Sleeping with the Teacher

Sleeping with the Teacher

There is an article in today’s Observer by Victoria Coren, whose writing is usually entertaining and often stimulating. A short aside – is such ability genetic?

This week she was writing about Helen Goddard, the attractive bisexual woman who has recently been sent to prison for having sex with a fifteen year old student at her school.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/27/helen-goddard-teacher-victoria-coren

There are some bizarre commentaries about this case, and the case itself brings about a range of questions and comments. The most peculiar issue is that the judge sent her down for a crime that she committed but allowed her to remain in contact with the girl with whom she had sex.
As Coren says, would a judge sentence a burglar to a couple of years in the nick and then tell him/her that she was free to have a little break-in on the side once he/she was released?

I want to get one thing clear from the outset.
I actually think it is wholly inappropriate for a teacher to have sex with a pupil at their school. There was good reason for introducing this law and I hope that it has protected many innocent and naïve young men and women who could have been emotionally scarred for some time by the experiences.
However, it is not quite as clear cut as that.

What happens if you actually meet someone that you really care about through this type of relationship? What happens if the teacher and pupil are both emotionally stable and mature, and they actually genuinely care about one another so much that it seems the absolute right thing to do?
Making such a clear cut rule is probably the right thing to do but the judgment also has to take into consideration a range of other issues.
Even as I write this, I am unsure of my thoughts on the whole issue.

Then again, I have to say that I was possibly emotionally scarred by having a relationship with an older person when I was seventeen. The emotional abuse was quite obvious to all around but because he wasn’t a teacher at my school, and because it was before this law was introduced, there was nothing that prevented the abuse from happening. I was over the age of consent – nothing could have stopped him doing what the hell he liked to me.

The irony in my particular case was that there was another man in my life at the time, a very beautiful man who cared for me enormously and looked after me. He talked to me and treated me with the uttermost respect. He nurtured my intelligences and enabled me to develop the self-confidence and worth that I needed. If I hadn’t have had him in my life at that time, then I think I might have been a permanent gibbering wreck due to my sexual relationship with the boyfriend of the time.
Of course, this other man was a teacher at my school.

I think at the time, if I had told my parents that I would like to have a sexual relationship with the teacher rather than the abusive swine I was actually sleeping with, they would have run to the nearest church, raised their hands to heaven and shouted, “Hallelujah!” despite the fact that the teacher was married with three kids.
Like so many things in the world, and particularly the sexual world, nothing is as straightforward and clear cut as it seems, and sometimes strict legislation is not the answer.

One commentator on Coren’s piece has made an interesting point.
A seventeen year old who has sex with a fifteen year old is committing a crime, admittedly, it would hardly be pursued in the courts but by the statutes of law, it is a criminal act. An eighteen year old who has sex with a sixteen year old is free to do so and nobody would bat an eyelid.
The commentator went on to say that in essence, this is a little ridiculous. Putting a mandatory age-related cut-off point is somewhat pointless when the real issue is about the emotional and social maturity of the people involved. There are some fifteen year olds who are possibly mature enough to cope with sexual activity and there are some 23 year olds who are simply not ready!

There were calls in the press on the weekend about lowering the age of consent.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/2009/09/iconoclasts_age_of_consent.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mrd9g
The crux of the matter though was that this Dr. John Spencer from Cambridge was suggesting that the age of consent should be lowered or indeed eradicated completely. He was saying that there is a real issue about criminalising consensual sex in an attempt to prevent abusive sex. He is not advocating a specific age of sexual consent but he is trying to determine the differentiation by outcome, i.e. that each case should be on its own merit, or lack of merit – whatever way you want to view it.

The delightfully right-on Peter Tatchell also contributed to the debate saying that in essence it was about human rights, i.e. the right to have consensual sex and the right to be protected from sexual abuse and that the law as it currently stands does not reconcile these two issues.
As I discussed in a previous blog, I am not sure there actually is a human right to having sex and whilst I would like there to be the opportunity for all to have sex if they want it, there is a huge danger in such a right regarding the abuse of it.

Tatchell then went on to say that it is really about good relationship education and another contributor came up with the classic line “Wearing a condom does not protect from heartache”.

And this is really the issue with both the age of consent and the particular case of the trumpet teacher and her young lover.
There is no law that protects against emotional responses and abuse. One could argue that the age of consent should remain precisely where it is for there is the outside hope that a sixteen year old is less likely to suffer from emotional abuse through sexual activity than a thirteen year old but it is never that clear-cut.
In fact, the more I think of it, I think I would ban sex and marriage until there are definitive signs of emotional maturity and security! Having said that, if this was the case, then I could still be a virgin!

So back to Tatchell.
It is about good quality sex and relationship education with a heavy emphasis on supporting young people to delay sexual intimacy with another until they are completely confident that they have the emotional capacity to deal with the negatives as well as the positives, and I am not sure that this can ever be legislated for.

Good sex is intimate. Good sex is deeply engaged in feelings that go well beyond the physical. Good sex takes you to a higher plane than anything else this world has to offer. Even as a person who has experience of teaching sex to young people, I cannot even begin to imagine how I can possibly get this across to young people. Sex is so bloody wonderful when it is all encompassing that really you shouldn’t even want it without all elements. But then again, how will you know what is perfect about a really all-encompassing sex if you haven’t experienced a quick shag that is just about the instinctive urge to fuck?

The papers are all out to condemn Helen Goddard, or even worse, to assume her own emotional immaturity in being attracted to a fifteen year old girl. But sometimes, attraction comes and knocks on our head and hands and heart and there is nothing that can be done to stem the desire and the passion. It is simply there.
Whilst I would advocate a certain amount of restraint, particularly in this case when Helen Goddard was the responsible adult, you cannot legislate for feelings. You cannot have laws and legally binding documents that mean that you can simply turn off the thoughts and ignore the intensity of an attraction.

I am genuinely not saying that it was perfectly acceptable for her to do what she wanted. She was in the wrong and she should have restrained. There were other ways of maintaining the relationship and being honest with the girl, even if necessary to say that there could be a future sexual relationship without putting herself in such a tenuous position.
I am just saying that sometimes, you cannot ignore the feelings.

There is, of course, another issue about this story.
I suspect that the coverage would not have been so great if it Helen had been a bloke. The intrigue is exacerbated by the fact that this woman is a bisexual woman and that her ‘victim’ was a female.
The other most recent case of the teacher in the docks for having sex with a pupil was another woman but she had sex with a boy. I am sure that there are plenty of other cases where a male teacher has had sex with a female pupil but quite frankly such cases are not as sexy for the press. That is almost a given!

It is yet again an example of the double standards in this country regarding sexuality. There is acceptability to a point. The irony of this story is that it has come to the forefront because it is so abhorrent that a young 26 year old woman would want to have sex with a 15 year old girl, yet it is precisely the titillation of such a story that warrants its coverage. As a society, we are appalled by this sexuality yet also enormously intrigued at the same time.
We want to be all moralistic about bisexuality yet we want to know more about it and read about it, thus proving in my opinion that we are actually interested in it.
Admitting that is something that people are not prepared to do.

Obviously, this is only my opinion. There is also the idea that this woman is too beautiful and too sexy to waste herself of bisexuality or lesbianism. How many times have I heard women say that it is “such a waste” when they see a gorgeous gay bloke? But it is not a waste at all. It is their choice and they are not wasted if they are experiencing the sexual excitement that they desire.
This woman is clearly someone who is a sexual being and all she is doing is recognising that fact, albeit in a legally inappropriate way. If she wants to swing both ways, then good luck to her!
I just wish I could get such a good looking woman with similar interests into bed with me and mine (proverbially speaking) so that we could enjoy the swing of both of her directions.

And on that note, I am going to have some beautiful thoughts, recognising both my sexuality and the sexuality of others. Nobody can legislate for that either. I am an evolving person, as all should be, and for now, this is my sexuality. I can look at a woman and think some very positive sexual thoughts. I can do the same with men.
I just wish that our society could be a little more honest about their love of sexuality and not live up to this prudish anachronism that is so prevalent in our unsuitably named Great Britain.