True story. From the age of 10 or 11 on I was the kid in the neighborhood that mowed lawns, shoveled snow, did odd jobs etc. I had this lady customer who must have been late 40’s, or so, who owned 2 hair salons in town and a couple apartment buildings. She did not have a man around her living there. I was always doing work for her. Often I was in her apartment (which was huge) doing this and that for her.
I was 13 or 14 just and came, as told to, at her place early on a Saturday morning and she met me in a bathrobe and not much else on. She was showing me around of the things I was to do when her bathrobe came apart and she was oblivious to it. Of course her boobs hung out and I was just staring at them till she noticed. She was bemused by that. “Looks like you never seen that sight before” I just shook my head no. She opened up her bathrobe and said “Here take a good look” and I did. Then she closed up her robe and said “I’d offer you some, but your way too young’
“Offer me some”. That puzzled me and I had no idea that meant. Honestly took me a couple years for me to figure it out. What an innocent I was.
She was my favorite client and after that I got many glimpses in one way or another for a number of years, but nothing else
Of course there is an old joke that helps us to put this sensitive issue in perspective:
The junior-high teacher comes into class, and somebody has written, “Timmy Johnson has a big dick!” on the blackboard in chalk. She casually erases it and goes on with the day’s lessons.
At the end of the day, as students are filing out, she says, “Timmy Johnson, I want you to stay after class.”
Timmy’s friends wait for him out in the schoolyard. When he eventually comes out, they asked him what happened. He winks and says, “It pays to advertise.”
“Not sure”; it depends too much on circumstances.
In my view sex with under age, post pubescent teens, people who are old enough to be interested but too young to have good judgement isn’t wrong the same way sex with outright children is. Sex with children is wrong because of the harm it directly causes; sex with underaged teens old enough to want it (and possibly initiate the relationship) is wrong because of the potential harm.
It’s rather like the difference between deliberate murder and drunken driving. Murder is wrong directly, in itself; but drunken driving is wrong because it puts others at risk - plenty of drunken drivers reach their destination without hurting anyone, but that’s because they got lucky not because driving drunk is smart or ethical. I think there’s plenty of relationships between older adults and teens that don’t end in trauma for anyone involved; but that’s because they got lucky, not because it’s a good idea.
That said, I think that at the very least we need “Romeo and Juliet” laws to keep teenaged lovers from being punished for acting like teenaged lovers. And better sex ed to prevent some of those potential disasters from happening.
I honestly feel this way too. At 16 I was a misfit, bumbling into an understanding of how to talk to girls without coming off like a complete dork, still thinking of myself as a chubby kid even though I wasn’t anymore, and I had little self-esteem or confidence in my sex appeal. If a hot teacher had been interested in me, I would’ve been over the moon.
I can’t see being damaged by it. I would look back on it differently, though---- not with regret, but with more mixed feelings about the good judgement of an adult who’d have sex with someone as young as I was. Which isn’t entirely fair, I guess, but there you have it.
For me 13 was a good year in starting the transition from child to adult. I started having sex, and I led my first wilderness white water canoe trip. I opened a small greens keeping business at 14, and by 16 had several crews out working for me, all the while doing very well at school and athletics, and more to the point, while continuing to have normal, healthy, sexual relationships (and yes, nearly forty years later I’m still friends with the people I dated in high-school – we all have had good lives, and look back with fond memories, thank you very much). Had a couple of comely teachers wanted to have sex with me when I was 16 (and if I was not dating someone at that particular time), I would have enjoyed it greatly, for by that age I was comfortable with sex and comfortable with relationships, could distinguish the one from the other, and enjoyed the company of women, particularly including women older than myself. I also was aware of the perils of sticking my dick in teh crazy. Would it have messed me up? Good heavens no. It would have been a positive experience for me, for I’ve always been a sex-positive person, be it sex in a relationship or just good old fashioned recreational sex.
Of course that’s just me. We all develop at different rates and in different directions, so I realize that for some folks, a threesome at 16 with a couple of young comely teachers would mess them up, so I’m not in any way at all saying what should or should not be, or how a person should or should not feel. It’s all good as long as we respect ourselves and each other for who we are, in not just our similarities, but also in all our differences.
We all still agree that The Reader was hot, right?
Not 16 . . . 13. My 8th grade math teacher, Mr. D. There wouldn’t have been any downside to it, and it would have saved me years of coming out.
The fact that I was “gifted” in the subject of mathematics complicated things. The other kids called me “teacher’s pet,” but I couldn’t be that in the sense I needed to be.
Its not a blind pole and this isn’t an issue most people want their name associated with.
…And if people want to ostracize me for taking a stand against allowing sexual predators to make a buffet out of our schools, Have At It. :dubious:
Here’s a blind Pole. He’s good with it.
Muffin, I had some very similar experiences to yours being precocious both intellectually and emotionally. At the age of 16 I owned a small software company which employed college age programmers. Even at the time I found it fun to speculate that if I had sex with one of my employees some people would melt down trying to figure out who was taking advantage of whom.
There’s really two different questions here…
- Should teachers be punished for engaging in sex with their older teenage students? ABSOLUTELY YES
- Is the situation “damaging” to an older teenage student? MAYBE, BUT PROBABLY NOT
That’s what most of the men are saying in this thread and the other one.
An older woman who is willing to risk everything–her personal and professional reputation–to have sex with a student is probably not the most emotionally stable.
Right, but a teacher is different. A teacher has watched you with your friends, read your essays, seen your test scores, talked about you with other teachers, has discussed you with your parents, knows your schedule, your influences . . .while concealing most of themselves. It creates a tremendous distortion and imbalance.
Out of 130 or so, I teach 40ish kids right now who *adore *me, who live in fear of disappointing me, who would go to ridiculous lengths to please me. And while I like them all, while I am really emotionally invested in their success, I don’t need them to like me, approve of me, like they need my good opinion. Age gives you distance, a separate support structure, a LIFE. There is no way a romantic relationship there could be healthy, because one person could so clearly and easily manipulate the other, and the reverse is not possible.
i don’t know about emotionally damaged.
there could be psychological and intellectual damage.
i would develop bad study habits and want to get a grade the easy way.
I didn’t ask if a female teacher who has sex with a female student is necessarily nuts. I asked if an older woman who has sex with a younger man necessarily is. Say a 25-year-old woman and 16-year-old boy.
Probably not. But the OP asked about a teacher, and I don’t think a teacher is casually risking everything just for a fun roll in the hay.
There are some rare instances where I would be traumatized:
- Say the teacher revealed afterwards they were transsexual.
- Transmitted HIV/AIDS to me
- It was a setup and her husband or some friends robbed me or kidnapped and taken me to a another location.
Those are ones I can think of, whether the teacher is unattractive is moot, for I would not sleep with someone whom I feel no physical connection with.
I also do not buy the coercion or threatening me, say with grades. I would not ask for my grades to be changed, even if I was having sex with her. Plus the student would have the upper hand, so the teacher can’t really threaten me. I could report her, and she would get in trouble, losing her career, registering as a sex offender, and possibly going to prison.
So in a normal circumstance, it would not damage me. I would cherish the moment for a lifetime, and my self esteem and ego would hit the roof.
Imagine this man’s ego now, from his peers, but also reading around on the internet, people branding him “lucky” and what not! He is in overdrive.
There is a good chance she could be nuts, and some cases not.
On Tom Leykis’ show many years ago, a woman called about how when she was 29 she had a few months sexual relationship with her mechanic’s 15 year old son.
:: hands Nema98 a flame-proof umbrella ::
You’ll need this.
Most teenage boys are so horny that they only dream of something like this.
Assuming that there was no immediate fallout, and that she and I parted on good terms, no, I don’t think I would’ve been damaged, not at all. It probably would’ve been quite a confidence-booster, as some have already suggested.
Can we point out that the teacher is mentally disturbed and had a history of making extremely bad decisions that harm people she interacts with- some of which you will almost certainly be a target of now that you are in her sights?
Can we also point out that you were not chosen because you were the hottest sophomore on the block, but rather because she thinks you are easily manipulated and probably stupid?