In an interview regarding the newly released movie "Call Me By Your Name", Armie Hammer was asked about the age gap between the two main characters. The interview went as follows:

Reporter: But with this movie, there were some people, even famous people, that said that this movie wasn’t possible because it depicted a story between a 17-year-old boy and a 24-year-old guy. What do you answer them?

Armie Hammer: It's a story of two adults. 17 is not a child, and neither is the character of Elio a child. In fact, you see that Elio is more aggressive and self-assured to say "this is what I want." There is no power dynamic that is unbalanced. It's just two human beings that genuinely fall for each other. Two legal aged human beings.

Allow me to disrespectfully disagree.

A 17-year-old boy is likely in his junior or senior year of high school. He is newly able to drive, still going through puberty, and unable to smoke, drink, or vote in America, where the movie was marketed. In Italy, where the movie takes place, the character is unable to smoke, vote, or drink anything other than beer or wine. While he is above the age of consent, what many people fail to realize is that lower ages of consent in most European countries are NOT in place to allow older adults to have sex with younger teens, but rather to protect younger teens from prosecution when they have sex with each other.

For example; in America, in many places, an 18-year-old who has sex with a 16-year-old is committing statutory rape. Should the parents of the 16-year-old find out, they could charge the 18-year-old and have them prosecuted. Whether or not they're convicted, that charge will be on their record. If they ARE convicted, they'll be tried as an adult and sent to prison for having consensual sex with someone very nearly their age. Nations where the age of consent is under 18 acknowledge this and acknowledge the fact that teens are going to explore sexually and should not be punished for it.

Armie Hammer's assertion that Call Me By Your Name is the "story of two adults" is technically, and legally true. His character broke no laws by having sex with Timothee Chalamet's character and not a jury in the world would be able to state otherwise.

It's still wrong.

A 17-year-old boy is likely in his junior or senior year of high school. He is newly able to drive. He is still going through puberty. His brain and body are still developing. He is unable to smoke, drink, or vote.

A 24-year-old man has likely graduated from college. His body has all but finished going through puberty. He pays taxes as an independent. He can smoke, drink, vote, join the army, and hold a 9-5 job.

He is seven years older than a 17-year-old boy.

Think of the person you were seven years ago. Think of the person you were at 17. I'm only 19, barely a legal adult myself, and I've changed so much since going off to college that it's hard to believe. When I think about myself at age 17, it's not like I'm thinking of an alien, but neither am I thinking of a peer. How many college graduates, or even students, are willingly signing up to spend extended periods with 17-year-old high schoolers? Not many. How many are dating them? Hopefully even fewer.

Call Me By Your Name is about two gay men. Any other time, I'd be jumping for joy at the mainstream, well-funded representation this movie was bringing in. But it majorly fucked up, and we shouldn't let ourselves be so desperate for any representation that we sacrifice our morals for an indie film that glorifies predatory behavior.

Pedophilia has always been associated with gay men and the queer community, as ridiculous as that notion is. The community has put in decades of work to dispel people's prejudicial notions about the predatory nature of gay men, and Call Me By Your Name has chucked all of that out the window in favor of a cutesy story with bicycle rides in the Italian sunshine. The last thing the queer community needs is movies depicting relationships with large age gaps and an underage kid, ESPECIALLY not where the younger party is being portrayed as the “aggressor”!

I thought that in 2018 we were getting rid of the entirely false narrative of "they were asking for it so it's ok". Kids ask for a lot of stuff. Sometimes they demand it. When I was 10 I would sneak into the fridge and eat Smart Balance straight out of the tub. Was I "asking" for heart disease? Maybe. But that doesn't mean my parents should've handed me the spoon!

And before you point out that the character isn't 10, I'm well aware of it. 17-year-olds can be just as dumb, don't worry. And on some level, we should let them be dumb. Kids are gonna cut their hair and get nose rings and date idiots and listen to music too loud. I'm a kid CURRENTLY DOING most of those things. But if a 24-year-old man is handing me the needle gun and a box of Manic Panic, alarm bells are going to go off.

Not to mention that all relationships entail a power exchange. You have to trust the other person to some extent, and you have to know that they trust you. There is a LOT of emotional and physical exchanges that go on in most relationships and THAT is why the age gap is an issue. Not because I don't think a 17-year-old knows that they want sex, not because I don't think that a 17-year-old can say "no" just as easily (or not as easily) as a 24-year-old, but because the power exchange between them is NOT EVEN CLOSE TO EQUAL.

Metaphor time:

There are two people in a room. The light's gone out. You need someone to hold up the ladder, and someone to screw in the light bulb. If the first person is 30 and the second person is 37, the decision comes down to a flip of a coin, or maybe whoever's bigger or afraid of heights gets to hold the ladder up.

But if one's 17 and one's 24? It's a lot more likely for the 24-year-old to be trusted with the support, and the 17-year-old be the one climbing the ladder. Are there exceptions? Sure. Maybe the 17-year-old's dad is a construction worker. Maybe the 24-year-old is 300lbs and the ladder can only hold 200lbs. Maybe they're both blind and neither need a light bulb so the point is moot anyway.

But we're not talking about exceptions.

I know plenty of 17-year-olds who have had relationships with older men (and women) who DON’T regret it and plenty who DO. The point is that SEVENTEEN YEAR OLDS SHOULDN'T BE MAKING THOSE DECISIONS PERIOD. But they're going to anyways. So it's up to the adults to say NO.

Do I have a HUGE issue with the age gap? No. Do I have a HUGE issue with Armie Hammer dismissing valid concerns about the age gap and saying the 17-year-old was the aggressor and the pursuer just as much if not more than the 24-year-old? Absolutely. HUGE ISSUE WITH THAT NARRATIVE AND THE KIND OF MENTALITY IT PROMOTES. It's the same kind of mentality that allows predators to excuse their actions when they leer at 16-year-old girls in shorts or hit on teenagers because they were only TECHNICALLY a girl, they ACTED like a woman! The same mentality that allows predatory men to groom young boys to do what they want without the boys ever knowing that they're being manipulated.

In ANY relationship with an age gap, there is going to be some kind of power imbalance. The one portrayed in Call Me By Your Name is blatant and BAD. Address it. Don’t gloss over it. And DO NOT excuse it because the 17-year-old CHILD was “into it” or the "aggressor".

And now, Mr. Hammer, I'm going to address you directly. You have kids. Two of them, I believe. How would you feel if your daughter, once she hits 17, still in high school, brought home a man 7 years older than her with his own car and apartment and tax return and everything? Would you be ok with it? What if she was the one who approached him? Maybe she was working her part-time job at McDonald's and he came in on his lunch break and she asked him for his number. Is that an ok situation? She was the aggressor after all.

How about your son? Would you let him date a man 7 years older than him? A woman? The age of consent is 17 in New York, and some states it goes as low as 16. you said yourself that “17 is not a child.”

And yet a 22-year-old actor was cast in the role... could the director have cast a 17-year-old? Legally? Ethically?

Would you have been comfortable acting out the scenes you did, acting, not even really doing, with a 17-year-old? Would you have been comfortable, as an adult, making out with a 17-year-old boy on camera? As “two legal aged human beings” would it have been ok to do that?

And think about yourself at 17. Were you able, mentally, emotionally, and physically to enter into a safe, sane, and consensual relationship with another human? Even if the human was 7 years older than you? I sure wasn’t.

But I dunno. Maybe I just wasn't aggressive enough.

To everyone hoisting this movie up as some beacon of queer representation: don't. It's two straight actors playing cisgender gay men in an unhealthy relationship. I don’t want this representation and the queer community doesn't want it either. Take it back. Fix it. Fix whatever part of yourself is ok with this narrative. You can come back once you’ve sorted it out. I’d advise doing it soon lest you end up as just another name on the Hollywood blacklist of creeps.

“Just because a girl knows how to imitate a woman, does not mean she’s ready to do what a woman does.”

-Hard Candy (2005)