Barbara Ellen
The Observer
Do you believe that a female teacher sleeping with a male student is as bad as a male teacher sleeping with a girl? asked Barbara Ellen. “I don’t—and neither, I’d wager, would most 15-year-old boys.” Yet British law treats the two infractions exactly the same.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Latest Videos FromThe Week
High school teacher Madeleine Martin, 39, was recently sentenced to 32 months in jail for sleeping with a 15-year-old male student. The punishment is excessive. Surely a boy who beds an older woman is not victimized in the same way as a girl preyed upon by a man. After all, teenage boys “mainly want sex”—it brings them “excitement, experience, bragging rights, kudos.” Teenage girls “mainly want attention” and validation.
So a tryst with a teacher is different for the two sexes. “For most boys, it would be the score of all scores, for girls, the ultimate exploitation.” So why can’t we acknowledge the difference? Besides, Martin, who professes to have been in love with her student, “seems more pathetic than predatory.” For a male teacher, such an act is obviously wrong. For a female, it’s “a far grayer moral area.”
