I rarely watch SNL anymore but had it on that channel when it came on last night. That was a new low. Incredibly poor taste on that segment but just no talent in sight, in general.
A prosecutor of my acquaintance, on the sex crimes unit, once complained to me about having to deal with an uncooperative witness, a 15 year old who was getting beer and pot from one of his high school teachers and banging the crap out of her.
The prosecutor's exact words: "I simply cannot get this kid to believe that he's a victim."
Just as many people believe minorities inherently cannot be guilty of prejudice, many people believe women cannot be molesters. The boy is lucky to get laid, yuck yuck.
All sex for women should be considered non-consensual unless proven otherwise. For men, even boys, all sex should be considered fully consensual. Why is this truth so difficult for you to understand?
It should be a double-standard. Had Ms. Pape seduced me when I was 15/16 it would have been one of the greatest moments of my life and one I would never have looked back on with regret or a feeling of having been victimized. Do people really watch the famous scene in Persona (27 minutes in) and think ewwww. . . that Bibi Anderson's character was an evil rapist!
SNL always stops at the first floor nowadays. Funny faces, broad acting, playing to the junior high kids that think it makes them seem older by watching.
That said, they had all the elements for an interesting skit. They could've taken those elements and simply veered away from the obvious elbow-in-the-ribs and have the kid feel like he was the one who did something wrong. Earn some uncomfortable laughs.
Prosecutor: So who instigated this relationship.
Gavin: I... I guess I did.
Prosecutor: YOU did?
Gavin: I think so, yeah. I went into my Teacher's room after class and asked what I could do for some Extra Credit. I didn't mean it that way, it was my mistake.
Prosecutor: And you believe this was YOUR fault?
Gavin: Well, if I had just studied harder in the first place I wouldn't have needed extra credit in the first place and none of this would've happened. I'm sorry.
Prosecutor: And word got around school, didn't it?
Gavin: Yeah. Kids were calling me names.
Prosecutor: What kind of names?
Gavin: Things with 'Pimp' in it, usually. Gavin the Pimp, Pimpin' Gavin. I just remember a lot of Pimp jokes and wishing I could just be invisible.
Prosecutor: And this was at school?
Gavin: Yeah, mostly. I remember going to McDonald's though, after school, and a fellow student called me "Gavin McHavin'It".
Prosecutor: And how did this affect your home-life?
Gavin: Well, I quit Facebook and slept alot. When I was asleep I didn't keep asking myself why I did something so wrong.
Prosecutor: What about your family: how did they react?
Gavin: My Dad seemed proud of me. For once.
Prosecutor: Are you sure your Father's reaction was pride'?
Gavin: Yes: he said he was "proud of me" so I think it was pretty much pride. He also said this was the first time I actually seemed to amount to something. Like winning third-prize in the Junior Science Fair was nothing, I guess. I don't know; maybe if I had come in First Place he would've respected that.
Prosecutor: And what happened when the Police first interviewed you?
Gavin: They laughed.
Prosecutor: The Police Officers laughed?
Gavin: They laughed and asked me if I was gay. I thought I was going to jail. I don't won't to go to jail. I'm sorry this ever happened.
Prosecutor: Gavin, you do understand that you are not the one on trial here, don't you? That you are not at risk of going to jail?
Gavin: I think so. The Police said that if I was the one to go to prison I would learn what 'real rape' was like.
Prosecutor: So Gavin, is it fair to say you never wanted this to happen?
Gavin: Well, I used to, um...
Prosecutor: Yes, Gavin?
Gavin: I used to masturbate about my teacher. A lot. So maybe I do deserve all of this, after all. I'm sorry I disappointed everybody.
The most dangerous part of the double standard is in newspaper reports - when it's a male teacher and an underage female, the headline is, "____ High School Teacher Admits Raping Student". When it's a female teacher and underage male, it's, ""____ High School Teacher Admits Sex with Student".
Dangerous not only because of the double standard, but because the headline writers try to imply that the sex was violent in the male teacher version.
Ann, when you read/watched Summer of 42 with the love-making scene at the end of the book/movie between Raucher and Dorothy, was your reaction ewwww. . . this is rape and disgusting? I know -- no teacher was involved -- but I am curious whether the reaction of people here to that scene was really that of witnessing a rape.
A post tailor-made for the Laslo treatment and he doesn't fail to provide.
I know it's wrong but the awful truth is that when I was 16 I woulda jumped at the chance to be seduced by any of my older female teachers. I remember it being rich fantasy fodder that I had recourse to many a'time. I don't even think looking back that any of 'em were particularly attractive. Just female which was enough for me. I'm just a jerk, sorry for not taking this seriously. I suck.
Older women initiating younger men into sex has been culturally acceptable for ages. That it's not acceptable is what's new. A mom of one of my middle school students went to jail for having sex with two of his friends. One of the boys' fathers initiated the police investigation, but the other dad didn't think it was a big deal.
Agree with Eleanor. A 23 year old woman giving herself to a willing 16 year old boy has not historically been deemed rape by our culture. I have no desire to throw a woman who is not a threat to anyone in prison for the sake of the false fetish that says there are (or should be) no differences between the genders. There are big differences. If a female teacher does it with a student, fire her and let her find a different career. But let’s stop pretending the poor boy was victimized. That is nothing but a load of crap. Good for SNL for crying bullshit.
Do people really watch the famous scene in Persona (27 minutes in) and think ewwww. . . that Bibi Anderson's character was an evil rapist!
I didn't know that anyone watched that scene and thought anything less. I watched it and thought, "Oh, that's why people act like this is so great--there's an admission of grotesque sexual wrongdoing from a woman."
Freeman Hunt, I wonder if Persona is a movie similar to The Third Man where men and women tend to react differently to the central character (women sympathize for Orson Welles, men think he is evil, etc.) Another example -- Tadpole from 2000. The NY Times describes Bebe Neuwrith's character, who seduces a 15 year old boy, as “mischievously sexy,” “a sexy, self-assured single woman with a rebellious streak” who seduces the hero with “blunt, warm physicality.” Maybe a lot of people watched the movie and thought eww .... rapist. I did not.
Freeman, 12 is over the line, but I assumed they were probably 16 or so. Movie doesn't say. They could do a remake of the movie and have the police come and arrest Bibi right after that scene and then we wouldn't have to figure out all the weird stuff that starts 10 minutes later.
Prosecutor: "Mr. Robinson, what is your occupation.
Mr. Robinson: I was a high school teacher. Social Studies.
Prosecutor: "Was" a high school teacher?
Mr. Robinson: Yes: I was fired after the incident with the defendant.
Prosecutor: Let the record show that the witness is referring to seventeen-year-old Jenna Maze.
Prosecutor: What was your relationship with the defendant?
Mr. Robinson: She was one of my students.
Prosecutor: And what is the nature of the crime for which the defendant Ms. Maze is being tried?
Mr. Robinson: She raped me.
Prosecutor: She raped you?
Mr. Robinson: Yes. Multiple times.
Prosecutor: Mr. Robinson, you are a big healthy man: surely you could have resisted.
Mr. Robinson: I resisted many times. She would wear tight pants with exposed thong straps, mini-skirts, tight sweaters with no bra, tight T-shirts that read "Hot for Teacher": I resisted them all.
Prosecutor: So what happened, Mr. Robinson?
Mr. Robinson: The defendant showed up after class in her cheerleader outfit.
Prosecutor: That's it? A cheerleader outfit?
Mr. Robinson: What can I say, cheerleader outfits are a thing for me. Anyway, I resisted, even then, until she flipped up her skirt to show me she was no longer wearing any panties.
Prosecutor: And this is when she raped you?
Mr. Robinson: I asked her to keep a respectful distance, but she proceeded to undo my pants.
Prosecutor: And there was nothing you could do to stop her?
Mr. Robinson: I was afraid to put my hands on her to push her away. We are instructed not to touch the students.
Prosecutor: And then what happened?
Mr. Robinson: The defendant proceed to have oral sex on me.
Prosecutor: Do you believe that the defendant knew this was inappropriate?
Mr. Robinson: I told Jenna that this was inappropriate, but she just... continued.
Prosecutor: And how did this make you feel?
Mr. Robinson: Helpless.
Prosecutor: Helpless?
Mr. Robinson: Well, I ejaculated as quickly as I could to stop the rape. It was my only defense.
Prosecutor: Did the defendant spit or swallow?
Defense Attorney: Objection!
Judge: Objection sustained: the act of swallowing or not swallowing would be prejudicial to the jury.
Prosecutor: And what did you do afterward? Did you report this rape?
Mr. Robinson: No, no I didn't. I felt no one would believe me.
Prosecutor: And if the defendant did not initiate such action none of this would've happened.
Mr. Robinson: Definitely not. Al least for another three months.
Prosecutor: And what was to transpire in three months?
Mr. Robinson: The defendant's Eighteenth Birthday.
Laslo, I hope that somehow, somewhere, you're being financially rewarded for sharing your gift. Maybe you could have an Amazon sub-portal in the commenters section?
I read a biography of Mickey Mantle. He was sexually molested by his babysitter. The biographer suggested that as a result of this Mickey, as an adult, became a compulsive womanizer. So I guess it's possible to have ill effects from such a relationship.....,I can't see how an altar boy having sex with a priest can be anything but harmful to the boy's development.. I suppose a female teacher sleeping with one of her students could have some damaging effects, but it just doesn't have the appearance of a traumatic experience........When I was younger, I frequently had teachers who nagged me about tardiness and punctuality. Looking back if can see now that they were just trying to distance themselves from my sexual magnetism. But all that verbal abuse over minor peccadilloes also had it's damaging effects. I think that I might have become a better person if they had had sex with me instead of being so judgmental about minor flaws.
I'd like to see a poll on this. How many men think that they would have considered themselves a lucky 15 year old to bang a really hot teacher?
btw: A Michigan Circuit Court judge recently had a substantially identical case. And the judge, a woman, hammered the defendant teacher in sentencing her. Among the comments from the judge was this: "If this was a male teacher who had been involved with a 15-year-old female, there would be people here hanging from the ceiling trying to get every drop of blood... But because it is a woman, there seems to be a winking about what happened."
I have three boys. If their high school teacher has sex with them after the age of 15/16, I'm not going to freak out. They'll be fine mentally and emotionally. Maybe even gain an ego boost.
On the other hand, if my daughters teacher did it, I'd kill him.
I understand the point about boys liking to have sex with their teachers (although I can imagine that some high school girls like the idea of sex with some of their male teachers), but I don't see any basis for the law to discriminate on such grounds. Do you?
This-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpMpSLexilw --is the scene from Persona, it's the 2004 version with the subtitles restored by John Kirk. Bibi Anderson describes the boys as "terribly young" according to the titles. Google translate says that would be "oerhört ung" in Swedish, which is not what I hear on the sound track (the first word sounds like "hamstadt" to me, which according to google means nothing at all in Swedish). FWIW.
The sketch backs-up something I've long suspected living in Seattle: In lieu of the traditonal roles that make men...men, the take-things apart-model (from radical Lefty and ideological feminist, to vaguely collectivist hipster) often just reduces men to boys.
In Lenin's view, all history can be reduced to two words: Who, Whom. Who, whom starts with male/female. Western Enlightenment can pretend that law applies equally regardless of gender, and feminists can appeal to that fiction when it serves their self interest, but down deep we all know its just Who [can do to] Whom in sexual matters.
That's why the Attorney General of California can openly contemplate the prison rape of a white collar defendant (Ken Lay) with relish, and still enjoy a successful political career. Minor males can never be victims, and victims of prison rape are just losers.
Fen@10:35 alluded to one thing that doesn't ever get discussed much, if at all: A fairly significant number of women orgasm during rape. And by rape we're talking rape-rape, forcible, violent, stranger rape. Are you pretending to be stupid?
In the 9th grade, I had a 22 yr old Latin teacher for whom I would have done anything for 'extra credit'. My only regret is that I never stirred up the guts to ask.
We can have a uniform standard with respect to the offenders--that is, male and female teachers who diddle their students are equally reprehensible and pathetic--while having acknowledging that the level of trauma sustained by male versus female teens in these situations may very well tend to be different. if that is a double standard, then it is a sensible one that seems to accord more with reality than does denialism on this issue.
Btw the denialism seems to me to stem from a perceived need on the part of rape culture agitators for "consistency"--ie never acknowledging that there are shades of gray in the Great Rape Conversation.
"Ann, when you read/watched Summer of 42 with the love-making scene at the end of the book/movie between Raucher and Dorothy, was your reaction ewwww. . . this is rape and disgusting?"
Not my kind of pop culture. Didn't read or watch it. My reaction to the expression "love-making scene" is kind of eww. And that's having no idea what happens in the story.
I have a good male friend who started an affair with a teacher when he was 15 and she was 32. They got married when he was 23. They've been married for 23 years.
The reason for the double standard is that the boy is getting what he wants, a one night stand; a girl is not, a continuing romance.
Who's to say there's no continuing romance? In many of these cases, there is -- and frequently the girls are very willing participants, even the initiators.
And, in fact, sex (and marriage) between teenage girls and (established, experienced) older men was not only tolerated, but expected and even applauded. Recall -- how old were the Dashwood girls in Sense & Sensibility? Answer: Marianne Dashwood was 16. Colonel Brandon was 40ish. Rapey? Creepy? Or a classic romance that still makes a whole lot of modern women swoon 200 years later?
Although I so believe in a double standard, I do not think a 20 year old man falling in love with and marrying a 15 year old girl is necessarily sick. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2829689. But of course we are so much more sophisticated today than these two people were when they met.
You're the one being ignorant. Its an abuse of power and betrayal of trust that damages the student, regardless of whether he wanted to bed a "hot" teacher.
Maybe you don't see it because you lost your moral principles a long time ago.
"I now recognize that my relationship with Mrs. Kelly was abusive. She exploited her power and my immaturity. But at the time I was ashamed. Because of my shame, I never acknowledged the relationship to anyone, and I decided to save sex for marriage. My wife thought I was a virgin when we married. I never corrected her because I didn’t want to think about how much of my childhood was taken by someone I should have been able to trust."
9.1 Effects on targeted students: Academic, emotional and developmental.
Reanalysis of the AAUW data indicates that targets of educator sexual misconduct report that they suffer emotional, educational, and developmental or health effects. At least a third of students report behaviors that would negatively affect academic achievement:....
For most children, being the victim of sexual misconduct does damage that lasts well into adulthood, and for most it is never fully repaired (Kendell-Tackett, 1993). Child sexual abuse targets lose trust in adults and authority figures, suffer physical ailments and lowered immune systems, and do less well in school (Finkelhor & Brown, 1985). They often drop out of or avoid school. Sexually abused children are more likely than children who are not sexually abused to be substance users as adults and to have difficulty forming intimate relationships (Finkelhor, 2001). David Finkelhor (2001), the premier researcher of child sexual abuse, notes that the same sense of betrayal and shame that attaches to incest is found in sexual abuse by teachers where the pseudo parental relationship that the teacher plays has been sexualized."
Boys are different from girls, its a strange idea these days that this should not be taken into account. I don't see a good reason to make such a liason a criminal act. That said, a female teacher caught behaving this way should be dismissed. It is unprofessional, immoral, and demoralizing to students to have such an example before them.
Virgil - time, context and place matter. In the Depression (the one before this one), my wife's grandmother was married and had two daughters before her 17th birthday. She lost her husband and remarried, living a full, albeit tough, life. I also knew a couple in the late 1970's who had met after he returned to HS to get his diploma. He had quit earlier and rode the rails looking for work to keep body and soul together. As a 19YO senior, he took a shine to his 19YO teacher. They had been married about 4 decades when I knew them. These people were made of sterner and more serious stuff than the current slightly older but infantilized college students who worry about micro-agressions, feeling unsafe, opinions and facts that aren't congenial to their world view and so forth. Their younger sibs wouldn't be any better able to handle the real world.
It's an orientation that defies normalization through progressive morality. For now its behavior is still realized in the "bedroom" and "closet", but it's not rape-rape. Sometimes, but not always. Selectively.
Actually, objectively, girls mature sooner than boys. With the normalization of abortion, girls bear no greater physical or psychological burden than do boys. The only reason then to distinguish between boys and girls is a traditional religious or moral principle, not nature.
That said, our society is progressively amoral or selective, and nature and conventional morality is only consulted when it is not a personal burden. Progressive corruption and a dysfunctional convergence seems to be inevitable.
Many traditional religions can avoid the bigot (i.e. sanctimonious hypocrite) label as a matter of principle. Progressive religions can avoid the bigot label on the principle of pro-choice or selective morality. Perhaps in time, progressive religions will openly embrace pedophilia and other excluded transsexual orientations; but, today, the majority of society would bury them.
Prosecutor: Mr. Thompson, you are a student from the defendant's class, correct?
Mr. Thompson: Yes, ma'am. Senior English.
Prosecutor: And you are suing Ms. Jameson, correct?
Mr. Thompson: Yes, ma'am. I'm suing her on account of all the rapes and shit.
Prosecutor: Mr. Thompson --
Mr. Thompson: Sorry, ma'am, about the cursing and shi-- uh, stuff . I'm suing her on account of all the rapes, yes.
Prosecutor: So you are talking about the six students in the criminal case? Did you know all of them?
Mr. Thompson: Yes, ma'am. I sure did.
Prosecutor: So you knew David Rose?
Mr. Thompson: Yes, ma'am. Played on the football team. White boy.
Prosecutor: So you knew Thomas Mason?
Mr. Thompson: Yes, ma'am. Played tennis. White boy.
Prosecutor: And you knew Justin Lakewood?
Mr. Thompson: Yes, ma'am. White boy. Played baseball: look -- I knew all of them, you know?
Prosecutor: And did Ms. Jameson rape you, Mr. Thompson?
Mr. Thompson: Hell, no. She only raped white boys.
Prosecutor: And you are suing for discrimination, yes?
Mr. Thompson: Straight up. Ms. Jameson -- everyone knew she was raping all the white boys, but should wouldn't even touch none of us brothers, not one.
Prosecutor: I thought not being raped was a good thing, isn't it?
Mr. Thompson: Look, when you're in the locker room and the white boys are all whoopin' and high-fivin' and shit -- sorry -- when they're all doin' all that stuff because they got to sleep with the teacher, and you know you didn't get none because you're black: man, it hurts.
Prosecutor: And how did this inequality affect you?
Mr. Thompson: Look, I'm okay with the white boys: we're good. But when it comes time to havin' sex with the teacher it is all 1950s shit again, and we brothers are at the back of the bus.
Prosecutor: Was there anyone at the school you could talk to?
Mr. Thompson: Well, I talked to Ms. Harris once, the Social Studies teacher. She's black, I thought she'd understand things, you know?
Prosecutor: And what did Ms. Harris say to you?
Mr. Thompson: Ms. Harris said that Ms. Jameson was a White Devil, and that's why you cannot trust white people, even the bitches.
I understand the point about boys liking to have sex with their teachers (although I can imagine that some high school girls like the idea of sex with some of their male teachers), but I don't see any basis for the law to discriminate on such grounds. Do you?
Yes. You can base the law on how people actually are - men and women are different (on average) in various respects, including the extent to which they are likely to regret participating in casual or non romantic sex. Or you can base it on a fantasy - that they're the same.
Girls require protection; there is no more fundamental rule for any functional society, even a pre-civilized one. This protection can take many forms, many which we find distasteful, but still, it is there. Girls have to be protected from unsanctioned sex. They have that expectation. Without it we have, not just no civilization, but no humanity. This is a reduction to a plain animal condition. On the other side - Young men -fertile boys are men in all historical circumstances - have a degree of responsibility that girls don't have. If they are tempted by women, they are expected to look after themselves. This is a fundamental part of manhood, along with the expectation that they are ready to sacrifice themselves for family, women, and tribe. This business of the law protecting boys from women (women!) is fundamentally disrespectful of their manhood, of their power. Its as deep and base an insult, towards what should be young warriors, as I can conceive.
What is wrong with people? If the teacher gets preggers, she can expect the Courts may require the boy to pay child support for 18 years ("the best interests of the child"). How is that not a negative? Just being sued for support would be a horrible negative.
Next, the power differential alone means the relationship cannot be consensual. I can't believe I'm having to spell this out.
Rape is rape is rape. If we are going to have an egalitarian society, then let's have an egalitarian society. If not, then let's quit demanding equality between the sexes.
Nature and natural law make some of our conceptions of an egalitarian society absurd affectations. We are humans, not bees, cattle, or someones fantasy.
Great post. Funny skit. Both sides are right. My view is that male teacher should be both fired and prosecuted and female teacher should be fired and prosecuted only if young man credibly asserts it was not consensual and/or there is proof of emotional damage to the man.
No real legal basis for distinction. Just the way it strikes me as a guy and as a matter of common sense. Don't think there really is an answer that is right or that great majority would agree with (in confidential vote).
Oh for heaven's sake! (Way to earn your gadfly status, though.)
As a complete supporter of the legal concept of statutory rape... I nevertheless strongly object to your statement. Forcible rape is a violent crime. Statutory rape is a status offense, the boundaries of which can be changed at the legislature's whim. Both can be illegal, without them being "the same".
With the normalization of abortion, girls bear no greater physical or psychological burden than do boys. The only reason then to distinguish between boys and girls is a traditional religious or moral principle, not nature.
No it's nature. Alas, evolution has had limited time to work on the human brain since Roe v Wade. Women regret casual sexual encounters much more often than men, not seldom because they have been deluded by their sexual partner, or by themselves about how committed the man was to the "relationship.". eg as generously provided above, by Eric the Fruit Bat, from this very case :
The prosecutor's exact words: "I simply cannot get this kid to believe that he's a victim."
The prosecutor was sympathetic toward the teacher: "No. It's not like that. It's really sad. She really thinks that she's in love."
This unequal regret about casual sexual encounters is not because of traditional religious or moral principles but because of biology (and microeconomics.) Female investment in children is greater than male - indeed that is the basic distinction between the sexes in any animal - right from the word go, eggs require more investment than sperm. So females are more choosy about who to make their investment with.
Sure, the modern woman can calculate that she may be able to mostly avoid the traditional high cost consequences - and the modern man can calculate that he might get stuck by the modern legal system with some of those high cost consequences. But rational calculation only goes so far, we also have instincts and brain chemistry that don't always align well with rational calculation.
it is not "traditional religious or moral principles" that are the reason for nine times as many men as women finishing u in jail. In some respects the sexes are different.
Biology is also instructive about the type of casual sexual encounter that a woman is least likely to regret - one with a heap big high status man - far higher than she could scoop up as a long term mate. Hence the torrent of women happy to leap into Presidential or rock star beds. (Do rock stars use beds ?) Because this type of casual sexual encounter is one that her nature is urging her to go for - get impregnated by the best guy.
Of course evolution has not had time to adjust her urges to tell her (a) you are confusing fame with good genes (a much harder mistake to make in the olden days) and (b) if you're using contraception, you won't get impregnated by the heap big high status guy.
Nevertheless, our average grandmother will look back with a grin about her quickie in Mick's dressing room, and with shame and regret about her fumbly night with that chemistry nerd with the bad breath. "What was I thinking ?"
I get the double standard and am ok with Instapundit and others calling out the hypocrisy, but the reality is, the male student is not a victim, he is lucky, he is the envy of his peers.
The teacher should be fired for unprofessional behavior, but she should not go to jail. It should not be a criminal matter.
""I now recognize that my relationship with Mrs. Kelly was abusive. She exploited her power and my immaturity. But at the time I was ashamed. Because of my shame, I never acknowledged the relationship to anyone, and I decided to save sex for marriage. My wife thought I was a virgin when we married. I never corrected her because I didn’t want to think about how much of my childhood was taken by someone I should have been able to trust."
And
"being the victim of sexual misconduct does damage that lasts well into adulthood, and for most it is never fully repaired (Kendell-Tackett, 1993). Child sexual abuse targets lose trust in adults and authority figures, suffer physical ailments and lowered immune systems, and do less well in school (Finkelhor & Brown, 1985). They often drop out of or avoid school. Sexually abused children are more likely than children who are not sexually abused to be substance users as adults and to have difficulty forming intimate relationships (Finkelhor, 2001). David Finkelhor (2001), the premier researcher of child sexual abuse, notes that the same sense of betrayal and shame that attaches to incest is found in sexual abuse by teachers where the pseudo parental relationship that the teacher plays has been sexualized."
All this talk about being the envy for bedding "hot teacher" reminds me of all the nonsense about how the lap dancers were really exploiting the men, not the other way around...
Western Enlightenment can pretend that law applies equally regardless of gender, and feminists can appeal to that fiction when it serves their self interest....
Bingo. Lets try one way or the other. If there are no differences, treat them the same. Or, my preference, recognize there are differences and act accordingly. In many more matters than sex with the teacher (like, say, sex with an intern).
eric said... I have three boys. If their high school teacher has sex with them after the age of 15/16, I'm not going to freak out. They'll be fine mentally and emotionally. Maybe even gain an ego boost.
On the other hand, if my daughters teacher did it, I'd kill him.
4/12/15, 11:25 AM
Asking only half sarcastically, why? Don't girls mature faster than boys? shouldn't she be better able to handle the affects of the encounter?
buwaya puti said... Girls require protection; there is no more fundamental rule for any functional society, even a pre-civilized one. This protection can take many forms, many which we find distasteful, but still, it is there. Girls have to be protected from unsanctioned sex.
4/12/15, 8:10 PM
Why? 60 years ago, sure but today with the availability of all sorts of birth control and easy, on demand abortions? Why? Old white guy sensibilities? Why that is so 1960s. Get with the times man! It is a friggen free for all out there and the rules no longer matter. That dictate comes directly from the top!
Fen said... All this talk about being the envy for bedding "hot teacher" reminds me of all the nonsense about how the lap dancers were really exploiting the men, not the other way around...
You keep saying stuff like this, but if you want to convince, you have to do better. Why is the young man a victim? (I will stipulate that below a certain age, the person is too young to be carrying on with an adult.) Society sets certain age limits based on culture, biology and human psychology set other limits. Most of us are arguing for biology and psychology, you are arguing for culture.
You need a better explanation of why culture is better when we're talking about destroying the life of one of the 2 people.
You keep saying stuff like this, but if you want to convince, you have to do better. Why is the young man a victim? (I will stipulate that below a certain age, the person is too young to be carrying on with an adult.) Society sets certain age limits based on culture, biology and human psychology set other limits. Most of us are arguing for biology and psychology, you are arguing for culture.
You answered your first point yourself (below a certain age, etc.). As for biology/psych/culture, Fen listed several examples of how this is damaging psychologically. He even posted those examples at least twice.
You need a better explanation of why culture is better when we're talking about destroying the life of one of the 2 people.
We live in a country that at least feigns to demand equality. Women should be able to do the same thing as men, they should be able to make the same, etc. There are two sides to that coin - responsibility. That's the side that so many in this thread are willing to ignore. You've just given women more rights than men by doing this.
Second - because someone is biologically disposed to something, it certainly doesn't mean that mentally, that person should act upon that disposition. A very crude example would be this: should people with debilitating, hereditary diseases be encouraged to reproduce? I'd say no. I'm not advocating stopping people, but I'm also not advocating encouragement.
Today's children (and yes, they're children) are still immature in their 20's. Were it up to me, people wouldn't be of majority until 25 years old, unless you're serving in an armed service or working full time.
Kids aren't mentally ready for the responsibility that comes from any consequence of sexual activity. I'm with Fen on this. And to be blunt (not necessarily to you, Tim), I think a lot of people in this thread are thinking with their 16 year old dicks.
I Callahan said...You answered your first point yourself (below a certain age, etc.).
Uhh...no, I didn't. I stipulated that there is an age. I did not stipulate that it is the age Fen set.
You are quite right that we are thinking with our 16 year old dicks, and our 16 year old dicks tell us this is just fine. Yes, equality, but what kind of equality? That's doesn't answer the issue. It is not unequal to set different expectations for areas where the harm is different.
I Callahan said... And to be blunt (not necessarily to you, Tim), I think a lot of people in this thread are thinking with their 16 year old dicks.
JMHO
4/13/15, 1:36 PM
Exactly!
As a thought experiment, if we had three teachers each caught having sex with a minor student, who of these three should be fired and who of these three should go to jail?
Case a: 28 year old male teacher and 15 15 year old female student.
Case b: 28 year old female teacher and 15 year old male student.
Case c: 28 year old female teacher and 15 year old female student.
And the right answer is.... Fired and jail (same time) for all three. All three are guilty of statutory rape and of abusing a position of power.
It is not unequal to set different expectations for areas where the harm is different.
By today's standards, it most certainly is. If equality is the be all and end all, and in this country I believe most people to believe it is (whether they practice that or not), then yes, equal is equal. If a woman sleeps with her 16 year old student, she should get the same sentence as a man who does the same thing. If not, then you're letting women off the hook from their own responsibilities.
You keep saying stuff like this, but if you want to convince, you have to do better. Why is the young man a victim?
3rd or 4th time now:
"being the victim of sexual misconduct does damage that lasts well into adulthood, and for most it is never fully repaired (Kendell-Tackett, 1993). Child sexual abuse targets lose trust in adults and authority figures, suffer physical ailments and lowered immune systems, and do less well in school (Finkelhor & Brown, 1985). They often drop out of or avoid school. Sexually abused children are more likely than children who are not sexually abused to be substance users as adults and to have difficulty forming intimate relationships (Finkelhor, 2001). David Finkelhor (2001), the premier researcher of child sexual abuse, notes that the same sense of betrayal and shame that attaches to incest is found in sexual abuse by teachers where the pseudo parental relationship that the teacher plays has been sexualized."
And what I'm hearing from the "get some hot teacher pussy" crowd here reminds me of a guy I knew who decided to have an affair with his hot neighbor.
Really good sex with a playboy centerfold type. 3 months of bliss. He got away with it too, wife never found out, but the damage it did to his marriage lasted a lifetime.
^^^ If you can't understand the "why" of that paragraph, then there's really no point trying to explain to you why a young male will be damaged by a tryst with his teacher. Sure, the sex is hot at 15, the regret at 25 is not.
(Which incidentally makes my point from the New Yorker thread, that there are commenters here who do a better job at satire than a paid writer at the New Yorker.)
Fen said... "All this talk about being the envy for bedding "hot teacher" reminds me of all the nonsense about how the lap dancers were really exploiting the men, not the other way around..."
Played_By_Julia_Roberts: Sure I lap-danced for him. Sure he exploited me.
Breathless_Reporter: And what did you do about it?
Played_By_Julia_Roberts: I exploited him right back.
Lets stipulate for a moment that a woman seducing a 16-year old boy is something we should tolerate (or at least not criminalize). If so, why should it be any different for a 16-year old girl? Does the sex of the teacher matter?
Sure, 16-year-old boys fantasize about this. (As do 13-year-old boys.) That doesn't mean it couldn't screw them up psychologically. (Not that I'm sure it would, I am agnostic on that.) Also, what if the teacher got pregnant? What if the boy got herpes? A 16-year-old boy might also enthusiastically drink alcohol or smoke crystal meth with an adult woman -- not everything is OK with a 16-year-old just because he wanted to do it.
Kirk Parker said Forcible rape is a violent crime. Statutory rape is a status offense, the boundaries of which can be changed at the legislature's whim. Both can be illegal, without them being "the same".
Rape is the crime of having sex without meaningful consent. Lack of (meaningful) consent is what makes rape, well, 'rape.' This isn't hard to figure out, just as murder is murder is murder (unlawfully taking another's life) without every murder being the same.
If, when I was in high school, any of my stunning female teachers had blessed me with the gift of her body I would still be lighting candles in her honor today.
"Equal justice under the law" is but one of the many lies we tell ourselves, along with the idea that feminists want women to be treated equally with men.
Good grief, what kind of benighted place do you live, that drugging a woman is only considered statutory rape?
And no no no to your question! I'm talking about the situation where 30 y.o. teacher (of either gender) has sex with a willing student--if the student is 17 years 364 days old, it's a crime; a day later and it's not.
Again, please note I said I wasn't at all against the concept--we do have to draw that line somewhere, it's just that there's nothing "magic" or "natural law" about that line being drawn at 18 years.
And further to my objection: surely if relations between and adult teacher and a minor student involve actual violence, force, or coercion, surely it's charged as forceable rape, isn't it?
The victims report trouble forming and maintaining healthy relationships, std infections, sometimes the minor child becomes a father and is then responsible for child support, education and career plans are ruined, years of therapy because some pathetic adult, who can't deal with her own age cohort, takes advantage of a child.
The persistent talk about what the child wanted is vacuous. The key here is whether or not we want to live in a society where government hierarchs are as bound by law as the rest of us, or whether they are nobility, with special privileges. It is the behavior of the teacher that matters, and whether it conforms with the law. Are we a nation ruled through law, or are we a nation ruled by the whims of hierarchs above us?
Remember - Rape is Funny! At least to SNL. Stupid entitled dirtbags. They validate every negative nasty stereotype about ignorant New Yorkers full of hubris.
If, when I was in high school, any of my stunning female teachers had blessed me with the gift of her body I would still be lighting candles in her honor today.
What complete bullshit.
You have no clue what you'd be doing. You're projecting your adult thoughts with your dick when you were 16. You neglect that your thoughts were 16 years old also.
Dude, you've watched too many movies. These are kids. They ain't ready for sex, ESPECIALLY with someone who is older and more powerful than they are. You weren't ready either.
You might want to read the RCW's to see what kind of legal environment I live in. Hint: the severity of rape here in WA state ranges from Class A Felony (the worst) if force or kidnapping is used (among other things) all the way down to a gross misdemeanor ... and if the older perpetrator is NOT in a school or other supervisory position over the minor, and the minor is at least 16 years of age, and the perp is less than 5 years older than the victim, it doesn't look like it's a crime at all.
In other words, in terms of the severity of the crime and the penalties involved, it's anything BUT "rape is rape is rape", which is the statement (not yours) that I originally objected to.
And since I can guarantee you that these laws were not put in place by NAMBLA, I suggest you back off on your disgusting personal slurs.
Broadly though, erstwhile castrators like Althouse preach among other things that men commit crimes at , say, 10x the rate of women. No-they are imprisoned at 10x the rate of women.
Take away all their girls-will-be-girls free passes, enforce equally as they pretend to desire, don't make boy crimes and girl crimes so disparate, and see how the ratios close up.
MichaelPaulCastrillo : “The victims report trouble forming and maintaining healthy relationships, std infections, sometimes the minor child becomes a father and is then responsible for child support, education and career plans are ruined, years of therapy”
1. You have a self selecting sample there. Victims who consider themselves victims report things they didn’t like. “Victims” who don’t consider themselves victims don’t. 2. The responsibility for child support is an imposition by the government. If the government wanted to take that responsibility away, in cases where a boy was raped, it could do so. It chooses not to. 3. Education and career plan ruins, if they arise, arise from number 2.
Kirk Parker : Forcible rape is a violent crime. Statutory rape is a status offense, the boundaries of which can be changed at the legislature's whim. Both can be illegal, without them being "the same".
Gadflyjohn : “Rape is the crime of having sex without meaningful consent. Lack of (meaningful) consent is what makes rape, well, 'rape.'
And of course all the weight is carried by “meaningful.” Where consent is not in fact given, you have an unambiguous case of lack of consent, by, er, definition. With statutory rape, you have a deemed lack of consent. It is perfectly possible that a particular 25 year old is too immature and ignorant to realize the implications of intercourse, and perfectly possible that a particular15 year old is not too immature and ignorant. Clearly it depends on the individual’s intelligence, education and personality; and equally clearly since most of us become less immature and less ignorant as time goes by, the older we are the more likely we are to know what’s going on.
But Kirk Parker’s perfectly reasonable point is that the borders of statutory rape are set by legislative whim, they do not coincide with the borders of “meaningful” consent – ie sufficient maturity to make up your own mind. How could they – since they treat all people of the same age as equally mature ? The age of consent differs between states, and between countries. Some places it’s 18 some places it’s 16, some places it’s 14. And some places there’s a “close in age” exception – hard to square that with the idea of an age at which you’re old enough to make up your own mind.
Statutory rape is a statistical offence – ie there’s a probability but not a certainty that there was no meaningful consent. IMHO there ought to be a defense that this particular boy or girl was sufficiently mature to know what they were getting into. (Measured by the standards of ordinary adults – not theoretical perfectly knowledgeable and rational adults with no sex hormones.)
"And some places there’s a “close in age” exception – hard to square that with the idea of an age at which you’re old enough to make up your own mind."
WA definitely has this for the non-position-of-authority cases (i.e. a 21-year-old teacher can't argue this as a defense for having sex with her 17 364/365 year old student.) Now I don't know the actual legislative history here, but I'm guessing it's all about not having something legal though (from society's point of view) regrettable--two unmarried 17-year-olds having sex--suddenly become a felony because one of them got a day older.
Well, I'm not so sure about the wisdom of that last suggestion, Lee. Just because I recognize that the line drawn for statutory rape is arbitrary, doesn't mean that I want to see that like jerked around every legislative session or two. :-( As long as the arbitrary line we draw is reasonable and defensible, I'd far rather see it stay in the same place for the sake of stability of the law.
What people don't seem to realize is that what has changed in society is the idea that a 30 year old man having sex with a 14 year old girl is rape. Throughout all of recorded human history as soon as a girl hit puberty she was marrying, having sex and babies.
What has changed is that while women still tend to lose their virginity at 13 / 14, they are protected to the point where all sex is treated as a man raping a woman. If that's the case, politically, men have to start crying rape every chance they get just to protect themselves.
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107 comments:
I rarely watch SNL anymore but had it on that channel when it came on last night. That was a new low. Incredibly poor taste on that segment but just no talent in sight, in general.
There's a double standard. A boy getting sex with a teacher is getting lucky.
The reason for the double standard is that the boy is getting what he wants, a one night stand; a girl is not, a continuing romance.
A prosecutor of my acquaintance, on the sex crimes unit, once complained to me about having to deal with an uncooperative witness, a 15 year old who was getting beer and pot from one of his high school teachers and banging the crap out of her.
The prosecutor's exact words: "I simply cannot get this kid to believe that he's a victim."
The prosecutor was sympathetic toward the teacher: "No. It's not like that. It's really sad. She really thinks that she's in love."
I laughed. I cried. I ordered another drink.
Judging from the sentences being handed out, so do most judges.
Just as many people believe minorities inherently cannot be guilty of prejudice, many people believe women cannot be molesters. The boy is lucky to get laid, yuck yuck.
All sex for women should be considered non-consensual unless proven otherwise. For men, even boys, all sex should be considered fully consensual. Why is this truth so difficult for you to understand?
It should be a double-standard. Had Ms. Pape seduced me when I was 15/16 it would have been one of the greatest moments of my life and one I would never have looked back on with regret or a feeling of having been victimized. Do people really watch the famous scene in Persona (27 minutes in) and think ewwww. . . that Bibi Anderson's character was an evil rapist!
It's not as though sexual desire exists or anything like that.
SNL always stops at the first floor nowadays. Funny faces, broad acting, playing to the junior high kids that think it makes them seem older by watching.
That said, they had all the elements for an interesting skit. They could've taken those elements and simply veered away from the obvious elbow-in-the-ribs and have the kid feel like he was the one who did something wrong. Earn some uncomfortable laughs.
Prosecutor: So who instigated this relationship.
Gavin: I... I guess I did.
Prosecutor: YOU did?
Gavin: I think so, yeah. I went into my Teacher's room after class and asked what I could do for some Extra Credit. I didn't mean it that way, it was my mistake.
Prosecutor: And you believe this was YOUR fault?
Gavin: Well, if I had just studied harder in the first place I wouldn't have needed extra credit in the first place and none of this would've happened. I'm sorry.
Prosecutor: And word got around school, didn't it?
Gavin: Yeah. Kids were calling me names.
Prosecutor: What kind of names?
Gavin: Things with 'Pimp' in it, usually. Gavin the Pimp, Pimpin' Gavin. I just remember a lot of Pimp jokes and wishing I could just be invisible.
Prosecutor: And this was at school?
Gavin: Yeah, mostly. I remember going to McDonald's though, after school, and a fellow student called me "Gavin McHavin'It".
Prosecutor: And how did this affect your home-life?
Gavin: Well, I quit Facebook and slept alot. When I was asleep I didn't keep asking myself why I did something so wrong.
Prosecutor: What about your family: how did they react?
Gavin: My Dad seemed proud of me. For once.
Prosecutor: Are you sure your Father's reaction was pride'?
Gavin: Yes: he said he was "proud of me" so I think it was pretty much pride. He also said this was the first time I actually seemed to amount to something. Like winning third-prize in the Junior Science Fair was nothing, I guess. I don't know; maybe if I had come in First Place he would've respected that.
Prosecutor: And what happened when the Police first interviewed you?
Gavin: They laughed.
Prosecutor: The Police Officers laughed?
Gavin: They laughed and asked me if I was gay. I thought I was going to jail. I don't won't to go to jail. I'm sorry this ever happened.
Prosecutor: Gavin, you do understand that you are not the one on trial here, don't you? That you are not at risk of going to jail?
Gavin: I think so. The Police said that if I was the one to go to prison I would learn what 'real rape' was like.
Prosecutor: So Gavin, is it fair to say you never wanted this to happen?
Gavin: Well, I used to, um...
Prosecutor: Yes, Gavin?
Gavin: I used to masturbate about my teacher. A lot. So maybe I do deserve all of this, after all. I'm sorry I disappointed everybody.
Prosecutor: No further questions.
Gavin: I'm sorry, mom.
I am Laslo.
"SupercalifrigiThisADopeKid"
South Park was making this joke nine years ago.
"You're right. We're sorry. This is serious. We need to track this student down and...
...give him his 'Luckiest Boy in America' medal right away!"
The most dangerous part of the double standard is in newspaper reports - when it's a male teacher and an underage female, the headline is, "____ High School Teacher Admits Raping Student". When it's a female teacher and underage male, it's, ""____ High School Teacher Admits Sex with Student".
Dangerous not only because of the double standard, but because the headline writers try to imply that the sex was violent in the male teacher version.
Pernicious.
Ann, when you read/watched Summer of 42 with the love-making scene at the end of the book/movie between Raucher and Dorothy, was your reaction ewwww. . . this is rape and disgusting?
I know -- no teacher was involved -- but I am curious whether the reaction of people here to that scene was really that of witnessing a rape.
A post tailor-made for the Laslo treatment and he doesn't fail to provide.
I know it's wrong but the awful truth is that when I was 16 I woulda jumped at the chance to be seduced by any of my older female teachers. I remember it being rich fantasy fodder that I had recourse to many a'time. I don't even think looking back that any of 'em were particularly attractive. Just female which was enough for me. I'm just a jerk, sorry for not taking this seriously. I suck.
Older women initiating younger men into sex has been culturally acceptable for ages. That it's not acceptable is what's new. A mom of one of my middle school students went to jail for having sex with two of his friends. One of the boys' fathers initiated the police investigation, but the other dad didn't think it was a big deal.
Agree with Eleanor. A 23 year old woman giving herself to a willing 16 year old boy has not historically been deemed rape by our culture. I have no desire to throw a woman who is not a threat to anyone in prison for the sake of the false fetish that says there are (or should be) no differences between the genders. There are big differences. If a female teacher does it with a student, fire her and let her find a different career. But let’s stop pretending the poor boy was victimized. That is nothing but a load of crap. Good for SNL for crying bullshit.
Do people really watch the famous scene in Persona (27 minutes in) and think ewwww. . . that Bibi Anderson's character was an evil rapist!
I didn't know that anyone watched that scene and thought anything less. I watched it and thought, "Oh, that's why people act like this is so great--there's an admission of grotesque sexual wrongdoing from a woman."
God Almighty, is that stupid show still on the air? Well, anyway, I'm in bed by 9pm, as I have to collect eggs and feed the chickens in the morning...
Freeman Hunt, I wonder if Persona is a movie similar to The Third Man where men and women tend to react differently to the central character (women sympathize for Orson Welles, men think he is evil, etc.) Another example -- Tadpole from 2000. The NY Times describes Bebe Neuwrith's character, who seduces a 15 year old boy, as “mischievously sexy,” “a sexy, self-assured single woman with a rebellious streak” who seduces the hero with “blunt, warm physicality.” Maybe a lot of people watched the movie and thought eww .... rapist. I did not.
In Persona, she's talking about a twelve year old, isn't she? Surely that's over the line by anyone's reckoning.
Mrs. Robinson.
"But let’s stop pretending the poor boy was victimized."
Uhm, he was victimized. Just because he enjoyed good sex doesn't mean he wasn't.
Next you'll be telling us that women who orgasm during a gangrape are not victims...
Freeman, 12 is over the line, but I assumed they were probably 16 or so. Movie doesn't say. They could do a remake of the movie and have the police come and arrest Bibi right after that scene and then we wouldn't have to figure out all the weird stuff that starts 10 minutes later.
Prosecutor: "Mr. Robinson, what is your occupation.
Mr. Robinson: I was a high school teacher. Social Studies.
Prosecutor: "Was" a high school teacher?
Mr. Robinson: Yes: I was fired after the incident with the defendant.
Prosecutor: Let the record show that the witness is referring to seventeen-year-old Jenna Maze.
Prosecutor: What was your relationship with the defendant?
Mr. Robinson: She was one of my students.
Prosecutor: And what is the nature of the crime for which the defendant Ms. Maze is being tried?
Mr. Robinson: She raped me.
Prosecutor: She raped you?
Mr. Robinson: Yes. Multiple times.
Prosecutor: Mr. Robinson, you are a big healthy man: surely you could have resisted.
Mr. Robinson: I resisted many times. She would wear tight pants with exposed thong straps, mini-skirts, tight sweaters with no bra, tight T-shirts that read "Hot for Teacher": I resisted them all.
Prosecutor: So what happened, Mr. Robinson?
Mr. Robinson: The defendant showed up after class in her cheerleader outfit.
Prosecutor: That's it? A cheerleader outfit?
Mr. Robinson: What can I say, cheerleader outfits are a thing for me. Anyway, I resisted, even then, until she flipped up her skirt to show me she was no longer wearing any panties.
Prosecutor: And this is when she raped you?
Mr. Robinson: I asked her to keep a respectful distance, but she proceeded to undo my pants.
Prosecutor: And there was nothing you could do to stop her?
Mr. Robinson: I was afraid to put my hands on her to push her away. We are instructed not to touch the students.
Prosecutor: And then what happened?
Mr. Robinson: The defendant proceed to have oral sex on me.
Prosecutor: Do you believe that the defendant knew this was inappropriate?
Mr. Robinson: I told Jenna that this was inappropriate, but she just... continued.
Prosecutor: And how did this make you feel?
Mr. Robinson: Helpless.
Prosecutor: Helpless?
Mr. Robinson: Well, I ejaculated as quickly as I could to stop the rape. It was my only defense.
Prosecutor: Did the defendant spit or swallow?
Defense Attorney: Objection!
Judge: Objection sustained: the act of swallowing or not swallowing would be prejudicial to the jury.
Prosecutor: And what did you do afterward? Did you report this rape?
Mr. Robinson: No, no I didn't. I felt no one would believe me.
Prosecutor: And if the defendant did not initiate such action none of this would've happened.
Mr. Robinson: Definitely not. Al least for another three months.
Prosecutor: And what was to transpire in three months?
Mr. Robinson: The defendant's Eighteenth Birthday.
Prosecutor: I have no more questions.
I am Laslo.
I think you watched a revised version. She implies twelve or thirteen.
Saturday Night what?
Underage people do not have the capacity to understand the implications of what they do, nor see how it will hurt them later.
It is up to the adults to do the responsible thing and LEAVE THEM ALONE.
Especially teachers due to their unique position in society.
Laslo,
I hope that somehow, somewhere, you're being financially rewarded for sharing your gift. Maybe you could have an Amazon sub-portal in the commenters section?
Yes, according to Wikipedia's entry on Persona:
"Two scenes are frequently cut from versions of the film; a brief shot at the beginning depicting an erect penis, and segments of Alma’s night-time monologue about her abortion and ménage à quatre (the American print makes no reference to ages; in the original, it is implied that the boys are twelve or thirteen)."
I read a biography of Mickey Mantle. He was sexually molested by his babysitter. The biographer suggested that as a result of this Mickey, as an adult, became a compulsive womanizer. So I guess it's possible to have ill effects from such a relationship.....,I can't see how an altar boy having sex with a priest can be anything but harmful to the boy's development.. I suppose a female teacher sleeping with one of her students could have some damaging effects, but it just doesn't have the appearance of a traumatic experience........When I was younger, I frequently had teachers who nagged me about tardiness and punctuality. Looking back if can see now that they were just trying to distance themselves from my sexual magnetism. But all that verbal abuse over minor peccadilloes also had it's damaging effects. I think that I might have become a better person if they had had sex with me instead of being so judgmental about minor flaws.
I'd like to see a poll on this. How many men think that they would have considered themselves a lucky 15 year old to bang a really hot teacher?
btw: A Michigan Circuit Court judge recently had a substantially identical case. And the judge, a woman, hammered the defendant teacher in sentencing her. Among the comments from the judge was this: "If this was a male teacher who had been involved with a 15-year-old female, there would be people here hanging from the ceiling trying to get every drop of blood... But because it is a woman, there seems to be a winking about what happened."
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/oakland-county/2015/03/17/female-teacher-gets-prison-sex-student/24902401/
(The picture in this Detroit News article doesn't do the teacher justice. She's hot.)
I have three boys. If their high school teacher has sex with them after the age of 15/16, I'm not going to freak out. They'll be fine mentally and emotionally. Maybe even gain an ego boost.
On the other hand, if my daughters teacher did it, I'd kill him.
I understand the point about boys liking to have sex with their teachers (although I can imagine that some high school girls like the idea of sex with some of their male teachers), but I don't see any basis for the law to discriminate on such grounds. Do you?
This-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpMpSLexilw --is the scene from Persona, it's the 2004 version with the subtitles restored by John Kirk. Bibi Anderson describes the boys as "terribly young" according to the titles. Google translate says that would be "oerhört ung" in Swedish, which is not what I hear on the sound track (the first word sounds like "hamstadt" to me, which according to google means nothing at all in Swedish). FWIW.
The sketch backs-up something I've long suspected living in Seattle: In lieu of the traditonal roles that make men...men, the take-things apart-model (from radical Lefty and ideological feminist, to vaguely collectivist hipster) often just reduces men to boys.
That's as far as some people have gotten.
Eric the Fruit Bat said...
The prosecutor's exact words: "I simply cannot get this kid to believe that he's a victim."
'Cuz he's not. Duh.
But he could become a victim if the State gets involved:
"The court also ruled that a mother's potential culpability under criminal statutes was of no relevance in determining the father's [13 years old] child support liability in a civil action."
Apparently "They" are also having some trouble getting high-school kids to feel "bullied" about nonsense on Facetwit.
In Lenin's view, all history can be reduced to two words: Who, Whom. Who, whom starts with male/female. Western Enlightenment can pretend that law applies equally regardless of gender, and feminists can appeal to that fiction when it serves their self interest, but down deep we all know its just Who [can do to] Whom in sexual matters.
That's why the Attorney General of California can openly contemplate the prison rape of a white collar defendant (Ken Lay) with relish, and still enjoy a successful political career. Minor males can never be victims, and victims of prison rape are just losers.
So men and women are really different?
Too bad the law can't account for that.
Zeb Quinn said... [hush][hide comment]
Fen@10:35 alluded to one thing that doesn't ever get discussed much, if at all: A fairly significant number of women orgasm during rape. And by rape we're talking rape-rape, forcible, violent, stranger rape.
Are you pretending to be stupid?
They would. Prof Puppy-Blender will nail them soon's he hears of it.
Most 16 y/o boys DREAM of having a pretty woman, even a teacher, seduce them.
Comparing to Rape is a little extreme.
Nope, Equality says its rape. Sexting in high school can get you expelled.
"Gavin McHavin'It".
Primo! Good stuff, Lazlo.
In the 9th grade, I had a 22 yr old Latin teacher for whom I would have done anything for 'extra credit'. My only regret is that I never stirred up the guts to ask.
- Krumhorn
We can have a uniform standard with respect to the offenders--that is, male and female teachers who diddle their students are equally reprehensible and pathetic--while having acknowledging that the level of trauma sustained by male versus female teens in these situations may very well tend to be different. if that is a double standard, then it is a sensible one that seems to accord more with reality than does denialism on this issue.
Btw the denialism seems to me to stem from a perceived need on the part of rape culture agitators for "consistency"--ie never acknowledging that there are shades of gray in the Great Rape Conversation.
"Ann, when you read/watched Summer of 42 with the love-making scene at the end of the book/movie between Raucher and Dorothy, was your reaction ewwww. . . this is rape and disgusting?"
Not my kind of pop culture. Didn't read or watch it. My reaction to the expression "love-making scene" is kind of eww. And that's having no idea what happens in the story.
I have a good male friend who started an affair with a teacher when he was 15 and she was 32. They got married when he was 23. They've been married for 23 years.
I was bothered by how the skit was covering stale ground and didn't go anywhere. Filler.
The reason for the double standard is that the boy is getting what he wants, a one night stand; a girl is not, a continuing romance.
Who's to say there's no continuing romance? In many of these cases, there is -- and frequently the girls are very willing participants, even the initiators.
And, in fact, sex (and marriage) between teenage girls and (established, experienced) older men was not only tolerated, but expected and even applauded. Recall -- how old were the Dashwood girls in Sense & Sensibility? Answer: Marianne Dashwood was 16. Colonel Brandon was 40ish. Rapey? Creepy? Or a classic romance that still makes a whole lot of modern women swoon 200 years later?
Although I so believe in a double standard, I do not think a 20 year old man falling in love with and marrying a 15 year old girl is necessarily sick. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2829689. But of course we are so much more sophisticated today than these two people were when they met.
Are you pretending to be stupid?
You're the one being ignorant. Its an abuse of power and betrayal of trust that damages the student, regardless of whether he wanted to bed a "hot" teacher.
Maybe you don't see it because you lost your moral principles a long time ago.
"I now recognize that my relationship with Mrs. Kelly was abusive. She exploited her power and my immaturity. But at the time I was ashamed. Because of my shame, I never acknowledged the relationship to anyone, and I decided to save sex for marriage. My wife thought I was a virgin when we married. I never corrected her because I didn’t want to think about how much of my childhood was taken by someone I should have been able to trust."
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/4298/one-of-the-side-effects-of-teacher-student-sex/
9.1 Effects on targeted students: Academic, emotional and developmental.
Reanalysis of the AAUW data indicates that targets of educator sexual misconduct report that they suffer emotional, educational, and developmental or health effects. At least a third of students report behaviors that would negatively affect academic achievement:....
For most children, being the victim of sexual misconduct does damage that lasts well into adulthood, and for most it is never fully repaired (Kendell-Tackett, 1993). Child sexual abuse targets lose trust in adults and authority figures, suffer physical ailments and lowered immune systems, and do less well in school (Finkelhor & Brown, 1985). They often drop out of or avoid school. Sexually abused children are more likely than children who are not sexually abused to be substance users as adults and to have difficulty forming intimate relationships (Finkelhor, 2001). David Finkelhor (2001), the premier researcher of child sexual abuse, notes that the same sense of betrayal and shame that attaches to incest is found in sexual abuse by teachers where the pseudo parental relationship that the teacher plays has been sexualized."
http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdf
Boys are different from girls, its a strange idea these days that this should not be taken into account.
I don't see a good reason to make such a liason a criminal act.
That said, a female teacher caught behaving this way should be dismissed. It is unprofessional, immoral, and demoralizing to students to have such an example before them.
Virgil - time, context and place matter. In the Depression (the one before this one), my wife's grandmother was married and had two daughters before her 17th birthday. She lost her husband and remarried, living a full, albeit tough, life. I also knew a couple in the late 1970's who had met after he returned to HS to get his diploma. He had quit earlier and rode the rails looking for work to keep body and soul together. As a 19YO senior, he took a shine to his 19YO teacher. They had been married about 4 decades when I knew them.
These people were made of sterner and more serious stuff than the current slightly older but infantilized college students who worry about micro-agressions, feeling unsafe, opinions and facts that aren't congenial to their world view and so forth. Their younger sibs wouldn't be any better able to handle the real world.
RazorSharp,
"when I was 16 I woulda jumped at the chance to be seduced by any of my older female teachers."
Surely you mean any of your younger female teachers???
It's an orientation that defies normalization through progressive morality. For now its behavior is still realized in the "bedroom" and "closet", but it's not rape-rape. Sometimes, but not always. Selectively.
buwaya puti:
Actually, objectively, girls mature sooner than boys. With the normalization of abortion, girls bear no greater physical or psychological burden than do boys. The only reason then to distinguish between boys and girls is a traditional religious or moral principle, not nature.
That said, our society is progressively amoral or selective, and nature and conventional morality is only consulted when it is not a personal burden. Progressive corruption and a dysfunctional convergence seems to be inevitable.
Many traditional religions can avoid the bigot (i.e. sanctimonious hypocrite) label as a matter of principle. Progressive religions can avoid the bigot label on the principle of pro-choice or selective morality. Perhaps in time, progressive religions will openly embrace pedophilia and other excluded transsexual orientations; but, today, the majority of society would bury them.
Prosecutor: Mr. Thompson, you are a student from the defendant's class, correct?
Mr. Thompson: Yes, ma'am. Senior English.
Prosecutor: And you are suing Ms. Jameson, correct?
Mr. Thompson: Yes, ma'am. I'm suing her on account of all the rapes and shit.
Prosecutor: Mr. Thompson --
Mr. Thompson: Sorry, ma'am, about the cursing and shi-- uh, stuff . I'm suing her on account of all the rapes, yes.
Prosecutor: So you are talking about the six students in the criminal case? Did you know all of them?
Mr. Thompson: Yes, ma'am. I sure did.
Prosecutor: So you knew David Rose?
Mr. Thompson: Yes, ma'am. Played on the football team. White boy.
Prosecutor: So you knew Thomas Mason?
Mr. Thompson: Yes, ma'am. Played tennis. White boy.
Prosecutor: And you knew Justin Lakewood?
Mr. Thompson: Yes, ma'am. White boy. Played baseball: look -- I knew all of them, you know?
Prosecutor: And did Ms. Jameson rape you, Mr. Thompson?
Mr. Thompson: Hell, no. She only raped white boys.
Prosecutor: And you are suing for discrimination, yes?
Mr. Thompson: Straight up. Ms. Jameson -- everyone knew she was raping all the white boys, but should wouldn't even touch none of us brothers, not one.
Prosecutor: I thought not being raped was a good thing, isn't it?
Mr. Thompson: Look, when you're in the locker room and the white boys are all whoopin' and high-fivin' and shit -- sorry -- when they're all doin' all that stuff because they got to sleep with the teacher, and you know you didn't get none because you're black: man, it hurts.
Prosecutor: And how did this inequality affect you?
Mr. Thompson: Look, I'm okay with the white boys: we're good. But when it comes time to havin' sex with the teacher it is all 1950s shit again, and we brothers are at the back of the bus.
Prosecutor: Was there anyone at the school you could talk to?
Mr. Thompson: Well, I talked to Ms. Harris once, the Social Studies teacher. She's black, I thought she'd understand things, you know?
Prosecutor: And what did Ms. Harris say to you?
Mr. Thompson: Ms. Harris said that Ms. Jameson was a White Devil, and that's why you cannot trust white people, even the bitches.
Prosecutor: And how did this make you feel?
Mr. Thompson: Like Malcolm X was right.
Prosecutor: No further questions.
I am Laslo.
I understand the point about boys liking to have sex with their teachers (although I can imagine that some high school girls like the idea of sex with some of their male teachers), but I don't see any basis for the law to discriminate on such grounds. Do you?
Yes. You can base the law on how people actually are - men and women are different (on average) in various respects, including the extent to which they are likely to regret participating in casual or non romantic sex. Or you can base it on a fantasy - that they're the same.
Ah, that Republican war on science.
Girls require protection; there is no more fundamental rule for any functional society, even a pre-civilized one. This protection can take many forms, many which we find distasteful, but still, it is there. Girls have to be protected from unsanctioned sex.
They have that expectation. Without it we have, not just no civilization, but no humanity. This is a reduction to a plain animal condition.
On the other side -
Young men -fertile boys are men in all historical circumstances - have a degree of responsibility that girls don't have. If they are tempted by women, they are expected to look after themselves. This is a fundamental part of manhood, along with the expectation that they are ready to sacrifice themselves for family, women, and tribe. This business of the law protecting boys from women (women!) is fundamentally disrespectful of their manhood, of their power. Its as deep and base an insult, towards what should be young warriors, as I can conceive.
What is wrong with people? If the teacher gets preggers, she can expect the Courts may require the boy to pay child support for 18 years ("the best interests of the child"). How is that not a negative? Just being sued for support would be a horrible negative.
Next, the power differential alone means the relationship cannot be consensual. I can't believe I'm having to spell this out.
Rape is rape is rape. If we are going to have an egalitarian society, then let's have an egalitarian society. If not, then let's quit demanding equality between the sexes.
Nature and natural law make some of our conceptions of an egalitarian society absurd affectations. We are humans, not bees, cattle, or someones fantasy.
Great post. Funny skit. Both sides are right. My view is that male teacher should be both fired and prosecuted and female teacher should be fired and prosecuted only if young man credibly asserts it was not consensual and/or there is proof of emotional damage to the man.
No real legal basis for distinction. Just the way it strikes me as a guy and as a matter of common sense. Don't think there really is an answer that is right or that great majority would agree with (in confidential vote).
To clarify, I think female should be fired, but only prosecuted upon credible evidence of non-consent or emotional/psychological damage to student.
gadfly,
"Rape is rape is rape."
Oh for heaven's sake! (Way to earn your gadfly status, though.)
As a complete supporter of the legal concept of statutory rape... I nevertheless strongly object to your statement. Forcible rape is a violent crime. Statutory rape is a status offense, the boundaries of which can be changed at the legislature's whim. Both can be illegal, without them being "the same".
So I guess you guys are cool with male teachers raping their male students too?
Kinda like the NAMBLA crowd I guess....
"Forcible rape is a violent crime. Statutory rape is a status offense"
So if I drug her and she "goes along"...not really your definition of rape?
And again, you guys are cool with male teachers raping their male students?
NAMBLA at Althouse, who would have thought....
With the normalization of abortion, girls bear no greater physical or psychological burden than do boys. The only reason then to distinguish between boys and girls is a traditional religious or moral principle, not nature.
No it's nature. Alas, evolution has had limited time to work on the human brain since Roe v Wade. Women regret casual sexual encounters much more often than men, not seldom because they have been deluded by their sexual partner, or by themselves about how committed the man was to the "relationship.". eg as generously provided above, by Eric the Fruit Bat, from this very case :
The prosecutor's exact words: "I simply cannot get this kid to believe that he's a victim."
The prosecutor was sympathetic toward the teacher: "No. It's not like that. It's really sad. She really thinks that she's in love."
This unequal regret about casual sexual encounters is not because of traditional religious or moral principles but because of biology (and microeconomics.) Female investment in children is greater than male - indeed that is the basic distinction between the sexes in any animal - right from the word go, eggs require more investment than sperm. So females are more choosy about who to make their investment with.
Sure, the modern woman can calculate that she may be able to mostly avoid the traditional high cost consequences - and the modern man can calculate that he might get stuck by the modern legal system with some of those high cost consequences. But rational calculation only goes so far, we also have instincts and brain chemistry that don't always align well with rational calculation.
it is not "traditional religious or moral principles" that are the reason for nine times as many men as women finishing u in jail. In some respects the sexes are different.
Biology is also instructive about the type of casual sexual encounter that a woman is least likely to regret - one with a heap big high status man - far higher than she could scoop up as a long term mate. Hence the torrent of women happy to leap into Presidential or rock star beds. (Do rock stars use beds ?) Because this type of casual sexual encounter is one that her nature is urging her to go for - get impregnated by the best guy.
Of course evolution has not had time to adjust her urges to tell her (a) you are confusing fame with good genes (a much harder mistake to make in the olden days) and (b) if you're using contraception, you won't get impregnated by the heap big high status guy.
Nevertheless, our average grandmother will look back with a grin about her quickie in Mick's dressing room, and with shame and regret about her fumbly night with that chemistry nerd with the bad breath. "What was I thinking ?"
I get the double standard and am ok with Instapundit and others calling out the hypocrisy, but the reality is, the male student is not a victim, he is lucky, he is the envy of his peers.
The teacher should be fired for unprofessional behavior, but she should not go to jail. It should not be a criminal matter.
The psychology says you are wrong.
Again:
""I now recognize that my relationship with Mrs. Kelly was abusive. She exploited her power and my immaturity. But at the time I was ashamed. Because of my shame, I never acknowledged the relationship to anyone, and I decided to save sex for marriage. My wife thought I was a virgin when we married. I never corrected her because I didn’t want to think about how much of my childhood was taken by someone I should have been able to trust."
And
"being the victim of sexual misconduct does damage that lasts well into adulthood, and for most it is never fully repaired (Kendell-Tackett, 1993). Child sexual abuse targets lose trust in adults and authority figures, suffer physical ailments and lowered immune systems, and do less well in school (Finkelhor & Brown, 1985). They often drop out of or avoid school. Sexually abused children are more likely than children who are not sexually abused to be substance users as adults and to have difficulty forming intimate relationships (Finkelhor, 2001). David Finkelhor (2001), the premier researcher of child sexual abuse, notes that the same sense of betrayal and shame that attaches to incest is found in sexual abuse by teachers where the pseudo parental relationship that the teacher plays has been sexualized."
All this talk about being the envy for bedding "hot teacher" reminds me of all the nonsense about how the lap dancers were really exploiting the men, not the other way around...
Where no one (?) wants to go: if it's OK for a female teacher to have sex with 15 yo boys, then it must be equally OK for a male teacher to do so.
Western Enlightenment can pretend that law applies equally regardless of gender, and feminists can appeal to that fiction when it serves their self interest....
Bingo. Lets try one way or the other. If there are no differences, treat them the same. Or, my preference, recognize there are differences and act accordingly. In many more matters than sex with the teacher (like, say, sex with an intern).
eric said...
I have three boys. If their high school teacher has sex with them after the age of 15/16, I'm not going to freak out. They'll be fine mentally and emotionally. Maybe even gain an ego boost.
On the other hand, if my daughters teacher did it, I'd kill him.
4/12/15, 11:25 AM
Asking only half sarcastically, why? Don't girls mature faster than boys? shouldn't she be better able to handle the affects of the encounter?
buwaya puti said...
Girls require protection; there is no more fundamental rule for any functional society, even a pre-civilized one. This protection can take many forms, many which we find distasteful, but still, it is there. Girls have to be protected from unsanctioned sex.
4/12/15, 8:10 PM
Why? 60 years ago, sure but today with the availability of all sorts of birth control and easy, on demand abortions? Why? Old white guy sensibilities? Why that is so 1960s. Get with the times man! It is a friggen free for all out there and the rules no longer matter. That dictate comes directly from the top!
Fen said...
So I guess you guys are cool with male teachers raping their male students too?
Kinda like the NAMBLA crowd I guess....
4/13/15, 3:01 AM
For some here, that question can only be answered if they know if the student was pitching or catching.
Sounds like they would have not problem is he was "on the mound"...
The first funny SNL skit since Colonel Angus.
My own thoughts <a href="https://blueapsara.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/criminals-and-innocents/>here</a>.
Fen said...
All this talk about being the envy for bedding "hot teacher" reminds me of all the nonsense about how the lap dancers were really exploiting the men, not the other way around...
You keep saying stuff like this, but if you want to convince, you have to do better. Why is the young man a victim? (I will stipulate that below a certain age, the person is too young to be carrying on with an adult.) Society sets certain age limits based on culture, biology and human psychology set other limits. Most of us are arguing for biology and psychology, you are arguing for culture.
You need a better explanation of why culture is better when we're talking about destroying the life of one of the 2 people.
You keep saying stuff like this, but if you want to convince, you have to do better. Why is the young man a victim? (I will stipulate that below a certain age, the person is too young to be carrying on with an adult.) Society sets certain age limits based on culture, biology and human psychology set other limits. Most of us are arguing for biology and psychology, you are arguing for culture.
You answered your first point yourself (below a certain age, etc.). As for biology/psych/culture, Fen listed several examples of how this is damaging psychologically. He even posted those examples at least twice.
You need a better explanation of why culture is better when we're talking about destroying the life of one of the 2 people.
We live in a country that at least feigns to demand equality. Women should be able to do the same thing as men, they should be able to make the same, etc. There are two sides to that coin - responsibility. That's the side that so many in this thread are willing to ignore. You've just given women more rights than men by doing this.
Second - because someone is biologically disposed to something, it certainly doesn't mean that mentally, that person should act upon that disposition. A very crude example would be this: should people with debilitating, hereditary diseases be encouraged to reproduce? I'd say no. I'm not advocating stopping people, but I'm also not advocating encouragement.
Today's children (and yes, they're children) are still immature in their 20's. Were it up to me, people wouldn't be of majority until 25 years old, unless you're serving in an armed service or working full time.
Kids aren't mentally ready for the responsibility that comes from any consequence of sexual activity. I'm with Fen on this. And to be blunt (not necessarily to you, Tim), I think a lot of people in this thread are thinking with their 16 year old dicks.
JMHO
I Callahan said...You answered your first point yourself (below a certain age, etc.).
Uhh...no, I didn't. I stipulated that there is an age. I did not stipulate that it is the age Fen set.
You are quite right that we are thinking with our 16 year old dicks, and our 16 year old dicks tell us this is just fine. Yes, equality, but what kind of equality? That's doesn't answer the issue. It is not unequal to set different expectations for areas where the harm is different.
I Callahan said...
And to be blunt (not necessarily to you, Tim), I think a lot of people in this thread are thinking with their 16 year old dicks.
JMHO
4/13/15, 1:36 PM
Exactly!
As a thought experiment, if we had three teachers each caught having sex with a minor student, who of these three should be fired and who of these three should go to jail?
Case a: 28 year old male teacher and 15 15 year old female student.
Case b: 28 year old female teacher and 15 year old male student.
Case c: 28 year old female teacher and 15 year old female student.
And the right answer is.... Fired and jail (same time) for all three. All three are guilty of statutory rape and of abusing a position of power.
It isn't that hard...
It is not unequal to set different expectations for areas where the harm is different.
By today's standards, it most certainly is. If equality is the be all and end all, and in this country I believe most people to believe it is (whether they practice that or not), then yes, equal is equal. If a woman sleeps with her 16 year old student, she should get the same sentence as a man who does the same thing. If not, then you're letting women off the hook from their own responsibilities.
You keep saying stuff like this, but if you want to convince, you have to do better. Why is the young man a victim?
3rd or 4th time now:
"being the victim of sexual misconduct does damage that lasts well into adulthood, and for most it is never fully repaired (Kendell-Tackett, 1993). Child sexual abuse targets lose trust in adults and authority figures, suffer physical ailments and lowered immune systems, and do less well in school (Finkelhor & Brown, 1985). They often drop out of or avoid school. Sexually abused children are more likely than children who are not sexually abused to be substance users as adults and to have difficulty forming intimate relationships (Finkelhor, 2001). David Finkelhor (2001), the premier researcher of child sexual abuse, notes that the same sense of betrayal and shame that attaches to incest is found in sexual abuse by teachers where the pseudo parental relationship that the teacher plays has been sexualized."
http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdf
And what I'm hearing from the "get some hot teacher pussy" crowd here reminds me of a guy I knew who decided to have an affair with his hot neighbor.
Really good sex with a playboy centerfold type. 3 months of bliss. He got away with it too, wife never found out, but the damage it did to his marriage lasted a lifetime.
^^^ If you can't understand the "why" of that paragraph, then there's really no point trying to explain to you why a young male will be damaged by a tryst with his teacher. Sure, the sex is hot at 15, the regret at 25 is not.
Laslo is killing it in this thread.
That is all.
I am not Laslo.
(Which incidentally makes my point from the New Yorker thread, that there are commenters here who do a better job at satire than a paid writer at the New Yorker.)
Fen said...
"All this talk about being the envy for bedding "hot teacher" reminds me of all the nonsense about how the lap dancers were really exploiting the men, not the other way around..."
Played_By_Julia_Roberts: Sure I lap-danced for him. Sure he exploited me.
Breathless_Reporter: And what did you do about it?
Played_By_Julia_Roberts: I exploited him right back.
Don't be mad at SNL. It is the liberal NYC view of the world. That is what they think is funny.
Of course NYC liberals think pretty school teachers having sex with students is not just OK, but a boon to the male student.
Of course they freely admit there is a double standard. Be glad SNL so freely demonstrates the double standard.
Lets stipulate for a moment that a woman seducing a 16-year old boy is something we should tolerate (or at least not criminalize). If so, why should it be any different for a 16-year old girl? Does the sex of the teacher matter?
This all smells of special pleading...
Sure, 16-year-old boys fantasize about this. (As do 13-year-old boys.) That doesn't mean it couldn't screw them up psychologically. (Not that I'm sure it would, I am agnostic on that.) Also, what if the teacher got pregnant? What if the boy got herpes? A 16-year-old boy might also enthusiastically drink alcohol or smoke crystal meth with an adult woman -- not everything is OK with a 16-year-old just because he wanted to do it.
Kirk Parker said Forcible rape is a violent crime. Statutory rape is a status offense, the boundaries of which can be changed at the legislature's whim. Both can be illegal, without them being "the same".
Rape is the crime of having sex without meaningful consent. Lack of (meaningful) consent is what makes rape, well, 'rape.' This isn't hard to figure out, just as murder is murder is murder (unlawfully taking another's life) without every murder being the same.
If, when I was in high school, any of my stunning female teachers had blessed me with the gift of her body I would still be lighting candles in her honor today.
"Equal justice under the law" is but one of the many lies we tell ourselves, along with the idea that feminists want women to be treated equally with men.
Fen,
Good grief, what kind of benighted place do you live, that drugging a woman is only considered statutory rape?
And no no no to your question! I'm talking about the situation where 30 y.o. teacher (of either gender) has sex with a willing student--if the student is 17 years 364 days old, it's a crime; a day later and it's not.
Again, please note I said I wasn't at all against the concept--we do have to draw that line somewhere, it's just that there's nothing "magic" or "natural law" about that line being drawn at 18 years.
And further to my objection: surely if relations between and adult teacher and a minor student involve actual violence, force, or coercion, surely it's charged as forceable rape, isn't it?
The victims report trouble forming and maintaining healthy relationships, std infections, sometimes the minor child becomes a father and is then responsible for child support, education and career plans are ruined, years of therapy because some pathetic adult, who can't deal with her own age cohort, takes advantage of a child.
The persistent talk about what the child wanted is vacuous. The key here is whether or not we want to live in a society where government hierarchs are as bound by law as the rest of us, or whether they are nobility, with special privileges. It is the behavior of the teacher that matters, and whether it conforms with the law. Are we a nation ruled through law, or are we a nation ruled by the whims of hierarchs above us?
Remember - Rape is Funny! At least to SNL. Stupid entitled dirtbags. They validate every negative nasty stereotype about ignorant New Yorkers full of hubris.
Kirk Parker said Fen,Good grief, what kind of benighted place do you live, that drugging a woman is only considered statutory rape?
Except that's not what I said.
But my bad for assuming a NAMBLA perv like you would have anything approaching intellectual honesty.
I would like to see that entire skit redone with the genders reversed. Every line spoken by a male, spoken by a female. Lets see how people react.
If, when I was in high school, any of my stunning female teachers had blessed me with the gift of her body I would still be lighting candles in her honor today.
What complete bullshit.
You have no clue what you'd be doing. You're projecting your adult thoughts with your dick when you were 16. You neglect that your thoughts were 16 years old also.
Dude, you've watched too many movies. These are kids. They ain't ready for sex, ESPECIALLY with someone who is older and more powerful than they are. You weren't ready either.
No wonder this country is so jacked up.
Fen,
You have gone quite insane on this subject.
You might want to read the RCW's to see what kind of legal environment I live in. Hint: the severity of rape here in WA state ranges from Class A Felony (the worst) if force or kidnapping is used (among other things) all the way down to a gross misdemeanor ... and if the older perpetrator is NOT in a school or other supervisory position over the minor, and the minor is at least 16 years of age, and the perp is less than 5 years older than the victim, it doesn't look like it's a crime at all.
In other words, in terms of the severity of the crime and the penalties involved, it's anything BUT "rape is rape is rape", which is the statement (not yours) that I originally objected to.
And since I can guarantee you that these laws were not put in place by NAMBLA, I suggest you back off on your disgusting personal slurs.
Kirk: You have gone quite insane on this subject.
You're one who thinks its "cool" for a teacher to rape her students.
Not really a credible source for what is sane there.
I suggest you back off on your disgusting personal slurs.
I suggest you stop making up stuff I didn't say.
And you're the one who wanted to make this personal, you little boy-lover. Go fuck yourself instead.
Broadly though, erstwhile castrators like Althouse preach among other things that men commit crimes at , say, 10x the rate of women. No-they are imprisoned at 10x the rate of women.
Take away all their girls-will-be-girls free passes, enforce equally as they pretend to desire, don't make boy crimes and girl crimes so disparate, and see how the ratios close up.
MichaelPaulCastrillo : “The victims report trouble forming and maintaining healthy relationships, std infections, sometimes the minor child becomes a father and is then responsible for child support, education and career plans are ruined, years of therapy”
1. You have a self selecting sample there. Victims who consider themselves victims report things they didn’t like. “Victims” who don’t consider themselves victims don’t.
2. The responsibility for child support is an imposition by the government. If the government wanted to take that responsibility away, in cases where a boy was raped, it could do so. It chooses not to.
3. Education and career plan ruins, if they arise, arise from number 2.
Kirk Parker : Forcible rape is a violent crime. Statutory rape is a status offense, the boundaries of which can be changed at the legislature's whim. Both can be illegal, without them being "the same".
Gadflyjohn : “Rape is the crime of having sex without meaningful consent. Lack of (meaningful) consent is what makes rape, well, 'rape.'
And of course all the weight is carried by “meaningful.” Where consent is not in fact given, you have an unambiguous case of lack of consent, by, er, definition. With statutory rape, you have a deemed lack of consent. It is perfectly possible that a particular 25 year old is too immature and ignorant to realize the implications of intercourse, and perfectly possible that a particular15 year old is not too immature and ignorant. Clearly it depends on the individual’s intelligence, education and personality; and equally clearly since most of us become less immature and less ignorant as time goes by, the older we are the more likely we are to know what’s going on.
But Kirk Parker’s perfectly reasonable point is that the borders of statutory rape are set by legislative whim, they do not coincide with the borders of “meaningful” consent – ie sufficient maturity to make up your own mind. How could they – since they treat all people of the same age as equally mature ? The age of consent differs between states, and between countries. Some places it’s 18 some places it’s 16, some places it’s 14. And some places there’s a “close in age” exception – hard to square that with the idea of an age at which you’re old enough to make up your own mind.
Statutory rape is a statistical offence – ie there’s a probability but not a certainty that there was no meaningful consent. IMHO there ought to be a defense that this particular boy or girl was sufficiently mature to know what they were getting into. (Measured by the standards of ordinary adults – not theoretical perfectly knowledgeable and rational adults with no sex hormones.)
"And some places there’s a “close in age” exception – hard to square that with the idea of an age at which you’re old enough to make up your own mind."
WA definitely has this for the non-position-of-authority cases (i.e. a 21-year-old teacher can't argue this as a defense for having sex with her 17 364/365 year old student.) Now I don't know the actual legislative history here, but I'm guessing it's all about not having something legal though (from society's point of view) regrettable--two unmarried 17-year-olds having sex--suddenly become a felony because one of them got a day older.
Well, I'm not so sure about the wisdom of that last suggestion, Lee. Just because I recognize that the line drawn for statutory rape is arbitrary, doesn't mean that I want to see that like jerked around every legislative session or two. :-( As long as the arbitrary line we draw is reasonable and defensible, I'd far rather see it stay in the same place for the sake of stability of the law.
What people don't seem to realize is that what has changed in society is the idea that a 30 year old man having sex with a 14 year old girl is rape. Throughout all of recorded human history as soon as a girl hit puberty she was marrying, having sex and babies.
What has changed is that while women still tend to lose their virginity at 13 / 14, they are protected to the point where all sex is treated as a man raping a woman. If that's the case, politically, men have to start crying rape every chance they get just to protect themselves.
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