They aren’t. Children cannot be willing to have sex with adults. Thats what consent is. So, again I’m not going to explain what pedophilia is to you and why it is wrong.

And no. Because I and many other women have first hand experiences of dismissal at the hands of law enforcement. I have met women whove been told “are you sure you didnt want it?” and turned away from police on the same night the incidents occured and denied rape kits being performed. I believe other women, I’ve experienced this kind of discrimination myself. I listen when women share the ways they are victimized. I know very few women who have never been secually assaulted in any way. Most of those women grew up in wealthy communities. I’ve never met a woman who hasn’t experienced misogyny both from friends and family as well as institutionally. We face misogyny in education, in employment, in Healthcare, in their homes, from their co-workers and so on. Misogynistic attitudes are so pervasive across society that even the wealthiest women I know still face misogynistic barriers all the time. Their abilities are dismissed, their intellect downplayed, their resilience and strengths ignored. So no, rape which is overwhelmingly a crime that women face is no harder to prosecute than any other crime. It is not taken seriously by law enforcement (overwhelmingly male profession) because law enforcement do not afford it precedence and urgency at the same levels they do for other crimes. The very fact that you are here dismissing the experiences of women is misogynistic. You’re perpetuating the exact same beliefs that lead to victims of rape not being believed when they come forward.

Those crimes (and most crimes in general) also rely heavily on eye witness testimony, which rape also does. And yet those things never run into endless debates about whether what they’re doing is right or wrong, and they’re responded to very seriously by law enforcement. Those things carry serious penalties for conviction. Whereas rape is unlikely to ever result in conviction, and when it does rapists pretty much get to walk free after a year or two and at best with 5 years on a registry. We live in a society where men can be rapists and return to function in society. Sometimes without even doing time. Rapists are abundant throughout all levels of our society. Rape victims face significantly more pushback in employment, in the media, in the legal system, and from their communities for reporting offenses committed against them than rapists do for committing those offenses.