I know what you're going to say. No teenage boy will object to this type of "abuse." Just as the sexes are inherently different, the distinguishing factor here is that the women in question didn't want the sexual attention. The boys not only wanted it but probably couldn't believe their luck.
But you're forgetting something.
There's a reason we have an age of consent that applies to both boys and girls, and the reason is that the law doesn't consider teenagers mature enough to make decisions about sex. (That's because they're not.) A cute female teacher in her 20s who decides to have sex with a teenage male student may be giving him the experience of his dreams, but that doesn't mean she isn't doing him harm.
Try for a minute not to think with your flesh. She's in a position of authority over him, and by involving herself with him sexually with him, she's not only introducing a very complicating factor into the teacher/student relationship - although she's certainly doing that. She's also messing with his psyche, as anyone will understand is a sticky wicket when you're dealing with the way sexual experiences influence the development of the male self-concept.
And: When a teacher is having sex with her students, she's got a secret she needs to protect on penalty of job loss at the least and jail at the worst. She's now putting that teenage boy in the very uncomfortable position of having to help protect that secret.
I suppose I don't need to say any more in making the case that this is harmful to young men. If you get that, you already see it. If you're determined to view it from a libertine perspective, I'll never convince you. But I don't hear even the most libertine among us arguing that these teacher/student trysts should be legal or accepted, if only because some of them might have teenagers themselves at some point.
The larger point here is not for me to make the argument that this is bad for the teen boys. That seems self-evident to me but some people's attitudes are what they are. Rather, it's to acknowledge however uncomfortably that the emerging societal phenomenon of people in power pursuing others inappropriately for sex is not limited - despite what recent media coverage would have you think - to scenarios involving male perpetrators.
We've been hearing these teacher/student stories with some regularity for the past several years, and it happens often enough there there's clearly some sort of pattern going on. You can Google it if you want to see just how much it's happened in recent years. I think it's important to acknowledge that the number of known incidents is tiny compared to the larger number of teachers in America, or even compared to the number of young pretty teachers. It's unfair to make them all suspects because of the ones we know about.
At the same time, we should acknowledge that we surely don't know about all such situations. We only know about the ones where the relationships came to light. It's impossible to say how many others are going on and will never be found out.
So what's the common thread, and how should we understand the larger phenomenon?
Powerful men like Harvey Weinstein, Mark Halperin, Charlie Rose and others clearly used their positions to at least pursue sexual gratification, believing that they would either a) get what they wanted; or b) suffer no real consequences in the event their targets didn't welcome the overtures. Just how many prominent men were behaving this way is impossible to say as I write this, since it seems we learn of a new one - or at least one with allegations against him - almost daily.
Support Canada Free Press
I've hypothesized that these men don't like the fact that women typically control the availability of sex, and tried to use their positions of power and influence to change that balance of power in their favor. It's about power, sure. And it's about sex. It's crazy to pretend either end of the equation doesn't play a role here.
Obviously that doesn't apply with cute young female teachers, who - married or not - can surely find a man willing to have sex with them pretty much any time they want.
But the use of power in these entanglements is still a common theme, as is - I suspect - personal insecurity. A man can be the CEO of a production company or a famous politician but still be personally insecure, and view sex as a form of affirmation that serves as a salve for that weakness. The same is true of young women. You're beautiful. You know it. But that doesn't necessarily keep you from being insecure, and maybe because you're young and beautiful, you know that sexual attention from men is the one thing you can go and get that will make you feel better about yourself, at least in the moment.
This is one of the ways the sexual revolution has made people of all ages and both sexes vulnerable to psychological beatings. To many people, your cultural worthiness is defined by how many people are willing to bang you, or by how many you have banged. We've strayed very far from quaint notions like meeting and marrying one person, and having sex with that one person only for life. That's still the right thng to do, but if you actually do it you're a cultural outlier. You're not the norm.
So people get programmed into thinking they need to constantly pursue sexual relationships to prove they're deemed worthy of them by others, and those in a position of power over others will abuse that position of power to help themselves to succeed in the quest. Many of these teachers have been married, and many of those had several kids. It's not as if they don't have the opportunity for sex at home. Yet here they are: Bedding teenage boys under their charge. Why? Because they want to see if they can, and once that starts the challenge becomes intoxicating.
Yes. Far too many men are sexually harassing, abusing and assaulting women. This is a symptom of moral degradation in our culture. Also: Far too many women are doing the same thing, albeit with young men who are foolishly willing to take part because that's the leading way in which young men are fools.
This is two sides of the same coin, and the coin represents that which the sexual revolution unleashed on our culture more than 50 years ago, and at this point we have no idea how to bring it under control.
One final point: I know there are some of you who are scoffing at this because, you'll say, scandalous sexual behavior is as old as humanity, and it's silly to think there's anything new under the sun. This is usually the argument of people who want you to show how worldly they are, by discounting the importance of rising depravity.
Well. If that's how you feel, then we can probably stop caring about what the Harvey Weinsteins and Mark Halperins of the world - or these teachers - are doing. Because there's nothing new under the sun, right? Or we can recognize that while humanity has always been capable of depravity, the corruption of our culture is reaching new levels precisely because we stopped judging, stopped distinguishing between right and wrong, and stopped honoring God. Acknowledging that is the only way to reverse a growing evil that is not limited to men or women, but is simply driven by the desperate need of insecure people to satisfy their feral desperation.
I know what you're going to say. No teenage boy will object to this type of "abuse." Just as the sexes are inherently different, the distinguishing factor here is that the women in question didn't want the sexual attention. The boys not only wanted it but probably couldn't believe their luck.
But you're forgetting something.
