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.

Literacy Crisis, Part II

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

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

Back in November of 2024, I wrote a blog titled The USA Literacy Crisis & This Election where I bemoaned the fact that only 25 percent of American adults were currently reading above the 6th grade level. Don’t flatline, but that’s a fact we must face if we want to fight Felon 47.

I have also posted frequent videos of The Library Dads, founded in Atlanta, where young Black fathers take their small children to the library to read and to have a playtime session on a weekly and/or monthly basis. It is one of the most encouraging sights to see all these young Dads headed to the library for the sake of their children’s literacy and to spend time bonding with their kids and each other.

People who read always think deeper than people who rarely read. Critical thinking skills are virtually non-existent in people who do not read. Stimulating thought and critical thinking is essential to fighting Felon 47.

I looked at the percentages of voting eligible Americans, tabulated by the Cook Political Report Popular Vote Tracker in the University of Florida’s Election Lab General Election Turnout data, and saw that 36.70 percent of voters did not bother to vote at all. I don’t have any evidence, but I bet these non-voters don’t read much.

Our political system was flawed even before Felon 47 won the Whitehouse a second time. Yet, thinking people, including some racists and sexists, know that going to vote is essential to the maintenance of our democracy. When over a third of voters stayed home, it spoke to a lack of depth and a lack of civic responsibility that is not easy to fix.

So let me share this. I taught college History courses for 7 years. I would have to say that I enjoyed all of my students, except for a couple of them. One day in class a young white male student complained that he had to take History and English to fulfill the general requirements to earn a Bachelor’s degree. He was a Math Major so he felt like subjects like History and English were of no use to him. I let him talk and then reminded him that subjects like History and English inspire ideas, and would cause him to think more. “You will be a better mathematician,” I said.

The following week my class had a discussion about police brutality. This same student stated that he was unlikely to be the victim of police brutality simply because he was white. All of his classmates that represented all colors, races, and ethnicities looked at him like he was crazy. Two days later he was jaywalking. A police officer stopped him and this student decided to mouth off at the police officer who then promptly hauled him to jail.

When this student returned to class, his classmates were ready to poke fun at him. I stopped them, but I reminded this student that what he did not know could, would, and did hurt him. I reminded him that making assumptions without any proof or knowledge could cripple him. He then decided that maybe reading was essential. He turned out to be a pretty good student.

So, if you have a friend, a kid, a relative, or a neighbor that never reads, take them to the library yourself. Encourage them to read. Give them book suggestions because whatever fight we put up against Felon 47 will require the most erudite fighters among us. We won’t win if we cannot outthink the enemies of democracy and fairplay.

©️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.

Something That Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò Made Me Think About By Default

Posted on December 16, 2024 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

I read Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s book Elite Capture in a day. And even though I highly recommend it, this blog is not a review of his book. You can read a great review of it right here by Hunter Hilinski. It is what this book made me think about much later that I’m addressing here.

I thought a lot about Táíwò’s ideas after this 2024 United States presidential election. Published in 2022, I was intrigued by Táíwò’s observation that during the Covid-19 pandemic, police violence went on unabated not only in the United States but in various countries across the continent of Africa and in Latin America.

While most of the police violence against primarily Black victims in the United States was racially motivated, that was not always the case across countries in Africa and Latin America. So, here’s why that particular piece of information popped back into my head after the election.

I had the extreme misfortune to speak with a few young men (both Black and White) who voted for Trump because they “liked the way he pushes people around.” They also did not think a woman could run anything as well as a man.

To the 78% of Black men who voted for Kamala Harris, I thank you, but that percentage of you was much too low. You now have another dilemma where Black women can no longer help you.

Black women cannot correct or fix the sexists and misogynists among us as a people. Those kinds of men do not listen to women or engage in any meaningful dialogue with us. I have learned my lesson. I have wasted my time with them.

When we got hit with a wave of police violence during the pandemic in the USA, Africa, and Latin America as Elite Capture points out, I wondered out loud if men on police forces enjoyed the abuse they heaped on citizens. Was that their definition of manhood, of power? Is pushing someone around attractive?

I cannot speak to anyone else’s experience except my own—The men I grew up around were not violent. A violent man, an abusive man, and a thug were anomalies in my childhood. The boys I attended elementary and high school with were not saints, but the majority of them were respectful and none of them ever wanted to be a “thug.” I was never once called out of my name by any man, at least not to my face.

The ironies for me are endless. All of my mentees—I have about eight of them—are young men in their 20s and 30s. All but two of them were born outside of the United States. Well-educated and feminist, they hail from Ghana, The Gambia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and India. I did not go looking for them. They came and found me. I am grateful to them because they prevent me from being insular and American-centric.

While increases in thuggery and sexism seem to be a worldwide phenomenon now that is either praised as a path to follow or justified by bullshit theories about Black and Brown boys not having enough role models and being unjustly incarcerated, I wonder how Black men will address these problems in the aftermath of this election. I wonder where my mentees will fit in.

Will conversations at barbershops and lodge meetings and board meetings and conferences and church council meetings ever focus on and address the core issues of sexism and misogyny and how you might approach and speak to these disaffected and misinformed young Black men? Black women cannot do it anymore. We are not going anywhere near these types of young men anymore.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

Sister Survival

Posted on November 28, 2024 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

In the aftermath of Kamala Harris’ defeat in the US 2024 presidential election on November 5th, no one took her loss as hard as Black women. Our work for her and our votes for her created that long blue line at 92 percent—the single largest and most consistent voting bloc in the United States.

My sister friends did what sisters always do. We called each other to vent at 10 PM or 3 AM. We called to see how we all were doing. We worried about Kamala. The sentence that came up the most in these conversations was: I’m done.

Baltimore’s Mayor Brandon M. Scott stated that Black women shouldn’t have to shoulder the bulk of everything with little to no help from others. And we won’t.

Sisters are worn out from over work, over strategizing, navigating inter- and intra-racial sexism, misogynoir, racism, the constant double standards, the defensiveness that rears its head whenever we dare to acknowledge double standards, the expectation that we must show up to work in everyone’s behalf, but that we must not make a mistake, and we must always be accessible.

A few days after the election and shortly after I reviewed a NAACP report that concluded that one-in-four Black men under the age of 50 voted for Trump, the poem below popped in my head. It’s reposted here at the request of a friend. I wrote it in 4 minutes to the delight of every one of my former English professors. Every sister that read it, got it. And their responses were all along the same lines:

“Girl, I’m done killing myself for people that never support us.”

“So many men and so many other people only pay attention to Black women when we are fighting for them instead of fighting for ourselves.”

We sisters are not the same people we were the day before the election; and whatever is left of us that still resembles us is on hiatus.

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 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 Holiday Thought: What Educators Cannot Do Alone

Posted on November 27, 2024 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

In my previous blog about the USA’s Literacy Crisis, I mentioned the tragic fact that only 25 percent of American adults read above the 6th grade level; and the consequences of not reading is a poorly informed population that voted against their own interests in this previous presidential election.

But this blog is not just about reading, it is also about developing a wider sense of civic responsibility in the aftermath of this presidential election because not all reading serves equitable and fair purposes. The literature so many members of the Right Wing want to ban are books that often tell inconvenient truths; truths that make some people uncomfortable. But here is another uncomfortable truth.

I can never forget that when the Nazis came to power in 1933, Germany was one of the most literate nations on this earth. Nazi Germany effectively used written propaganda to foster public support for a corrupt and merciless regime that ended the lives of over 6.0 million Jews, along with Afro-Germans, Gays and Lesbians, Gypsies, and the disabled. The Nazis also burned well over 25,000 books that are lost forever.

Therefore, a literate and book-loving population alone will not save the USA. (God knows the folks who purchase a Trump Bible are living proof that literacy isn’t a perfect cure.) Nevertheless, many US Teachers, Instructors, and Professors will inevitably choose books that the Far Right will dislike. In the coming months and years, I anticipate battles between Republican officials and school boards, and challenges to college curricula. Yet…

Educators cannot fight alone. So, from Black Friday to Christmas Eve, if you know any children—your own and other kids—forego the video games and high-priced sneakers, and other useless items for Christmas. Go to your local bookstore and buy them books.

If you know kids that do not have a Library Card, take them to your Public Library and get them a Library Card. While there, ask them if they are interested in any particular thing and let the librarian introduce them to a new subject or area of interest. This is not a miracle cure for what we all may be facing in the next four years, but a better informed population beats one that is not informed at all.

The recent presidential election proved two things: people who don’t read often lack critical thinking skills and can be led to vote against their own interests; and many more can be led to not vote. I just had a heated discussion with someone who did not vote; and I don’t have the strength to write the details of the 45-minute lecture I gave to this individual.

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.

Leslye Joy Allen

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

Tag Archives: presidential election