A Reminder: “Underaged Women” are Not Women
If you've been following the news stories around Jeffrey Epstein’s horrific sex crimes, you might already be familiar with the term, "underage women". It’s frequently used by mainstream media, including MSNBC and CNN, as well as Epstein's legal team to describe his victims, some of whom were as young as 14 years old. The term is problematic in more than one sense. The most obvious problem is that it's completely farcical - no "woman" is underage. An underaged woman is a girl. A girl is, by definition, a child. But the far more insidious nature of the term is that it muddies the waters and minimises the severity of the crimes in question, which are undeniably horrific. Many news agencies stated they used the term to avoid confusion over whether the victims involved were legally considered children (that is, pre-pubescent, which they were not). But their usage points to a larger and more disturbing cultural trend surrounding female victims: a tend...