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Aswad -> RE: Sexy High School Teacher Busted for Sex with Moron Student (6/4/2007 1:37:48 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: calamitysandra
Aswad wrote that it would be alright for an 28 year old to have an affair with his/her faculty advisor while writing a thesis, and I have to disagree with that.
Err... no. What I said, was:
For a teacher at a university to get involved with a 28 year old student wrapping up specializations would not raise eyebrows in the same way, despite there being a similar relation. I did not say that it would be right or wrong, just that it would not cause the same reaction, despite their preexisting relationship (teacher/student) being of a similar nature.
Not as wrong as a relationship with a student on highschool level, it still is not okay in my eyes. The teacher still needs to grade the student and maintain a professional relationship and he/she still has a hold over the student. A affair like this would most likely besmirch the academic record of both.
Again, I prefer to treat the issues seperately. Lumped together, the conclusions do not generalize to other cases, are hard to discuss beyond the soapbox-stage, and do not give any insight into the reasons why people feel things are- or should be- a certain way.
The way I factor it is that the independent ethical issues are:
- Age: one party is legally a minor, the other is not.
- Power dynamic #1 (role): though the minor may not be consciously aware of it, the teacher has a weak hold over him through grading; weak, because any significant shift would be grounds for complaint, but present.
- Power dynamic #2 (judicial): the student can ruin his teacher's life with a phone call, given the current legal system, which kind of counterbalances #1, but is a distinct issue.
- Power dynamic #3 (personal): in many schools (at least around here), a teacher is perceived by most of the students to have some amount of authority over them, so a habituated personal power dynamic exists.
- Professional: as a teacher, she's got an obligation to keep their relationship strictly professional for various reasons, including bias.
What I would say, is that the issue of age is the one most seem to focus on, and the one that causes the huge ruckus, and that a similar case would not cause a similar amount of noise if the age element was not present. I've also argued that age is an artificial issue.
The first and second power dynamics are a concern, to the same extent as a couple working in a company with different rank within the same department; one determines how the other is judged, the other determines whether the first holds a job or not. This is an unfortunate situation if things fall apart and one or more of the parties fail to act responsibly in this regard; certainly worthy of more attention than the age difference. It is also one I would argue to be artificial; under reasonable circumstances, it should be possible for the teacher to defer grading to someone else, just like they do if they have other bias factors.
The third power dynamic is only a problem if abused, IMO.
The professional aspect is again an artificial requirement, IMO, except for the resolvable issue of bias.
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But what gets me most about this thread is the uninformed use of a term like paedophile. Please, please, at least try to get your facts right, people. A paedophile is somebody who is sexually atracted to pre-puerscent children. Somebody having sex with a 16 year hold makes his/her not, in no way a paedophile.
That's the point I was trying to make, as well. Men, at least, are biologically wired for ages 14 through 24, on average. They are not, however, usually wired for prepubescents.
This kind of conflation of terms is not only frustrating in how it lumps regular people in with practicing paedophiles, but more importantly, how it lumps practicing paedophiles in with regular people. It is also silly in relation to the witch-hunt phenomenon, as it helps establish an actual witch-hunt, rather than a legal process, by lumping people with two different charges under the same charge, in this case the more serious one.
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Plus, a paedophile is not automatically a predator. There are those who are aware of their desires and not acting on them. A child rapist is a child rapist. It is not really wise to log them all together.
Quite true. As I've mentioned before, the "minister of children, family and education" (a top gov't position) here was a paedophile, and strengthened legislation against those who act on those impulses, etc.; at no point did he do anything inappropriate. He was still forced to resign when he mentioned it, however, despite 6 years of doing a great job. His love for kids was not channeled into sex, it was channeled into working to do better by the kids.
Also mentioned before, most who rape children are not paedophiles. Children are quite simply more convenient to them: they can be easily threatened, are easily forced, cannot usually resist, tend to believe what adults tell them, weigh little enough to transport easily, are given little credit, and usually have no idea what the rapist intends to do. In short, they are the weakest victims around; as a lot of people will tell you, a sexual predator will usually select prey in the same way that carnivores in nature select food, which means the easiest prey.
Even if you assume that as many as 10% of the population are attracted to prepubescents, which I find unlikely, you would still only end up with a worst case figure of about 0.03% of all males acting on an impulse to rape children; slightly less for women, I'd assume, but I don't have the statistics for incidence of rape among women.
These things also probably have a significant impact on recidivism rates; I would assume that recidivism rates are higher for those who rape anyone than they are for those who do statutory rape against a prepubescent. The latter can probably be more successfully rehabilitated than the former.
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