Insty has been running a new “intro tag” – “TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE” – often linking to news stories of school teachers who are arrested for having sex with students. Also mentioned on some of those posts: “Remember, one reason there are so few male teachers is that people are afraid they’ll be sexual predators.”
Now, it seems to me that there is a problem here, in that a male teacher who had sex with a 15 or 16-year-old student would be automatically assumed of using his position of authority and disparity of power to unduly influence his target, male or female. (And let’s face facts: 15 and 16 year olds are not children, they are young adults, biologically speaking, and the only reason they are not young adults mentally and emotionally is because our culture is guilty of deliberately delaying their development until their early twenties, which is absolutely and utterly ridiculous.)
Somehow this doesn’t seem to be an issue with a lot of people responding to the same situation between a female teacher and a male student, though I do see a bit of the same dynamic (power imbalance, misuse of authority) when a female teacher seduces a female student. It’s almost as if male students can’t be victims – as if there is no inherent power imbalance between a female teacher and a male student. Hmm, I wonder why many people in our culture think like that? *coughfeminismcough*
Of course, when it’s a female student, the fact that she willingly – and likely, eagerly – had sex with her male teacher doesn’t excuse the fact that the teacher is not allowed to fraternize with his students. Society will tolerate such pairings only if the teacher and student in question wait until after graduation to officially begin a relationship – and even then, there will be deep suspicion of wrongdoing on the part of the teacher. Yet when a female teacher seduces a male student (possibly more than one, by the time allegations come to light) there are a large number of people who assume that male fifteen and sixteen-year-olds are perfectly capable of assuming total responsibility for the (heterosexual) relationship and its potential consequences. Including ending up with court-ordered child support payments to the teacher, if she uses him to get herself pregnant.
It doesn’t come up much (because there are so few male teachers) but I suspect people would react very differently if a male teacher were found to have seduced a male student. The same script – abuse of authority – would run for a male student as well as a female student. But if a heterosexual 15-year-old is old enough to be expected to take responsibility for his part in a relationship with a female teacher (including child support!), then there’s not much reason to flip the script and make him a victim in a homosexual relationship – unless society’s script for such situations is that the male teacher is always a predator.
Notice that the script simply does not allow any other role for the male in authority except “predator” – and that the script also does not allow the female to take on the role of “predator” even under the exact same circumstances. The social narrative implies that she did nothing truly wrong in seducing male students even if she’s brought up on charges.
Well, why not simply equalize things by relaxing society’s taboo against male teacher/female student relationships? Because there are very good reasons to think that the kind of man who will seduce a young teenager does not do so out of pure romantic intentions. You might as well put out a sign and say “abusers’ victim buffet here” at every public school! But the truth is that there are just as many women who are abusers, and there is no social safeguard for male targets of abuse, because society regards women who exhibit abusive behavior as “empowered”.
“She hit you? What did you do to her? You must have done something.” “She’s a woman, she can’t really hurt you.” “If you get into a fight with her, it’s your fault.” All kinds of victim-blaming go on when it’s a male on the receiving end. If men are socialized into thinking that they can’t be victims even when their girlfriends are literally smacking them around and screaming in their faces, how are teenage boys going to be able to defend themselves from a “hot teacher”? Answer: they aren’t.
A woman who seduces a student is a predator. Period. If she weren’t a predator, she could have waited two years before “hooking up” with a student and just gone trolling for one night stands in the meantime, if celibacy was so intolerable to her.
Something Fishy 
Further, until recently, it was a truism that during their teenage years, girls were a year or two more “mature” than boys. So if there were a cultural disparity on the two gender pairings of student/teacher, shouldn’t the female teacher/male student be MORE condemned than the other way around?
That would be logical. However, in the case of female teacher/male student, obviously the victim was asking for it, on account of his being male. Logic doesn’t enter into it. At all.
The only constant difference is that females get pregnant and males do not.
Everything else is a legal, physical, and psychological variable of instances.
Unfortunately judges are not allowed to rule in terms of ‘no harm, no foul’.
No, the thing about the law is that it has to apply equally to everyone, or it’s no longer legitimate. Judges are human as well, and faced with the same temptations common to any person given a great deal of power. If you think giving judges wide discretionary power is a good thing, just look up what heinous abuses the wide discretionary power of prosecutors has lead to.
Of course, if members of legal profession were hanged by the neck until dead as a penalty for abuse of office, granting them discretionary power might work – in a monolithic culture where everyone agreed on all significant moral decisions and upon the line between offences punishable by legal power vs social opprobrium.
And when females get pregnant when THEY rape it remains their body and their choice. When little boys end up being forced to pay child support to adult women we have a bit of a problem.
“I suspect people would react very differently if a male teacher were found to have seduced a male student.” – I’m not sure I agree, since this is so close to another sacred cow of popular leftist culture, “gay rights.” While most will quickly recognize the evil of a Sandusky showering with barely or pre-pubescent boys, criticizing a “consensual” relationship between an adult and a 15 or 16 year-old same-sex young adult runs the risk of looking homophobic.
The homosexual activists are already working on this, but they’re approaching it from the more tactically sound side of supporting cute lesbian predators who go after younger girls in school first. (See: Free Kate)
There is pretty clearly a double standard here. The absolute worst double standarrd though is when teenage boys are statutorially raped by and older female, and the female gets pregnant, and the teen boy is then forced to pay child support to their rapist. How in the world the feminists can justify forcing a male rape victim to pay child support to his rapist, is totally beyond me.
Feminism is the bastard hate-child of Marxism, that’s how. Men are always oppressors, and women always victims, no matter what reality would lead a sensible, sane person to conclude. They pretend that the money is for the benefit of the child, and ignore the possibility that being raised by a statutory rapist (who, at best, is sexually manipulative and willing to abuse a position of authority) is not conducive to the benefit of a child no matter how much money in “child support” she receives.