Hey Ali —

This is a great piece on a topic I’m heavily interested in (in fact, I quite literally study sexual and reproductive health, and will be teaching sex-ed in NYC in January), so I have a few thoughts.

I really appreciate you neatly combining the relevant stats on unintended pregnancies, sexual violence etc, and highlight action steps that the gov’t and we can take (outside of simply educating ourselves on this issue). For the most part — I do agree with those. Fuck yes they should redefine rape and other forms of sexual violence — across sexualities, genders, and marital contexts. There’s one thing I would like to challenge: the suggestion to lower the age of consent. From a harm reduction approach, I understand your suggestion: lowering the age of consent allows the country to recognize who’s having sex, implement policies to protect them, and then funnel adequate resources in their direction. That said, here are other factors to consider:

It’s already very difficult to persecute sexual predators since a lot of people say sexual violence can take place in “grey” or “murky” waters — i.e. it’s hard to dictate if something truly is sexual violence. Keeping that in mind, as well as the reality that half of Jamaicans are victims of sexual violence(I say half because sexual violence is notoriously underreported — especially for men and non-heterosexual relationships), a *higher* age of consent could actually make it significantly easier (say b&w) to persecute perps. If we lower the age of consent to 15, and someone who is 15 appears before a judge about whether or not they were raped, it’s harder and less likely for them to get justice. That’s just the sad reality. Also, we have a higher age of consent because of the international recognition and surmounting empirical evidence that children aren’t emotionally and cognitively developed enough to understand sexual responsibility, and behave accordingly. So are we really protecting them if we lower the age of consent? (That’s not hypothetical — that’s me genuinely asking about your thoughts.)

Beyond that — big the fuck up for talking about issues back home, while being in the U.S. I sincerely hope that Jamaica makes adequate steps to developing age-appropriate, culturally-competent and inclusive comprehensive sex ed. I’m still trying to figure out how I can help with that since I have so many resources at my disposal for development and implementation, and am heavily interested in this issue.