Men’s Rights activists are constantly posting links to stories of women committing horrible crimes – what some have taken to calling “women behaving badly” (WBB) stories – and almost reveling in the fact that, yes, some women do indeed do horrible shit.
MRAs are particularly obsessed with stories of female high school teachers preying on their underage students. While this partly reflects the general MRA obsession with badly behaving women, MRAs do actually make a legitimate point here: while most people understand that female victims of predatory male teachers are indeed victims, quite a few people regard male victims of attractive female teachers as “lucky” boys who get to live out the schoolboy fantasy of having sex with a “hot teacher.”
So when I saw that The Spearhead was featuring a guest post titled “The Hot Teacher Myth, and How it Hurts Men,” I expected to see some version of this argument being made. What I found was one of the strangest and creepiest things I’ve ever read: Walt Forest seems to think that the real problem is that so few guys get the opportunity to have sex with “hot teachers.”
Forest points out (correctly) that cases or female teachers sexually abusing their male students are actually fairly rare. He goes on to argue that all the attention paid to predatory “hot teachers” in the media promotes the “myth” that male and female sexuality is fundamentally the same. This, he suggests, is bad for men:
How does this myth hurt men?
Set aside for a moment the image of the hot teacher and her underage male victim which the media force on us with such insistence. Instead imagine a far more common scenario: a young man (or for that matter, a not-so-young man) who does NOT have sex with his teacher, but desperately wants to.
I’m not quite sure in what world lots of young and not-so-young men – not teenage boys — are being taught by “hot” high school teachers. Perhaps the “hot teachers” here are actually “hot” college professors or grad students and the men in question are college students? Or is Forest simply trying to avoid the question of sexual abuse by pretending that underage boys are “men?”
Forest continues to explore the plight of this poor fellow:
In fact this man would like to have sex with many of the women around him, but — with very few exceptions — he cannot.
Well, yeah. There are 3.5 billion girls and women on planet earth; even the most advanced Lothario is only going to be having sex with a very small fraction of a percentage of them.
But alas, the media tortures this hapless undersexed fellow by suggesting that women like sex as much as men, even though the overwhelming majority of women won’t actually have sex with him personally.
[O]ur media and increasingly ordinary people assure this man that women he hardly knows (even his teachers) will suddenly lead him by the hand to their beds for no other reason than the pleasure of having sex with him, “no strings attached.” This kind of thing is ordinary, we tell him. It “happens all the time.”
Well, in porn it does. Most people are aware that porn isn’t reality.
When it does not happen—of course it never does—he is left to think that he must be something less than an ordinary man. If he dares to voice his disappointment, we tell him that he places excessive importance on sex, views women as “objects,” and the rest of the standard pop feminist rhetoric designed to put the blame back on the man himself. We blame the man because we MUST if we are to avoid blaming ourselves for all the lies we are telling him.
I’m pretty sure that most men – or even most teenage boys — don’t spend their days wondering why their lives aren’t exactly like Penthouse Letters.
These lies hurt men. It is difficult for anyone who has not suffered this hurt first hand to understand just how bad it can be, but from my own experience I believe these lies are helping to create the ongoing male suicide epidemic (which our society, tellingly, also refuses to acknowledge).
Men kill themselves because “hot teachers” don’t seduce them on a regular basis? Really?
These lies certainly make countless men miserable. For this reason I believe exposing the myth that male and female sexualities are the same should be the men’s movement’s first priority. Hot teacher stories obviously make up only a tiny part of this myth, but because they are such a blatant distortion of reality, they are a good place to start.
Quite a few of The Spearhead’s regulars were put off by the, well, weirdness of Forest’s post. But others chimed in to agree. Indeed, Arpagus actually took Forest’s strange argument a step further, earning himself some actual Spearhead downvotes in the process:
[T]he female sex offender charade has been the most frustrating aspect of feminism for me personally, not least because I have experienced a great deal of sexual frustration in the past, and nothing can be more offensive to celibate men than pretending there is an epidemic of female rapists. …
It is a most distinctive sign of cultural decline that we have forgotten that pussy is good. This ancient wisdom has been brainwashed out of our culture by feminism. Now pussy is rape and abuse just like male sexuality is. Traditional society might have punished an adulteress for a student-teacher type of relationship, but they certainly did not indulge in any charade about the boy being a “victim,” because they knew he got lucky if you consider the sex itself. There are reasons why a society might want to proscribe those kinds of relationships, but the boy being a “victim” of “abuse” is most assuredly not one of them.
MRA elder “Zed” gently corrected Arpagus in a comment that was nearly as strange, suggesting that predatory “hot teachers”
are not being punished for “harming the boys”, that is just a convenient excuse. What they are actually being punished for is giving away free pussy.
If you take a close look at the outrage among men these days for having to pay full price for used pussy, their anger is divided between the guys who got it at a price far lower than they paid for it, and the women who gave it away to another man for less than they charged him for it.
It would be like a rich man buying an entire wine cellar of Dom Pérignon at the going price of $200+/bottle – savoring what indulgence his wealth could buy him – only to find his kitchen wench had been pouring free flutes for the pool boy.
Or, like it a member of the Medellín Cartel discovering that their US connection to whom they shipped 2 metric tons of high quality cocaine, was laying out lines for her friends.
She is not being punished for “harming the boys” (HA!) but for black marketing the product that the pussy cartel owns.
The women are being punished FOR allowing the boys to get lucky, and get some without having to lay out 3 months salary for an engagement ring and $35,000 on a Bridezilla party for cupcake.
Now that’s the kind of comment that gets upvotes on The Spearhead, and makes Zed a revered figure in the Men’s Rights movement.
EDITED TO ADD: Not sure how I missed this, but Arpagus is apparently the truly creepy Norwegian blogger Eivind Berge, whom we’ve met before.
Ugh. This is where my mom really got on my nerves with her homophobia. She automatically assumed that my non feminine PE teachers were both a) lesbians and b) pedophile child rapists. When I asked her why she thought that was the case when my teachers had been nothing but professional with myself and the rest of the class, she explained that being sexually attracted to people of the same sex is apparently completely indiscriminate. *headdesk*
People victimize, rape and abuse others because they are rapist abusers, NOT because of their sexuality. There were several “teacher scandals” in my high school involving a teacher who was outted as gay and then literally a few weeks later, accusations of sexual abuse surfaced on the part of parents, even though there was never any actual evidence that this was the case.
Apparently, a lot of people think that gay people are automatic child abusers. Obviously SOME gay people are statistically going to be child abusers, but it’s not like the sexuality causes the abusive behavior.
My mom also believed that all men were abusive as well. She started telling me disturbingly detailed stories of what bad men do to little girls at a very very young age. Somehow, I still don’t hate men, even after having been raped once by someone who did not give me the “obvious signs” that everyone seems to feel compelled to send me in forwarded emails and little “serious chats” since I was maybe 6 years old.
With my daughter, I’m going to focus on non-scary empowerment exercises to help her be safe. I still know that she needs to know how to navigate a world that includes predators who will try to hurt her and I won’t always be there to help protect her. I am a huge fan of KidPower-(they also help teens and adults build safety skills and develop boundaries). I think that it is very smart to help give kids tools to help themselves and be empowered without freaking the shit out of them.
Link: http://www.kidpower.org/abuse-prevention/
@Ian: the university that I work at does not ban professor/student relationships. It does, however, place very strict rules on what has to happen should a relationship occur (for example, if the student is a Ph.D. candidate, and professor is in any way evaluating or grading the student, that faculty member must then recuse themselves from doing so.
What I want to know is, how did The Kitteh’s Unpaid Help manage to get that meltdown countdown so spot on?
Aw, man, I missed a Pelltdown! I can’t decide if my favorite part was Penelope Cruz being “past menopause” or the fact that the greater Boston area apparently has anti-feminist force fields. Heaven only knows how I keep managing to break through them!
I think the technical term is sheer blind luck!
haha….. ‘Pelltdown’ ^_____________^
Eivind wrote:
Wow, what a swell guy.
So, most of the regulars here have some pet issue. Have we found another?
Pell, I think my sociolinguistics tutor is about the sweetest and cutest and most enthusiastic people on the this green earth, but I also manage not to flirt and wouldn’t even consider a relationship, because ethics and her career. Could you try that perhaps?
Why I’m voting Republican
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/roger-rivard-rape_n_1956491.html
And btw, make all the stupid comments you like, but I don’t respond to proles. Out of the billion people on the Net a handful of freaks and creepettes who can’t read are about as important as a gnat on an elephant’s arse. You’re redundant.
I can make a blog about how to wipe your arse and I’ll get more readers than Fruitloops Futrelle 🙂
Well, if you made a blog about wiping your arse, you’d actually be talking about something you understand. That might make a difference.
Let’s not assume too much here.
If anyone’s still in any doubt, ‘Fruitloops Futrelle’ is Pell’s biggest giveaway.
Aside from all the other massive giveaways that is.
Fruitloops Futrelle giveaway sounds like a supermarket special offer.
So Arpagus is Berge? I’m actually kind of relieved – imagining a horde of people who thought like that was giving me hives.
Damn it, why do I always miss the meltdowns?
For once I disagree with you David (if only on one sentence): Unfortunately many many many people (both men and women) do NOT know that porn is not real life. And that is a huge issue (not just in the bedroom, but there as well). I agree with that crazy dangerous psycho Eivind to the extent that our media and culture that portrays women as the ‘sex class’ (Spinster shoutout) and constantly shows them as ‘ready for it’ in every pose of every public ad ever creates a completely distorted image and this might also be frustrating for boys to find out that that’s not really how life works.
On a different note: COMMENT SECTION- would it be possible to please please for the love of God and my love for this site to change this so that the oldest comment shows up first and so that it’s possible to respond to comments and collapse or open responses to a comment? Please, I beg you.
Ahahahahaha!
OK, comments about how you don’t intend to comment are stupid enough (seriously, just think about it for a second), but from someone who keeps coming back despite repeated bans? Cry all you want about how you don’t care, but clearly you’ve got a bee in your bonnet about this place. Either that, or you’re the kind of creep who gets off on verbally abusing women…
a handful of freaks and creepettes who can’t read
If we can’t read…?
As to the “proles”… doesn’t wash. If that were your actual opinion, 1: you wouldn’t be “filling in” at Princeton (teaching, even at the professorial level being beneath you), and 2: You wouldn’t be arguing on the internet.
You wouldn’t bother your silly little head with it at all.
I can make a blog about how to wipe your arse and I’ll get more readers than Fruitloops Futrelle
Please do.
On a different note: COMMENT SECTION- would it be possible to please please for the love of God and my love for this site to change this so that the oldest comment shows up first and so that it’s possible to respond to comments and collapse or open responses to a comment? Please, I beg you.
Dear god no. That makes it much harder to follow the evolution of the discussion. Threading (the “collapse responses” option) flat out kills discussion, because it creates new discussions that aren’t actually visible. Given a free-wheeling arena like this one there are any number of comments which are both sidebars, and topical.
Speaking for myself, I don’t want to lose those. I also don’t want to create little pockets where people can be semi-invisibly ganging up on someone. The Pells and Nomless and Eurosabras of the world would love that.
What Pecunium said.
Regarding Kat’s primary point, I’ve read several solid feminist writers refer to the ‘pornification’ of pop culture–where the mainstreaming of porn and near-porn (such as Maxim and other “lad’s mags”)–causes an Overton Window-type shift in what’s considered an acceptable portrayal of women, and thus, how young men are taught to expect women to act.
And yes, the “lucky schoolboy” angle is part of that. That said, like most MRAs, the subject of the original post can’t even take a true point and draw a sane conclusion–instead, he insists that only men are harmed by it, and that it’s all part of a conspiracy by feminists. This shows that even stopped clocks can usually beat out the average MRA.
The newest-first comment arrangement can be a pain if you’re just coming into a long comment thread – but on the other hand, if you’re caught up on the thread, it’s nice to be able to jump to the newest comments. Having the option to toggle the comment order would probably be useful, but I have no idea how flexible WordPress is in that regard.
Pell, what’s with the classism angle? It’s fairly new for you.
Pretty toothless, though. A bunch of people on this board likely make quite a bit of money.
I had a look and it’s a simple setting change to make the comments start on the first page, but in my (quick) search it didn’t find any mention of settings or widgets that let a user change it on a thread by thread basis. And that is what you would need to accommodate active threads as well as old threads.
WordPress.com is very limited in what you can do with it unfortunately.