Roman Polanski was arrested for a rape of a 13 year-old girl committed in the 1970s. I think this has many of us "sex radicals" feeling a bit conflicted. We don't want to defend rape. But we certainly aren't ready to join the lynch mob, as the mob generally gets it wrong when it comes to sex. "The Sexist" blogger Amanda Hess has some helpful point/counter-points regarding the various arguments being made in defense of Polanski, and her version of why these arguments are invalid. I agree with almost all of them. Most helpful here:

"But 13 is old enough to consent to sex"

Let's assume that, like Joan Shore and others have suggested, age 13 is old enough to consent to sex, and Polanski is merely a victim of the Puritanical sex laws of the U.S.A. If that's true, then surely 13 would be old enough to say no to sex, right? Because here's what Geimer said happened at the one-on-one Vogue shoots:

According to Geimer in a 2003 interview, "Everything was going fine; then he asked me to change, well, in front of him." She added, "It didn't feel right, and I didn't want to go back to the second shoot."

Geimer later agreed to a second session, which took place on March 10, 1977 at the Mulholland area home of actor Jack Nicholson in Los Angeles. "We did photos with me drinking champagne," Geimer says. "Toward the end it got a little scary, and I realized he had other intentions and I knew I was not where I should be. I just didn't quite know how to get myself out of there." She recalled in a 2003 interview that she began to feel uncomfortable after he asked her to lie down on a bed, and how she attempted to resist. "I said, 'No, no. I don't want to go in there. No, I don't want to do this. No!", and then I didn't know what else to do," she stated.

That's rape, whether you are 13 years old or 14 or 16 or 44 or 76.

Indeed.