I’m honestly asking why so many female teachers seem to fall into actual love and sleep with their students. Males with younger females makes sense because almost all of the time they’re predatory and looking for somebody they can easily exploit who can they force to keep quiet, but reading stories about female teachers with young students it seems it’s more actual genuine love they fall into.
The answer is contained within your question. You really don’t think there are any predatory women?
Your sexism is showing.
Just like there are some men that have higher levels of testosterone that have very masculine features, there are women that have higher estrogen levels and tend to have more feminine attributes, whenever I would meet my children’s teachers at their school a lot of them seemed that way with the higher pitches voices and more feminine looks.
They used to say back in the day that breast cancer was a teacher’s disease and women with higher levels of estrogen have higher rates of breast cancer and endometrial cancer. They had a study in California of teachers that showed way higher levels of these types of cancers. Men with higher rates of testosterone are more likely to have more sexual partners and to cheat and the same is true for women with higher average estrogen levels.
I always thought maybe that plays a role, that these were women that were more attractive, with higher levels of estrogen so were probably more likely to be flirted with by young boys full of testosterone or vice versa.
I’m sure there is also an element of power and control and ease of access.
Anyway just a theory.
Firstly, faulty premise.
The incidence of female teachers having sex with high school boys is exceedingly low, but virtually all such cases become headline news, for several cultural reasons.
So there is something of a sampling error here.
I would also disagree that this is necessarily, or even usually, the case. I think the ability to exploit such girls is an enabler, but not the motivation.
A lot of the physical characteristics that men find attractive in women are present in girls of 16-17. That’s not to say that makes it OK (particularly for teachers, who, yes, are in a position of trust and can exploit such girls), but we don’t need to think of some special reason why men would want to sleep with them – they want to sleep with them because they find them physically attractive.
And on that note, I would also disagree with the sentiment of some posters that women who sleep with high school boys need to be unusual in some way – hyper-sexual or get a thrill out of dominance.
Given the extremely low incidence, circumstance alone can be enough explanation most of the time. Some particular combination of a teacher who is having difficulties with more conventional dating, and may be depressed say, who meets a handsome, and not too boyish, high schooler, whose personality really clicks with hers. And, past the point of no return, the fact it’s wrong makes the affair more exciting, rather than something pulling them apart.
But change the circumstances a little and the teacher is dating a guy her own age.
How did you come to believe all this unadulterated crap?
Lots of nonsense posted here so far, tho Mijin is, as usual, on target.
I see the same phenomenon in prisons. Female staff willingly having sex with inmates. It’s an incredibly small percentage but it happens regularly across the system. I have worked with these women, sometimes for years, and knew them as professionals and competent people, and was always shocked as hell when the activity was uncovered. And each time the explanation was that they just ‘clicked’ with the person, the relationship was special, only they understood the inmate and their unique circumstances. In other words, the heart (gonads) want what it wants. The urge for sex and intimacy is deeply programmed into our very core for most folks, and it can express itself in many dysfunctional ways.
I will note that sometimes the inmates are excellent predators themselves, and make a point of seducing staff. One notorious case was a guy who managed to have sex with different women in SEVEN different prisons, even though in the last 4 prisons the announcement went out to all staff that he was a dangerous corrupter and predator.
But at other times, the female staffer is by far the instigator of the whole activity.
People are weird.
A good percentage of the “Woman Teacher / High School Boy” cases I’ve read about involve the teacher having sex with multiple students or having another ‘friend’ over when the student comes over, etc. Reads a lot less like tragic misunderstood love and more like they’re just horny. Maybe they get kicks out of the power dynamic or maybe the senior class is just a good pool of hot willing studs to pick from but the overall theme doesn’t seem much different than the Male Teacher cases.
Even in the “misunderstood love” scenarios, it doesn’t seem much deeper than “Teacher is emotionally stunted on some level” where she finds kids to be most relatable for her emotional needs. Again, that’s about the same thing as the weirdo 25 year old ‘friend’ sincerely hanging out with high school kids (assuming he’s not just a predator) where most adults have moved on.
Love makes blind. All (good) teachers build social bonds with their students, and it’s not surprising that on rare occasions that leads to inappropriate feelings and that on occasion that leads to inappropriate actions.
On a purely emotional level it’s not fundamentally different from sleeping with a close friend’s spouse, or a sibling’s. Those are of course not illegal, but can still have grave personal consequences when discovered, and yet people do it all the time because we have brains that some times decide physical attraction should override all other. Just be glad it’s as infrequent as it is.
I’d also guess that media bias in creating an interesting, and unchallenging, clickbait narrative means that the news will play up the predatory angle of male teachers and the sympathetic emotional nature of female teachers.
Some people are just sick fucks.
People who enjoy grooming their lovers and being worshipped by them for the wisdom they bestow can come in any gender and orientation. That’s not something which is necessarily part of every unequal relationship, but it is a factor in some of them. The story of Pygmalion is partly the story of every broken teacher who went way beyond what was appropriate teaching matter.
Or those guys who’d start pursuing the women in my group of friends and then run away screaming once they realized that yes, we’d all moved to the area recently for university - but graduate school, not undergrad. We used to wonder what made a grown-up guy so unsure of himself that he’d be terrified of dating a woman 2 years his junior and need to pursue those with a 12 year difference instead.
Simplest explanation:
The same reason Bill Clinton fooled around with Monica Lewinsky, Ahnold banged his housekeeper, and countless other men in power fucked their secretaries and other subordinates: convenience. They were just there.
It being taboo is probably a reason as well.
People are overthinking it, there is a very sound evolutionary benefit to seeking out genetically “fit” mates. We are hard-wired for it.
A physically fit, youthful, sexually mature person of the required gender is going to ping our sex-radar as “suitable” How can it not? The societal restriction we’ve set-up fight against that animal drive for very sounds reasons as because we have the ability to rationalise our behaviour we can navigate what we *want *to do v what we *should *do.
Most of the time it works (and that never makes the news…how could it?), sometimes it doesn’t and that very much is newsworthy.
For centuries, men have been blaming their sexcapades on women (She was wearing a tight skirt, walking alone after dark, she smiled at me, etc. etc.). Now women have gotten into the game, so let’s blame their partners: He wears tight jeans. He said no, but his eyes said yes. And people act horrified.
Talk about your double standards.
The double standard can be seen also by how people respond to these stories. If it’s a male teacher/female student, the response is “That disgusting predatory creep. He’s ruined that poor girl’s life. She will suffer for years from this!”
If it’s a female teacher/male student, the response is, “Man, that teacher must have some wild stuff wrong with her, but wow, what a lucky kid! Why didn’t I have teachers like that at school?”
All agreed, and I’ll just add that double standard has a lot to do with who’s been setting the standards and telling the stories.
How is this different from “They horny” which was suggested several times above?
Sounds like mostly a case of “man bites dog.” If a male teacher has an affair with student girls, that’s wrong, but it’s considered “wrong within expected wrongdoing parameters.” Whereas if a female teacher has an affair with student boys, that’s so unusual and rare that it becomes headline worthy.