Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. Its totally a matter of what society teaches us. If these two had grown up on some isolated island culture where sex was something you could do with anyone you pleased, and there was no stigma towards age, then it would be perfectly normal. This is very important, I believe. This is the same problem homosexuals have. There’s nothing wrong with homosexuality, its just that our society has been condemning it for so damn long that it has a negative effect. Its hard to believe that you are right when the majority says its wrong. If we lived in some imaginary society where 14 year-old boys regularly had sex with women, it wouldn’t matter. Hell, we aren’t that far removed from the days when girls got married at the age of 15 or 16, and it is also true that girls of today are going through puberty earlier than before.
So in a way, being against boys and men having sex is somewhat like being against homosexual sex or polyamorism, or anything that is considered non-mainstream sexual behavior. By the way, as flame repellent, I am not pulling a Santorum, here. I am not saying that homosexuality is in any way bad. I am just stating that there is a long history of societies condemning it. I believe that in the complete absence of any cultural or societal factors (it it were possible) almost all consensual sex would be pleasuable and problem-free. Biologically its going to feel good, and if nobody is going to tell you that it is wrong, then you wouldn’t care.
The problem comes in with the ability of people to deal with the sociological aspects of having had sex. If you have sex with a married woman, you are going to have problems with what other people think about it. As a result you’ll feel bad about it yourself. This really, in my mind, explains what is screwed up about sexual relations in our world. The reaction of the dopers here explains it perfectly. Most male dopers agree that they would have liked to do that back then, we think about how impressed our friends would be and how proud we’d be of ourselves. That’s because men are so often put in the position of having to be the initiator of sex, to have to work for it, when we get it, it feels like winning. Obviously women play the reverse role of feeling guilty. Its taken for granted that men want to have sex, and its the woman’s job to stop it. That should show us we have a long way to go in this department.
So what do I think? Its wrong, but only because society says its wrong, and its irresponsible because at such a young age, people don’t know how to deal with societal norms and teachings as you do when you get older. Its wrong in the same way that it would be for a girl to go topless to school. In some cultures its completely acceptable to be topless in public. There is a negative social stigma to certain things. Homosexuality for sure, but its much less than it was before, and since a pretty good percentage of people are openly homosexual its not as bad as it was before. NAMBLA? That’s not accepted by hardly anyone, so its got extreme negatives.
If we are prosecuting this as a crime based on the harm it’s done to the kid, or based on his lack of willingness, then it is up to the prosecutors to prove the harm. We may not assume the harm; we may not presume her guilty of harming him until she proves her own innocence.
This doesn’t apply if we prosecute the crime regardless of any harm that’s been committed.
I suspect that a lot of the problem folks have with such prosecutions is the assumption (which Zagadka seems to champion) that the boy is necessarily harmed. I think that’s a very faulty assumption. That’s doesn’t mean he was necessarily unharmed, either.
Well put. I’m not saying that I know for sure he was harmed, it’s certainly possible he was. But it’s silly to state it as an iron-clad fact when in fact it could have been the high point of his life.
Of course, because of statutory rape laws, she’s going down anyway. (pun not intended)
This thread isn’t a court of law, though. It’s just a discussion of the situation. In court, if the prosecution rested solely on the harm done to the boy or his unwillingness, they’d have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt before the teacher could be convicted. But it seems to me that some here are suggesting that such a matter should never even come before the courts, because there’s no way the boy could possibly have been hurt or unwilling. I think that’s ridiculous. Just because this is a situation that many teenaged boys fantasize about doesn’t mean that there’s some universal law holding that every boy would enter into a real-life sexual relationship with a “hot teacher” with complete willingness, or that he’d suffer no harm from it if he did.
Now, if I’ve been misunderstanding the intended message here and people just want to suggest that if the boy was willing and if there was no harm done then the teacher shouldn’t be punished, then I apologize. That’s a position I could have some respect for. I’d still have to respectfully disagree (due to my concerns about the teacher’s recklessness and potential harm to other students), but it wouldn’t bother me the way “He must have wanted it! He couldn’t be a victim, he’s the luckiest kid on earth!” does.
I suspect we’re in substantial agreement. My position:
The boy, given the facts as we know them, probably wasn’t harmed by the actual sexual relationship. But he may have been.
If he was harmed by the relationship, then the woman should be prosecuted for statutory rape.
If he wasn’t harmed, then she should be prosecuted for terminal stupidity. If that’s not a crime in her jurisdiction, then she should have her teaching license stripped and be fired from her job.
If he wasn’t harmed by the relationship, then there’s a serious danger that he’ll be harmed by the media attention to the case AND by an overreaction against the teacher on the part of prosecutors. (That is, if the relationship were consensual, and if his consent results in the teacher’s prosecution, he may have huge guilt issues that can fuck up his sexual health).
To clarify, yes, I agree that the teacher screwed up for just these reasons. Teachers, sadly, are expected by their employers to uphold societal norms instead. I just think those norms are stupid.
Can this slipperly slope lead to accepting homosexual pedohilia? Yes, I would say so. Currently even I think that pedophilia is just sick and wrong, but I acknowledge that I only see it that way because that is what society tells me. If a grown man gives a little boy oral sex, and the little boy enjoys it, where is the harm, other than the societal impact? His body is not damaged, his mind is not damaged because no one has ever told him that this act is evil or destructive, and he doesn’t have t ohide it from an accepting society. Obviously inherent in this is that both parties enjoy it. And don’t tell me that you have to be over 17 to be able to know what feels good to your body.
Again: why is this so particular to NAMBLA? I am not foolish enough to suggest no abuse exists but neither am I unaware that kids are interested in finding out about the world, and penises and vaginas are in the world. Generally, I don’t think anyone is prepared to have sex. Some kids think they are, to the point where they actually go have it. This is reality, not some obscure group of men looking for teen lovin’. If the kids can have sex with each other, generally, then I think they can have sex with adults, generally, though again I wish to state my personal distaste for sex with any formal authority figure.
Surely if the position is so outrageous on its own, you don’t need to bring any group in for comparison purposes. If it is not that outrageous on its own, then this tactic is disappointingly trying to create a scandal out of thin air. Rhetorical hogwash.
Not a popular position–ok, whatever. Kids are angels corrupted by evil adults, the end.
I never thought I’d see the day, but all the taboos are falling, so I guess we are going to hell in a handbasket.
So now we need to lobby for 14 year olds to vote and drink too. Its only fair, why be biased just about somethig as totally unaffecting and unimportant as sex? eh?
Driving too. Why not?
I figured as much myself. You’ve always struck me as a reasonable guy. Or hand, as the case may be.
*I’m more inclined to come down on the side of “probably was”, but I must admit to some bias here. First, a very dear (female) friend of mine did suffer harm from a sexual relationship with an after-school instructor, despite this relationship being about as consensual as one with such a young girl could ever be. Secondly, I teach some teenaged boys myself, including at least one 14-year-old who seems to have a crush on me. I’m certain that the last thing in the world he needs is a sexual relationship with me or any other adult woman…although what he wants may be a different story.
However, I don’t know the boy involved in this case and I suppose it’s possible that he’s far better mentally/emotionally equipped for a “mature” relationship than my students of the same age. I doubt it, but it’s possible. Were he a few years older I could more readily believe that a sexual relationship with an older woman in and of itself wouldn’t do him any damage, although I’d still have problems with the teacher/student aspect of this case.
*Pretty much in agreement here.
*I do hope the boy gets some sort of counselling, even if he was completely willing and doesn’t think the relationship did him any harm. At best the woman involved has destroyed her chances of continuing a career in teaching, and I’d want to be sure that the boy understood that this wasn’t his fault, it’s the result of a decision she made when she must have known better.
Sure, why not drink. I don’t think they need to vote, though. They are not adults, but adults-in-training. There is no need to train to vote.
I don’t think people should drive unsupervised until they’re of age to vote. But, apart from your troubling descent down a slippery slope, I think that’s a topic for another thread.
And, of course, my “probably not” was due to my own biases. When I was a teenager, plenty of my friends got involved with folks older than them, sometimes even in their early twenties. Instead of seeing a lot of harm come from these relationships, they appeared to cause less heartbreak than relationships with peers. Maybe a case of what happens when the blind lead the blind, or something.
I know my experiences weren’t universal, but I didn’t grow up seeing what was technically statutory rape ruin lives. (In some cases–there definitely were caess of rape both statutory and aggravated, and those aren’t the ones I’m talking about at all).
Yep, given the outcome of this, he can definitely use some counseling. I just really hope the counselors don’t take it on themselves to convince the kid that he’s been abused: if he’s okay with the actual relationship, then they need to respect that, not screw with his mind by telling him how he ought to feel.
i wonder if getting it on with your hot young teacher constitutes “getting a life” when they told the 14 year old who was spending 10 hours daily on evercrack…
It baffles me that many people are still willing to entertain only two possibilities:
The kid was an unwitting victim of a deviant sexual predator who used her position of power and authority to coerce him into sex.
The kid was a testosterone zombie incapable of rational thought, due to hormone-induced dementia, and was criminally abused by a deviant sexual predator who took advantage of his mindless steroidal impulses.
Howzabout they both were judgement-challenged human beings who probably figured they’d never get caught, and for their own, not necessarily compatible reasons, had few qualms about doing the nasty?
We can conclude with a fair amount of certainty, I think, that Ms. LaFave has some issues, but that doesn’t absolver her. And it true that the boy’s age is a mitigating factor, but I don’t think he’s completely without fault here either. No hormones don’t turn him into a mindless robotic sex toy. But couple those raging hormones with teen impusivity and you’ve got the basic recipe for a teen boy. Add some personality, stir, and you’ve got a thinking, reasoning human being who nevertheless is prone to doing some incredibly stupid things, like many kids his age.
I bet about 1/5 of the kids I went to school with drove legally itoxicated on one or more occasions in their high school career. Some got in accidents. Some died, and killed others in their vehicle. My sister lost a good friend to drunk driving. The driver of the car lived. He was a minor. They threw the book at him, because, teen or not, he still knew what he was doing was illegal. He made the same mistake lots of kids his age make, but unlike most of them, he paid the price for his stupidity. And, quite frankly, I think he deserved to.
I’m a little sick of this “poor little victim” crap. The reason we point out the horndog rationale that likely drove this kid’s actions is not to demonstrate what a slave to his dick he was. It’s to draw attention to the fact that if he was thinking with the little head instead of the big one, that doesn’t absolve him.
Everything I’ve read leads me to believe he was a willing participant in these escapades. I refuse to believe he was a pure and innocent victim, and I don’t think his minor status makes him unresponsible for his behavior. Kids are accountable too, sometimes.
Some, if not many, are not ready to have sex though their body is. To coerce a person who is a developing minor into sex is selfish and potentially destructive to their psychological well being and their future views of sex. Not to mention that in the ‘relationship’ becoming public, it places the child under a scrutiny that most adults can’t handle.
Further, with the heightened emotions of a teenager, it is abusive to have sex with them not knowing if they see it as purely physical or not. Plenty of us had unrequited loves as teenagers that were often teachers or those considerably older. What if those figures had actually wanted and had sex with us and then we found out we were just being used?
It is an abuse of power and a potentially damaging level of psychological abuse.
Perhaps, but I’m not saying that he will be. I am merely questioning the bald-faced assertion that societal pressure is the only reason that he would be scarred. That is an assertion, not evidence.
Moreover, since maturity toward sex is a gradual process, we do at least have some reason for believing that a young teen is not quite prepared for the full sexual experience, especially when the other partner is an authority figure. It’s not enough for you to argue, “Well, we don’t know for sure that it’s dangerous.” Rather, since there is good reason to believe that genuine damage would occur at that young age, one must first demonstrate the safety of such activity.
Yes. Notice “person”. Coercing “a person” to have sex is wrong. I don’t see much disagreement here.
Being used by anyone always sucks unless it is clear. I don’t know what adults you’ve known in your life, but I’ve seen thirty-year old divorcees handle relationships worse than kids in high school. WTF is all that supposed to show but people get into bad relationships quite easily regardless of age or experience?
