Victim-blaming in Britain.

[polimicks]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1077266/He-seduced-Married-housewife-sex-boy-14-walks-free-court-judges-extraordinary-ruling.html

A judge gave a 40 year old woman who slept with a 14 year old boy a slap on the wrist, and told her that the kid had obviously seduced her.

:|

Yeah... This is no more ok than when the genders are reversed. Seriously.

This is something I have never understood. Ok, so girls physically mature earlier than boys, and most psychological research has come to the conclusion that they mature mentally and emotionally earlier than boys as well.

Let a man seduce a 14 year old girl, and USUALLY the majority of public* opinion is that he should be buried under the jail. When a MUCH older woman seduces a 14 year old boy, you get a lot of "Every boy fantasizes about that." Holy shit, you'll even get that crap from the parents of teen boys, who you would THINK would be the last beings on the planet willing to give someone a pass on that.

I had this argument about a hundred times during the Mary Kay LeTourneau/Vili Fulau trial the first go around. A child is a child is a child. Doesn't matter what gender.

And while I'm NOT saying that people should be fucking 14 year old girls with impunity, I guess I just don't entirely understand the difference in perception here, particularly when psychology would indicate that the opposite makes more sense. Well, until you take into consideration that people are far more concerned with controlling female sexuality than male sexuality. But that's another post.

The fact remains that it is wrong to have sex with children of either gender. Period. Full stop. End of sentence.


*Public. The defense attorney, wife and family of said fuckstick will be performing incredible feats of mental gymnastics in order to justify their client/loved one's behavior.

Comments

[sarmonster.livejournal.com]

It's fucking insulting that a woman "must have been seduced" by a 14-year-old. How obviously, outwardly incapable is this person to deserve a verdict like that?

If she didn't KNOW he was 14, I'd be willing to give her a little slack, but..Seduced? Take SOME fucking responsibility.

[polimicks.livejournal.com]

Especially when you consider he went to school with her kids.

[polimicks.livejournal.com]

She actually pled guilty. I'm not sure what all she said in her plea, but the seduced comment was from the judge,not her.

Even more fucked, as it didn't come from someone trying to save their own ass, but an outside observer.

[tundra-no-caps.livejournal.com]

"They Seduced me" is what in my mind is connected with cases of pedophilia.

[spitphyre.livejournal.com]

Isn't that the whole premise of Lolita?

[sirriamnis.livejournal.com]

Lolita's supposed to be a study of a deranged mind, not a "get out of jail free card." You're not supposed to sympathize with Humbert, you're supposed to be disgusted by the ways his mind rationalizes his behavior.

[spitphyre.livejournal.com]

Well that was the point I was trying to make. That at the very end it's a whole... "ooohh... He's just an abusive pervert!" :/ So pedophiles and seduction and... too not feeling well to make a good point... :p

[tundra-no-caps.livejournal.com]

Ah, I think I need to clarify.

I do not think children seduced pedophiles. But the answer that is shown on TV, as if those pedophiles have the notion that the children are seducing them.

[candika.livejournal.com]

I don't know how the judge could hand down this verdict. It's never right for an adult to have sex with a child, regardless of the gender of the people involved.

[javagoth.livejournal.com]

Un-fucking-believable! She should, at the very least, get more than a slap in the hand for the fact she was supplying him with DRUGS for crying out loud!

If she was so fucking miserable then she should have filed for divorce and found a lover closer to her own age or older!!!

People suck!

[mojrim.livejournal.com]

Well, the Judge's line of justification (I won't call it reasoning) is bizzare at best. That said, and knowing I'm going to catch hell for this:

PC or not, enlightened or not, when my (male) buddies and I discuss this sort of thing, we tend to agree. If our 15 y/o son came to us and said "Sad, I'm fucking a teacher." Our response was two fold (1) What does she look like? (2) Don't tell your mother.

[spitphyre.livejournal.com]

And if your 15 year old daughter came to you and said, "Dad, I'm fucking my teacher" you and your friends would...?

[tigrrlily.livejournal.com]

And if your 15 year old son said to you "He's tall and has brown eyes" then what?

[mojrim.livejournal.com]

In reply to both: The first case is easy, I would catch him after school and beat him senseless. I'm an unrepentant throwback with open double standards. The second is a much richer question, and I'm frankly unsure. I have no reflexive objection, but something still bothers me.

Contemplating the idea of my 15 y/o daughter having a lesbian relationship, I don't get especially worked up. On reflection, I think my concern is more with the sex of the older person than the younger. The simple truth is that I consider male sexuality to be more predatory than it's female counterpart. An older man fucking teenagers (and I've known a few) is a dangerous animal on the loose. A woman doing so is usually desperate for attention. Perhaps I'm romantisizing here, but this is what I've observed.

[sirriamnis.livejournal.com]

I forgot to reply to this earlier.

Give me a moment: "The simple truth is that I consider male sexuality to be more predatory than it's female counterpart."

Baa haaa haaa haaaaa!!!!! Have you MET me? Or any of the other women we used to hang out with during the party days?

Alzheimer's settles in early, I guess.

Snrk.

[madarab.livejournal.com]

It would be nice if you could just blame this on a foreign court system or culture, but there is too much evidence here that the same kind of mentality exists.

[sarmonster.livejournal.com]

There's the teeniest possibility that the judge was easy on her because she plead guilty right away.
The Brits are generally a lot more resonable and guideline oriented than us yanks, but they still have some maddening sexist tendencies and "gender roles".

[kaligrrrl.livejournal.com]

er, a 14 year old is not a child.
pre-pubesence=child.
pubesence=teenager.
there *is* a difference.

I am not categorically against inter-generational relationships, as I had them when I was a teenager and I do not feel they were abusive/exploitative.

they have a great deal of potential for damaging the teen but they can be as healthy and great as any other kind of relationship.