We may well agree it is wrong for a teacher to seek to have sex with a student that they have authority over, because there is a real danger there that the student might feel coerced, and might agree to it despite not really wanting to. This doesn’t just apply to teachers and students but to any pair of people, regardless of their relative age, where one is in authority over the other. This is what sexual harassment laws are about, or what they ought to be about, and is presumably the reason for the French and German laws regarding teachers and students, mentioned above. Such laws are probably a good thing. Certainly the ethical standards for teachers, that they enforce, are. Teachers ought not to try to have sexual relations with their students.
That is a completely different issue from that of whether consensual sex between a teenager and an adult, with a fairly large age gap between them, is likely to be psychologically harmful to the teenager. If it is truly consensual, if the teen really does not feel coerced (and they may very well not, even when the adult does have some sort of potential authority over them), then I can see no reason whatsoever to think that such a relationship is any more likely to be psychologically harmful, or any less likely to be beneficial, than any sexual relationship between full adults. People can get hurt in consensual sexual relationships, but, on the whole, and in most cases (and provided they do not involve betrayal of someone else, or other such complications), they tend to be good things for all involved.
If anything, I should guess that an inexperienced teen is rather more likely to benefit psychologically from a consensual sexual relationship with an experienced adult lover than they would be likely to benefit from a similar relationship when they are older. For a teen it it is likely to be be much more of a learning experience, and much more of a confidence boost than an otherwise similar relationship would be for the same person at a later age. I suppose the possible downside is that a teen having their first relationship is particularly likely to be vulnerable to being badly disappointed when (as is likely) the relationship breaks up. However, I doubt whether that is any more true of a teen than of someone experiencing their first major breakup a bit later in life.
As I said in one one of the earlier threads, I very firmly believe that I myself would have had a much happier, better adjusted, subsequent life if I had had a consensual sexual relationship with an attractive (to me then) woman when I was a young teen, and I suspect this is true of very many men, perhaps even a considerable majority. (I am not saying a sexual relationship with an older woman would have been preferable to one with a girl of around my own age, I am saying that age wouldn’t really have mattered: certainly, back then, I found both teenage girls and women who were well into their thirties plenty attractive.) I think the intense sexual frustration I suffered as a teen messed me up very badly, and I very much doubt that I am enormously unusual in that respect.
If there is a difference between teenage boys and teenage girls in this respect, I think it is probably because a girl is very much less likely than a boy to be giving her wholehearted free consent to a sexual relationship with an adult, without feeling at least a bit pressured or coerced. Not only are the (often internalized) social pressures on teen girls not to have sex (with anybody, of any age) much stronger than they are on teen boys (if anything, the general social pressure on boys is, on balance, in the other direction), but a girl may have quite rational fears about such things as getting pregnant, or the pain of losing her virginity, that are simply not a factor for boys. Very possibly (because men are bastards and all that)* it is also the case that a male teacher, or other authority figure, is rather more likely to knowingly use their authority to pressure an otherwise reluctant girl into sex than a woman teacher or other authority figure is likely to knowingly use theirs to pressure an otherwise reluctant boy, but even if that is not the case (even if the older authority figure truly has not intentionally exerted any such pressure), it remains the case that a girl is less likely to be truly and wholeheartedly consenting. It is for these reasons, I think, that most people’s, certainly most men’s initial reaction to such stories is to envy, or be happy for, the boys in such situations, but to be concerned about the girls. I think that reaction is usually the appropriate one. If anything, we are probably erring a little to far on the side of concern and disapproval in the case of the girls, who may, quite often, be genuinely consenting and having a good and psychological beneficial experience (but almost certainly not as overwhelmingly often as is likely to be the case for the boys).
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
*Why are men so often bastards to women? I think a lot of it is probably due to the anger they feel about the intense sexual frustration they suffered in their teens (and, perhaps, beyond). Certainly on the occasions I have behaved badly towards women over sexual relationships (not all that many times, I think, but there are things I am ashamed of) it was in those terms that I justified and rationalized my behavior to myself. (Perhaps I should add that, although I have been a [university] teacher my “bad behavior” never involved having sex with a student, or otherwise abusing any authority I may have had over anyone. It was more a matter of, a few times, rather unceremoniously dumping girlfriends who deserved better of me. If I ever had tried to pressure a student into having sex with me, however, I am sure I would have been justifying it to myself in terms of all the pain of sexual frustration that I had experienced, especially when I was a teen.)
This part is my favorite, because I have no idea what these words in these sequence can possibly mean.