On the other hand, as a society, we do seem to believe that 13-year-olds are capable of knowing whether they wanted it, at least under some circumstances. Like, for instance, when a famous, powerful 43-year-old man says they did. At that point, many of us will happily take his word for it that it wasn’t “rape-rape.” According to him, she said yes, so never mind what she says about it. Never mind what she said under oath to a grand jury. If she’s post-pubescent, and there’s a question of “he said/she said,” plenty of people just stop at “he said.”

I mean, that’s what’s so fascinating to me about the pro-Polanski arguments here. In many cases, there’s overlap between two of the most common defenses of him: “He only pled guilty to sex with a minor, not non-consensual sex,” and “We should listen to what the victim says — she doesn’t want him prosecuted!” We should listen to what the victim says now, as a 45-year-old woman, when it fits with the narrative that Polanski’s already suffered enough and shouldn’t endure further indignities. But what about listening to what the victim said then, at 13? What about listening to her testimony that she said no, that she asked him to stop, as he raped her orally, vaginally and anally? Some people are making very curious arguments about when, exactly, it’s important to listen to the victim.

And when I consider that alongside people’s refusal to listen to what Dakota Fanning said at 13 about her decision to play the lead in “Hounddog,” her reasons for doing it, her distinct lack of traumatization, and her pride in providing a voice for actual victims, I can only conclude that as a society, we’re just not much interested in listening to 13-year-old girls’ thoughts on what they do with their own bodies, and what’s done to them. If a young actress decides to do a movie with a fictional depiction of the very real horror of child rape, we say it’s impossible that she had the maturity to make such a decision for herself. But if a young girl is raped by a much older man, after he’s given her alcohol and drugs, we’ll take his word for it that she consented. I mean, you know how those blossoming girls can be, flaunting their sexuality, teasing, asking for it! Who among us wouldn’t be tempted?

Speaking of which, the rape scene, which is less than a minute long, was not the only controversial one in “Hounddog.” Kampmeier told me, “There’s a scene in my film where Dakota’s character is singing ‘Hound Dog’ on the bed, moving her legs back and forth in a very innocent expression of her love for this song.” As Kampmeier tells it, Fanning wasn’t intending to play it as sexual in any way, nor was she directed to — but in the film, a 17-year-old boy is watching, and projecting his own interpretation onto it. Says Kampmeier, “I had men in audiences watch that and say, ‘Well, she’s asking for it.’ Women say, ‘No, she’s just being natural, being herself.’ Why is a young girl seen as asking for it when she’s just exploring the experience of being alive in her body?” It would seem to come down to whether you identify with the 12-year-old girl or the 17-year-old boy watching.

This is what too many people fail to understand about adolescent girls when it comes to sex, rape and personal agency: The experience of being alive in their bodies makes them sometimes sexual, sometimes curious, sometimes desirous, sometimes totally innocent — and at all times vulnerable to other people’s interpretations of their behavior, of their decisions, of their very existence in bodies equipped with brand-new womanly features. And all they have to counter those interpretations are their own voices — voices that are routinely ignored, dismissed and silenced. What does a kid that age know, after all? At least until an older man says, she knew damn well what she was doing.

Five minutes after we ended the interview, Kampmeier called me back to say she wanted to add one more thought: “When you rape a girl, the problem is not that you’re taking away her purity — which is what gets the religious right up in arms — it’s that you’re taking away her wholeness. And trying to keep her ‘pure,’ repressing her sexuality, silencing her voice, also takes away wholeness. It’s two sides of the same coin.

“I don’t want my daughter to grow up pure,” she said. “I want her to grow up whole.”