Maybe she would be of a type that is deliberately being destructive to young boys.
Hmmm. Well, then she’s made an odd career choice. Or maybe not, if she’s gone into teaching deliberately to oppress young boys. Still, I think she’d have been packed away in a padded room long before she got that far.
Well, I would have hardly gone to the principal and reported that she fucked me and then insulted me. I would have cried in corner my entire adolescence and never asked a girl out.
Which isn’t all that far from what actually happened in my youth, BTW.
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In the work place it is usually not acceptable for a supervisor to engage in a sexual relationship with a subordinate. In many instances one or both will be fired. (Note in this setting both are adults)
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In the military it is not acceptable for an officer to engage in a sexual relationship with an enlisted person. (Note in this setting both are adults)
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In the medical profession it is not acceptable for doctors to engage in sexual relationships with patients under their care. (Note in this setting both are adults)*
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In religious settings it is not acceptable for priests, etc. to engage in sexual relationships with minors (Do I have to spell it out here?)
Given the above in what possible universe should it be acceptable for a teacher to engage in a sexual relationship with a minor student? (Note in this setting one is an adult the other is below the age of consent)
*[Does anyone really want to justify a doctor engaging in a sexual realtionship with a minor patient in this thread?]
That’s not what post 102 says.
Sex is a loaded gun now? Maybe to Freud. Not, I thought, to anyone living in the 21st century.
I might have missed it, but I don’t recall anyone in this thread saying it is acceptable behavior. I DO recall a lot of males, myself included, saying they doubt they would have been harmed by it had it happened to them. And more still admitting to adolescent fantasies they had toward some of their teachers and wishing they might have come true – which is not necessarily a commentary on whether that reality would be “good” from a societal point of view.
Let’s just say that people can do wrong or unacceptable things that have beneficial consequences for others.
Aha, I somehow missed that. Yeah, suddenly this thread make a lot more sense to me. And again, I would say, universalizing from his experience (which is what he has done throughout this thread) is not a sound line of reasoning.
Especially to people living in the 21st century. Double especially to a minor who a) doesn’t have the life experience to forego a relationship with a nutjob and b) doesn’t have the sense to use protection, as many of them don’t even in relationships with girls their own age.
In this very statement you are saying it is acceptable behaviour.
In many ways, it is… especially when teenagers are involved.
Besides, as you know full well, I was using the gun argument to demonstrate that saying “He wasn’t harmed!” is an invalid line of reasoning. Merely escaping harm does not mean that a particular action is wise or responsible. Every sensible adult knows that.
And I call bullshit, in light of a far sounder line of reasoning - namely, just letting him give his evaluation of the situation. Since he’s not otherwise displaying odd behaviours that might undermine his credibility, what evidence do you have overriding this and establishing that he was harmed or ever at risk of harm?
So he was… lucky? Good for him!
Rubystreak has been essentially saying what I’ve been thinking as I’ve read this thread.
I know males are societally conditioned to be all “hey! sex! yay!” but the reality is, they are just as emotionally fragile as females during the teen years. Yeah, when I was in school guys talked shit about having sex with teachers, but they were lying. (Yes, I know this for a fact because years later they fessed up.)
As a teenaged guy, we took great delight in catcalling girls and so on. Usually they’d tell you to fuck off, get really embarrassed, or smile a little. The bolder guys would do it to older women. The expected reaction was negative. If it was positive… I’m sure to everybody’s face, the guy would be like, “alright!” and behind closed doors he’d be like, “what the fuck just happened?”
I think for the vast majority of us, adolescent sexuality is fraught with awkwardness, missteps, and mistakes. You don’t need the complexity of power differential and scandal thrown in the mix. Hell, I was a teacher’s pet for a few of my teachers, and I caught shit for that. (And one was “moderately hot.”) The thing is, these relationships don’t typically come off perfectly where the two go their separate ways discreetly at the end. Promises are made that aren’t kept.
And as a former teacher, I don’t think it’s enough to simply take away these predatory teachers’ licenses. The profession is maligned enough as it is. Every single teacher in that school will be dealing with the aftermath of the scandal. Men and women alike who pull this shit should go through the criminal justice system. And the whole “well, the kid was at the age of consent” argument? All the more reason to point out that these cretins couldn’t wait A FUCKING YEAR or two to bump uglies with their (former) students?
Students, parents, community members, and even other teachers and administrators trust teachers to be fair and to be role models. It’s kind of hard to be impartial if you’re banging one of the seniors. That teacher has caused damage not only to the kid he/she is preying upon, but also the kids who didn’t get the extra attention.
I don’t see how you get that. Let’s say someone rips off and kills a drug dealer. As he flees, he drops a pound of dope and 10 grand in my back yard. Just because I get some primo weed and spending money doesn’t mean the killer was in any way justified.
If you want to get all moralistic about it, skip the weed and have the murderer dispose of the body. I could actually turn the money into the cops, but no one ever claims it, it isn’t traced back to a crime or an owner, I get it back and pay taxes, blah blah blah. I innocently benefit from someone else’s bad act.
I’m not claiming these are moral equivalents, I’m jst saying that it is certainly possible to benefit from a bad act without condoning it, or even realizing that it happened.
Ah, yes. Because that philosophy works so incredibly well when it comes to teenagers, doesn’t it? Let them decide; after all, nobody knows better than a teenager.
Yes. Wonderful. That still doesn’t make his behavior responsible.
Who, anywhere, said this behavior was “responsible”? Or even “appropriate”? The only claims I recall are that it’s possible that the younger person in these realtionships might not be harmed by them.
Maybe I missed some posts claiming more, but I’m not of a mood to wade back through them all to find out. Bit if you can show me a post where someone condones an adult teacher screwing an underage student as ok on general principles, please do.
And yet again you go from the specific to the general without a valid bus ticket.
If you acknowledge that he was lucky, then you can also acknowledge that he should not be universalizing. He is not in a position to say that, because he had a great experience, all boys who have sex with teachers have a good experience, that he is so thoroughly aware of the “guy culture” and locker room environment that he can win a wager that no boy would ever have a bad or traumatizing experience having sex with a teacher.
It’s not him simply telling us that he did it and it worked out OK for him. It’s the prescriptivist nature of his discourse on the subject that I object to. HE WAS LUCKY. That means he bucked the odds, doesn’t it?
Isn’t it fairly obvious at this point that no-one should be? His approach is more entertaining and less preachy, though.
Wow, sorry my point of view wasn’t entertaining to you (and it was hardly obvious, as I think I failed to win the hearts and minds of any of the men who still think it’s groovy as hell). I will weep into my pillow for countless seconds at the thought that my rational view of teachers fucking their students, amidst the chorus of “you go, boy!” failed to amuse you and came off as preachy. Mean old teacher lady, I bet she doesn’t blow her students either! What a spoilsport.
Exactly. Very well said. The rest of your post as well, but I especially liked this last quoted bit.
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Pot. Kettle. Black. Just a moment ago, you went from the specific (“He says he wasn’t harmed by his experience,” I paraphrase) to the general (“See! It’s perfectly responsible behavior.”) Obviously, the irony escapes you. As Rubystreak said, “If you acknowledge that he was lucky, then you can also acknowledge that he should not be universalizing.”
Moreover, it should be immediately obvious that teenagers are NOT the paragons of maturity and sound judgment that you make them out to be. This is one reason why insurance rates are much higher for teenage drivers, and why parents routinely dread raising their kids through the teen years. I’m shocked that you even think this needs further explanation.
You argument also assumes that the person who’s most directly affected by a situation is also the one who has the best judgment. That’s simply an overly broad claim – ESPECIALLY when teenaged hormones are involved. Sometimes, the best judge is one who has no vested interest in any particular outcome. Again, that’s just common sense.