People are expressing dismay that none of the people who partied with Jeffrey Epstein (Emmanuel Goldstein?) are being prosecuted and that we’re being denied access to a possible list of those people.
I’m not too interested in a list of customers for the world’s oldest profession, but I find it fascinating that people can simultaneously hold the following two ideas in their heads:
- Jeffrey Epstein was a monster because he surrounded himself with paid young females, some of whom might have been younger than 18 and possibly even as young as 14 (the age of consent in Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary, etc.)
- we need millions more immigrants from places where a standard marriage age for girls is 12
https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/dataset/fertility/wfr2012/Data/Data_Sources/TABLE%20A.1.%20Mean%20age%20at%20first%20marriage.xlsx
Which countries are those?
Thanks for the data set from the completely unbiased United Nations! I notice that they don’t provide any data for Iraq, which, after years of U.S. occupation, has decided to formally allow citizens to follow the Hadiths (see Mohammed and Aisha).
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jan/22/women-children-rights-iraqi-law-allows-child-marriage
The Iraqi parliament has passed a ‘terrifying’ law permitting children as young as nine to marry
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We can also look at today’s favorite model society. From Gemini AI: “Historically, the Egyptian-issued Law of Family Rights in the Gaza Strip allowed girls to marry as young as nine years old and boys as young as twelve years old. Although this was superseded by an administrative decision in 1995 that raised the minimum ages to 15 for girls and 16 for boys, child marriage continued.”
Here’s the Biden-Harris administration saying that they’d like to see more Gazans living in the U.S.: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/palestinian-refugees-us-gaza-white-house/
a different perspective.
https://youtu.be/0aLXZj-oBLE?t=62
I have long held that we should take only female (and possibly minor children) refugees or immigrants from places with repressive sexual mores or excessive sexual violence, but not any men at all. You can’t tell me that we should take refugees from El Salvador because there are pervasive rape gangs and then insist that we should bring in a bunch of rape-gang-aged men in. Same with places in Africa or Asia where it’s supposedly nightmarish to be a woman. Why take any men (except maybe nobel-prize-winners) from anyplace more orange than us on this map. Aren’t we as a society desperately struggling to be less orange?
https://giwps.georgetown.edu/the-index/
when people said ‘why is it that Europeans do not bat a eyelid at taking Ukrainian refugees’ they forget said refugees were overwhelmingly female (or minors). Apparently accepting women and children did not cause any major problem. Therefore, as a general rule, accepting just women and minors seems to be a reasonable approach to refugees.
SM: By your standard 100 percent of women and children in China would be eligible for refugee/asylum status in the U.S. China has “repressive sexual mores” in that it is illegal for a woman to have a child without being married (she certainly cannot sue for child support profits, as would be her right in the non-repressive nations). One hundred percent of women and children in Islamic countries would also be eligible because they don’t support premarital sexual activity for women (another example of “repressive sexual mores”). Essentially you’re saying that Europe would be the only place from which immigration to the U.S. would be blocked.
I think you are confusing age of consent with the legal ability to lawfully participate in sex work (which might be altogether illegal in a number of jurisdictions).
Federico: I’m not sure that there has been evidence of the extent to which Emmanuel Goldstein’s female companions were paid in cash rather than in kind (free housing, luxury trips via Gulfstream, etc.) or the extent to which these companions were under whatever you think the appropriate age for prostitution might be. Maybe you’re following 1960s feminism, which held that a typical marriage of the day was prostitution because the wife did not work and, via providing sex to her husband, received in-kind payments of housing, food, etc.
Speaking of feminism, don’t forget bodily autonomy, except when it comes to COVID-19 vaccination and the wearing of saliva-soaked face rags. From ChatGPT:
The feminist perspective in favor of legalizing prostitution typically emphasizes women’s autonomy, safety, and labor rights. Key arguments include:
Bodily autonomy and agency:
Feminist supporters argue that women should have the right to choose what they do with their bodies, including engaging in sex work. Criminalizing prostitution, they contend, denies women that choice and reinforces patriarchal control over female sexuality.
Labor rights and de-stigmatization:
Legalization can improve the working conditions of sex workers by recognizing prostitution as legitimate labor. This allows access to legal protections, health care, and the ability to unionize—similar to other forms of work.
Safety and harm reduction:
Legalizing and regulating prostitution can reduce violence, coercion, and exploitation by bringing the industry out of the shadows. It allows sex workers to report abuse without fear of arrest, reducing their vulnerability to predators and police harassment.