Writer Basically Says Teacher Sex Assault Is A-OK In Washington Post Opinion Piece

I can always tell that there is a giant wad of fuckery in the world I need to address when I receive a tweet like this:

What my loverly and talented co-worker Maria Guido is directing me to is this, an opinion piece that ran in the Washington Post entitled ” The Unintended Consequences Of Laws Addressing Sex Between Teachers And Students.”

You know, what the rest of us who live in the normal world generally refer to as “rape” between a minor and an adult. And not just any adult, an adult in a position of power who we taxpayers have entrusted to care for, educate, and enrich the lives of our sons and daughters.

The author of the piece, Betsy Karasik, sums up her feeeelings about the case of the Montana high school teacher Stacey Dean Rambold who will receive a 30 day prison sentence after raping a 14-year-old student thusly:

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.

Hey yo Bets, thanks for your opinion about how teachers raping students shouldn’t be classified as rape, but do you think maybe the fact you are tying your (extremely creepy) opinion to the case of a 14 year old CHILD who killed herself because she was raped may be a twee bit offensive and this girl’s family and friends, and mayhaps to all young (and old) victims of rape? I’m glad (and by “glad” I mean extremely troubled) you personally see nothing wrong between adults in positions of power using this power to rape and exploit kids, but your entire opinion piece is misguided and offensive and pretty much a nice giant pile of victim-blaming and excuse-making. She then goes on to explain her opinion by saying:

I’ve been a 14-year-old girl, and so have all of my female friends. When it comes to having sex on the brain, teenage boys got nothin’ on us. When I was growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, the sexual boundaries between teachers and students were much fuzzier. Throughout high school, college and law school, I knew students who had sexual relations with teachers. To the best of my knowledge, these situations were all consensual in every honest meaning of the word, even if society would like to embrace the fantasy that a high school student can’t consent to sex.

I don’t see many people denying that teenage girls are sexual. Of course they are! There is nothing wrong with that. But a young girl cannot consent to having sex with an adult. We aren’t talking about a 17-year-old and a 19-year old here. We are talking about a child and an adult. That’s rape. That’s why this is a crime. To muddy this up with dragging the sexuality of young girls into it is just giving every single rapist of a minor out there a nice easy way to say “The victim was asking for it. They wanted it.” And Betsy also hints that young Cherice may have kids herself not due to the fact she was raped, but due to the fact her teacher was in trouble:

I don’t know what triggered Morales’s suicide, but I find it tragic and deeply troubling that this occurred as the case against Rambold wound its way through the criminal justice system. One has to wonder whether the extreme pressure she must have felt from those circumstances played a role.

She starts out her whole opinion piece by mentioning a joke the brilliant Louis C.K. made about child rapists and how society really doesn’t take too kindly to them, and I’m not totally positive what her point with that was. To draw the readers into her reading her victim-blamey op-ed piece? To say that Louis C.K. agrees with her views? All I know is I hope he fires back with something brilliant about all of this, because I don’t think what he said when he made his joke back in 2010 was in any way saying he also thinks child rape is all righty by him.