I don't know the origin of this but it's true.

@paulk Years ago it became the vogue to call girls of a certain age young women. Any female under 18 is a girl. We need to stop calling them young woman and young ladies. They are girls.

The same verbiage was used to refer to the sexual abuse by priests of boys, referring to them as young men, some underage.

@paulk True, but there were also young women over the age of 18 trafficked by Epstein and we shouldn't leave them out of the conversation. Just because they were adults, it doesn't mean they were not abused. Especially the 19 year old woman from Oklahoma who said she was going to report Trump and Epstein for rape before she was found dead.

@paulk

The groomers own the press.

@paulk I don't know who this press thing is. It all depends on the person who's writing this stuff and their affiliations with one group or another. I'm saying it's not just one big entity. Check your sources carefully.

@paulk I think it can be dangerous to obsess on "legal age". The experience of being trafficked or pimped out does not stop being damaging or traumatic at passage of the age of consent.

These girls and women were damaged and traumatised by the abuse they experienced, regardless of their age.

@paulk@writing.exchange
Blame corporate social media and SEO!
The word "rape" will trigger filters.
The word "girl" will trigger filters.
The words "child sexual abuse" will trigger filters.

Journalists HAVE to invent new words to get past the homogenization and dumbing down filters of today's social media (which by the way there is no such thing as a word NOT EXISTING in the English language! The English Dictionary is DESCRIPTIVE about words that are already in circulation, not proscriptive about what words may or may not be said or written.)

@paulk @gme So it's like that tiktok thing where you say "unalive" instead of "die," lest the sponsors demonetize your video?

@madengineering@mastodon.cloud @paulk@writing.exchange
!

@paulk because the press are projecting.

@paulk Rich white dude. While people of colour (especially arab men) get slandered as "sex offenders" by the media like it's nothing.

@paulk And content warning / trigger warning are for ?