MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
I'm sorry, this is just beyond absurd. As a former 16 year old high schooler, I am able, even at some distance, to discern the difference between victimization and the best thing that ever happened to a guy...
Comments
BTW, reverse the genders? it's still not the end of the world (here in the 21st century...)
by jollyroger on Wed, 06/04/2014 - 2:34pm
It is rather overwrought - basically, every 16-year-old male's wet dream.
"raunchy selfies of her breasts" - this is 2014? aside from mutilation, how can breasts be "raunchy"? other parts of the body perhaps.
"endangering the welfare of a child" - what kind of law is that? yeah, leaving a 6-year-old alone in a hot car in summer.
"This defendant violated the teacher-student trust" - presumably she fulfilled every part of his fervid imagination at the same time.
by AnonymousPP (not verified) on Wed, 06/04/2014 - 4:57pm
Okay, the Post helpfully clues us in on what raunchy breasts might be. Oh wait, it's fashion. Or a protest. Never mind. BTW, this picture is helpfully pixelated to save our tender sensibilities from overexposure.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 06/04/2014 - 5:09pm
Trust PP to bring the visual aids...
by jollyroger on Wed, 06/04/2014 - 11:25pm
Sorry, I just found the pixels more pornographic than the body parts - thought others might share in the humor of what our digital world has come to. (Think Adam & Eve & blocky fig leaves)
I blame it on Sarah Silverman.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 06/05/2014 - 1:43am
Blame? What blame? Stab me and sink me, did you construe my comment as censorious? Pshaw!
Do we not yet treasure, even to this very day, the memory of the Israeli soldiers in their abbreviated uniforms?
by jollyroger on Thu, 06/05/2014 - 5:36pm
Given that you now know they could have been more abbreviated? Hard to say... But somehow it doesn't look anything like Gomer Pyle.
In any case, you *did* watch the Sarah Silverman clip I hope.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 06/05/2014 - 6:34pm
I wasn't going to get into this but this nonsense kept irking me. There are some men, psychologically mature free agents able to make choices, who project their mature adult minds into the circumstances of boys to vicariously live out a fantasy. Funny but I never see these same men say the same about the experience of boys and catholic priests. They never claim that was the best thing that ever happened to a guy. How is it that boys lose that free agent status when the relationship is homosexual.
The first question that needs to be considered is whether boys can be victims of statutory rape and at what age. Is a boy a free agent at 14? 12? 10? 6? 4? Is a 5 year old boy having sex with his beautiful kindergarten teacher the luckiest boy in school? While we may argue about what age a boy becomes a free agent able to make a mature adult decision clearly at some point he is a child and a victim of statutory rape.
Imo a 16 year old boy in a sexual relationship with his adult teacher is not a psychologically mature free agent capable of making an adult decision. I wonder what effect this rather unique relationship will have on his psychological development. How will it effect the maturation that comes from age appropriate social and sexual relationships. Even more detrimental to a child's emotional development if the boy is 15 or 13 or 11.
But let us assume he is a mature adult at 16 for the sake of argument. Even if we were to legally define statutory rape with 16 as the cut off age sex between a student and a teacher would be controversial. Even if there were no criminal charges for the teacher if the relationship was revealed it would roil the school and the community and have significant effects on all students particularly on the student involved. For this "relationship" to work one much assume that the student live a secondary secret life. Very few adults are able to successfully maintain a secret life I doubt that any child could live one.
Is a boy capable of dealing with the psychological ramifications of leading a second secret life? Hiding in supply closets for quick blow jobs and fucks. Hiding all information about his secret fucks from every other person in his life. Is a boy capable of dealing with the ramifications when that secret life is uncovered?
Having sexual relationships with a coworker at work is not a crime. Yet if I had a career I'd think twice about having sex with a coworker in the supply closet. I think refusing a quick fuck in the copy room at work is probably the wisest adult decision. Would a boy have the maturity to weigh the long term ramifications of the quick fuck? Is he truly a psychologically mature free agent?
Yet these teachers seem as incapable of making an adult decision as the children. Knowing that getting caught will result in the loss of their career, public shaming, and likely criminal charges they still seduce these boys. (and girls) It seems clear to me that these teachers have some severe psycho-sexual dysfunction to risk so much for what can only be a short term casual sexual relationship. Is it really a mature adult decision to get involved in a sexual relationship at 16 with someone who has clear mental health issues? What kind of psychological damage would be done to a child in dealing with their teachers mental illness?
I suppose it could all work out, at least for the boy, if his goal was to take advantage for a few quick fucks and when the shit hit the fan discard her and walk away. How many boys are capable of that? Is teaching that sort of callousness the right education to give boys?
You're just projecting your fantasies onto these situations without considering the real psychological damage it creates in real world situations.
by ocean-kat on Sat, 06/07/2014 - 7:10pm
You're making some very good points.
by Peter Schwartz on Sat, 06/07/2014 - 8:51pm
I agree that you make some good points but some of them, along with other comments, make me want to weigh in with a few thoughts of my own.
I start from a premise that we are an evolved species as opposed to a created one in which the creator designed our conscience. That evolution has, though, given us a 'nature', one we call 'human nature'. Humans that liked sex more than others had sex more than others and passed on that characteristic more often to more offspring. There has to be a feedback loop for natural selection to have an effect. The affect in this case is that we almost all like sex quite a bit. The few who don't are variations which happen and which are necessary for natural selection to have something different from which to choose which might be more adaptive, and by being more adapted produce more offspring which are likely to have the same characteristics.
I do not believe that evolution somehow developed us to the point that in the normal coarse of events a physically mature male cannot have consensual sex with a physically mature female without either one or both having their psyche damaged. I would expect that something in the opposite direction would be more logical to expect and it would also fit my own life experience. It seems to me that any damage done by the act of having sex that is desired by both people involved is a result of violating arbitrary societal rules. The damage might be in the form of punishment or it might be because those societal rules were internalized and breaking the rules causes an internal psychic conflict and/or a negative reaction by others which might be internalized also as being a legitimate censure. If we were raised in a society that taught that only perverts had sex before the age of thirty there would be many lying perverts roaming the streets.
In the topical case we are discussing I think it is possible/likely that the harshest affect on the young man, assuming he continues in his maturization to become an empathetic and reasonably well rounded person, would be a feeling of guilt at being party to the societal damage done to the teacher by having the situation revealed.
I do, like most men, think that a young girl is more likely hurt by out of bounds sex, but that is probably, when true, just because culture puts stricter rules on females and harsher penalties on them when they violate the rules.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sun, 06/08/2014 - 12:54am
Yeah, you know, I think sex is great. I like it a lot and I've been lucky enough to have done it a lot. I've had my share of one night stands, simi pernament sexual relationships, marriage, and living together arrangements. So really, spare me the sex is good because, evolution, talk. Its bullshit.
I do not believe that evolution somehow developed us to the point that in the normal coarse of events a physically mature male cannot have consensual sex with a physically mature female without either one or both having their psyche damaged.
That's the fantasy you want to cling to. Its just about physical maturity, age doesn't matter, emotional maturity and stability doesn't matter, psychological maturity doesn't matter and most important society doesn't matter. If the physically mature organs meld as evolution intended its all good. In the fantasy this at least attractive older women who is mentally stable gifts the 16 year old virgin with cost and commitment free sexual experiences.
I don't believe for a second that's how it works. Here's what we know. A 38 year old married women with children initiated a sexual relationship with a 16 year old virgin by taking him into a closet, popping out her tit, giving him a blow job and letting him fuck her. After this happened about 20 times, she flipped out with jealousy when he took a classmate to the prom even though she was fucking at least one other student at the school. That's when the affair ended and (in a strange coincidence?) a few weeks later word got out about the affair and she was arrested.
Does that sound like cost and commitment free sex with a mentally mature, emotional stabile older women? Here's a clue. Married women with children who are mentally stable don't decide to have sex with 16 year old virgins at school. Its the ones that are mentally unstable who make that choice and its not cost free for anyone involved. As we happen to live in a society two physically mature organs melding doesn't remove the two psychologically immature minds from the effects of society's reaction. I will concede the probability that society's views on sexuality need to change and we might discuss how. But I don't think the way to begin that change is to endorse or encourage mentally unstable 38 year old married school teachers to have sex with 16 year old or less adolescent male virgins.
By the way, a majority of teens leave high school as virgins That number has been increasing. In 2011 only 43% of high school students had intercourse. 70% of girls and 60% of boys who had intercourse had it with someone they were in a lengthy relationship with.
I had intercourse when I was 17. It was a long progression. We dated. We kissed. We french kissed. We necked for hours. We caressed each others bodies. We masturbated each other. We each gave and received oral sex. Eventually we had intercourse. There was a lot of learning and psychological and emotional growth in that process. That psychological and emotional development would have been stunted if some teacher had taken me at 16 into a supply closet, popped out her tit, gave me a blow job, and then let me fuck her. I'm not saying that growth is irretrievable or that their life is ruined. But there is enough research to convince me that statutory rape is psychologically damaging, even for teen boys.
PP posted, "Adults frequently enter into affairs knowing they could end their careers- sex is often a no-think or high-risk-accepted zone."
Yes they do, but that's not what we're talking about here. This isn't about a couple exploring an emotional and sexual relationship that may create some difficulties if discovered by other office personnel. Its not even about a couple in a relationship engaging in the thrill of sex in risky and unusual places. Its not even about a drunken escapade at some office party Let's create a more realistically similar scenario in the work place.
A 22 year old college grad gets his first job with a computer company. There is a fleeting acquaintance, a 47 year old married women with children, who he has met in passing now and then in the office. She requests his help in the supply room to move some heavy boxes. When the door closes she pops out her tit and drops to her knees to give him a blow job.
Now I realize that some men would be all, boo yah free pussy, let me at it. But that situation would strike me as.... let's say... unusual. I'd question whether I wanted to be involved in a relationship with this women. I wonder about her mental stability and whether I could even get a quick blow job and walk away satisfied without further repercussions. I think I'd try to refuse as gently as possible and hope I could get away with it and away from her.
What would you do?
What do you think is the adult response our hypothetically psychologically mature 16 year old virgin should make?
by ocean-kat on Sun, 06/08/2014 - 5:24am
Oceankat, I did not comment looking for a fight and I am not doing so now. That said, I wish you would reconsider what I did, in fact, say and not attack things I did not say.
My comment was not to the specifics of the topic case but rather to how and when and why sex might be psychically damaging only because of external variables. I described what I see as a general truth about human nature and how the hard wired parts got to be the way they are. I said that we are hard wired to enjoy sex. I said that sex between two physically mature people who desire each other does not have a psychic penalty hard wired into our DNA. If you choose to call that bullshit I think you should give some supporting argument. If there is damage done to a person's psyche in such a case it is from one of several external causes. One cause is the dissonance caused by breaking a cultural rule that has been internalized. Even if not internalized it is still a rule and there are prices to be paid for breaking rules. Another would be the result of societies 'punishment' if their chosen act was discovered.
I believe it is accepted wisdom nowadays that suicide among homosexual teenagers will be reduced if they can accept the way they are and be accepted in society, see their sexuality as being healthy and non-perverse, and that they can live openly in a society which is non-judgmental, or at least tolerant. In such a case they can follow and enjoy their sexual nature and not be guilt ridden and/or self-hating as some are because of what they have been taught. Even in a case where they are comfortable with their own nature they could still be damaged if surrounded by a culture that considers them repulsive perverts.
I did not say, as you suggest, that any and all sex is 'good' just because we have evolved to enjoy sex. I did say that a lot of sex that is otherwise okay causes problems because of societal sanctions, some of which had formative affects on the participants starting at birth. Believing as I do is not, as you say, a fantasy of anything-goes sex that I wish to cling to.
You go on to describe your own sexual history in which your first intercourse was at the age of seventeen and apparently, by your account, both you and your girlfriend handled everything in an admirable and responsible way. Good for the both of you, but did your young girlfriend go home and tell mom the high points of her great date? If not, why not? Might she have worried that she would meet some disapproval? Did she, like most girls/women of those days who became sexually active at a young age hide her sex life from her parents? If asked directly did she or would she have lied? Did she tell her preacher and Sunday school class? And, if your well developed sexual partnership had become known to her high school class and she had been slut shamed would she have paid a psychic price for something you participated in and you both saw as completely okay but probably chose to keep private so that it could go on without interference? Were you one of the very few seventeen year olds of that day who rigorously practiced birth control? What if your very same story had been played out in a different culture? As an extreme example, what if you had been brought up in a fundamentalist Muslim culture for instance? Would your story of wise and wonderful sexual choices have been possible in such a case without a great chance of strong feelings of guilt/shame especially by the girl, and real danger of severe punishment, such fear itself being a psychic price for what was good and decent in the micro culture of you and your girlfriend in the back seat of your car or wherever your surprisingly mature sexual decisions played out?
A way to describe the intent of my comment is to say that in the mix of nature/nurture in forming and controlling situations, nurture can guide our actions in ways both good and bad or rather in ways which make the same act either harmless and joyful or harmful a guilt inducing. Culture's rules can sometimes screw up an otherwise good thing and individuals certainly add their own mistakes. Of course that is not the totality of how and why many things can fall anywhere along a spectrum of good to bad depending on circumstances.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sun, 06/08/2014 - 1:24pm
Of course DNA didn't hardwire sex to be psychologically damaging. But I don't think that's saying anything relevant to school teachers having sex with adolescent males. DNA doesn't care about anything but its own propagation. Read some anthropology and look at all the bizarre sexual rituals from insane cultures,, often warrior cultures, where every man, women, and child is psychologically traumatized. DNA doesn't care about the psyche.
Look at our own culture 100 years ago. A majority of women never had an orgasm. There's plenty of research that concludes that was psychologically damaging. Think of all the hard work the feminism movement had to do to get to the point where women could say, "WTF dude, don't you realize that slamming away for 10 minutes isn't doing it for me? Ya think you could at least touch my clitoris once or twice before you squirt, roll over and go to sleep?" Evolution might have made it possible for women to have pleasurable sex, but it doesn't care if women actually have pleasurable sex.
I agree, evolution did not hard wire sex to damage the psyche. But what exactly is your point? Evolution doesn't care the slightest bit whether sex is psychologically damaging. All it cares about is that babies are born and survive to make more babies.
No my girlfriend didn't tell her mother no doubt because of society's disapproval. Again, I'll concede that our society is sexually misguided and should change. I suppose there's some slim possibility you could make a convincing case that it should be socially acceptable for 38 year old crazy married women with kids to fuck adolescent males, or sane 38 year old married women to fuck boys, or sane 38 year old single women to fuck boys.
Its possible that our, and every, society is crazy. Its possible that the only reason statutory rape is psychologically damaging is due to society's insanity. I don't believe that's true but if it was I don't see how it matters in this discussion. Until we change society those adolescent male virgins are not the luckiest boys in school. They are in most cases being emotionally and psychologically damaged. I disagree with the original post.
PS No I was not one of those boys that rigorously practiced birth control Neither was my girlfriend. I was in fact one of the luckiest boys in school because she never got pregnant. You see, I was not a psychologically mature adult capable of making adult decisions. I was an immature boy sometimes making bad decisions that luckily didn't ruin my life. And so are those boys seduced by their teachers. That's why I support statutory rape laws. To protect children, both male and female.
by ocean-kat on Sun, 06/08/2014 - 2:57pm
"But that situation would strike me as.... let's say... unusual. I'd question whether I wanted to be involved in a relationship with this women." The way you describe it, it's a woman he he hardly knows - which makes it more unusual than being in class together for a while. But it's still unusual then. But not that unusual. One company I worked for, a couple of female HR management types would fly off to different countries for the weekend for a bit of hard core anonymous banging; a friend was getting into it heavy with an American woman in bar in an Asian port when he discovered she's married - "how come you didn't bring him with you?" "because I like to fuck" was the answer. Somewhat curiously, that stopped him - curious, because he was in roughly the same situation except he happened to be there because of business. There are a lot of types of people in the world.
Whether I personally would do this or that now, I'm sure at 16 I would have gladly imbibed, as I'd already done with a girl I'd met 1 time. That it didn't involve a "relationship" would have been mostly irrelevant. Maybe it would have still felt a bit creepy and strange - well, I did once have a qualuud junkie throw herself at me, and that one I rather quickly backed out of - as soon as I literally could pry her arms off me. Not fun. Other than that, I knew all the words to Frank Zappa and read Happy Hooker and Diary of a Hit Man and Erica Jong's Fear of Flying (in which she popularized the "Zipless Fuck") and other various other guides to good clean teen living, so somehow, I don't expect I'd have been traumatized.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 5:35am
There are obvious distinctions - who's doing the penetrating, that we were looking at those girlie mags thinking that's what we wanted, etc. Was it consensual or predatory (tricked or forced)? [nothing in the report says the kid had a problem with it or reported it] Yes, an involvement with a teacher at 15 or 16 could be emotionally challenging, just like years of the feeling of not being wanted, or confused relationships any other time of life. I remember one teacher who was friendly and was a bit flirtatious with us at 11 or 12 and gave us a glimpse into adult passion, and while I don't think she had any real inclination to screw a minor, rolled forward 4 or 5 years later, it would have been a plus in any of our lives, temporary as it likely would be.
While I'm not always hip to JR's outlook, there is quite a bit of closet or toilet stall banging that goes on in this world - usual consensual, sometimes quite a lot of fun with its secrecy/breaking-the-rules excitement. Some seem better at this or more inclined towards it - it's a career choice, not really something I condemn or applaud, though in a busy world, I can see advantages to getting in your quick fucks where you can.
Adults frequently enter into affairs knowing they could end their careers - sex is often a no-think or high-risk-accepted zone. Yeah, maybe the teacher involved is a bit bonkers - but probably less than women who stay in abusive relationships and other common societal problems we have.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 06/08/2014 - 1:07am
Yeah, maybe the teacher involved is a bit bonkers - but probably less than women who stay in abusive relationships and other common societal problems we have.
You make this type of argument a lot on all sorts of subjects in all sorts of threads. In fact its your most common argument. The implication is that if you can find a worse problem the problem being discussed is trivial. That argument rests on the premise that if two bad things can be found the lessor bad thing doesn't matter. I don't accept that premise. I believe its flawed. In most cases both problems are meaningful and both need to be addressed. Therefore this type of argument never moves me at all.
by ocean-kat on Sun, 06/08/2014 - 4:08am
I see your point, and you're right.
However, it CAN be a valid argument in a number of situations.
Sometimes, it goes to fairness. Other times, it goes to consistency. At still other times, it goes to the logical implications of a policy.
So, it might be unfair to punish X if we're letting YZ, much worse offenders, go free. It might vitiate our principles if we fail to apply them equally to XYZ. And logic might impel us to overthrow dictators A-Z if we say that we're overthrowing dictator A because he's killed a lot of people.
But it's a pro forma argument and gets you into trouble if you aren't looking at the details of each case. So, in this case, it's not just a teacher who's "bonkers"; it's a teacher whose bonker-osity leads her to screw up a kid in her charge in the context of an important social relationship. There's a vastly unequal power arrangement that changes everything, IMO, and it contravenes one our bedrock principles and social expectations: We expect and believe teachers will handle our kids with care.
Women who stay with abusive partners are adults as are their partners. It's a big problem, but a different category of problem, so you can't put them up against each other and draw a meaningful comparison or conclusion.
by Anonymous PS (not verified) on Sun, 06/08/2014 - 9:51am
This woman's going to jail for something that I don't see any evidence the kid really suffered from, or likely enjoyed quite a bit, as JR noted. Twenty 3rd degree rape charges weren't enough - they had to top it with "endangering the welfare of the child" - sorry, my relativism says that we don't prosecute a lot of "endangering the welfare of the child" instances, but if it's a juicy sex scandal that makes front-page tabloid, we're all over it. Women aren't safe to walk across parks and streets all across America, we have an atrocious violent rape record, the number of adolescent girls who get raped - as in involuntarily - as their first sexual experience is rather huge. You kinda have a point if I think this affair was very harmful and trivialize it with "could be worse" - but I was off to college at his age, so it fits in with "unusual, but could be fun". You're freaked out by sex in closets - that's your problem.
Yes, the teacher should probably lose her job over "violating that trust", but don't we have any better way of dealing with this shit than 21 criminal charges?
And the weird presumption that it's only adult minds that dream up adolescent fantasies about teacher? Google it - there are dozens of songs about it - it's standard fare.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 12:47am
There's no weird presumption. My post was long enough, I only addressed JR's statement. He happens to be an adult male. I thought Trope dealt with some of the issues I didn't address quite well and I pretty much agree with his comment.
I hate the modern trend of heaping dozens of charges. The purpose in loading up charges is to force a plea bargain. It feels like a form of blackmail to me. It doesn't feel like justice. I also think that our justice system focuses too much on punishment and jail time rather than rehabilitation. But those are separate issues that I don't have time to discuss. When the trial or plea bargain reaches a conclusion we may agree the punishment was too harsh. But that's irrelevant to my post. It says nothing about whether statutory rape of boys should be a crime.
by ocean-kat on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 2:18am
"There are some men, psychologically mature free agents able to make choices, who project their mature adult minds into the circumstances of boys to vicariously live out a fantasy."
"... I only addressed JR's statement."
I think these contradict each other - my "weird presumption" statement referred to the former.
Re: heaping dozens of charges, I accept your disliking it, but part of my reality-prone nature is linking the practical ways society will treat it with how it's accepted. I might marginally accept marijuana being illegal if the "treatment" was something like driving school (I don't smoke, so it doesn't affect me personally) - but that in practice the penalties ruin people's lives much more consistently than any actual effect of the drug makes me hate these laws viscerally - especially with heaping on, as well as anonymous gathering of evidence without disclosing it, etc. - I especially like living outside the US because in America, every time I step into a car as a passenger or driver, I give away most of my basic rights - I can be searched, have background checks, etc., even without a traffic violation, mostly because of what abuses the "war on drugs" started as some kind of critical societal need.
I'm not so concerned about keeping kids from making bad decisions - that's just part of the turf. I'm concerned about 1) making sure those decisions don't result in draconian irreversible results - teenage pregnancy without access to abortion, for example, and 2) heavily emotion destroying and exploitive behavior, including violent attacks, heavy coercion of the defenseless into having sex, etc.
In the current case, I don't have any evidence that really happened. Yeah, they ostensibly met alone to help him lose weight, but I don't see evidence that she threatened him or ruined his life in some way.
That the US is continually freaked out about sex, with rising disinformation about basic stupidities like rape not causing pregnancy or AIDS affecting US heteros as much as gays as well as increased religious conservativism, I'm not surprised people are staying virgins longer. In Europe, it's the opposite - the age of consent in Germany is 14, and 1/3 of German 15-year-old girls have had sex. (only 1/5 of boys - note, girls seem to like older boys)
In the UK they report women losing their virginity 3 years earlier (16) than was the standard in the 60's, and the avg number of lifetime partners has doubled to 8.
The article also notes people having sex less than they used to - perhaps because we're wasting our time on the internet discussing teen sex than out getting fucked ourselves.
This other ariticle from 2007 notes girls starting puberty 2 years earlier - at 12 - than their grandmothers. Of course physical ability doesn't equal emotional, intellectual or financial preparedness, but the data point's interesting in light of how laws are written and societal changes.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 6:09am
If we say that statutory rape of boys is not a crime, we implicitly put them a position in which they have to look after their own vulnerabilities.
Society won't help them, so they only have themselves to to fall back upon.
This sows the seeds of deep-seated and unacknowledged vulnerability and resentment against others that can later express itself as violence of various sorts against others.
Since society wasn't there to protect them when they needed it, they can come to view society's rules as unfair, ineffectual, and not worth abiding by.
No one said boo when I was raped, why should I say boo about raping you?
Personal strength was the only thing they had, so personal strength becomes the ultimate arbiter and weakness is disdained because it roots back to a time when they were vulnerable and there was nothing they could do--and nothing anyone else would do--about it.
by Peter Schwartz on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 11:08am
As Monty Python & the Holy Grail noted, "please, can't I face a little danger?"
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 4:50pm
All you want.
Feel free to have your children face all the danger they can, too.
The libertarian-style plaint that we're squeezing all the danger out of life has always struck me as odd. Anyone looking for danger doesn't have far to look or go.
The oddest thing is that this whine is almost always accompanied by the complaint that, if they look for danger, they might get jailed.
Well, hells bells, that's part of the danger, man. Risking imprisonment just ups the danger ante. I mean, if you can kill someone and not risk imprisonment or even death, then you aren't really living dangerously, are you?
You just want your fun without the consequences. But if there are no consequences, there is no danger, almost by definition. Call it Dangerous Living For Pussies.
by Peter Schwartz on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 6:51pm
The humorlessness around here is astounding. Monty Python, for fuck's sake - Galahad at the castle Anthrax, not Rand Paul. Please assume the quote below starts at age 17 or 18 so you're not offended.
ZOOT (she moves off and GALAHAD unwillingly follows): I'm afraid our life must seem very dull and quiet compared to yours. We are but eightscore young blondes, all between sixteen and nineteen-and-a-half, cut off in this castle, with no one to protect us. Oooh. It is a lonely life ... bathing ... dressing ... undressing ... making exciting underwear....
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 3:19am
I'm not in the least offended.
Also, I love MP.
However, I thought we were talking about real people doing real things and facing real consequences, not actors making jokes on celluloid.
If you want to trade MP bits, I'm game.
by Peter Schwartz on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 9:19pm
I think the key point, though, is that the kid was...a kid and didn't have a full amount of free will...the capacity to consent.
The teacher was an adult and also someone in authority whom the kid is asked to trust and even depend on in a way.
I had a number of teachers who were wet dreams, and that's the life of the boy (or many boys), but it doesn't mean we were ready for sex with an adult.
If you turn it around and imagine a male teacher with a female student, our attitude changes pretty quickly (I think). Is it just because the girl could get pregnant or because she undergoes a physical change when she loses her virginity? Or...
If you look at priests (or other types of clerics) molesting boys, our attitude really changes (as OK points out), and we've had copious testimony about the lasting damage they suffered into adulthood from the guys who were molested.
Just a question: In most of these stories, the boy is pictured as unwilling prey. But I suppose, for some boys, it was a bit exciting for various reasons. This is a subset of the molested we don't hear from, as far as I know. But it would be interesting to know if these boys suffered lasting damage from these encounters.
by Anonymous PS (not verified) on Sun, 06/08/2014 - 9:40am
Or does the taboo against homosexuality change everything with priests and boys?
by Anonymous PS (not verified) on Sun, 06/08/2014 - 9:52am
Age still has a lot to do with it - 10 is not 16.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 12:45am
Are you suggesting that had the molested boys been 16, everything would've been okey-dokey? A 16 year old is still a minor, yes?
There's the overriding power relationship between a student and a teacher, the latter having power over the former and the former not having much power over the latter.
Two students doing it may be a problem if they aren't taking care, but at least there aren't structural power imbalances between the two.
Even in the adult world, folks tend to frown on bosses fucking subordinates because the subordinate has less power to decline and consent is suspect.
You bring up interesting points about the different ages of consent in different countries, which dovetails a bit with the discussion about "societies being insane." In the case of sex, I tend to think that if society accepts it, then the child is somewhat sheltered from harm.
OTOH, we're all too aware of accepted sexual practices in other countries that DO do a great deal of harm, even though they've been practiced for ever.
Looking to the article to see if the kid was permanently harmed is silly. Harm like this isn't like getting a felony record for selling an ounce of pot. It is psychological harm and isn't likely to show up for years and in ways that can be hard even for the victims to recognize, as we see from the molestation scandals.
by Peter Schwartz on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 10:34am
Are you suggesting a 16-year-old is no more equipped for sex than an 11-year-old? Have you lost your mind? Half of 16-year-olds in Europe have lost their virginity. Get over it.
We make laws for minors to protect them from exploitation and emotional abuse - that doesn't by any means mean that every encounter is exploitation and abuse. It's a fuzzy vague line - often it's more distinct the larger the age gap - that's why there are laws like a 17-year-old can sleep with a 15-year-old, but a 25-year-old can't. But still, are we really looking at the actual negatives?
There was once the teacher who slept with a boy, and then when she got out of jail, they got back together. How romantic.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 4:58pm
The age gap here was pretty large.
Wasn't she 35, a gap ten years greater than the one you mention here?
Everything to do with a human being--except that he'll eventually die--is a probability and not a certainty. What is your point?
Just as there's some chance nothing bad will come of it, there's some chance something bad will come of it. A teacher isn't supposed to be in the business of playing the odds with a kid's life. Presumably, she has a lot of adult options if she's looking for some strange.
But if we make laws based on probabilities (in effect) and someone breaks the law, she breaks the law. Yes?
Perhaps if she had warmly initiated him into the ways of sexual love and then gently let him swim away when a lass his own age caught his eye, I might have more sympathy. Heck, it wasn't even clear that he was dumping her; he just wanted someone to go to the prom with, but she was so unstable, so un-adult, she couldn't even handle that.
One lesson she may already have taught the kid is that sex is dangerous. You're having fun one day, and all of a sudden your partner flips out; she's getting frog marched out of the house; you've broken up a marriage; the family is pissed off at both of you; her husband is looking for you with a tire iron; your name is in the headlines; and worst of all, every kid in the school knows.
To be sure, sex CAN turn out this way, but I'm not sure that it's responsible for a teacher--who's supposed to be playing a certain adult guide role in the kid's life--to teach one of her charges this lesson at this point in his life. It's possible things will turn out fine for him, but I don't know that it's her place to play games with his life to satisfy her own libido and (perhaps) ego needs.
If your real beef is with the punishment, then argue that. She probably shouldn't be sent to the electric chair: On that, you and I agree.
by Peter Schwartz on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 6:24pm
"If your real beef is with the punishment, then argue that." - I argued that, but my real beef is with "liberals" who aren't very liberal, who are just as conservative in certain ways as my GOP-combobulated father, who think just because we put tight constructs around complex issues that those constructs are holy and eternal; who think for some reason our society isn't continually evolving and devolving, even though the pace of it has quite accelerated over the last 50 years. You'd think a few liberals would recognize how much the heavy fundamentalist Christian basis of the US distorts the outlook and laws and pre-conceptions of what's "right" and what's "wrong", with little nuance. Oh, and without humor as well. It was better with Quinn and Dijamo around - at least I had someone to joke with.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 3:25am
Sorry, I didn't see this...
At this hour, I can't disentangle your non-liberal liberal complaint.
Not too long ago, you were arguing that non-liberal liberals ought to respect the very conservative, traditional feelings many people have toward gay marriage.
"Give him a break. He thinks the way our grandparents thought." This is a reasonably conservative exhortation. You didn't seem too concerned with how our society was evolving when it came to gay marriage.
The fact is, the idea that a boy might suffer harm from sex with his teacher just as a girl might is a relatively new idea. It's pretty nuanced. It certainly didn't occur to JR. It's not a holy or eternal construct at all.
Traditionally, boys are winked at when they sow their oats; girls are called sluts. Unless it's the neighbor's underage or of-age daughter, it's fine for the boy to screw whomever he wants. "Just don't get her pregnant, son." No thought is given to what it might do to him.
Also, you seem to lose your sense of humor quite a bit, so I wouldn't keep walking out onto that branch. Unless you think that calling people stupid is funny. Quinn, as I recall, made a sport of pummeling people pretty regularly. Maybe you found that funny, too.
Listen, when I boil it all down, I think your real concern is the penalties. Someone losing his job for making a donation. A teacher goes to jail for what might be a consensual act with someone old enough to drive. I think those are valid concerns.
What you end up doing, however, is arguing that the act in question is perfectly fine...or could be fine...we just don't know...other people do the same thing...or our grandparents thought the same way...so...something.
At bottom, this is a favorite conservative rhetorical gimmick: "Whatcha getting all upset about? I've seen plenty worse than this." But half the time the analogies aren't analogous, and the points are strained and the humor is that of a Las Vegas conventioneer after he's had ten highballs.
Then you complain about liberals because they're not doing something or other.
by Peter Schwartz on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 9:53pm
There was once the teacher who slept with a boy, and then when she got out of jail, they got back together. How romantic.
I knew you would eventually bring this up so yesterday I looked it up to refresh my memory. A 34 year old married women with children initiated a sexual relationship with a 12 year old boy. " the best thing that ever happened to a guy." 12 year old Fualaau didn't use condoms and luckily Letourneau got pregnant with his child. The child was born while she was out on bail. After completing a 3 month jail term she immediately contacted him again. Two weeks after she was released from prison they were caught and she was sent back to jail for violating the terms of her parole.
Fualaau wasn't just the "luckiest boy in school" for being chosen as Letourneau's sexual partner, he was luckily soon to be the father of a second child. In just 2 weeks he luckily got her pregnant. Sex at 12 and a dad twice before he was 14. Talk about good luck.
Fualaau's parents were lucky too because they got to raise their son's children while he completed high school. They celebrated their good luck by suing the Highline School District and the city of Des Moines, Washington, for emotional suffering, lost wages, and the costs of rearing his two children, claiming the school and the Des Moines Police Department had failed to protect him from Letourneau.
After Letourneau got out of jail they got married. Such a romantic tale, brings a tear to my eye. Clearly Fualaau was emotionally and psychologically mature enough to consider the ramifications and consent to sex at 12. After making such a wise decision who can doubt he gave careful thought to his ability to be a father and raise a child. He made the adult decision to not use a condom. And of course after carefully evaluating his performance as a father at 13 he decided he was ready to have a second child.
No harm no foul, just a beautiful romantic story of the luckiest 12 year old boy in school. This illustrates why there should be no statutory rape laws for boys.
by ocean-kat on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 8:55pm
The point was, when the woman was released from jail, the kid-now-man at 21 asked to reverse the no-contact order and they got married. Yes, kind of romantic, for whatever warts there are on the story.
More romantic than a family signing over their daughter to Ted Nugent at age 17. Perhaps not as romantic as Elvis' relationship with 14-year-old Priscilla.
Of course you turn this into me supporting sex with 12-year-olds. The point was simply that nature is more complicated.
Re: the children, well, the woman was of age to support them - and single mom families are now 25% of America - 1/3 of kids are raised without a father. I personally don't think the single-parent household is a good trend, even though it can certainly work and sometimes it's quite necessary. I've been told it's illiberal of me to have these anachronistic attitudes, that I should be more "you go, girl!" But in any case, I'll figure a situation relatively similar to 25% of households isn't a completely damning aspect to this story, unlike perhaps the hell for the woman's original family.
But to clarify - no, my dislike of sending a teacher to jail for consensual sex with a 16-year-old is not the same as feelings about an affair/statutory rape with a 12-year-old, even if 1 case out of 100,000 might have a more noble or substantiated basis.
Still, I like the romantic ending, the triumph of mutual human attraction.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 2:03am
Its like a Disney fairy tale, I'm all a swoon. I'm sure the fact that he was raising two kids as a 21 year old unemployed high school drop out had nothing to do with this marriage to his soul mate. Nor that the expensive wedding was paid for and filmed by Entertainment Tonight. Nor that they were paid 750,000 for the movies of the wedding. How could the romantic in me not be moved? Its true love!
by ocean-kat on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 2:55am
There are lots of 21-year-old dropouts raising kids - deal with it. I don't recall anyone saying this was the best path to success. You want a morality play for some reason - guess you came out of the Jehovah school of divine recompense or the Greek Oedipal "blind yourself for the sins you've unwittingly done" ethic.
Okay, disclaimer: "hey kids, don't try this at home - it may look easy as seen on TV, but this soap opera was carried out by trained professionals using mirrors, guy wires and stunt doubles". Better?
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 3:12am
That is better! We can get rid of all those useless statutory rape laws, for boys only of course, cause he was the luckiest 12 year old boy in school. We can replace them with that disclaimer as a public service announcement on the Saturday morning cartoons.
Lots of 21 year old drop outs raising kids and as we all know, the man is just as responsible for birth control as the women. If this 12 year old man couldn't be bothered using a condom he has only himself to blame. Its despicable the way some people place all the blame for those 2 babies on the 34 year old women when the 12 year old man should have known to use a condom.
Frankly, I'm convinced if we checked his fifth grade report card grades it would be obvious that he was destined to drop out of high school even if he hadn't got that women pregnant in sixth grade.
Like I said, no harm no foul, just a beautiful romantic story about the luckiest 12 year old boy in school.
by ocean-kat on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 3:45am
There are romantic endings and triumphs of the human spirit in all kinds of situations. Including the concentration camps.
That's great, but so what?
The fact that great music was composed in Treblinka doesn't mean we should wink at Treblinkas because great music was composed there evidencing the man's indomitable spirit and will to overcome even the harshest conditions.
by Peter Schwartz on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 9:33am
Godwin alert - we went from a 16-year-old boy (now 17) sleeping with a teacher to Nazi concentration camps. I'm done, this is debating with (old-fashioned) monkeys.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 1:44pm
You see, just the fact that you need to add that the boy is "now 17" shows the irrelevancy of your arguments, liberal or not.
It doesn't matter how old the boy is now...and he's not that much older than he was then. So what?
You retreated from the substance of the argument to talking about the NY Post. Now you've retreated from that to calling me a "conservative" as if that's relevant. It isn't.
This is sort of what Aaron Carnine did to you when he became flummoxed. He said you were a faux liberal.
Personally, I don't care what you call me. It's irrelevant to the discussion.
by Peter Schwartz on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 1:51pm
This is the point: If it's one in 100,000, why even bring it up? What's the point? That sometimes improbable things turn out well? Well, the other 99,999 turned out badly. Isn't that just a little bit more important?
Nature IS complicated, as you point out. If your point is that we should show compassion to others, therefore, I'm with you. But the odd case isn't a basis for policy. Nor is it a guide to acting ethically. It's a cautionary warning to act compassionately and not assume you know more than you do.
But you're arguing as if the 99,999 don't exist, as if they aren't worth worrying about, as if worrying about them is a holdover from our Puritan past. And you're assuming that our beef with this teacher is nothing more than our society's humorless fundamentalist substrate bubbling up to the surface.
by Peter Schwartz on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 10:25pm
Thanks for this comment. Like you "I wasn't going to get into this but this nonsense kept irking me," but I just didn't have the mental energy to devote to such a post. You bring up the key points that were rattling around in my head.
One in particular:
While it is true that boys and young adult males of the age of 16 do have such fantasies, it is the projection of the fantasy by the adult males in this case that drive them to actually make some effort to try to make the case that nothing bad here.
I would point out that there are a number young adult females in high school who have not just a crush on their teachers (and for both genders, this is true for all orientations), but are also sexualized. There are plenty of cases where the 16 year old female is a "willing" participant at the time of the "affair."
Since I am a male, I can't speak for the females, but my guess would be that most females, even those without children, tend to think "what if this was my son, what if this was my daughter?" It becomes difficult to maintain the positive arousal fantasy once one's mind goes down this path.
The other thing I wanted to add to the discussion was that there seems to be the notion that just because it is a fantasy, living it out must be a good thing. This is a problem for adults as well as teens. Sometimes there are not so healthy issues driving the formation of the fantasy, and to actually carry them out can lead not only to further damage to the person, but to people around them. I could go on and on with examples, but I think we can all think of some fantasy that has popped into our head that while it might for a moment (or two) seem like a great idea if given the chance to live it out, don't - for a host of reasons. In part, it was some might call being mature as opposed to immature.
by Elusive Trope on Sun, 06/08/2014 - 11:41am
Just because you're male doesn't mean you can speak for all other males.
The reason a 16-year-old boys screwing an older woman is unlikely is because 16-year-old boys aren't very attractive to older women - there isn't a rush of women to take on boys when they turn 18, is there? say evolution programmed us that way. If you asked the average 16-year-old boy whether he'd screw an attractive 38-year-old teacher, the answer would probably be 70% or more "like duh, of course". Make it a 25-year-old teacher and it'd probably pass 90%.
Speculating a lot of harm and psychological damage for a 16-year-old boy that wasn't presented - wow, yeah, I see this incident turning him into a Columbine shooter or going through years of psychotherapy. Fast Times at Ridgemont High was popular because it described behavior that was psychologically devastating to the adolescents involved, and even playing in it caused Sean Penn to marry Madonna.
Our sex laws were in general written with girls in mind - where males are to some extent they fit with forced involuntary homosexual acts with adolescents. To some extent they don't make as much sense when sex roles are reversed.
Sean Connery brags about having sex at 8, the leader of the Chili Peppers at 12 - have you ever heard a male complain that their first sexual experience happened too early, was too gross and horrible?
Sexual fantasy with self-asphyxiation can be deadly. I really don't see where the issue is with living out fantasy about an older woman. I had my own experiences, and while it didn't work out for long-term - duh - it was certainly an experience I enjoyed and look back fondly on. If she had been the instigator, would I feel different? probably not - would have been more flattering.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 1:25am
I know I can't speak for all males, but I can make generalizations about the male species being one myself, and spending my whole life around them, talking with them, listening to them when they think they are in the company of someone who agrees with them, etc. On top of that, I, too, would have jumped at the chance to have sex with an attractive female teacher when I was 16, even at the age of 14 or younger. And when I looked at the article, the first thing I did was check out how attractive the teacher was. My first "thought" when hearing about such stories is very much along the lines of "that would have been cool," but taking a moment to reflect, I decide that, no, it wouldn't be cool.
In no way did I imply nor do I believe that such an encounter would lead this young adult to become a Columbine shooter. And maybe it won't even reach the level of what we call
"devastating", but lets remember, in his Penn's marriage to Madonna he "was charged with felony domestic assault, a charge for which he pleaded to a misdemeanor. Penn and Madonna divorced in 1989." Not exactly the best example of a healthy relationship.
I do believe his risk of being a date rapist would be higher than average, but not his destiny.
I believe that most, if not nearly everyone, male and female, in this country would benefit from a couple of years of psychotherapy with a therapist who actually knew how to be a great therapist, of which unfortunately there are very few.
There is, of course, the attempt of living out fantasies that can have disastrous consequences at the time one is fulfilling them. At sixteen it is was mine and all the guys around me to drive as fast as we could in our cars, regardless of our level of intoxication on whatever mix of drugs we were on. Luckily I didn't kill or hurt anyone in my stupidity to "take it to the max."
But if I have to explain to you how our first sexual encounters form our understanding of not only sex, but our understanding of those who we desire to have sex with - regardless of orientation, than there is much we can talk about. Adolescence is a time in this culture and biologically where not only is the body and mind are going through extreme changes, a period where we are trying to figure things out (the brain doesn't reach it full growth until the early twenties). Having an experience such as this may not lead him to shoot his classmates and then himself, but it will have a major impact on his view of himself, women, and the world at large.
There may be some positive things that come from the experience. Encounters like this are not black and white from a psychological point of view. But the likelihood that the negatives will outweigh the positives is pretty much likely.
by Elusive Trope on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 9:54am
For one thing, he didn't have to deal with an equal.
We can look at it as a stronger partner imposing on a weaker partner--a power imbalance we're familiar with.
But there's another way to look at it: Here, the stronger partner removes all the "obstacles" or "challenges" the kid would encounter with an equal partner. He doesn't have to take any responsibility for what they're doing, because she, in effect, is taking all the responsibility for both of them.
There aren't all those pesky issues that often arise when you're dealing with an equal. One, but only one, reason why younger partners become so attractive to us as we get older. They willingly let us remove all the obstacles because they believe we, the older more powerful and experienced adult, can do that and will do it well by virtue of all our hard-won wisdom. They're fresh, unjaded, without nagging questions or doubts. They demand nothing (or less) in return except what you're giving them.
The younger person becomes a sort of initiate seeking entry into the adult world.
Positing the extreme case of the kid turning out to be an ax murderer is one of PP's favorite false moves. It's so obviously false that it isn't worth addressing. We all know, going in, that there are plenty of bad outcomes short of someone becoming an ax murderer, and we know there are no guarantees as to how a person will turn out.
Plant a cabbage, get a turnip.
by Peter Schwartz on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 11:16am
"He doesn't have to take any responsibility for what they're doing, because she, in effect, is taking all the responsibility for both of them." - how awful, sex without responsibility. fun without pain and suffering and punishment - it must be wrong.
I can feel all the bad outcomes, as someone posited. It's a sin to kill a mockingbird - poor Boo Radley - what have we done?
I feel old - the 60's are so far away.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 4:47pm
by Peter Schwartz on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 6:07pm
Well, you know, if you look at those programs that address teen pregnancy--where the girl's life takes sharp turn left--one of the things they often bemoan is the absence of the boy. The girl is left with the mess, even if she can terminate; the boy zips his pants and walks away. "Where are the boys/men who impregnated these girls? Why aren't they stepping forward?"
So yes, teaching a kid--and he is a kid--that sex comes with no consequences is probably not a great lesson.
You're skidding from "sex without responsibility" to the very different "fun without pain and suffering and punishment." This is a false move; the former doesn't equate to the latter unless you think that taking responsibility precludes fun and entails pain and suffering.
Fact is, she's teaching him how painful even the best sex can be. Even before the cops showed up, I'm sure it was painful for the kid to have this kind teacher turn into a jealous shrew. Think he was able to deal with a 38 year old jealous woman on the war path? Maybe. Maybe the husband got into the act, too. Wonder what she said to him when she flew into a rage.
Maybe he'll mine it later for great literature like Augustine Burroughs.
by Peter Schwartz on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 6:41pm
Maybe he'll get lucky and she'll be pregnant. Than his parents can raise the child until he graduates from high school and they can get married, As PP said, "How romantic."
by ocean-kat on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 8:51pm
Goes easy on PP. He's trying to recover from a childhood swaddled in fundamentalist GOP attitudes toward sex, God, and assorted no-nos. If he were more aware, he wouldn't lay his personal recovery on the backs of others.
by Peter Schwartz on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 8:09am
If I'd listened to my parents, I might be like you, panicked about emotional distress that might jump out years later from 1 tiny slip-up.
Fortunately, no recovery needed. Mistakes been made, fun been had.
BTW - if you're going to go joyless, at least graduate to Joy Division
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 8:48am
"Even before the cops showed up, I'm sure it was painful for the kid to have this kind teacher turn into a jealous shrew. Think he was able to deal with a 38 year old jealous woman on the war path?" - really, listen to yourself - do you self-identify as a liberal?
Let's go down the list -
1) is a headline on an article written by the journalist, or by a copy editor trying add pizzazz to the story? does the headline frequently diverge from the facts?
2) did the woman "get jealous" or "flip out" or go "on the war path"? they're rather different. in any case, the boy didn't report the affair - his friend did - maybe his friend exaggerated the woman's outrage as well.
3) what exactly made her a "shrew" in your eyes? do you realize that's a sexist, ageist demeaning term that was common in Shakespeare's time? do you feel a bit like Archie Bunker when you say it, or it escapes you?
4) did you know the affair continued to when he was 17 (consenting age)? that the issue of the prom was after he turned 17?
5) are you a fan of the NY Post? do you trust the "reporting" of the rag that wrote a wicked letter to "Chelsea Clinton's fetus"? why exactly did the Post leave out the fact that the boy's now 17 and was at the time of the prom?
Probably part of what affects my attitude in this whole thing is this is a nation - including "liberals" - that's still obsessed about and impeached a president who got 8 or 9 blowjobs from a 22-year-old employee - even as they had no problem with another president who used the USS Sequoia as a habitual fuck room parked on the Potomac. We're an absurd arbitrary people.
Here's a comment from an article I noted a second ago. Why people just assume some massive emotional trauma with a 16-year-old, I don't know.
JAKESHUMAN
15 hours ago
In my younger days a boy in this position would have considered himself "lucky". I had sex with a friend of my mother's who was 29 when I was fourteen. It went on for almost a year. I look back upon it fondly because it was a learning experience. I wasn't coerced and if I would have said "no", it would have stopped immediately. There is a difference between rape and consensual sex; that is why we used to have "statutory" rape charges. "Statutory" meant it was against the law even if it may have been consensual. Political correctness has made all rape the same; it isn't. Now, I suppose everyone is going to say I am naive but the point is I wasn't damaged by my sexual encounter nor do I feel like I was a victim. I respect women more than most men I know and, to tell you the truth, I think a lot of people this has happened to play on their "victimization" for all they can get from it. It's also a way for people to release their moral outrage while they continue to literally "screw" people in other ways.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 3:37am
"Even before the cops showed up, I'm sure it was painful for the kid to have this kind teacher turn into a jealous shrew. Think he was able to deal with a 38 year old jealous woman on the war path?" - really, listen to yourself - do you self-identify as a liberal?
• Why is this un-liberal?
1) is a headline on an article written by the journalist, or by a copy editor trying add pizzazz to the story? does the headline frequently diverge from the facts?
• Sometimes they're wrong; sometimes they're right. Right? How do you know this one isn't right? You're just assuming.
2) did the woman "get jealous" or "flip out" or go "on the war path"? they're rather different. in any case, the boy didn't report the affair - his friend did - maybe his friend exaggerated the woman's outrage as well.
• And maybe he didn't. Why do you assume he did? They are different, but they can all go together quite nicely as we see many, many times.
3) what exactly made her a "shrew" in your eyes? do you realize that's a sexist, ageist demeaning term that was common in Shakespeare's time? do you feel a bit like Archie Bunker when you say it, or it escapes you?
• Quoting Shakespeare is something I'm never ashamed of.
4) did you know the affair continued to when he was 17 (consenting age)? that the issue of the prom was after he turned 17?
• And?
5) are you a fan of the NY Post? do you trust the "reporting" of the rag that wrote a wicked letter to "Chelsea Clinton's fetus"? why exactly did the Post leave out the fact that the boy's now 17 and was at the time of the prom?
• Impugning the messenger has some validity in my mind, but it doesn't necessarily settle things. If the NY Post were the only source for these sorts of stories, you might have a point, but since it isn't, your point is weaker than it might be otherwise. What political ax are they grinding here, e.g., anti teacher unionism?
Probably part of what affects my attitude in this whole thing is this is a nation - including "liberals" - that's still obsessed about and impeached a president who got 8 or 9 blowjobs from a 22-year-old employee - even as they had no problem with another president who used the USS Sequoia as a habitual fuck room parked on the Potomac. We're an absurd arbitrary people.
• Liberals, including me, supported Clinton through the Lewinsky affair. We were criticized for not coming down on him for an act that, in a corporate setting, might have been called sexual harassment (rightly or wrongly). Fortunately, we are an "absurd and arbitrary people" who, if asked, probably didn't like the Lewinsky affair, but still registered high approval ratings for the president. In fact, despite the growing chorus of women who felt they'd been victimized by him, we sent him to the WH twice. That ain't too bad.
If you're referring to Kennedy aboard the USS Sequoia, then we know his affairs were kept hush hush. First, it was a different time when boys were allowed to boys and, had the public known then, they might not have felt too good about JFK. Who knows, but why the clash of these two examples, separated by 40 years, bothers you, I have no idea. Ike and FDR seem to have had affairs: Where are you going with this? I'm trying to follow, but the scent is growing faint.
You're demanding a level of consistency, including consistency across vast stretches of time, during which great cultural changes have taken place. If it bugs you that society has changed a lot in 40 years...well, in some ways, it's changed for the better.
Here's a comment from an article I noted a second ago. Why people just assume some massive emotional trauma with a 16-year-old, I don't know.
• In a comical twist, you're impugning the article without proof whilst turning to the online comments section of all places as a reliable source of solid info. Really? But this guy seems to support the concept of statutory rape which is what this teacher appears to have committed, when she started. IOW, it's rape whether the kid consented or not, which no one seems to dispute. Yes, some 11 year olds may be ready to go all the way, but many may not be; the statute sets a basic bar which may be unfair to some, but protect the lives of others. It's a trade off.
(I read that a number of the victims of priest molestation were as old as 15, which you say is the age of consent in places in Europe.)
But even if we allow the relevance and veracity of this online comment (ever know someone who said he was "fine" when everyone else knew he wasn't?) your words to Trope would seem to apply here: This is one guy; he's not all guys; and what happened to this one guy may not have happened to this other guy.
Here's a favor I have to ask, though: If you're going to impugn my "credentials" as a liberal, then put it out there and make the argument. Don't just cop a feel here and there or try to brush me back from the plate with sly comments.
by Peter Schwartz on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 9:21am
"If you're going to impugn my "credentials" as a liberal, then put it out there and make the argument." - I just did. It all wafted by you. Bye.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 12:49pm
No you didn't.
And you still aren't.
by Peter Schwartz on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 1:39pm
Just stepping back a bit...
I'm not sure the veracity of this article is the point of this discussion.
JR is posting this as if it were true, though he has a different opinion about the morality of what happened and perhaps disagrees with the terms in which was described. So we're accepting the "facts" as true for the sake of discussion.
But even if the NY Post completely fabricated or exaggerated every "fact" in the article, this discussion, IMO, would still be valid.
That's because situations like this do happen and have been reported before. So it's not as if the NY Post is reporting something farfetched that just never happens, and they just decided to make it up.
So, to my mind, the discussion centers around the issues involved in a situation "like this" with the understanding that "situations like this" aren't so rare and are thus worth talking about.
If it turns out the article got it wrong in a number places, so be it. I'm sure (or hope) the woman will have her day in court at which time the actual facts of the situation can be brought out if she has a decent lawyer.
by Peter Schwartz on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 10:49am
Here, the stronger partner removes all the "obstacles" or "challenges" the kid would encounter with an equal partner.
There is a lot of truth in that analysis and its likely that's how it begins. But that's also the fantasy and rarely is that how it plays out. Often the older partner gets obsessive, jealous. They stalk, spy, and incessantly text the younger partner in an attempt to manipulate their behavior. In this case this 38 year old married women with children flipped out when her 16 year old "boyfriend" took a classmate to the prom. What was she thinking, that they were going steady and he should forgo normal teen social interactions to remain faithful to her? We never get the full story of these situations but can we realistically assume this was the only instance of obsessive behavior in this relationship?
I think most would agree that this type of obsessive and manipulative behavior from an adult is damaging to children even without the sexual relationship. When we add the sex suddenly not only is this obsessive and manipulative behavior not harmful but he's the luckiest boy in school.
Its not the mentally balanced 38 year old married women with children that get involved with these teen. Its the mentally unbalanced women that make the choice to risk everything and it rarely plays out the fantasy script even before secret gets out and the cops get involved.
by ocean-kat on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 6:02pm
No sex here so I guess its all good. Or is this obsessive relationship only inappropriate because the 42 year old man wasn't having sex with the 15 year old girl? Its so confusing. Oh wait, its a girl. That's bad If it was a boy it would be cool.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/08/maryland-father-hits-teacher-with-...
A Maryland father will not be facing charges after hitting one of his daughter’s teachers with a baseball bat after the teacher refused to leave the family’s home following a texting scandal.
Authorities are not releasing the names of the girl, her parents or the teacher.
Police were initially contacted by the teen’s mother after she became aware of hundreds of texts, described by Baltimore County Police as documenting ” an emotional relationship that seemed inappropriate for a teacher and student,” between the 15-year-old girl and the 42-year-old teacher.
Police determined that no crime had been committed and referred the case to the Crimes Against Children Unit for further investigation.
“There’s nothing we’ve seen in the contents that’s criminal,” Baltimore County police spokeswoman Elise Armacost said in regard to the texts .
by ocean-kat on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 10:50pm
Yes, if it were a boy, it would be less of an issue - girls are often getting hit on by dozens of males from the time they hit puberty - nature has created an unlevel playing field, so it's not surprising if we happen to differentiate between the 2 circumstances.
Additionally, I think there's a very different emotional effect in being penetrated vs. just shoving your thing in, even though predator fondling might be the same for both sexes. But I'm not a psychologist, just a human being, so I'll just suggest there are probably studies on that to Google.
As for the scene itself, aside from the age difference it's probably not that different from the typical redneck version of "you stay away from my daughter" that's gone on for eons, or at least as long as Louisville Sluggers have been in production.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 2:16am
No doubt. Which leads to cavalier attitudes toward getting girls pregnant, shame or rape when you can't find someone willing to let you "just shove it in."
You seem to find this ability to "just shove it in" as an unadulterated blessing from Our Maker to the male species. In some ways, to be sure, it is a blessing.
What could be better than getting off and walking away? Of course, if you care about what happens to the girl, you might not want to have the boy think of it as just shoving it in and walking away.
If the law and society regard what happened as no big deal because, after all, the boy just shoves in and walks away, then that is what we're telling boys sex is for them. And if they felt predated by an older woman, then they should just man up and remember that sex, for a man, is just shoving it in and walking away.
by Peter Schwartz on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 9:42am
JR, when you and I disagree, we really do disagree. I don't find humor in this, and I've been a teenager and raised a bevy of them. You can do better and still make me chuckle dude.
by Bruce Levine on Mon, 06/09/2014 - 10:36am
Father, dear Father, you've done me great wrong
You've married me to a boy who is too young
I'm twice twelve and he is but 13
He's young but he's daily growing...
(from: The Trees They Do Grow High, a ballad sung by Joan Baez.)
by Lurker on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 5:27pm
The Middle Ages...a grand time was had by all.
You stopped too soon, Lurk:
I went up to the college and I looked over the wall,
Saw four and twenty gentlemen playing at bat and ball.
I called to my true love, but they would not let him come,
All because he was a young boy and growing.
Growing, growing,
All because he was a young boy and growing.
At the age of sixteen, he was a married man
And at the age of seventeen he was a father to a son,
And at the age of eighteen the grass grew over him,
Cruel death soon put an end to his growing.
Growing, growing,
Cruel death soon put an end to his growing.
And now my love is dead and in his grave doth lie,
The green grass grows o'er him so very, very high.
I'll sit and I'll mourn his fate until the day I die,
And I'll watch o'er his child while he's growing.
Growing, growing,
And I'll watch o'er his child while he's growing.
by Peter Schwartz on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 7:34pm
The age of consent was 12 in Vatican City until Pope Francis raised it to 18 last year.
While I recognize the need to protect children from sexual exploitation by adults, I've never much liked statutory rape laws. Such a big penalty for such an arbitrary age distinction.
by Michael Wolraich on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 8:02pm
To your point about arbitrary age distinctions, check out this state-by-state comparison of statutory rape laws. Similarly, the penalties vary state by state and intrastate as well. Of course, these sorts of disparities are anything but uncommon when we compare state criminal statutes -- a true visual of federalism.
But to your point about statutory rape laws per se, how do we protect kids from sexual exploitation without them? Presumably you would agree that at some age every child (not the same for each child of course) is in a stage of life where he or she is unable to have consensual sex, so then don't we need statutory rape laws, as arbitrary as they and their corollary penalties might be?
by Bruce Levine on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 9:03pm
We must have statutory rape laws, of course, but I would allow more flexibility around the edges. A 16-year-old can certainly be raped by an adult, with or without violence, and contrary to Jolly's adolescent fantasies, the case in question here may well be rape.
But it doesn't follow that every sex act between a 16-year-old and an over-18-year-old is a serious crime perpetrated by a criminal predator on a helpless child. So I believe that judges and juries should have some leeway to assess the circumstances.
I recognize that such flexibility allows chauvinistic judges or juries to miscarry justice, but as with mandatory drug sentences, I would rather place the power to err in the hands of human than in a rigid, arbitrary law.
by Michael Wolraich on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 10:09pm
With apologies for having "posted and run", as it were, and seeing as how the topic has certainly been thoroughly fleshed out (pun intended), I am moved to make a few observations.
1. It is, of course, the essence of the enunciation of a "statutory" category of rapethat that we deny the putative victim any possibility of agency. Mostly because we have made a policy decision that it's just gonna be too hard to sort out the subtleties on a case by case basis. This values jurisprudential efficiency over considered justice, and has the collateral effect that it is often the consequences of the criminal justice sequelae that create for the victim the greatest risk.
Viz, the case you cite in which, as it happens, the fourteen year old girl took her life because of remorse at the consequences that were being visited upon her older male sexual partner. It is not beyond the bounds of speculation that the judge's description which you have shorthand describe as "chauvinistic" was, in fact, the very opposite--he may have perceived that she had, in fact, agency.
2. But to turn with more particularity to my (implied) chortle, which has caused several, (including my dear brother --pace, Cornel West--Bruce) to raise eyebrows.
Permit me to recount a personal anecdote, fwiw.
When I myself was at the cited age (or maybe, 15, I forget exactly), while on a trip to Lake Placid with the high school ski club, I encountered on the slopes a petite cutie, who I recognized as having been in one of the busses (not mine.)
I figured she was a student.
Come to find out, she was a new math teacher (not mine), and you can see where this is going
Once I had chatted her up on the slopes, the unfortunate clarification of her employment status was not going to be an obstacle, if I had anything to say about it
Well, gentle readers, I am sad to inform you that I only got to what we in those more innocent days called "first base" (albeit with tongue...) and was being driven home by her for a few weeks following the ski trip, when people began to talk, and she (wisely) broke things off.
I can tell you with clarity and absolute conviction that my regrets at the truncating of the intriguing vista of possibilities were perfectly sincere
Thus was postponed by a year my transition from dewy virgin to man about town, but I am sure that my psychological health was in no peril whatsoever had things taken a different course.
I know, pure anecdote, and others milage may vary.
But I am, withal, in a position to speak with somewhat greater particularity than mere elaboration of "adolescent fantasies"
by jollyroger on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 7:35am
But assuming you're not against statutory this or that laws in principle (or are you?) then don't you have to decide WHEN she develops the capacity for agency?
And then, once you've decided when, don't you have to answer the question one of my philosophy professors used to ask with annoying frequency: How do you know that?
Even two year olds, in my experience, have some agency. Five year olds have more. How much agency does the person have to have before she's fair game?
I read that the human brain isn't fully formed until the age of 22 or thereabouts. Does it take a fully formed brain to make a fully informed decision that, if you're a girl in particular, might change your life for a very long time? Dunno.
I think it was John Lennon who said that most people were conceived at the bottom of a whisky bottle. When you're a kid with hormones raging, you are the whiskey bottle. No?
by Peter Schwartz on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 8:26am
against statutory this or that laws in principle (or are you?)
Well,, yeah, that was the thrust of my remark--Or, at least, I object to the use of age as the defining characteristic (one might enunciate various status characteristics which might serve as indicia of enhanced risk of coercion undermining ostensible consent, which in fact is the gravaman of those laws which punish student-teacher sex even where the student is otherwise over the age of consent.
by jollyroger on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 4:01pm
So...
You would object to student-teacher intercourse regardless of the ages...
And are fine with a 50 year old guy banging an 8 year old girl...
Yes?
by Peter Schwartz on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 7:53am
Reductio much?
As to #1, I started teaching at Hunter College when I was 24--needless to say I considered co-ed pussy to be an integral component of my compensation package.
As to #2, I'll go out on a limb of arbitrariness and veto the 8yr old/50yr.old liaison.
by jollyroger on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 9:09am
Not reducing anything...
You said you wanted to keep age out of it...so I'm giving you a theoretical example. Isn't that what you lawyers do to learn your craft?
So here are a few more...
Does statutory punishment come along with your veto of 50-8 hook up?
Does it help if we raise the age to 11? Or 11.5?
On the other hand...
Perhaps I should apologize for our having taken your original post seriously instead of as a lark which, now, is how I think you probably meant it. Nothing wrong with that.
by Peter Schwartz on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 9:27am
Well, without simply surrendering outright in the face of the "eeww" factor, I would not necessarily quarrel with a case by case analysis that turned in part on the temporal distance between the charged offense and the onset of puberty in the particular younger individual, thus insulating myself from having to excuse the sexual interaction with ANY 8 yr old, and probably (if we posit, say, a minimum "safe harbor" interval of 2 years from puberty) the11year old as well.
Without conceding anything as to my motives (bear in mind, I put in no more effort than to clip the url and add an almost twitter length comment) I was intending to highlight the `16 year old boy as special case, bringing to bear the discomfort aroused by the implicit double standard, the het-privelege granted to the teacher (someone very early on jumped on that part of the conundrum) etc.
by jollyroger on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 9:39am
For me, this is the issue at the heart of the matter. Some comments on this thread seem to divide two possible outcomes for such encounters: the traumatic and the non-traumatic. Either the kid becomes psychologically damaged immediately from the encounter (leading to murder sprees, suicide, great mental depression, etc) or goes on all the better for it.
But the years between 12 and 22 are a major time for the development of the adult ego. At fifteen or sixteen, the ego is still in major processing the inclusion of abstract thought along with the figuring out of the understanding of self, the world, and the relationship between the two. The world of course has many facets: parents, institutions, religion, peer groups, the genders and sexual orientation, etc etc.
The impact of these encounters are submerged in the psyche in ways that the adolescent is completely unaware, as is the case for most if not all adults. Even if the encounter is not traumatic at time, nor in reflection from many years later, it is that alters the adolescent's view of self and others in ways we may never know, usually - in my opinion - in a way that is regressive, that is, in a way that leads to a less mature understanding of human relationships.
One of the posters here waxed nostalgia for the days of 60's, which I assumed to be this view that at one time there was an embracing of the notion of 'free love' (i.e. sex) and an openness to the pleasure of the flesh without any negative consequences or emotional impact on all those involved that seems to have disappeared. This is the same delusion that would say that a life lived taking ecstasy and going to raves as one's primary form of human interaction and entertainment is somehow harmless and won't impact the individual not in immediate, but down the line as to how they see themselves and others and the relationship between the two that is both empty and regressive.
Even if the popular nostalgic remembrance of the 60's was how everyone experienced it, which of course wasn't the case, I would point out that it led to the me generation of 70's and later those wondrous Reagan years.
by Elusive Trope on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 9:23am
To my mind, this "possibility" was always a straw dog that refused to hunt. It was inserted (I think) to make the alternative "possibility"--that no harm would result-- more appealing and probable and draw attention away from deeper and more nuanced views, such as the one you're presenting here. As soon as one is forced to pick sides between two extreme views, real discussion stops, IMO.
Idly mixing in questions about penal consequences also muddies the discussion. Penalties are very worth discussing, but they should discussed separately.
by Peter Schwartz on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 9:40am
a straw dog that refused to hunt
The only thing worse is a straw man who refuses to burn--fucks up the festivities of the entire playa....
by jollyroger on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 4:04pm
Some said burning Burning Man was a travesty - others said it'd passed its shelf-life. Me, I just think it makes a good story lede - liked Survival Research better with their tinmen - angry robotic goliathans battling it out and setting whole blocks in Amsterdam on fire.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 5:32pm
Wow, thanks for reinforcing my stereotypes of so many of you as old-fashioned-
how about quoting Reagan with "smells like cheetah" to complete the absurdity?
all those free love kids from the 60's were permanently scarred - they're just too dumb or confused to recognize it!!! and they danced disco and voted for Reagan!!! wasn't the hostages in Iran or the crashed economy or the oil embargoes or putting on a sweater - it was that no-obligation 60's nookie!!!
(small note: "preceded" isn't the same as "led to", but never mind - Kurt Cobain led to George W Bush, the Honda Civic led to the crack epidemic...)
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 11:39am
I, of course, understand that preceded isn't the same as led to. And I wasn't saying that the free love kids were permanently scarred. But the notion that events like Woodstock and the happenings at Haight-Ashbury were free of negative consequences for those who participated or, more so, represented some new higher level collective consciousness. They were mainly just the same self-medicating through drugs people we see today, it is just the music and the drugs have changed.
There were obviously some positive things that came out the sixties as people broke down cultural values, expectations and constraints that were in some cases more than a little oppressive. But if one takes away from the lessons learned from those times that one can engage in physical intimacy without any emotional or psychological impact, postivie and/or negative, then I just feel sorry for you.
The very notion of "free love" -- that is human interaction which asks no responsibility or presence of either participant is not only impossible and its undesirable, from my point of view. You may want to just be like animals grunting away for the pure pleasure of flesh, but that just seems like a shallow, meaningless encounter, even if both are consenting adults.
My point was that whatever did happen on a cultural level in the sixties left in its wake a cultural void, so to speak, where the immaturity of it all just shifted gears from being a hippie to being something else, and then something else, no different than club kids of today or grunge followers of the decades past. There was no great cultural wave that the majority were surfing back in those days. Young people seek meaning in their lives, and the rise of the Christian right has a lot to do with the fact that much of the culture of those days of peace and love didn't really offer much beyond doing drugs and listening to rock and roll and having sex. Sex, drugs and rock and roll was still the rally cry of my generation as we watched Reagan take office - who we feared would surely take us into nuclear annihilation.
Maybe that's why some my friends and I related when Johnny Rotten sang:
No future, no future
No future, no future
No future, no future
No future, no future
No future, no future
No future, no future
No future for you
by Elusive Trope on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 12:23pm
LOL.
Uh...the 60s were 54 years ago. By now, it's pretty "old fashioned."
In line with that, you've consistently argued here for a very old fashioned view of human sexuality and the differences between the sexes.
Boys, men can do what they want with sex. No harm, no foul, no consequences for them. The more the merrier. Problems only arise when a homosexual decides he wants to penetrate them. Otherwise, they're free of all consequences save, maybe, an STD.
Girls, however, get penetrated, so different rules apply to them and the rules have to be much stricter to protect them. Boys don't need protection; girls do.
This is an extremely old-fashioned view of the sexes and what happens when people have sex and it is, in essence, what you've been arguing for.
by Peter Schwartz on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 2:50pm
Quoting myself:
"Additionally, I think there's a very different emotional effect in being penetrated vs. just shoving your thing in...But I'm not a psychologist, just a human being, so I'll just suggest there are probably studies on that to Google." - did you read a study, or are you just talking out your ass?
"Age still has a lot to do with it - 10 is not 16." "my dislike of sending a teacher to jail for consensual sex with a 16-year-old is not the same as feelings about an affair/statutory rape with a 12-year-old" ""- selective reading makes for shitty debates
"girls are often getting hit on by dozens of males from the time they hit puberty - nature has created an unlevel playing field, so it's not surprising if we happen to differentiate" "There are obvious distinctions...Was it consensual or predatory (tricked or forced)? " - it's not like I'm describing the theory of relativity here or hid my meaning behind a codex.
I have to assume you're acting stupid not because you are, but you just want to argue with me and try to twist everything into some outrageous statement that I didn't make. why you do that, I don't know.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 3:35pm
Sorry. You've spent the last umpteen posts essentially poo-pooing any potential harm to this young man or any young men in this situation and have gone to some length to find examples, at least one example, to show that it's all water off a guy's back. As I said and you repeat above, you made the distinction between being penetrated (as a girl would be) and a man or a boy who just shoves it in.
In short, you divide the sexes along very traditional, conservative lines even as you accuse others of being old gaffers. There isn't a dime's worth of difference between your view and how our grandparents' generation viewed the sexes.
If your point had been about penalties, then you could've made that your point--but you didn't. Little asides don't count when stacked against mountains of copy picturing a teacher banging her charge in a mop room as something akin to 60s-style "free love." Or something.
Saying you'd have objections to a 12 year old boy, but not a 16 year old boy is perplexing, not illuminating. What's your cut off? 13.5 years? You seem to think the fact that the affair began when the kid was 16, but she didn't get jealous until he was 17 is somehow exonerating. Or interesting.
It isn't. It doesn't speak to the essential imbalance at work here, her role as a teacher, as a guide, as an authority figure, as a MUCH older person. Nor does it speak to school as a safe haven for kids. You seem lost in a fantasy about the 1960s which, somehow I don't think you actually experienced.
And of course everything with you is couched in sarcasm, belittling, denigrating fake liberals and calling the other person stupid.
by Peter Schwartz on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 9:03pm
Okay, you're right, my bad - you are just stupid. Sorry about confusing you with distinctions.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my "Treblinka's greatest hits" for inspiration and relaxation.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 1:25am
by Peter Schwartz on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 7:45am
And your Treblinka comment was what, a compliment? encouraging dialog? a half-way meeting point? is your self-awareness so low?
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 8:52am
Actually, I thought about your Godwin comment.
I think--now that I think about it--it was sort of a reverse Godwin.
IOW, instead of bringing in Hitler to trump your assertion, I was bringing in Hitler to support your position.
Your point was, as I recall, that good things can come from bad starts or bad situations. I was merely saying, "Yes, even in Treblinka good things arose, so this is that much more true when the situation is much less severe."
It's a Talmudic heuristic method: If X is true, and we know it is, then Y is that much more true.
What I was objecting to was the suggestion that because good can come from bad, we shouldn't disallow or discourage (through law or rules) bad starts like this one (either because the kid was a boy or for any other reason) or just wink at them instead of imposing some consequences for bad behavior.
Knowing that good can come from bad (just to use simple terms) means we should be compassionate. It doesn't mean that the bad is no big deal because, in fact, in many cases, bad continues to be bad and can even get worse. And things get even worse when one of the parties is supposed to be acting like an adult and caring for the other. The teacher did the wrong thing. That's not no big deal even if things sometimes turn out okay.
The objection to Jolly was that he was saying: "This is no big deal. This happened to me once, and I turned out fine. Let's not be prudes and Puritans about this."
Complaining about my use of an extreme example shows your lack of self awareness. You use them all.the.time. The last one I recall was your analogizing getting your name in the paper for being an asshole with being pinned down by a thumbscrew. It's one of the pitfalls of sarcasm.
Anyway, it's pretty rich to accuse me of fending off dialogue. Or not being willing to try to see the other side. I do that to a fault if not always. In fact, I need to do it less. A lot of these discussions, on reflection, are idiotic. The CSA flag thing was the height of idiocy.
This one has turned idiotic. You think it's okay for a teacher to bang a 16 year old in the mop room and then get bent out of shape when he asks a girl to the prom because now he's like 17? Okay then...chaque un a son gout.
Edit to add: If your position had been that what the teacher did was wrong, but the punishment was too severe and we should be compassionate, then I could've agreed. However, you kept arguing that it was no big deal and adducing examples to show that it was no big deal because, hey, things like this can turn out okay. Even good.
This is idiotic. When I was a kid and drove drunk, nothing happened. That doesn't mean it was okay to do it. It's not okay for the teacher to bang the kid in the mop room even if, years later, it becomes leitmotif of his Great American Novel and he ends up with a great marriage and raises a bunch of kids who turn out to be geniuses and his dogs never bite anyone.
by Peter Schwartz on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 10:08am
Whatever - I don't need or want any help in supporting my point, thanks.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 12:42pm
Technically, you were leading off first base.
In CT, I believe, you would've been leading off second base unless, maybe, you were just nibbling on her ear which, btw, in Arabic and Hebrew, I hear, is called "the apricot." To my way of thinking, this bit of romantic slang changes everything and awards you full second base credit even in the Empire State.
by Peter Schwartz on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 10:26am
JR,
You are more than a bit meshuggah, thank heavens, but you are also a mensch! I won't tell anyone.
by Bruce Levine on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 10:02am
You are in fact "in a position to speak with somewhat greater particularity than mere elaboration of "adolescent fantasies"" What you're not capable of speaking of is how that fantasy might have played out in reality. Both of you were so inept at playing out the fantasy that in a few short weeks, that resulted in only kissing, already people were beginning to talk. Luckily for you she was adult enough to break it off because you were clearly not adult enough and would have continued no matter what the risks.
As you were excitedly planning to live out your fantasy did you include birth control? Or were you without even considering it, trusting that the adult was mature enough take care of it? What if she had become pregnant? Would you have blamed it all on the women and walked away from the child, as in this case would be your right since you were a child? I hold adult males with adult females equally responsible for birth control but not children with adults. Or would you have stood up at 15 and shouldered an adult burden? How would the responsibility of raising a child at 15 have affected your school work? Is it possible you would have dropped out of high school or not attended college?
I had a friend, 28 years old, who told me the story of her crush on her 35 year old piano teacher that became a sexual affair at 14. It lasted several years before it ended without anyone being the wiser. She was not unhappy about it. No harm no foul I guess. When she was a couple years past 30 she initiated a sexual relationship with a 14 year old boy. She got pregnant and the boy stood up and took responsibility. Dropped out of school and took on the responsibility of raising a child at 15.
Here's the thing I found most interesting. She was not happy she got pregnant. She was distraught. She had already had two abortions and I stood by her as she made the difficult decision to keep the baby. (edit to add) She wanted a family and after two abortions she thought this might be her last chance. There's lots of reason's why beautiful women with nice personalities can't form adult relationships and a normal family life. But is it possible that the affair as a child stunted her emotional and psychological growth and was a factor in her inability in forming adult relationships that led to the marriage and children she wanted?
The boy though was ecstatic. He told me all he wanted in life was (name) She was the only thing he cared about.
This brouhaha was much discussed in our circle of friends. She was a friend even though I could not condone her actions. One psychologist friend suggested that she was attempting to recapture her lost youth. Was there truly no psychological damage to the 14 year old girl? Did this inappropriate affair have some effect on her replaying it with a 14 year old boy? Would the 14 year old boy have decided that all he wanted out of life was (name) if there was no sex? Even if there had been no pregnancy would that 14 year old boy not been psychologically damaged? Would they have ended up married if there was no child?
Here's a question I keep asking myself. Was that 35 year old man involved as a 14 year old in an affair with a 35 year old women? Might that have been a factor in his statutory rape of my friend when she was 14? Psychological dysfunction can broil under the surface passed down to the next generations, seemingly without harm, until finally it spins out of control.
That fantasy you're still pining for as an adult might not have played out as well in reality if that teacher hadn't been mature enough to call it off. Real life is so much more complicated than our fantasy lives.
by ocean-kat on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 6:33pm
Good questions. Eerie coincidences, if they are. It's really hard to know, hard to draw the lines of causation.
by Peter Schwartz on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 9:09pm
My sense, without looking at data across the various states, is that you probably see more of the kind of judicial discretion that you're talking about. And I would be surprised if there were that many prosecutions of 18 year olds for having sex with 15 year olds or whatever. But of course that's just a hunch, so might be interesting to learn about how these cases are dealt with in the ordinary course across the country.
by Bruce Levine on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 10:05am
Well, there is this case of an 18-year-old and a 14-year-old, but obviously one (or even 10) anecdotes does nothing to challenge your assertion (and, of course, in this case the primary claim being made by the father of the 18-year-old is that this case wouldn't have been brought if the 18-year-old had been a male — I have no idea whether that's true). I can also add the fact that I was surprised to find that a (male) student in a lab I worked in had been charged with a sex crime prior to attending university for engaging in "inappropriate" acts with another boy a couple years younger than himself. IIRC, he had failed to disclose this to the university and when they found out, he was ejected.
In short, anecdotes aside, my (unsupported) hunch is that many fathers of 15-year-old females (and I stress females) would at least consider pressing charges against an 18-year-old who had engaged in sex with their daughter, and if they did so, most prosecutors would oblige (assuming that the age of consent was above 15, which is evidently now true in all 50 states).
by Verified Atheist on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 10:22am
Wow, come to think of it, I had a 15-year-old girlfriend when I was 18. Weird to think that I could have been convicted of a sex crime.
by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 5:17pm
Likewise, I had a 15-year old girlfriend when I was 16, and the details of that relationship would also have gotten me convicted of a sex crime, I think. (I.e., I don't think Georgia would make an exception for my age at the time.)
by Verified Atheist on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 5:49pm
In Georgia, it is statutory rape if you have intercourse with someone 16 or under, and the penalties fluctuate as follows:
One to 20 years in prison, but (1) 10 to 20 years if the offender is age 21 or older and (2) up to one year in prison if the victim is age 14 or 15 and the offender is no more than three years older.
by Bruce Levine on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 6:12pm
You might have been OK. According to the chart I linked to above, Iowa's statute now provides that it is:
Third-degree sexual abuse to perform a sex act on another person, not his spouse, who is (1) age 12 or 13 or (2) age 14 or 15 if the actor is five or more years older.
Now if you were in Mass. or elsewhere at the time. . .?
by Bruce Levine on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 6:09pm
It was Iowa. Glad to know that I'm not guilty of sexual abuse.
We got caught messing around in a car, actually. The cop gave me a talk about the risk of pregnancy sent us away. My girlfriend was pissed that the cop excluded her from the sex talk.
by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 11:44pm
It's the beauty of federalism and shows the great wisdom exhibited by our forefathers in crafting our unique, and uniquely wise, form of government.
Maybe this is what gets the states righters up in the morning.
by Peter Schwartz on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 8:27am
For centuries societies have in most cases turned a blind eye to sexual abuse of children. That allowed most predators to operate mostly unencumbered and there was much harm done to children and teen kids. Some of the instances are easy to judge, the child is 5, 8, 14, the adult is 20, 30, 40. Others are much more difficult. One child is 14 the other is 17. Child abuse or not?
18 and 15. The level of maturity could be similar or very different. Teens mature at very different rates and rapidly so the difference between 15 and 18 could be large or small. Sometimes it could be a very mature 15 year old teen and an average 18 year old. They just fall in puppy love. Sometimes it could be an very street wise 18 year old that deliberately preys on vulnerable very immature 15 year olds or younger. Its hard to decide exactly what's happening and how to deal with it.
We're in the process of struggling with this issues and mistakes will be made. But something had to be done to come up with some way of dealing with it than turning a blind eye. Ignorance was not bliss for the victims.
by ocean-kat on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 8:01pm
Yes, it could be either. That's the trouble with strict age-defined statutory rape laws. I'm not too keen on saying oh well, mistakes will be made when those mistakes send innocent people to prison and permanently brand them as sex offenders.
That doesn't mean we should do nothing. It just means that we shouldn't use arbitrary age limits to determine guilt for such a serious crime.
by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 11:53pm
Agreed. I think we're making some bad decisions when two high school students have sex and the age difference is a several years. People are getting hurt. I still think sometimes it is inappropriate and something should be done, just not what we've been doing.
That brings up a whole other discussion. The criminalization of even non sexual childhood misbehavior in schools. Imo we're really getting on to a wrong track there.
by ocean-kat on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 12:13am
Of course, even an 18 year old with a 15 year old is pretty different from a 38 year old and a 16 or even 17 year old.
by Peter Schwartz on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 9:07pm
When you get right down to it, aren't all laws and their corresponding penalties arbitrary? But even when we admit that, we still find ways to draw lines, make distinctions, and judge. There's no other way.
If we allow our ability to judge in a sea of arbitrariness, then we have to allow virtually everything. Why should 12 have been the limit and not 11.5? PP wants to say that he "knows" that 16 is cool, but 10 isn't. But what of those mature 10 year olds out there?
by Peter Schwartz on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 10:11pm
Sure, but some laws allow judges and juries more flexibility than others. Mandatory drug sentencing and 3-strike rules are too rigid, for example.
by Michael Wolraich on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 11:29pm
Yes. I think if this discussion had been about penalties, judges, and laws, it would've gone in a different direction. There probably would've been a lot more agreement, and folks would've moved on.
Fortunately for Jolly's hit rate, we stayed with sex.
But in all the talk about rape, etc., one thing that needs a lot more attention here is the role of being someone's teacher (even if you're not in her class).
Had the kid just been Morsi's next door neighbor, this discussion might have gone differently and not attracted the headlines it did. As I understand it, it still would've been statutory rape, but the controversy might have been limited to the 'hood.
I don't have to go into what it means to be a young person's teacher and what it entails. A secular teacher. A spiritual teacher. The student is putting his well-being (for lack of a better word) into your hands. In certain situations (like this one) and at certain ages, but not only at young ages, you have authority over the student as he pursues a goal that is often very important to him.
Unless you are a teacher of tantra or a sex therapist with a physical orientation and are intiating your student into the ways of physical love, or just acquainting him with the clitoris etc., then adding sex, and sex with you, into the relationship often, almost always (you pick the frequency) damages the teacher-student relationship. So, pending some kind of therapy perhaps, Morsi needs to be kept out of the classroom and maybe have her license suspended.
One of my roles is as a t'ai chi teacher. Part of my code of conduct states that I'm not to have romantic relationships with my students, who are all adults. This piece of the code was hard-won through lots of bad experiences. Though not all of them were bad (human beings aren't machines; their mileage always varies), enough of them were bad that we made the rule which, still, is sometimes honored in the breach.
Most importantly, initiating a romantic relationship or just a physical one damaged the teaching/learning of t'ai chi, which is the reason the teacher and student were on the floor to begin with and not off at the movies. Are we here to study t'ai chi or are we here to screw? Let's decide and move ahead.
All of this becomes a lot more pointed and weighty when we're talking about a public shool and a teacher who's more than twice the age of her paramour.
by Peter Schwartz on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 8:07am
Your point about the teacher/student relationship is very apt. I graduated college young (19) and was soon a substitute teacher at the same high school (as well as other nearby high schools) that I had graduated from. Not surprisingly, I had a few (female) students make fairly obvious passes at me, and some less-than-obvious. If I'd still been in college, few people would have batted an eye had I gone out with them (or more, as this was in Georgia, where juniors and seniors in high school are typically at the age of consent). However, I knew that even suggesting I was open to anything would've been wrong, even though I was only a substitute teacher. I feel that being a decent teacher means being aware that this is wrong. A couple years later, I became a full-time teacher at this high school and the girls' swim team coach. Happily, by that time most students saw me fully as an "adult" and there were at least no more obvious flirtations. (I also made sure that the door to my classroom was always open whenever a student was in there, as we had been warned during county orientation that there was a gang initiation for girls to publicly claim that their teachers had done inappropriate things with them. I do not know if this was true or not, but I believed it, and so was very careful about perception, as well as reality, of course.)
by Verified Atheist on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 8:46am
Of course. There's no question that the teacher was wrong to have sex with her students and no question that she must be fired. The question is whether she should go to prison. If she exploited her authority to pressure the student into a sexual relationship, then I say yes. But I don't agree with the blanket equation that 38-year-old teacher + 16-year-old student = prison.
by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 10:42am
Letourneau served three months in prison for having sex with a 12 year old boy. That doesn't seem extraordinarily punitive or excessively long to me. If she had adhered to the terms of her plea bargain that would have been all the time she would have served.
She pleaded guilty and was convicted of two counts of second-degree child rape. She was sentenced to six months (three of them were suspended) in the county jail and three years of sex offender treatment.[22] At that time, she was not required to register as a sex offender, and, as long as she complied with the terms of her plea agreement, she would not be required to serve any additional time in jail.[22] As part of her plea bargain, Letourneau agreed to avoid any further contact with Fualaau
I don't think a similar sentence in the case of the 38 year old school teacher who had sex with her 16 year old student would be extraordinarily punitive or excessively long either.
by ocean-kat on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 2:49am
Yes. I think if this discussion had been about penalties, judges, and laws, it would've gone in a different direction. There probably would've been a lot more agreement, and folks would've moved on.
This discussion could have gone in a different direction. I'm not sure how much agreement we would have had, who knows, might have been easy.
But before we can discuss the appropriate penalty we have to agree that something inappropriate happened. While most of us do agree, The question we've been discussing was submitted by JR:
Was this victimization or the best thing that ever happened to a guy?
If it was the best thing that ever happened to a guy than not only should there be no punishment but we should actively encourage female teachers to sleep with the male students. Perhaps set aside a room with a bed instead of making them hide in closets.
by ocean-kat on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 11:47pm
You make good points, however, I think--though I haven't worked it out--we probably could've restated the question in a less Manichean way. We don't have to accept Jolly's formulation.
The situation may not have presented a choice that was necessarily between heaven and hell.
Or, we might say: This could be either heaven or hell, but probably somewhere in between. We don't know what the real damage is or will be, so we're not going to say we do.
That said, Mrs. Teacher, it isn't your place to be playing roulette with a kid's life, especially, but not only, because you've been deputized to protect and nurture his life.
Then, given that, we might have recommended a punishment that was a bit nuanced. Tough enough to discourage others (maybe), but not a life sentence. What you quoted about LeTourneau's original sentence might be an example of this. Not sure.
by Peter Schwartz on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 7:39am
There's definitely this traditional notion that boys don't get damaged by inappropriate sex with older females. Most people assume that females in a similar situation are damaged. This misconception should be corrected.
by Peter Schwartz on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 7:41am
Just my take on some of Jolly's posts.
It's sometimes hard (for me) to know how seriously he means them.
I suspect he's often smiling in a serious way.
Or not.
Sometimes, I think, he's posting a thought experiment.
I don't think he thought through all the ramifications of this post when he posted it. That wasn't his intention. It was more of a lark as he entertained a fond memory (where the adult allowed some fun but also acted responsibly) that makes him smile.
by Peter Schwartz on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 8:22am
One of my nicest most memorable sexual experiences was sneaking to the back storage area during work - don't remember whether we locked the front door or were just kinda listening in case a customer walked in.
Sometimes the sneaking around is part of the fun, other times a nice luxurious relaxed environment - a moveable feast.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 8:56am
Interesting that you know that...
Well, then reduce the penalty. It's not rape-rape; it's statutory rape.
Despite it's arbitrariness--and virtually all age limits are arbitrary--somehow Francis figured out that 12 was too young. How'd he figure that out?
by Peter Schwartz on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 10:03pm
I learned about it when researching Bill O'Reilly's war on Christmas for my first book (obviously). Back in '05, Bill was telling the faithful that the war on Christmas would soon turn America into godless Canada, where gay marriage was legal, drugs had been decriminalized, “any kind” of abortion was available, welfare benefits were double those of the United States, the military was nonexistent, and the age of consent was fourteen. “Can you imagine American adults being allowed to fool around with children that age?” he wanted to know.
Perhaps we can blame the war on Christmas for the first two, but the age of consent has gone the other way. Godless Canada raised the age to 16 a few years back. Now godly Vatican City has outdone them.
by Michael Wolraich on Tue, 06/10/2014 - 10:19pm
That's bad news for some Canadians:
the 15-year-old girls
I wanted when I was 15
I have them now
it is very pleasant
it is never too late
I advise you all
to become rich and famous
(from The Energy of Slaves by Leonard Cohen)
by Lurker on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 2:14am
Money buys a lot of things, but not love, I think.
The Energy of Slaves seems an apt caption here.
Buckley once bemoaned the fact that conservatism's principle policy prescription--let the market sort it out--wasn't very inspiring politically, even to him.
You guys still have that problem.
by Peter Schwartz on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 8:24am
Not sure about love - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp6jvMgLGMQ - but it sure won't buy you a sense of humour.
by Lurker on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 6:40pm
Love For Sale is a sad song about prostitutes.
Where's the humour in that?
by Peter Schwartz on Wed, 06/11/2014 - 9:04pm
Well guys, I think we have this one pretty well worked out. Thanks for not interupting, ladies,
by Funonymous (not verified) on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 2:14am
You're welcome. Thought I'd sit it out and see where this was headed. Nice job, guys.
by Ramona on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 7:53am
Ah, the voyeuristic type - careful, this could cause emotional disturbance later on
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 8:58am