EDIT: Why was this post removed? 🤔
Unwittingly had ‘sex’ with a child, realised it was a child, had ‘sex’ a second time.
And wrote a song about it. And then wrote it into his autobiography.
How this man apparently skated through the #MeToo movement unscathed is truly baffling.
I remember reading about Led Zeppelin when I was getting into them, I must have been about 14 or 15. I didn’t really understand why but that stuff made me uncomfortable, even if I was at an age where I thought of myself (and others my age) as fully understanding adults. I definitely knew it was wrong at the time but I didn’t really understand why, not at that age. Didn’t know about Bowie, that sucks. Crazy how that could be known about someone and it’s not even the first or second concern, it’s a yucky little quirk of history that we ignore.
Even taking a step back, putting the revulsion in a box for a second to take a holistic look at the situation: the way it was written about as normal, and casually known, and practically glorified in the case that OP is referring to, and all of that… I don’t know. Good old days my ass
It sometimes feels like one of the few good constants is how child abuse is considered a grave crime in pretty much every society, but I still feel like there’s a disgusting undercurrent of acceptance for older men leering at and being creepy with young women in particular. I don’t know
EDIT: a quick trip to Wikipedia is showing me a very different tone of writing than I remember. That’s good, but that’s the bare minimum
with the exception of every major society in human history
in medieval and early modern-age europe, it was considered normal for wealthy landlords’ children to marry young, for example
this might not sound like a lot, but the age of puberty has decreased by about 2 years since 1900 and probably more since the medieval age (i couldn’t find enough data to support this claim). Sources for example here and here
This means what was 16-18 back then would be 14-16 today, if you consider the age of marriage in relation to the age of puberty.
As a general rule, the wealthier the person (or their parents), the sooner they married. Median age of marriage for peasants was around 21-22 years, but for nobles it was more like 16-18. This would correspond to 14-16 today.
And don’t get me started on whatever they have going on in the islamic world.
That’s a terrifying and incredible thing to learn. I wonder what the cause of this change is. When did it start and when will it end? Its a stat that raises so many fascinating population-scale questions!
i think it has to do with better food and medicine. at least the literature mentions these two reasons as the primary guesses. but nobody knows for sure.
now one could argue that nobles back then probably had good access to food, and the effect might not be as prevalent for them. but they still often caught bad infections as children that might have a significant delay for puberty. because medicine wasn’t as good back then, not even for nobles.
Somehow I doubt Bowie was having sex with young girls. I mean, not impossible, I guess, but it seems unlikely.
Bowie was bi, not gay.