A true Mrs Robinson

There was a heart-warming romantic story in yesterday's Grauniad, about a couple very much in love, who'd produced two children together, but who'd been separated by cruel circumstance - one had been imprisoned for many years, but the other faithfully waited for her, and they married on Friday just gone (20th May). Not too unusual you'd think, so why was it in the newspaper? Well, because, when they first started going out together, she was 34 and married, and he was 12 and in school. When the affair was discovered, after she became pregnant by him, an awful stooshie was created in the US, where she was painted as a "child molester" and sentenced to jail for statutory rape. Although released on parole some months later, she went back to her lover, had sex again, got caught and was thrown back in jail, and served 6 years hard time, during which her second daughter was born

I remember this story coming out, and I also remember that my first thought on hearing about it wasn't "what a perv!", but "he's one jammy bastard!". Even after reading about it in detail, that was my second, third, and Nth thought, and remains so today. When I was 13, I and my mates dreamt about having it off with older women, and to be 'taken in hand' by a true-life Mrs Robinson like Ms Letourneau would have been an impossible fantasy come true. I would have loved a woman to have taken me away from my crap home town and crapper school, and wined and dined and shagged me senseless, and I'm pretty damn sure, even on mature reflection, that I'd have been able to cope with it.

At the time the case came to light, the woman was demonised as an abuser assaulting an innocent boy and traumatising him for life. She was the predator, he the victim, even if he was gagging for it. Unfortunately, in these days of the Demon Paedophile, any sexual contact between someone above and someone below the legal age of consent is counted as "paedophilia" and "child sexual abuse", regardless of the sex of the participants, the age difference, and the degree, or otherwise, of freely-given consent. Some liberals even celebrated this case, as it seemed to demonstrate a perverse even-handedness: women can be pedos too, and should be treated the same way as male kiddy-fiddlers.

Yet some 8 years later, after trial and trauma that would have broken most other relationships, the "abuser" and "victim" willingly marry. I wonder what all the moralising pundits and commentators are saying about Ms Letourneau now. Will there be humble pie eaten? Do bears shit in portaloos?

There have been other (in)famous cases of adult women having it off with under-age teen boys. In 2002, a young supply teacher, Amy Gehring, allegedly had sex with two 15-year-old pupils. She was eventually cleared of "indecent assault" (I wonder if the lads would have thought it "indecent"?) but drummed out of teaching both here and in her native Canada because she had flirted, partied and got pissed with them. Had she allegedly shagged 16-year-old sixth-formers she'd have been reprimanded and maybe even sacked but certainly not accused of being a "paedophile" and "rapist", but because the boys were a year younger it became a major scandal. Again, this is the sort of thing that I and my mates feverishly fantasised about when we were teens, a point I made to the Independent columnist, Deborah Orr, who wrote a highly moralistic article after the not guilty verdict, opining forcefully that Gehring was guilty. Orr lamented that "Ms Gehring wasn't even charged with rape, because there is no charge of statutory rape against boys of 14 to16 years old by women" and baldly stated as "fact" that "women can be rapists and paedophiles too". I've reproduced the brief email correspondence we had below.

The moral of all this? I'm not sure if there is just the one, but for sure one is that it's stupid and wrong (factually and morally) to draw an equivalence between a man forcing himself on an unwilling, or duped, under-age girl, and a woman engaging in consensual sex with a teen boy who's gagging for it. To quote what I wrote in an email to Ms Orr, "sex between a man and a teenage girl is far more likely to be assault or rape, both because men are far more societally powerful than women and because of sheer physical strength". The thought that a woman could physically overcome a strapping young boy and force him into sex is just risible.

Articles

Mary Kay Letourneau - case description at rotten.com.
Canadian school ban on sex case teacher (Guardian, 2/5/02). Article on how Amy Gehring was blacklisted as a teacher in her home country of Canada, with links to other articles about the case.
Imagine if this had been a male teacher (Deborah Orr, Independent, 6/2/02).

Correspondence with Deborah Orr of the Independent ([email protected]), February 2002

Slightly edited for the sake of brevity. My emails in blue, her replies in red.

I read your column yesterday with a little dismay. I can see the equalising logic in writing that a woman having consensual (in the sense of not physically forced) sex with an under-16 boy is "rape", and that it's as much a crime as a man having consensual sex with an under-age girl. That way you avoid the accusation of one rule for girls and another for boys. As someone who was a 15-year-old boy, though, I think you're wrong.

I've no comments on this particular case as I've not really read much about it, having better things to do than read lurid scandal. What I can tell you for sure, though, is that if I'd had the chance, as a 15-year-old boy, to have it off with an attractive young teacher, I'd have been out of my trousers faster than you could have said 'statutory rape'. I, and I know many other of my schoolmates, seriously lusted after the few young women teachers we had in our school, flirted with them, and I for one fantasised about being held back after class and 'taken in hand'. Had this ever happened, it would have been ludicrous for anyone to have called it "rape" or "assault". When I read last year about the woman in the States who ran off with an underage lad and put him up in hotels, fed and wined him, and screwed him silly, I remember feeling pretty damn envious, because that was exactly my fantasy as a young lad, and I wasn't alone, I can tell you.

As I shouldn't need to tell you, the power situations between men and girls, and women and boys, are very different. It's an error to draw an equivalence between them, although I can understand the 'right-on' reasons for doing so.

Of course, this is all IMHO and based on my own experiences.

Girls do fantasise about seduction by handsome male teachers as well. That
doesn't mean that the teacher isn't abusing a power relationship by giving
them what they want. It doesn't mean either that such a relationship would
be without detriment to the minor in question.

I dare say you're right in both cases. My simple points are:

a) a woman having it off with a teenage boy isn't "rape". Neither is it "assault". Put simply, you can't force a boy to get it up. A man can physically force a woman, but not vice versa.

b) sex between a man and a teenage girl is far more likely to be assault or rape, both because men are far more societally powerful than women and because of sheer physical strength.

A woman teacher may be in a power relationship with a boy by virtue of being a teacher, but a male teacher has two other power relationships over a girl: that of men over women in society, and that of physical strength. Not to mention the danger of pregnancy. A sexual relationship between a man and a girl is morally and legally wrong, as is (arguably) that between a woman and a boy, but only in the former is there likely to be physical assault or rape. Please don't tell me that a strong young lad is going to be physically assaulted and overcome by a young woman.

Anyway, I don't want to take up more of your time, and I'm surprised and grateful that you replied at all given the volume of reader email you must get. I just wanted to get this off my chest, and perhaps get you to think twice about setting up an equivalence between man-girl and woman-boy relationships.

Glad to hear that your penis always obeys your conscious mind. Many men
aren't so lucky and find their penises erect at times when their
intellectual choice would wish it otherwise (and vice versa).
Anyway, the question is not one of physical penetration but maturity.
Boys under 16 generally don't know their own minds well enough to make
informed decisions about the consequences of their penis's actions. and
even if they know their minds, they're in no position to shoulder the
responsibilites intercourse can bring.
Your own fantasies of sleeping with a teacher, for example, might curdle a
little when she tells you she's pregnant, and she's keeping the baby.

The US and 'velvet revolutions'

Now here's a funny thing. In an ex-Soviet Union country, a popular demonstration takes place in its capital city against a corrupt regime led by an autocratic president known to be a serial committer of 'human rights abuses', such as imprisonment without trial, and torture and disappearances of political opponents, to mention but a few. The kleptocratic regime hasn't even a figleaf of "democratic legitimacy", being the continuation of the old nomenklatura from the Soviet era. The people, suffering unemployment and poverty whilst the ruling class wallows obscenely in its stolen wealth, and denied normal avenues of political expression (political parties, free Press, etc), takes to the streets in protest.

The regime's response is swift and brutal: its troops open fire on the unarmed crowds, killing hundreds of protesters. The president claims that "only" a few tens died, and that they, and the demonstrators, were foreign extremists out to bring down his regime. According to him, a small band of terrorists attacked the security forces, then called their families into the main square and used them as "human shields". This grotesque and obscene version of events is plainly untrue.

So far, so normal for an ex-USSR country ruled by the old nomenklatura fortified with new mafia, and propped up by a powerful outside power with 'strategic and economic interests' in the region.

But here's the funny thing. The United States, quick to come to the aid of "freedom-loving peoples" the world over in their struggles to overthrow "brutal dictatorships", has in the case of this country called on both sides to "exercise caution and restraint" [1]. Why such diffidence, such reticence to support an open and shut case of a popular revolt against a brutal dictatorship? After all, President Bush was only last week in Georgia (that's Georgia in Yoorp, not Georgia, USA) where he praised the country as "a beacon of liberty for this region and the world", and lauded the "Rose revolution" carried out by the Georgians to depose the Russian-backed regime of Edvard Shevardnadze, setting an example to all those labouring under the yoke of tyranny [2].

Or take the "orange revolution" in the Ukraine, in which hundreds of thousands, millions of people took to the streets of Tblisi and stayed there, despite the bitter winter cold, until the corrupt, vote-rigging, repressive nomenklatura regime was driven from power and the "democratically-elected" opposition presidential candidate, Viktor Yushenko, was installed in office. The US, during and after the orange revolution, was fulsome in its praise of the opposition, and provided it with material, financial and political support.

Then there's Kyrgizstan, where "people power", again strongly supported with more than just words by the USA, drove another corrupt nomenklatura regime from power. Moving outside the ex-USSR, we recently had the "Cedar revolution" in the Lebanon, a nation occupied for over a decade by its powerful and dictatorial neighbour, Syria. A leading anti-occupation figure is killed in a spectacular car bomb assassination, all fingers of blame are pointed at the occupying power (although the perps still remain unknown), and millions take to the streets in open revolt. The US publicly and enthusiastically supports the yearning of the "Lebanese people" for freedom from occupation and, under severe pressure and with dark hints of 'stronger measures' emanating from Washington, Syria withdraws.

The Bush Doctrine is clear - anywhere in the world where peoples struggle for freedom against brutal and oppressive regimes, the US will come to their aid. And if there were dark insinuations and accusations, in all these "velvet revolutions", of US string-pulling, active regime destabilisation, and fomentation of revolt, it could rightly be said tht the US was just adding its not inconsiderable breath to an already mighty wind of freedom filling the sails of the peoples as they voyaged to the democratic Promised Land. Pushing at open doors, if you will.

Now, in Uzbekistan, the world sees a notoriously vicious and corrupt regime trying desperately to cling to power in the face of people power through the use of armed force against unarmed demonstrators. The regime is publicly acknowledged by the US as being guilty of "human rights abuses" - a previous US ambassador to Uzbekistan said as much explicitly on Radio 4's PM programme two days ago (14/5/05). Famously, the British ex-ambassador, Craig Murray, described in graphic detail the routine killings and torture carried out by the regime, including the boiling alive of political opponents (for which indelicate indiscretion he was forced into early retirement by the Foreign Office) [3].

The Uzbek regime is a gruesome case study of oppression, torture, murder and corruption. In comparison, the regimes in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgizstan and Lebanon were boy scout brigades. Funny, then, that the US is being so cautious and conciliatory, seeking to mediate between the people and its oppressor. You'd expect that, under the Bush Doctrine, the US would stand "four square" behind a people "yearning for freedom" beneath the yoke of a "brutal dictatorship", but instead it tamely tries to reconcile the opposing sides and calls for "restraint".

So why the softly-softly approach? Only a cynic or a naysayer or an "enemy of freedom" would dare even hint that the presence of long-term US military bases in the country, which allows it to "project power" into a region where are found nations like Afghanistan, Iran, and of course Iraq, might colour US views on "instability" in Uzbekistan. Only a "friend of terrorism" would make the foul insinuation that maintaining a client state in the region, however dictatorial ("he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch"), with its own oil, surrounded by other oil-rich states, and states through which pipelines have to run to reach the sea to slake the US's ever-growing thirst for oil, could even remotely be a factor in the US's uncharacteristic reluctance to stand "four square" behind the Uzbek people's popular revolt.

Hell, no - perish the thought.

PS: the day after posting the above, Craig Murray wrote an interesting article about the Uzbek regime and the US and UK's support for it in the Guardian. See article link below.
PPS: Schnews led on the Uzbekistan story, with a typically detailed, well-researched and scathing article - see article link below.

Articles and references

BBC News: Uzbek president blames Islamists (14/5/05), Uzbek troops seal off second town (16/5/05)

Guardian: "What drives support for this torturor. Oil and gas ensure that the US backs the Uzbek dictator to the hilt" (Craig Murray, 16/5/05); "The lie about liberty" (Nick Paton Walsh, 31/5/05)

Schnews: "Let them eat lead". Issue 498, 20/5/05.

[1] White House Press briefing, 13/5/05)
[2] President Addresses and Thanks Citizens in Tbilisi, Georgia (White House press release, 10/5/05)
[3] Our man in Tashkent (Index for Free Expression).