Sex education with a new twist?

Curt Mudgeon

August 2005

It appears that teachers of the fair sex, some quite attractive, have added a new dimension to the education of their charges by having carnal relations with adolescent boys. These incidents have elicited diverse reactions, some from men who snicker about the “lucky boys,” and some from people of the feminist persuasion who indignantly cry “unfair double standard” before the courts render any verdict. In between lies a whole range of opinions that have little to do with clear thinking and much to do with parochial preoccupations. Yes, there is the question of the double standard by which woman-boy relations would be looked upon with more tolerance than man-girl relations. But is that unfair? There is also the matter of the teacher being an authority figure. But is it an accurate representation of the teacher’s current station in the education system? Does bogus pedagogic “science” play a part? Did the sexual revolution of the 1960s and attendant feminist ideas contribute to a general blurring of the notion of propriety as it pertains to these cases? Could it also contribute to a resolution of the case of classroom mistresses gone astray?

In a column published earlier this year, Susan Estrich, lawyer, feminist, and die-hard Democrat, presented a typical examination of the “double standard” as it applied to Mary Kay Letourneau, a married teacher in her forties who seduced a thirteen-year-old boy and had with him two children. Mrs Letourneau, who initially managed to get a suspended sentence, ended up spending seven years in the hoosegow for ignoring the judge’s order to stay away from the boy. It is Ms Estrich’s opinion that, if a male teacher had impregnated a thirteen-year-old girl, he would have gotten much more than seven years to mull over the impropriety of his conduct. She thus denounces the application of a double standard to cases of statutory rape. But her article goes one step farther. She cites an experienced criminal lawyer’s remark that, ceteris paribus, good-looking women get lighter sentences, and then concludes that in that respect Mrs Letourneau’s punishment was on the “long side.” So, Ms Estrich’s exposé actually suggests the existence of a triple standard in the application of the law on statutory rape to (1) men, (2) homely women, and (3) good-looking women. Hah!

One would expect a better discussion of the subject matter from someone who teaches criminal law at USC. This disjointed article does not seem to reach an explicit conclusion. It only lets the reader infer that a prejudice based on men’s attraction to women pervades the application of the law, most probably because men conceived the law and control the courts. Of course, it ignores other possible reasons for the existence of a double standard, because it is a piece of feminist advocacy. In addition, its suggestion that the impregnation of a teenage girl by a male teacher would be comparable to the Letourneau story is just absurd. In that case, it is the adult who got pregnant.

As a lawyer, Ms Estrich must know why there may be a double standard. The laws on statutory rape were enacted to protect girls, because girls are more vulnerable than boys in intimate relations with adults of the opposite sex. Only girls run the risk to get pregnant. As to the act itself, it can always be completed if a girl is coaxed into it without any desire on her part. That is not true for boys. But it is true that most normal teenage boys wish for opportunities to have sex with an attractive woman, and whether such affairs could damage their psyche is highly dubious. These considerations are the natural realities that feminists want to ignore---and want the law to ignore---to advance their jaundiced views of equality. Surely, it is always possible to make laws that deny reality, but too often at a dreadful price---think of the consequences of a law that would deny the existence of gravity.

For good measure, the argument that a teacher is an authority figure has been thrown into the debate. This point, which would have carried weight a long time ago, has lost much of its cogency. Over the past forty years, a spurious current of egalitarianism has transformed the relative standings of teachers and students. On the one hand, many a teacher, no longer the classroom master, has been posing as his students’ older buddy who is there just to help. This is supposed to be a clever way “to reach” his charges. On the other hand, students have been encouraged to “question authority” with the pretence that their uninformed opinions harbor profound truths uncorrupted by cultural prejudice. These flaky ideas, which borrow from Timothy Leary’s ramblings and Rousseau’s silly concept of “noble savage,” have been promoted by progressive educators to the rank of pedagogical theories. That did not do much good for the teacher’s status of authority figure.

Hence, what should be done about these teachers guilty of relations with boys? Well, before answering this question, it is instructive to take a look at the life of an icon of the feminist movement, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, a French writer whose production spanned the first half of the previous century. Colette’s semi-autobiographical novels consisted of childhood memories and tales of love and passion that centered on feminine sensuality and involved characters outside the conventions of the time. Her life flouted all rules of modesty. She had three marriages, two divorces, multiple liaisons with men and women, and bared her breast in a theater play. With such credentials, it was inevitable that she became a subject of interest in the academic departments of Women Studies, and a darling of the feminists. At age forty-seven, Colette seduced the sixteen-year-old son of her second husband. Fifty years later, in the 1970s, newly “liberated” women seemed to have found the fact more titillating than reprehensible. Actually, some did not fail to mention approvingly that mature European women have had a tradition of initiating adolescent boys into the joys of manhood, and that fuddy-duddy America would be well-advised to follow that example. Myths about Europe always come in handy whenever one wants to put down America.

So, to go back to the problem of these classroom mistresses with a taste for boys, I suggest here a simple solution that should please those feminists who find the grass greener on the other side of the Atlantic. It should equally please the education establishment. It consists of giving these women a big raise for having inaugurated a new federal program funded by the Department of Education and aptly named “Reproductive Health Lab.” This extension of the sex-education curriculum would be open to heterosexual students and teachers of both sexes on a voluntary basis. Teacher qualification would require a semester of study---including lab---to be defined by our best schools of education. For the sake of fairness, no requirement would be placed on looks.

Well, the way things are going, I would not be too surprised if twenty years from now . . .