The very first bill ever proposed by a female lawmaker in the United States came from Colorado state representative Carrie Clyde Holly in January 1895. Building on a decade of women’s activism, Holly’s ambitious legislation sought to raise the age of consent in the state to 21 years old. In 1890, the age at which girls could consent to sex was 12 or younger in 38 states. In Delaware, it was seven. […]
[…] Based on English Common Law dating back to the 1500s, American lawmakers had selected 10 or 12 as the age of consent to coincide with the onset of puberty, as if once a girl menstruated she was ready to have sex. Men accused of raping girls as young as 7 could (and did) simply say “she consented” to avoid prosecution. Reformers understood that once “ruined,” these young victims of assault could be forced into prostitution because no man would marry or hire a “fallen woman.”
Prostitution especially concerned wives and mothers because, before penicillin became widely available in 1945, syphilis and gonorrhea were more widespread than all other infectious diseases combined. Wives who unknowingly contracted STIs from their husbands could pass them on to their unborn children, resulting in miscarriages, fetal abnormalities, blindness, epilepsy and unsightly “syphilis teeth.” In most cases, women could not successfully sue for divorce, support themselves, or retain custody of their children if they did divorce. […]
[…] British purity reformers had succeeded in raising the age of consent to 13 in 1861, and the movement received international attention in 1885 after muckraking journalist William T. Stead went undercover in London’s brothels. Stead published a series of salacious articles, collectively titled “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon,” in the Pall Mall Gazette detailing how London’s husbands and fathers paid top dollar to deflower child virgins in the city’s brothels. Within months, public outcry led Parliament to raise the age of consent to 16.
[…] Many lawmakers rejected women’s presence in public affairs and further resented the unprecedented campaign to curtail white men’s sexual prerogatives. So they stone-walled WCTU members, inserted neutralizing or mocking language in their proposed bills, and occasionally outright banned women from their galleries. The few legislators who went on record in support of young ages of consent voiced sympathy for hypothetical men who would be ensnared into marriage by conniving girls who consented to sex and later threatened to press charges. […]
[…] For years, black women—including Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Ida B. Wells—had called attention to the fact that white men used rape as a tool of white supremacy. […]
White Southern lawmakers stridently opposed revised age-of-consent laws because they did not want black women to be able to charge white men with a crime. Kentucky state representative A. C. Tompkins went on record with his opposition, explaining, “We see at once what a terrible weapon for evil the elevating of the age of consent would be when placed in the hands of a lecherous, sensual n*gro woman,” insinuating that black women, who he claimed matured earlier and had a more sexual nature, would seduce men and then accuse them of assault. […]
- Kimberly Hamlin "What Raising the Age of Sexual Consent Taught Women About the Vote" 2020
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