How do we feel about teachers fired for posting homemade porn?

In My Humble Opinion
923

Fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t address the point I was making, namely, how adults can advocate for healthier societal behaviors around sex and porn in the context of talking to schoolchildren.

Essentially, all the other teachers can tell the kids in this situation is, as you suggest, “shut up and mind your own business”. AFAICT, they can’t really discuss with the kids why they think attitudes on this issue need to change, because that’s skating too close to talking to minors about sexual activities.

Telling kids just to shut up and mind their own business on an extremely controversial and volatile issue really doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to opening minds and changing attitudes. I continue to think that the posters trying to handwave away the stubborn societal difficulties in this situation, or claim unconvincing analogies with other types of social ridicule, are being unrealistic.

924

You could make exactly the same argument, word for word, about LGBT stuff. In fact, Republicans do exactly that when they insist that acknowledging the existence of gay people is “grooming”.

925

See my posts #584 and #738.

926

Then how about if the teacher is outed as an adulterer or adulteress?

927

What do you mean, “how about” it? What information are you asking me for?

928

Should those teachers be fired?

929

What? No. Where have I argued that the OnlyFans teacher(s) should be fired?

In fact, see my post #713 for an explicit denial of that position.

930

Neither of those posts have anything to do with the fact that one could make the argument that teachers shouldn’t say anything more than “mind your own business” about LGBT issues because getting any more explicit than that (IE “some men are attracted to other men and that’s OK” for example) skates too close to breaching the firewall and releasing the Kraken (and whatever other strained analogies were used) of discussing sex with children.

If there’s something in those posts you think is relevant, could you please spell it out, because I don’t see it.

931

sex <> porn

932

As I said: Gender identity and sexual orientation are federally protected categories. They unambiguously fall under civil-liberties protections for individual rights in their personal and private lives. You don’t need to talk about sexual activity with schoolchildren in order to support a gay colleague against unfair firing.

Commercial activities involving the marketing of explicit sexual content, as I also said, may be more of a gray area in terms of rights. If you want to change minds about why that should likewise be considered a purely private and personal matter, you’re going to need to talk about porn.

And you can’t talk about porn to schoolkids.

933

Which is why I said your posts had nothing to do with my post above. I’m talking about what teachers can and cannot talk about in the classroom, not about someone being fired. Protected classes have nothing to do with it.

934

Let me try again since you seem to be missing my point.

You said that teachers can’t talk to children about any issues that might tangentially relate to sex because of a firewall.

I pointed out that this logic can be and in fact is used to claim that teachers who mention the existence of LGBT people in the classroom are “groomers”, because they are “skating too close to the firewall” of talking to children about sex related topics.

I hope you can agree that this side point has nothing to do with what is or is not a protected class.

I don’t know when you went through school, but when I was in 9th grade we absolutely talked about sex, porn, lesbian/gay people (not trans in my day), and many other aspects of adult sexuality in Sex Ed.

935

Sigh. You brought that up, AFAICT, in response to a post of mine. And what that post of mine was talking about was the ways in which this subject matter makes it difficult for other adults to advocate on this subject. The advocacy situations for teachers who are porn workers and teachers who are LGBT are indeed not exactly parallel, because gender orientation and sexual identity are federally protected categories.

What you’re saying, as near as I can make out, is along the lines of “Well, if other teachers did want to advocate for LGBT acceptance in the same way as this hypothesized advocacy for sex-work acceptance, they couldn’t do that either, so there!” Okay.

936

How is that at all relevant?

It means that the incredibly specific situation of defending your ex-coworker against an unjust firing won’t come up, or if it does, you can direct your students to the federal lawsuit taking place. Great.

But students mock people for being members of a protected class all the time, and if students are mocking Mr. Tedson (or Jimmy the 7th grader) for being gay, and teachers want to advocate that it’s OK to be attracted to members of the same gender, surely you don’t think those teachers are groomers just because they talked about a sex-adjacent subject in class?

What I am saying is that by your exact word for word argument, no advocacy of any kind for a group defined by its sexual orientation would ever be appropriate for a teacher in a classroom.

937

Well, it’s relevant to what I was talking about. I quite accept that it may not be sufficiently relevant to whatever it is that you want to talk about at this point, so feel free to carry on and not mind me.

So?

I think you may be getting so focused on striving for a “gotcha” here that you’re overlooking the plain sense of what I was saying. Namely, I think it would generally, and not unreasonably, be perceived as inappropriate for teachers to discuss with students the acceptability or otherwise of another teacher performing in porn.

And I don’t think the fact that porn was one of the curricular topics covered in your sex ed class is necessarily a persuasive counterexample to that perception.

938

But I am talking about children watching porn. When discussing children encountering porn, it’s essential to acknowledge the potential risks associated with teachers posting explicit content online. The accessibility of such material raises concerns, especially if students become aware of it through gossip or other means. I can attest to the curiosity and determination inherent in many children by recalling my childhood. Fortunately, there was no internet, or pornography when I was a kid. No one had genitals either.

Consider a scenario where a teacher, perhaps teaching 6th grade, intentionally posts content on a porn site. In today’s digital age, it’s plausible that a tech-savvy student could come across this material. And once one student finds it, it’s improbable that they’d keep it to themselves. The allure of such discovery is often too great for youngsters to resist. Before you know it, the whole school is buzzing about it (while teachers are left in the dark).

Some here argue that as long as teachers don’t display explicit material in the classroom, they shouldn’t face consequences for their online activities. However, this overlooks the potential harm inflicted on students who stumble upon such content. Whether encountered in school or online, the impact on a child’s perception of their teacher and their ability to learn can be equally detrimental.

Children watching porn is bad. Children watching their teachers in porn is worse. It’s nearly as bad as seeing your parents in porn. My grandparents were in porn, but it was furry porn, so it wasn’t so bad…come to think of it, that may have been a family album site and nana and pop pop were just really hairy.

Blaming the child for stumbling upon inappropriate material ignores the reality of their cognitive development. Young minds don’t possess the maturity to navigate such encounters without adverse effects. It’s unjust to hold them accountable for actions influenced by their still-developing brains.

This issue isn’t about punishing teachers; it’s about safeguarding the well-being of children. Establishing clear guidelines within teachers’ job descriptions regarding unacceptable online behavior, including involvement in pornography, is crucial. In the event of a violation, temporary suspension of teaching duties may be the way to go (not firing), and without public shaming or undue punishment.

While engaging in pornography may be financially tempting for some, teachers, like professionals in other fields, must adhere to certain standards of conduct. Comparable to restrictions placed on military officers or federal employees, these guidelines serve to uphold the integrity of the profession and protect those it serves. Ultimately, it’s incumbent upon teachers to respect these boundaries to ensure a safe and conducive learning environment for all students.

939

So, if Joey is crying in Mr. Stephenson’s class because everyone is saying that Joey doesn’t have a real family because he has two dads, and Mr. Stephenson says that some people like members of the same sex, and that’s OK, they can still love each other and their kid - is he ‘skating too close to the firewall’? Because I’m sure I can find plenty of Repu licans who will say “yes”, and justify it with some bullshit like:

I think it would generally, and not unreasonably, be perceived as inappropriate for teachers to discuss with students the acceptability or otherwise of someone’s parents being gay.

And then they’d call that teacher a groomer and accuse them of being financed by George Sorros.

940

Personally, I don’t think so, but also that sounds to me substantially different from discussing with students the making and using of porn, especially as practiced by a fellow teacher. I think that your efforts to make out that they’re exactly analogous situations smell a bit artificial.

941

Just to reiterate, this is what you unitially said that I objected to:

If you don’t see the relevance of LGBT issues, consider, what if it isn’t a teacher who did porn, but a kid’s parent, and now the kid is being bullied for it? Surely you agree that the kid doesn’t deserve to be ostracized, or shunted to another school, or bullied, and that therefore teachers should address the situation?

I think there is plenty that could be said besides “mind your own business”. Of course the exact message would need to be tailored to the specific age group, but addressing points like “the parent isn’t doing anything illegal, they deserve respect just like anyone else, etc” is surely appropriate in that situation.

942

Oh, boy. Do we really have to branch out into ever more hypotheticals adding ever more new complications to the putative situations being discussed? Now it’s a kid being bullied for a parental scandal, which AFAICT has jack-diddly to do with anything in the situations of the actual teachers who inspired this thread.

This, again, is starting to smell like just making up points to argue about for the sake of arguing. Which, don’t get me wrong, I think is a highly commendable recreation, but I’m not up for it in this context. And again, that’s not because I advocate firing the actual teachers whose situation launched these endlessly ramified speculations, because I don’t.