It’s amazing how I can complete miss a typo that make my comment virtually unreadable until somebody quotes it. :smack:
And you’re right.
Really, there’s friendly hugs, and then there’s “friendly” (scare quotes) hugs. Urbanredneck’s neighbors, if accurately reported, would be what feeds into popular “cougar” fantasies, which I suppose are the general-population extension of Hot4Teacher fantasies. And which have been around forever as well, just more popularly prominent now.
On the matter of double standards I saw on tumblr a grid of how people react to student-teacher shenanigans (T=teacher, S=Student):
FT/MS: Oh, where were those teachers when we were students…
MT/FS: Lock him up with all the criminals so THEY can rape HIM!!!
FT/FS: OMFG SO HAWT!!!
MT/MS: Don’t want to hear about itLALALALALALALALALA…
To which I would add the additional subsets:
(Handsome MT)/FS: Little slut must have set him up…
Ugly FT/(any S): Ewwwwww…
(Any T)/(*own *kid): KIILLLL!!!BUURRNNNN!!!SUE EVERYONE FOR EVERYTHING!!!
The word “predator” implies a whole bunch of things that don’t seem to apply to this story. Is there any evidence that she was actually a predator, or was this an isolated instance of terrible judgement?
Anyone here who doesn’t get that this is a violation of a child’s boundaries is part of the problem. Sorry I can’t join in the laughter but I used to have to help clean up the mess and it isn’t pretty when a kid doesn’t learn good boundaries.
Good points.
This. Wasn’t there a story a while back about an elderly substitute teacher who began masturbating in a school hallway (with no prior history of skeevy behavior) and he was taken in for a mental evaluation? I know dementia can be a cause of inappropriate sexual behavior in an older person.
Not real obviously, but there was an episode of Law & Order: SVU about a teacher who molested a student and it was revealed that she had a massive brain tumor.
Doesn’t excuse the behavior obviously, but if this teacher who gave the lap dance was a perfectly decent teacher prior to this then there may be something going on health wise (mental or physical).
How does it not? She not only gave him a lap dance groped the kid and told him she loved him. It wasn’t a no-contact thing. I agree that we often go overboard with what we think of touching, but a lap dance like that is an inherently sexual act. She was sexually molesting that boy. That makes her a predator.
I suppose that a mental issue can overcome ones ability to control themselves. However I dont think it makes you do something totally 100% out of your original thoughts. In other words, this might have been a fantasy of hers that a sudden mental block allowed.
Maybe this was like the 10th lap dance of the semester, but the first one that got reported.
Since this was an underage boy, and she was his teacher, yes, that is evidence enough. Doesn’t mean she was seeking out other boys though, which might be what you’re asking. AFAIK, she wasn’t charged with that.
Obviously a teacher giving a lapdance to an under-age student is illegal. It’s also fucking weird. There’s no debate here, just morbid curiosity (on my part too).
That’s not true. Some organic mental problems (tumor, dementia) cause radical changes in personality and behavior.
We’ve known since Phineas Gage survived having an iron rod blasted through his frontal lobes that damage to certain areas of the brain have a profound effect on an individual’s behavior. If there’s an organic cause to her behavior - which I think there’s a strong possibility of considering just how aberrant her behavior is - then she is not to be held responsible for it.
I see. I didn’t realize that “predator” was synonymous with “molester.” I certainly agree that she sexually molested him; no doubt about that. In my mind, though, “predator” is to “molester” as “serial killer” is to “murderer.”
Linguistic inflation and all that, I guess. Thanks for answering.
I don’t think that serial offenses have ever been an inherent part of the definition of a sexual predator. If you engage in predatory actions once, you’re a predator.
JMHO, but it’s always seemed to me that ‘molest’ and its variants (molester, molested, etc.) were words that seemed to minimize the offense and being dismissive of its seriousness. Referring to a person as a predator rather than a molester, and their actions as predatory, seems more geared to taking those actions seriously.
I feel the opposite: the primary connotation to me of “molest” is a sexual crime, while “predator” feels like hyperbole.
But I’m not in charge of the language, and fortunately I have no occasion to use these words except when discussing the news, so frankly my opinion doesn’t matter! I really appreciate the clarification, though.
If she one morning decided to rip off her clothes and run thru the streets naked, I’d go along with you.
But it sounds like she was doing many things that require high levels of thinking. meaning she was still making lesson plans, teaching, along with the other things like driving to work and all. Granted we dont know the whole story and she might have been doing other things.
So yes, maybe their is a mental issue but still, she should have known better and controlled herself.
Brain damage or tumors can make people suddenly pervy, predatory, and without impulse control, without necessarily making them incompetent in other areas.
If she’d been caught by a passing janitor, alone with the kid after school hours, or had him come to her house or something, I wouldn’t jump to a brain problem. But I agree, this is so blatantly self-destructive, on top of being gross and wrong, it makes you wonder.
If this had happened forty years ago perhaps the first thought people would have is that the teacher had a mental health problem. But considering that the teacher wasn’t close to retirement age and allowing for the current rash of predatory female teacher on student behavior a brain tumor isn’t the first place I’d go. Occam’s razor and all.
Apparently some number of our younger women have lost perspective of the appropriate teacher/student relationship.
Certainly brain and mental health is something that needs to be taken into consideration. Particularly if overtly sexual behavior isn’t usually common for her. It wouldn’t hurt a bit to consider substance abuse as well.
None of the reasons for the behavior would justify keeping her in direct student/teacher employment for the present. She needs some type of intervention.
The woman in question is 42 years old, so she’s not a “younger” woman, and there isn’t exactly a rash of predatory female teacher behavior. Most likely, the rate has been the same all along. It’s just that we’re finally starting to treat it as just as serious as predatory male teacher behavior.
I doubt the kids in the class would have urged a ‘perfectly decent teacher’ to give a lap dance. She must have behaved previously in a way that led the kids to believe she’d go through with it, so I doubt this kind of behaviour is unusual for her.