We cannot say it’s open season on adolescent males by older female teachers. Still it’s going happen, no matter what.
(CALGARY, Alberta) - On the morning of June 23, sixth grade teacher Susan Alderson was arrested at her home and charged with, among others, first degree rape. She had apparently began a sexual relationship in 2002 with a boy who was thirteen at the time. It continued until 2006, when the boy would have been seventeen.
One interesting thing here is that when women are raped, the act occurs over a relatively short span of time, usually minutes. But for young men, the act can take place over months and years. The “victim” in this case is now about nineteen—after whatever apparently happened, having ended about three years ago. Did it take him this long to catch his breath?
We all remember the story of Pinocchio, the little wooden boy. What we don’t think of is, that as time goes by, Pinocchio grows up and becomes a young man—still made of wood, of course. He begins dating and ends up with a human girlfriend. As they become more involved with each other Pinocchio becomes concerned that once they begin to become intimate, she runs the risk of slivers.
So, he goes to Geppetto and explains the problem. Geppetto goes to his work bench, opens a drawer and pulls out a piece of sandpaper. He gives it to Pinocchio, explaining that that will take care of things.
A week or so later, Geppetto is walking down the street and sees Pinocchio. He hails him with, “Hey, Pinocchio. How’s the girlfriend?”
Pinocchio gives him a sly smile and says, “Who needs a girlfriend?”
Entertaining yourself
I was thirteen when my dad caught me masturbating. I was sitting in the bathroom—pulling my wire, beating my meat, spanking the monkey, choking the chicken, squeezing the tomato or, as George Carlin put it “plain old, hardcore jacking off”—when I was suddenly startled by a voice telling me to “stop doing that!”. I looked up and there was my dad’s face in the window. He had taken a chair outside so he could stand on it and look in the window which was higher than eye level. I don’t think you could say he caught me by accident.
This was the prim and puritanical late 1950s. I still have on my bookshelf the dictionary we had in our house from that time. The Thorndike-Barnhart Comprehensive Desk Dictionary (1957) defined masturbation as sexual self-abuse. Couldn’t be much clearer, or scarier, than that. I remember my dad explaining the dangers of masturbation to me, like, you’ll go blind. He was bright enough not to believe that I would grow hair on the palms of my hands. This reminds me of the joke I heard many years later. Go blind? I’ll stop as soon as I need glasses.
The tragic (?) case of Susan Alderson.
The first commenter, Steve, wrote: “Its [sic] sad thing to hear of people doing this to kids....and a woman teacher of all things!” This sentence cries out to be parsed.
Why is it sad? and doing what to kids?
Puberty in males starts about 12 or 13 which is about the time I became sexually aware. And I think it is overwhelmingly common for adolescent boys to become aware of young female teachers and fantasize about possibilities—no matter how remote. My first infatuation was with Lois S., my seventh grade home room teacher. She had a pretty face, but the main attraction was that she was particularly well built.
I wasn’t the only boy who focussed on her, as my friends and I talked sometimes about what it would be like if she were to ask us to stay after school and, you know…
No one ever knew how it could happen, and at that time no one had ever heard of it happening, but there it was. This reminds me of skit by the late George Carlin called “Teenage Masturbation”. He says, specifically, that if God had not wanted us to masturbate, he would have made our arms shorter. “Hey, you, c’mere. Want a job?”
Back to Steve’s comment: Young men have been initiated into the sexual world by older women since time immemorial. It is only in our sexually twisted culture that it is seen to be wrong. Steve said, “and a woman teacher of all things.”
Who else could it be? If it were male teachers hitting on their male students, that would be another story entirely. Or would it? I have a cousin, L, who is gay and now in his early fifties. I know little of his background, but I’ll just surmise, here. Suppose he had been initiated into his sexuality by a male teacher? Would the result have been any different in the formation of his adult male sexual person? I think not.
An interesting aside: The New York Times, for all its claim to be “all the news that’s fit to print” would not use the word “gay”, in the sexual orientation sense, on its pages until 1987 wrote Frank Rich in a recent column.
Let me make clear that I am not, in these otherwise innocent meanderings, advocating support for pedophiles or people who sexually exploit vulnerable individuals. I’m talking about normal sexuality here, which turns out not be normal at all to large segments of the population, including Steve.
How this could all be handled is a quandary. We cannot say it’s open season on adolescent males by older female teachers. Still it’s going happen, no matter what. In my early twenties, I worked with a man named Andy who one day told me, in more detail than I needed to know, about his sexual initiation by a female teacher over several months. I listened to his story, envied him—and remembered Lois S.
In our sexually twisted society, perhaps it’s time to bring in some parental responsibility. By this, I mean that the parents would become aware of the relationship and approve it. By being aware, they could monitor it to a certain extent and try to prevent it from becoming an unhealthy thing. This would primarily be part of the father’s job in raising his son to manhood. In our society, it would, of course, have to be very discrete. And in cases where the father did not approve? Well, depending on the emotions of those involved, it just might go on secretly as it does now.
My speculation
One thing I can’t help wondering, is why this surfaced three years later. I’ll bet money that religion is involved in some way—the boy has found Jesus or something along those lines. For any would be commenters: Take note that if you want to write about how sex is dirty and she is a sinner, etc., don’t bother. Your comments will be ignored (unless they’re too funny to be ignored).
Oops. gotta run. I had a couple more comments to make, but I just heard that 7-Eleven has the new Penthouse magazine.
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Daniel Johnson was born near the midpoint of the twentieth century in Calgary, Alberta. In his teens he knew he was going to be a writer, which is why he was one of only a handful of boys in his high school typing class—a skill he knew was going to be necessary. He defines himself as a social reformer, not a left winger, the latter being an ideological label which, he says, is why he is not an ideologue. From 1975 to 1981 he was reporter, photographer, then editor of the weekly Airdrie Echo. For more than ten years after that he worked with Peter C. Newman, Canada’s top business writer (notably a series of books, The Canadian Establishment). Through this period Daniel also did some national radio and TV broadcasting. He gave up journalism in the early 1980s because he had no interest in being a hack writer for the mainstream media and became a software developer and programmer. He retired from computers last year and is now back to doing what he loves—writing and trying to make the world a better place
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