: There is no such thing as a Chess game where Queens/Women Heads of State/Women in general are not powerful and flexible while the Kings/Men Heads of State/Men in general are highly important but who have or exercise fewer tactical moves.

There is also no such thing as a Chess game where Pawns/Foot Soldiers/Laborers are not essential to success, even while they are considered less important.

Apply any and all of the above to what you see happening in the United States and the world right now. I refuse to tell you how to analyze and interpret this history because there are so many interpretations and analogies that can be extrapolated from this board game.

All I will say is that nothing is going to change or be corrected without the skill of devoted Pawns, and the power and daring of Queens.

Shutterstock photo of a Pawn and a Queen on a Chessboard.

Today, I Speak the Names of…

Posted on February 28, 2014 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

By Leslye Joy Allen Historian, Educator, Theatre and Jazz Advocate & Consultant, Ph.D. Candidate

Leslye Joy Allen, Copyright © 2013. All Rights Reserved. Self-Portrait.

Today I speak the names of PROFESSIONAL BLACK HISTORIANS (and I do not include amateur “chroniclers of facts” today, this February 28th). This day is for those individuals who stand, teach, and write only after they have performed extensive study and research.

This day is for those women and men who sit, anywhere from thirty to forty hours a week, wrapped in sweaters in those cold archives going over bits and pieces of paper that contain information until they begin to see a particular pattern or story to that information. Then they raise the “why” and the “how” questions about that information and they begin to piece together a story. Then they develop an analysis because history is not and never has been the regurgitation of names and dates and events. It is not a chronicle of events. History is the analysis of why and how things happen AND if there is no argument, it is not history! (Thanks for that one, Dr. Glenn T. Eskew. Okay, so Eskew is not Black, but he is one of the good ones who recognize the seriousness with which we all must advance and promote our profession.)

So on this day, February 28, 2014, the last day of so-called Black History Month (as if every day is not a part of Black History), I salute my classmates, colleagues, and former professors who work like slaves and dogs for very little money. There are days when you—and you alone—have been the only reason I can get up in the morning and keep moving.

I urge all of you, my colleagues, to remember your worth. If people need your stories and your opinions and your analyses, then those people can actually do something revolutionary and actually respect your worth and pay you like the professionals you are. Yet, if they do not want to pay you or acknowledge you, then they can take their lazy a***** to the dozens of libraries and repositories that you have visited. They can devote the same countless, and thankless months and years of research, research that you have perpetually performed as a matter of professional necessity, routine and courtesy. They can then experience how much they like doing years of your work without so much as a dollar or a “Thank You.” Do not settle my friends. Àṣé, and keep moving.

Leslye Joy Allen is a perpetual and proud supporter of the good work of Clean Green Nation. Visit the website to learn more about it: Gregory at Clean Green Nation!

This Blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this blog, or any total or partial excerpt of this blog must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly and visibly stated as the author.

A Thought for the Old and New Year

Posted on December 27, 2013 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

By Leslye Joy Allen Historian, Educator, Theatre and Jazz Advocate & Consultant, Ph.D. Candidate

One of the first things that came to mind shortly after Christmas and before the New Year was how much my Mom and Dad would have been thrilled and proud that a great film like 12 Years a Slave received great reviews and had enjoyed large viewing audiences. I would have heard a litany of what they remembered about their childhoods and how far we Black folks have come. And if they were still alive they would surely have warned me not to hyperventilate about whether or not Santa Claus was Black or some of the foolish and racist slips of the tongue that seem to dominate our current news cycles on most days.

Strangely, my mind goes back to that one scene in the film 12 Years a Slave where after a slave has literally dropped dead from exhaustion while laboring in the fields, you see the slaves standing around a gravesite that they have prepared for their fallen comrade. Suddenly, a slave woman begins singing the old Negro spiritual “Roll, Jordan, Roll.” Then all of the slaves joined in and they sang with a joyous abandon. At this moment in the movie theater, I completely lost my composure. I wept so loudly that I had to place my hand over my mouth to muffle the sound. For days, I wondered why that scene—and not one of the other more horrible scenes where someone was beaten or tortured—caused me to cry like a two-year-old toddler. Then it came to me. This was a gift. The gift was not simply my ancestors’ songs, but their decision that they had a right to sing their songs.

Their gift feels as familiar as a book of black poetry or history or the first time my parents took me to a Jazz concert or to see the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre or to a Broadway play. Afterwards, they would always inform me that I must never forget that it was my people that had created the artistry and creative offerings that I had just witnessed. The lesson was simple—I could perpetually cry about what white folks had done to my people or I could fight for and celebrate what my people had done for themselves and for me, all of which is a balancing act. Yes, one must call out and fight against racism. Yet, one cannot allow it too much space in one’s head, lest one descend into perpetual victimhood. “How much of your energy are you gonna’ give THEM,” Daddy would ask without blinking?

I wept in the dark of that movie theatre, as the slaves on the screen sang with abandon and rejoicing. It is difficult to count one’s blessings when the world and everyone in it seems to be your enemy. Yet, that is exactly what the slaves did. My slave ancestors did not sing with joy because they were happy and content, but rather because the singing allowed them to reclaim their humanity, to reclaim their right to joy. No degree of inhumane treatment routinely meted out to them by white slave masters could make them surrender their own humanity, or their very human need for joyousness and a belief in the future even when that future was uncertain. Their gift is still a gift that keeps on giving if you are willing to claim it. This is what I hope to remember now, and in the New Year.

Peace.

Leslye Joy Allen is a perpetual and proud supporter of the good work of Clean Green Nation. Visit the website to learn more about it: Gregory at Clean Green Nation!

Leslye Joy Allen

Social Commentary, History, Theatre, Jazz, and the Environment

Tag Archives: American History