Photo by Flickr user JND90745. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Monique of the 99% non-sex blog bounceswoosh.org has a thoughtful post linking back to one of my old posts about sexual double standards very inappropriately imposed on children.
“>http://www.realadultsex.com/archives/2006/03/boys_should_get_to_be_boys.html
It’s about how when a man has sex with a girl, it’s perceived as damaging to the girl, but when a woman has sex with a boy, it’s something the boy should feel, to borrow what I believe is a British term, chuffed about. Hey, man, high five!
And so it occurs to me that the problem here is related to the problem that people encounter in trying to decide if they should share their sexual fantasies or not. (The specific situation I’m thinking about is a boy who is old enough to have coherent sexual urges but not really old enough to make big decisions for himself.) Yes, there’s a lot of literature, tv, etc about how great it is for an adolescent boy when an experienced woman introduces him to the wide world of sex. But that’s fantasy. Just because a boy might have talked about how awesome it would be to “do” his teacher, doesn’t mean he’s actually ready for it…
So going broader, as a society we have confused the fantasy (I’m sure a lot of teens and pre-teens have had sexual crushes on their teachers or some other adult in their vicinity) with a reality that is damaging and awful.
I think that when trying to parse this stuff out it’s helpful to build up a little table or checklist with a column for boys and one for girls and then just go down it. (Metaphorically if not literally that is.) So, for instance, there’s no doubt at all that boys often get the hots for teachers — I remember all the boys in my elementary school talking about passionately hoping they’d get Miss [So-and-so] when we got to 5th Grade. But here’s the thing, I also know girls harbor equally vague but attracted thoughts for their teachers. And so on down the list.
But (assuming they’ll grow up to be autonomous, equal adults) it’s also equally important that as they approach their own adulthoods that both boys and girls transfer their idealized feelings for adults into real, initially tentative and then gradually more competent feelings for each other.
With the problem being that when adults step into the mix they effectively short-circuit developmental negotiate-with-your-peers experiences. Which would be fine in one of those societies where, say, years after their fathers arrange for their sons to have sex they finally earn enough money to buy child brides. In circumstances like that, peer development is no more relevant than central heat or a common currency. (And lest you think I’m making imperialist generalizations see Spencer, Diana: married age 20, and Charles, Prince: married age 32.)
Elsewhere, however, it’s pretty darn important not just for girls to develop naturally with their peers but for boys to as well.
Doesn’t mean they fantasize harmlessly (after all some people’s fantasies involve Donald Trump and event though they have to know that reality wouldn’t work out so hot either) but it does mean it’s not worth it to the child’s long-term social and sexual well-being to act on it.
Submitted by 1928 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-02-10 19:20.
This is very coherently expressed and reasoned. I don't think anyone could argue the point you make about fantasy vs. developmental readiness. Now... does the same thing also apply to 'consenting' adults who are also at very different stages in terms of emotional maturity? You mentioned one example, with Charles and Di... but obviously, there are much more extreme examples out there. If a much older women, say in her forties, succumbs to the (supposedly) flattering attentions of a man in his early twenties, is she stepping in where she shouldn't, since he should be learning how to live and relate in a world of twenty-somethings? I'm not sure, personally, but it's an interesting topic.
[It is an interesting question and I think I can answer it two ways. First of all, the decision to designate people as adults at age 18 is semi-arbitrary. The "semi" part is meant in the sense that it represents an aggregate point on the curve of maturity where most people are able to "handle it," and also in the sense that past a certain developmental stage simply being told "you're an adult now" has a certain transformative effect. The "arbitrary" part is meant in the sense that "most" is not the same thing as "all" at all. Thus it's entirely possible that someone who's nineteen or twenty *might* not yet be ready for adult sexual relationships *but* chances are very good that *by that age* they're mature enough in other developmental dimensions to be able to adequately manage their own boundaries (if not necessarily, problematically, manage the boundaries of others.) So that's the first way to answer your question about age differences. The other, though, is that further down the pike, a 40 year-old lover would have to find an extraordinarily isolated or terribly introverted twenty-something who had not yet had *any* developmental romantic/sexual experiences *and* was still vulnerable in *other* developmental dimensions not to be able to approach the older person as a more experienced peer rather than a parental/pedagogic authority. Cool question, Marianne! --fl]
Submitted by 1928 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-02-11 07:40.
I dunno, in some ways I think that a romance between a 19 or 20 year old college student and a 50 year old college professor is not all that different than a high school student and teacher. Legally, of course, there is a world of difference and a high school student is not the same as a college student, but ick. A 50 year old is so much more experienced in so many ways...On the other hand, maybe not everyone wants a balanced relationship with a peer? Maybe some 19-20 year olds want a relationship with a father (or mother) figure and so what if that's what they want? Maybe many college students don't want a relationship at all and they just want to fuck their professor,and I guess that's ok but I still think that 50 year olds aught not to be hitting on 20 year olds. Maybe I'm just being judgmental :-). It just seems like a bad idea.
Oh and about boundaries, when I was 20, I had difficulty asserting my boundaries sometimes because I was so concerned about hurting people's feelings. I had a weird experience when I was a 19 year old archeology student and a friendship sort of developed between a visiting professor and me at a field school and it took me awhile to realize that he saw the relationship differently than I did, and I found myself in a position where he was always asking me for hugs and I did not want to hug him but it was hard for me to tell him "no." One of the things that made it harder for me to assert myself was his age and it was easier to hug him when cornered or just walk quickly in the opposite direction than it was for me to be assertive. Now that I am in my 30s, I have no problem hurting someone's feelings if that's what it takes. Now that I am in my 30s, 50 doesn't seem that old but there is a world of difference between 20 and 50.
[I probably didn't make it clear enough that grown-ups can still be plenty vulnerable (I mean *I'm* still vulnerable about stuff!!!) but there's typically a consensus qualitative difference: A 50-year-old's impact on a 20-year-old is just about certain to be qualitatively different from a 45-year-old's impact on a 15-year-old... even if we're talking about the same two people five years later. In other words it's not that there stops being any impact, just that the terms are much more favorable when both parties are adults. Thanks, Mag. --fl]
Submitted by 1928 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-02-11 18:30.
I completely agree, Sugar Mag. It's one thing for a 19-year-old to want a father/mother figure. (Though the idea of calling a lover "Daddy" squicks me in a major way, I do realize that it's a game that floats some people's boats.)
I also get that power and knowledge are erotic. I've had more than one serious crush on a teacher or professor.
It's quite another thing for the 50-year-old professor - or even the 30-year-old professor - to get sexually involved with a student (of any age, I'd argue). I don't object to the age difference but to the power differential. Gosh, I'm cautious even about asking students to babysit for me. I would never ask a *current* student to do so - or anyone I'd expect to teach or formally advise in the foreseeable future.
I do have some very attractive male students this quarter. If I were single and seriously interested in one of them (unlikely, because the *experience* gap would still be huge), I'd wait until the term ended. And not just for ethical reasons: Power is erotic, to me, if it's something you can *play* with. That can only happen if it's not frozen into a rigid structure, as in the teacher-student relationship.
And then there's Donald Trump, who's the antithesis of sexy for me. There are worse lust killers (Dick Cheney, anyone?) but he's proof positive that sometimes power can just be repulsive.
[There's no, none, zero doubt that student/teacher, employee/employer, client/authority relationships have the same problematic power dynamics as child/adult. I'd just argue that *developmentally* the latter has more dire consequences over the long term, not that the consequences of the former can't be dire. Also, yeah, Dick Cheney. Eww. Thanks, Sungold. --fl]
Submitted by 1928 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-02-11 23:07.
Eep! I didn't realize you'd link back to my post. Not that I mind, and of course I know that my site is out there in the wide world for anyone to find ... it's just an unusual experience for me.
Anyway. The first teacher I remember having the hots for was a visiting philosophy professor my freshman year of college. Actually, that's the only teacher I ever had the hots for. I don't recall any other teachers being even vaguely attractive, although that may have a lot to do with the arrogance of my then-youth. I vividly remember standing in his office to pick up a paper he'd graded, trying to ignore all the very moist fantasies running through my head and other body parts. I'm sure I stammered and sounded like an idiot. I wonder if he realized what was going on for me ...
From a different perspective, I was very active in martial arts throughout high school, and there was an assistant instructor that really bugged me. I never really could figure out if he was hitting on me -- he was in his mid-20s and he was always telling me I should be dating lots of guys, not restricting myself to the guy I was with throughout high school and college. So I found that creepy, and he also was just a tad too touchy feely. That's hard to gauge in an environment where your instructors are constantly manually adjusting your form, etc, but it seemed to me he came very close to crossing the line, particularly when he rubbed my shoulders at a tournament. I did actually bring it up to the head instructor, which as a high schooler I think took a fair amount of courage, but he kind of laughed it off and I went with hoping the assistant was just socially inept.
(Massive tangent: It took a really unfortunate turn when the master instructor gave the school over to the assistant. For that and other reasons, I wasn't interested in continuing lessons, but had recently signed a 3 year contract. I ended up paying a lot of money to a collection agency for classes I would never take. I don't do contracts for anything anymore; the most I'll do is month to month.)
So that all sounds really creepy, but he never did cross any clear line where I could definitely say he was hitting on me or that he did anything sexually inappropriate, aside from commenting on my choice of relationships, which is just plain socially inappropriate and rude, and IMO typically counter productive.
Those are the two personal experiences I can think of, but they don't really enlighten me as to age of consent or the appropriateness of relationships with large age differentials. Actually, in both of those cases, the age difference couldn't have been more than 10 years.
[Wow, Monique, that was a nice description of two classic kinds of crushes. Very sorry to hear about your experience with the karate school, both the creepy instructor and the #%%~@% athletic-club membership contract business. (I've run afoul of one of those things and they just bite.) Thanks. --fl]