Byproducts of Relativity

[dtsou]

So I was listening to the radio this morning and they were talking about this stepfather who has been charged with indecent behavior and some other offense. Apparently, the stepfather was playing a game of truth or dare with his stepdaughter and some of her friends, and through the course of the game the stepdaughter and her friends shed their

Comments

[pessen]

I wonder (and I'm seriously curious, I'm not just trying to make some subtle point) if it would've been as big a deal if the genders had been reversed. What if it were a stepmother with her stepson and a bunch of his friends?

Having wondered that, I don't have too much to add. A lot depends on some of the specifics of the situation, but assuming that the girls were reasonably old enough and there was nothing else outlandish going on, it seems like this was all pretty consensual and that nobody was hurt. In that case, I find it hard to criticize any of this as necessarily being wrong.

Besides, who are you going to say was in the wrong? It actually sounds like the girls were doing most of the questionable stuff what with removing their clothes and making sexual gestures. Why aren't the girls getting charged?

[dtsou]

I think it would still have been a big deal. The media made a big deal about a 30something year old teacher marrying a 15 year old student (they got married because there's a law allowing it if the woman is pregnant). I think the woman is facing charges on something or other and can't see the boy anymore. That ruling seems kinda nutso to me, especially since the woman is pregnant. I mean, so the guy can't support/see his wife and child?

How old do you think the girls needed to be? 14? 15?

[pessen]

It still seems like there tends to be more outrage when it's an older guy and a younger girl, though. I've read plenty of stories where a female teacher has sex with a young male student and most people generally don't seem to care too much and are all about forgiving the female teacher and trying to see her point of view and claiming it was all consensual and they were in love etc. Whereas whenever it's an older male and a younger female, it always seems to be portrayed as some evil creep preying on some poor innocent little girl

[dtsou]

Yeah, awhile ago I would have agreed with you and said that I thought the same, but I remember coming across 2-3 stories in the news (not all at the same time) that chastised a relationship between a female teacher and a student. I thought it was patently ridiculous to a certain extent because it seems doubtful that the student was objecting. I think the reason for protecting children up to a certain age is that they just don't know better. Like if you have a kid and tell him to do something dangerous, he might not have heard that it was dangerous, or have had enough life-experience to understand how dangerous some things can be. On the other hand, you can't protect kids from everything and at a certain point you just have to let them learn from their mistakes (if it turns out to be a mistake). To complicate things further, it's difficult to agree on a certain age where you say a kid can make his own decisions. Everyone maturing at a different age doesn't help this choice either

[dtsou]

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