Sure, that’s probably what the system is based on/the reason it’s being advanced, but that doesn’t change that the system is entirely unworkable and makes no(very little) logical sense.
I was a young boy once, and I ( almost ) buy it. Anything female that is at least moderately attractive, not “anything”. Adolescent boys are obsessed with sex, judging by my experience; the simple occurrence of the word “she” or “her” in a story was a turn on. Much less an actual female person.
As for me, I object mostly because it’s a violation of teacher/student professionalism, and open to abuse because of the age/power imbalance, more than because it’s sex. Plus, there’s the danger of pregnancy, which would leave him with a hefty monetary burden.
On the other hand, I really don’t buy the idea of long term emotional harm from the sex as long as coercion isn’t used; perhaps girls are more touchy on this subject ( I think it likely, un-PC or not ), but I really can’t imagine any non-coercive sex that could leave me with long term emotional trauma worse that a “Yuck, I can’t believe I touched that” memory. Toying with his budding romantic impulses; that I could see causing long term emotional harm, but not just sex.
As for age of consent laws, I think that they are set ridiculously high, and violate a basic rule about making laws/giving orders : Never make one that you know won’t be obeyed.
I actually kind of agree with Der Trihs. I’m from Seattle, where the story of Mary Kay LeTernau (sp?) made the papers for years even after she got sent to prison. Now they’re married, for better or for worse, and really don’t seem more or less unhappy than any random married couple, other than the fallout from them having such a big age difference and lots of media coverage.
And I also remember being a young female, obsessed with sex, but I would never have gone there with any of my teachers in high school. The power balance was too great. (Nobody has ever tried it, in all my years of school.)
I also agree about the relative harm - I was a 16 year old in a relationship with a 24 year old (who was much more sophisticated than me, but not in a position of power - ie not a teacher) and I’ve talked to men who were much younger than women they’ve had sex with. For me, it was very negative, but for the men, it was very positive.
If they’d met in a coffee house, would it have been as bad? On the other hand, it may just depend on the fucked-up-ness of the people involved.
No, smarter people than you will not explain it, because smarter people than you know that you’re wrong. The genders involved are totally irrelevent. A couple generations ago, boys and girls were brought up very differently, and men and women held vastly different positions in society. Today, most people realize that it’s not about gender, it’s about power, and the genders have much more equal power than they used to.
And perhaps your thinking is being clouded by your admitted homophobia.
At it’s very least, it’s a breach of ethics and professionalism.
There may be many cases where it didn’t harm the boy and in fact did help him into manhood. But I doubt that was the goal of the teacher involved.
Society does have a double standard when it comes to teacher-student lovin’. But we can’t afford to create or even condone a legal double standard. The law must be enforced equally to man and woman for it to have any integrity.
This thread raises an interesting issue and quickly devolves into a stupid superficial discussion of “hotness,” which is not only separate, but even more juvenile than the students involved. Anyone who thinks “hotness” is important is just plain immature.
Now, the issue raised is a good one. There are two assumptions here: one, that sex below the age of consent is automatically rape and two, that anyone who has sex before they’re 18 is automatically harmed.
Part one is basically just an arbitrary definition. However, in this case, it’s necessary: most people under 18 are not able to understand the consequences of sex, especially when the sexual partner is is a decade or so more experienced. It’s a useful distinction.
In these cases, it is more dangerous since the teacher is in a position of both responsibility and power. In a sense, a teacher acts in loco parentis – in the place of a parent. If a parent has sex with their charges, it isn’t a good thing.
The second is also a pretty good assumption for the majority of cases, but not 100% true. The beliefs are also based on a rather Victorian image of teenagers: people under 18 know considerably more about sex than they did even 20 years ago. It’s not like they don’t know what’s going on.
So, getting back to the OP – Yes, some of the boys involved in this go in knowing what is going on, and are not harmed at all. Indeed, they may relish the experience. The problem is that some may have trouble dealing with it (if you’re not ready for sex, weird things can happen), so it’s best overall to punish the teachers to make it less attractive to them.
Setting aside the abuse of authority issue, even if both are mature enough to be consenting:
man teacher dating young girl student is wrong because should she get pregnant, that follows her the rest of her life, either on the anniversary of the abortion or in the raising of the child.
woman teacher dating young boy student is wrong because should she get pregnant, she alone has the choice of whether or not to carry the child to term. The boy has something following him the rest of his life too.
We haven’t even discussed the repercussions of the teacher giving a disease to the student. (what, you think the student they get caught with is the only student they’ve approached?)
Now, someone may ask, ‘what’s the difference? The teen might be taking the risks anyway with someone closer to their age.’ The difference is that the teen is used to being told what to do by an authority figure, and figures ‘they know more about this than I do, so I don’t need to use birthcontrol if they say not to’ (for example). The adult is supposed to know better what lines not to cross, but two teens equally ignorant are still finding out where those lines are.
I don’tthink it’s necessarily a double standard to realize that a 14-year-old boy having sex with a 26-year-old female teacher is different from a 14-year-old girl having sex with a 26-year-old male teacher. Not all socially unacceptable sex is necessarily rape. And the actual age difference is of no consequence. Girls and boys are affected differently by sex.
If a lad is somewhat tender-hearted and believes that he has some kind of future with the older woman who is using him for sexual pleasure, he will be crushed to realize that she is lying. The heartbreak will be tenfold that of an ordinary breakup; she’s a teacher, after all, someone he yearns to please, almost a motherly figure into whom he subsumes himself. When she rejects him, as she ultimately must, she will almost certainly destroy him emotionally.
If, on the other hand, the lad is a callous heel who sees nailing the teacher as nothing more than bagging a difficult sexual trophy few could dream of, then she has enabled his misogyny, further inflating his already outsized sense of entitlement.
For any older woman to sexually misuse any boy is irresponsible; if she is a teacher, it’s unconscionable. It doesn’t have to be rape to be criminal.
Let me put it this way. The other day I was in a grocery store and there was this lady that was around 5’4", dishwater blond hair, blue eyes (I think), and must have weighed around 690-pounds (plus she looked like she rolled in mud). Now, if she were a teacher, trying to come on to some young kid, I’d want to see her bull-whipped and thrown in jail for life.
On the other hand, if a woman is drop-dead gorgeous and is a total babe and wanted to show a young kid the facts of life, I certainly wouldn’t be upset with her (at all). That’s just the way it is.
Gorgeous, lusty women have a special place in this world. No biggie.
Anyone Else is enormously grateful.
But I can’t help myself. They are a bitter ray of sunshine to my logic-filled world. Your arguments show a juvenile male fantasy world come to life, with hot female (but not male) teachers showing young studs the ways of the world, licenses to have babies, but also contain greedy landlords that collude to suck the life blood from hard working (but underpaid) stiffs. It’s a little MPSIMS soap opera; heroes, villains, and, as always hot, nypho babes for the ratings boost.
First, as some have kind of said already, part of the issue is that the adult who is sleeping with an underage person is very likely motivated by things that are not in the best interests of the underage person.
Second:
I agree with this. Our culture has a very bizarre attitude towards sex; we push it so hard in advertising and the media, and then expect those very kids who eat up those images to not internalize them or act on the sexual suggestivity all around them. Kind of fucked up.
However, you seem to also have internalized these messages to an unhealthy degree. All your talk of “hot babes” being the only ones with whom it’d be ok for guys to have sex with sounds like nothing more than an advertisement for cigarettes or an MTV music video. You’ve become a parrot of commercial media. Congratulations.
When I was 16 I used to babysit. One of the mothers was 32 and divorced. After babysitting for her a few times she started getting flirting with me. Eventually we had sex. I was not a virgin at the time and I thought it was pretty cool. Wow! Me and an older woman!
After a couple times, though, I began to feel that something was wrong. It wasn’t just the fact that I was going to her house and she was still paying me :eek: even though the kids were out of the house. It wasn’t just the fact that I had to hide what was going on. It just didn’t feel right.
Any time she would call, I’d find some excuse to not go. I told my folks that I didn’t like her kids (which was another lie) and so didn’t want to sit for her anymore. Eventually, she stopped calling but she would give me nasty looks if she ever saw me outside. I didn’t tell anyone about it for years.
When I got older, I realized that I was being used by her. She was 32 and divorced with 2 kids. She felt trapped in suburbia and like she had lost her youth. She used me to try to reclaim it.
There was no relationship there and no hope of there ever being one. It was all about satisfying her emotional and physical needs. For a few hours she was young again. I was a tool, a dildo with legs. Fortunately, I was well adjusted enough to see that what was going on was not about me, it was all about her.
It doesn’t matter to me if it is a 30 year old man with a 16 year old girl or a 30 year old woman with a 16 year old boy. What is wrong with the adult that they are unable to have a partner who is closer to being their emotional and chronological peer? If they are only feeling fulfilled by having sex with a minor then there is something wrong with them.
You’re a little kooky, you know that, right?
For my part, I have absolutely no doubt that if I had been seduced by a teacher when I was 14, no matter how hot she was, it would have had negative consequences for me in the long run. It is entirely possible that an older woman in a position of power over me could have prevailed upon me to have sex with her - I was 14, and therefore relatively stupid - but the long-term consequences would have been unfortunate. Not world-shattering, but unfortunate. I refuse to believe that I am particularly unique in this regard, and therefore I believe that laws protecting minors who are more like me are good things, in spite of the fact that they might cost minors who are more like GuyinBlueJeans a chance to score with Debra LaFave.
I also don’t think pretty people get a different set of rules than unattractive people, nor should women get a different set of rules than men.
And by the way, Guy, what happens when your fantasy teacher gets pregnant by your hypothetical sex-crazed teenager? Kind of screws up his life, huh? It’s too bad there aren’t laws saying that at 14, he’s too young to make intelligent decisions about lifelong risks of that sort, so the grown-ups should hold off for a while.
I have no words. At least, none that I can use in this forum.
Why? I am asking this question seriously. Why is it different?
Exactly. Also, our OP seems to have given scant thought to “male teacher → male student” involvement, but since it doesn’t feature prominently in his juvenile stroke-off fantasies the way “hot lady teachers” do, I imagine he doesn’t look on it nearly as kindly.
Oh, he addressed that point after a fashion.
The line of reasoning is right up there with it only being ok for hot teachers to molest…I mean make men of their students.
So you’re saying that it’s OK to be molested, as long as your rapist is a hot babe.
Something tells me you don’t have kids.
I think that on the list of things that one would necessarily not have in order to make that argument, “kids” actually comes in third after “ethics” and “intelligence”.