Earlier today I was reading about the brouhaha that has happened on the internet when an editorial by a female lawyer in the Washington Post appeared to endorse pedophilia in a case where a middle-aged teacher convicted of having sex with a student who was fourteen years of age at the time was sentenced to 30 days in prison because the judge ruled that the young lady was equally in charge of the situation with the teacher [1]. Every once in a while [2], I ponder the connection between power and sexual crimes, as it is a serious issue and one I have often had to wrestle with in my personal life to a degree that has impressed on me its great seriousness not only for myself personally but for the people I am around as well. Although I do not consider myself a particularly selfish person, when it comes to matters such as sexual intimacy, it is extremely important to understand that the gratification of one’s own lusts can have horrible consequences on the lives of other people. As someone who has lived to face those consequences in my own life, I tend to be more cautious than other people about such matters, and even then it is not always an easy thing to understand the repercussions of one’s actions on the lives of those who are vulnerable and often wounded souls, and even if one understands it is not always a straightforward matter to make that understanding and that sensitivity well understood.

In many cases, no consent is possible because the differences in power and position between two partners is so unequal that any apparent consent can be seen as being due to the immense gulf in power between the two partners, especially in a case where the teacher has the power to continually punish someone for not complying with even unreasonable demands. This is not necessarily a matter of gender politics, as a female teacher would have the same sort of power over a male (or female) student, and would be equally a sexual predator for taking advantage of someone in such a fashion. To be sure, someone who is significantly older than his or her partner should have enough maturity to behave in a disciplined and honorable fashion and not take advantage of someone who was vulnerable, but this cannot necessarily be assumed. Apart from that, it is absolutely abhorrent to take advantage of one’s power so as to gratify one’s lusts with those who feel constrained to accept even if horrified by the requests made, because that sort of situation makes any sort of trust of authority figures an extremely difficult proposition as the survivor of such abuse will tend to view those in authority as potential abusers of some kind until they prove themselves otherwise, and that is not a pleasant way to live one’s life, or the sort of attitude that is likely to make authority figures feel respected.

I have known a wide variety of young people in my time, and as someone whose interest and attention is directed at young ladies, I can say that I have never met a young woman who I would consider as particularly predatory towards me. I have met plenty of young women who were friendly, some who were unconsciously flirtatious, and even some who for one reason or another sought affection or attention from a wide variety of men. I have not felt myself to be at risk or threatened by such young ladies, and being a person who is generally very shy and perhaps excessively restrained in matters of intimacy, none of them were in danger from me either. Though I am generally open and honest in my appreciation of the beauty or tenderhearted nature of a young woman, I am not interested in taking advantage of anyone either, no matter what their vulnerability, be it the absence of male affirmation in the home, a high and frustrated longing for affection (something I happen to share myself), the desire to escape from an intolerable domestic situation, or whatever other vulnerability exists (including the proclivity to abuse alcohol and other intoxicants). By and large, I tend to view anyone around me as an honorable person and to treat them accordingly, and I hope that my conduct has always been honorable as well to those whom I have found attractive and worthy of my interest in some fashion.

It is customary for young people to feel themselves more responsible than they are for what is going on around them. A child in a broken home will wonder what he or she did to anger his or her parents, or wonder what he or she could have done in order to keep his or her parents together, even though the answer is probably “nothing.” The survivor of a sexual assault will wonder what they did to “attract” such an attack, even if the answer may also be “nothing.” To be sure, there is nothing, for example, that an infant or toddler could have done to make themselves an alluring target to a predator, as only someone who is pretty sick already could see such a little child as a sexual being in the first place. Even among those who are old enough to appear as adults or close to it, the burden of responsibility lies on people to control themselves and discipline their own desires rather than on someone to behave in such a way as to make the provocation of desire impossible. We ought to remember, after all, that it is not difficult at all to provoke desire [3], and so we therefore ought to be especially certain not to blame someone for the desire that they have often unwittingly provoked in someone they had no interest in whatsoever. I would never wish for a young person to feel at fault for the failure of someone else to control themselves, and so that does not happen it is absolutely vital for adults to take responsibility for what is in their control, like ourselves.

Sadly, it is customary for adults to seek to evade such responsibility as they possess in the attempt to affix blame elsewhere and avoid the often unpleasant realizations that come from reflecting on one’s thoughts and behavior. Almost any excuse possible is preferable to admitting to oneself (much less others) the truth that one is a sexual predator. When it comes to any sin, there are various stages in the decline of a society’s view of that sin. First, the society may recognize and enforce standards of behavior, whether formally or informally. Then, a sin will become common enough that it will have a political support group that has sympathizers even from those who are not guilty of that sin. After that, the laws against that sin will no longer be enforced vigorously, or eventually at all, even while those laws remain on the books. Finally, the existence of those laws and any remaining moral sentiment by that society or culture against sin will become so abhorrent that they will in turn be castigated for being unloving or unmerciful or intolerant themselves, until that sin becomes accepted and tolerated and entirely licit within that culture. Barring a moral reformation and a decision by people in authority to restrain themselves from abusing their power to satisfy their lusts on those who are subject to their authority, which is unlikely, we can expect to see a lot more of this in the future, as unhappy as it is to be the bearer of bad news.

[1] http://www.redstate.com/2013/09/01/the-washington-post-endorses-pedophilia/

The most relevant lines in the editorial go something like this: “As protesters decry the leniency of Rambold’s sentence — he will spend 30 days in prison after pleading guilty to raping 14-year-old Cherice Morales, who committed suicide at age 16 — I find myself troubled for the opposite reason. I don’t believe that all sexual conduct between underage students and teachers should necessarily be classified as rape, and I believe that absent extenuating circumstances, consensual sexual activity between teachers and students should not be criminalized.”

[2] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/an-abuse-of-power/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/truth-is-an-absolute-defense-against-libel/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/book-review-when-a-man-you-love-was-abused/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/book-review-not-quite-healed/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/hell-is-for-children/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/somewhere-to-run-somewhere-to-hide/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/a-conspiracy-of-silence/

[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/08/11/ninety-percent-of-success-is-just-showing-up/