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Originally Posted by SkyDog
2. If the story was reversed (23-year-old guy, 14-year-old girl), we'd be ready to throw him in prison for the rest of his life, throw away the key, and *hoping* that his fellow inmates raped him unmercifully.
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Originally Posted by LloydLungs
Yeah, but males and females are different, as are their approaches to sex. It's just a fact of life. Not saying she isn't guilty of a crime and shouldn't be imprisoned (she is and should) but come on... there's a double standard for a reason. Hubba hubba.
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This is by far the most interesting part about this case, as it was in the Mary K. LeTourneau case here in the Seattle area a few years back. The LeTourneau case was even more extreme, as the boy was (I believe) 12 when the affair started and she was mid-thirties, and she went on to have 2 children with him from their repeated affairs.
Similar to this case, LeTourneau was an attractive woman and there were the predictable "hubba-hubbas" from most of the men discussing the case. Most women didn't see it the same way - they pointed out that the reverse situation would've been villified. A local columnist in fact went on a bit of a crusade combating the popular opinion many men had that this kid was lucky to have been deflowered by a hot teacher, and that in fact the boy had been seriously harmed psychologically from the whole ordeal.
In that case, I tend to agree given the age of the boy. In this case, this teacher is only 23 and the kid is 14. Now, 12 to 14 doesn't sound like that much but I think most of us realize a lot can change in that amount of time. And at 23, this teacher wasn't necessarily that much more mature than the kid.
This was a much different situation than the LeTourneau case so far as I can tell, i.e. for this teacher the affair was more about the thrill of the taboo, whereas with the LeTourneau case she was seriously disturbed mentally and wanted to marry this kid and of course had 2 of his babies.
On a more fundamental note, is it correct to believe in the double-standard view? Would it be any different if this were a 14 year old girl and a 23 year old male teacher? If so, why? Can we distill it down to an assumption that sex means different things to boys than it does to girls, and that boys have a more casual attitude about it so the potential harm done is less than with girls?
Discuss...