Ok, I get it now, you’re living in the Robin Hood universe. Ok, have fun in fantasy land, I’ll go back to reality, see ya.
Nitpick: with the 12 y/o, you have a pedophile in your hands. With the 17 y/o you just have an unethical skeeve.
Even stretching the term “paraphrase” in a most generous fashion, I don’t know how you derived the second phrase from anything I’ve written in this thread. I figure you’re projecting and building strawmen - I don’t take you sufficiently seriously for your tastes, therefore my view can be descrbed as an exaggerated opposite of yours.
If a partial fact makes something immediately obvious, what does another fact in the opposite direction do?
For instance, teenagers (past 16 I think) are deemed responsible enough to hold jobs. Does that make is immediately obvious that teenagers past 16 are responsible?
And are these two facts reconcilable in the land where further explanation is not necessary to explain things?
Your classic romantic triangle.
For those posters – especially female posters – saying that the respective gender roles of student/teacher in this situation make no real difference: no offense, but what do you know about it? Why are you so eager to dismiss the testimony of the large majority of guys here and elsewhere who say, “God, I wish Ms. What-Her-Face had molested me”? I suppose it’s possible that it’s just macho bluster that causes men to say these things, but isn’t it also possible that they talk like this because things really are different for boys? If I’m making a mistake here, it’s more likely to be that I’m overestimating the harm caused to female students than underestimating the harm caused to male students.
Note: I freely admit that there’s potential for abuse and/or damage in a male student/female teacher relationship, and that the potential for said damage increases exponentially the younger the student is. I’m just saying that the double standard on this issue isn’t ridiculousness, but rather a reflection of a common sense truth.
–VarlosZ (still pining for Mrs. Maurer, and Mrs. Castro, and Ms. Gonzales, and Professor Kizenko, and. . .)
I’m a dude. Am I entitled to call it ridiculous? Am I also entitled to observe that what an adult man wishes had happened when he was a child is not necessarily related to how that same man would have actually reacted to the fulfillment of that wish when he was a child?
Yes, it’s a fair point that many guys may be missing the mark in their estimation of how they, themselves would have reacted to an affair with a teacher. It’s also fair to say that, for example, you may be missing the mark in your estimation of how other people would have reacted.
I’m really not arguing that we should be fine with female teachers having relationships with their male students – just as when the gender roles are reversed, it’s risky behavior rife with potential for abuse. I’m arguing that the position that says the gender of the student makes no difference has a seemingly impossible hurdle to clear: most guys seem to say it wouldn’t have bothered them, so where is the vast majority of women who look back and say that they wish their 11th Grade Math teacher had seduced them? If you argue that the difference is just due to male ego and bluster than your argument depends on stereotypes to a far greater degree than the position you’re opposing.
When in junior high we had a teacher’s assistant from the local university. She was a total knockout. We had lunch together everyday and laughed and talked and had a great old time. All my classmates used to tease me about how she was my girlfriend. I blushed ( I was still the male equivalent of an unplucked flower), but, years later it occurred to me that she really might have been hitting on me, and that she was only 3 years older, I was 17 and she was 20. Had she seduced me I’m sure I would have enjoyed it but it probubly she would have broken my heart. Oh well.
A year later my first girlfriend was 5 years older than me.
How were you still in junior high at 17?
I was born December 29 1960.
I was in the class of 1979. in which I was 18.
The year before, my junior year, which was 1977-1978 I turned 17 midway through the school year.
Is this unusual?
“Junior High” refers to 7th and 8th Grades. I think you meant to say “When I was a junior in high school,” instead of “when in junior high.”
Add me to the men who would have been alllll over that in high school. (I’ll never forget you, chemistry teacher!)
I’ve gotten to second base with a professor, does that count? 
(for the record, I did have a class with him at some point, but it was before the incident, and I know since I graduate in 3 weeks, I’m never going to have another class with him again. And he gave me a B in the class anyway. :/)
Perhaps due to the lack of male teachers? The older the women that reply, the less likely any of their childhood teachers were male (let alone young and good-looking).
I don’t remember male teachers in pre-school. Elementary school, only 1, music, and I was still a kid.
High school (from 7th all the way to 12th)… Probably around 5 male teachers total. All of them were old (as in close to collecting SSN benefits), gay (nothing wrong with that, but I’m female), or just plain creepy (as in you want to take a shower if he taps your shoulder creepy).
Now, there were a couple of student teachers (doing practice) and clerical workers who were young enough, and cute enough, and I wouldn’t have mind getting it on with them (and the age difference was about 10 years). BTW, I grew up in a place where 14 is legal.
It wasn’t until college that I found cuter TAs and profs that were also close to my age.
Thank you, I always get that mixed up.
I don’t think it matters. Teachers still shouldn’t fuck their students. If you fundamentally agree with this statement, then what is this argument about anymore? That it would have felt good? Sure, but you don’t know how it would have gone.
The women who commit these transgressive acts have to be off their rockers. I say this as a secondary school teacher who has had students ages 11-19. There is no way to cross that boundary as a sane and rational person, with the mental instability getting worse as the kids get younger. I cannot say with any kind of certainty, nor could you, what kind of damage a sexual relationship with a crazy person in a position of power might do to a young boy. Maybe it would be fine. But there are things that could happen, that HAVE happened, that could be very damaging. You’re assuming a best case scenario. There is no guarantee you’d get that.
Ironically, you say that we shouldn’t be speaking for others, but you are speaking for all the women you claim would have regretted an affair with a male teacher, ignoring the female posters in this very thread who have said they wanted to do it. That doesn’t make it a good idea, of course. But YOU are arguing in favor of stereotypical gender reactions to situations that I just don’t think are accurate.
What she said.
I had crushes on teachers in high school but I would have been weirded out had they reciprocated. Not because I wasn’t frisky, but because for that to happen the teacher would have to not only be stupid enough to do it, he’d have to be, well, into 16-year-old girls, rather than women his own age. I was a pretty cynical teen.
Because sex is not the big deal you say it’s not, they probably would. I have raised a daughter of my own and now live in a blended family with a 14 YO girl and a 12YO boy. Both with who I’m close with. I have pretty good take on them and their friends,
Regarding what the thrust of this thread has become, I strongly disagree.
Could not agree more.
Which you apparently do, too bad you couldn’t have taken the time to add substance to your opinion and hipped us unwashed free thinkers as to where we could get some of this common sense.
Then we have to agree to disagree, because I don’t think that girls are less able to handle sex with an older person than boys are. In fact, most teenage girls who are having sex are doing it with older men. And about 50% of girls are not virgins by the age of 15. If it were so verboten, then why is it so commonly done? I wish they wouldn’t do it, but they are, and it’s not as stigmatized as you think it is. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I think men want to think women are more selective and emotional because it explains why women won’t sleep with them, specifically. Maybe that’s not true of you, DFTH, but it sure seems to crop up right along side the argument that women are pickier, they always have to be pursued for sex, they don’t like it as much as guys, etc. All of which I think are fallacies.