Washington Post Publishes Jailbait Apologist (Ain’t I Done Told You So?)

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Besty Karasik is an airhead who quit her job as a laywer to become a painter. Whatever the art community gained by that transaction, the legal community lost no wisdom. In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Karasik argues for decriminalizing student-teacher sex:

[W]ith our legal and moral codes failing us, our society needs to have an uncensored dialogue about the reality of sex in schools. . . .
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.  . . .
[T]he utter hysteria with which society responds to these situations does less to protect children than to assuage society’s need to feel that we are protecting them.

See, the problem is not teachers having sex with students. No, the real problem is the “utter hysteria” about this, and “society’s need to feel” that children are protected. In other words, the problem is your irrationality, whereas teachers banging their students . . . well,  they’re in need of understanding and sympathy. Teachers who have sex with kids are victims, really — victims of your “utter hysteria.”

Coincidentally, I had just been re-reading Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed, which addresses this rhetorical trick:

A concern that is important to the anointed is called “a matter of principle,” while a concern that is important to the benighted is called “an emotional issue.” Apparently other people don’t have reasons or principles; all they have are emotions.

So if you think teachers having sex with students should be criminally prosecuted, Karasik dismisses you as a hysteric. By contrast, Karasik’s own enthusiasms — “My loyalty is to justice and the planet,” she declares on her Twitter profile — she regards as entirely valid.

Betsy Karasik’s experience is simply superior to yours:

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. Although some feelings probably got bruised, no one I knew was horribly damaged and certainly no one died.

You have never been a 14-year-old girl, so your opinion doesn’t count. And if you have been a 14-year-old girl, but still don’t think it should be legal for teachers to have sex with students? Well, never mind your objections, because Betsy Karasik says it’s just fine.

No harm, no foul — maybe some bruised feelings, but teachers banging their students is really only a problem because of “society” which, having already been condemned for its “utter hysteria,” she now diagnoses as being in the grip of “the fantasy that a high school student can’t consent to sex.” But is this really what society believes? Are “hysteria” and “fantasy” the basis of our laws? Are there no valid reasons to treat student-teacher sex as a crime?

After saying that workplace sexual harassment is worse than consensual sex between teenagers and teachers, Karasik alludes in passing to “certain teachers I considered friends despite their sexual relations with students.” Who are these teachers? Would she be so kind as to tell us their names, so that we might examine whether (as Karasik assures us) their sexual involvement with students was harmless?

But, no, she just throws this strange fact out there — some of Betsy Karasik’s friends are teachers who have sex with their students — and continues with her condemnation of society:

The point is that there is a vast and extremely nuanced continuum of sexual interactions involving teachers and students, ranging from flirtation to mutual lust to harassment to predatory behavior. Painting all of these behaviors with the same brush sends a damaging message to students and sets the stage for hypocrisy and distortion of the truth. Many teenagers are, biologically speaking, sexually mature. Pretending that this kind of thing won’t happen if we simply punish it severely enough is delusional.

Her rhetoric — “utter hysteria . . . fantasy . . . delusional” — is deliberately dismissive. All who disagree with Betsy Karasik are irrational, or are too stupid to understand that “vast and extremely nuanced continuum” of which enligthened people like herself are aware.

It’s not as if you couldn’t predict that such arguments would be made as our culture slid slowly down the slippery slope. In April 2002, I published an article with the headline, “Promoting pedophilia; Attempts to legitimize adult-child sex on rise,” and there were people then who said that such concerns were irrational.

In January of this year, Rush Limbaugh warned about “a movement to normalize pedophilia,” and was mocked by Soledad O’Brien.

Well, here we are in August, and the Washington Post is publishing columns advocating the legalization of student-teacher sex.

Wesley J. Smith at National Review says, “How low can we go? I am afraid we are going to find out.” Betsy Karasik finds herself shocked by the “tsunami of attackers” on Twitter:

Of course, in her mind, the “tsunami” only confirms to Betsy Karasik that “society” is hysterical and delusional. She wants to “open discussion” about legalizing sex with 14-year-olds. And when society answers back, “Oh, hell, no”? This just proves you’re crazy.

 

 

UPDATE: Now a Memeorandum thread, with further commentary by Jazz Shaw at Hot Air and Tim Graham at the Media Research Center, but I like Stephen Kruiser’s solution best: “Kill the media.”

The world is full of idiots with bad ideas and the editors of the Washington Post are obligated to publish only the very worst of them. One cannot reform such institutions as the Washington Post and the New York Times, but can only pray for their well-deserved destruction, because their wicked depravity is not accidental.

The publishers are amoral monsters, their editors are active agents of evil, and their deliberate policy is to employ no honest or decent person. Nor could any honest or decent person ever wish to be associated with publications whose daily business is the destruction of Western civilization. A Christian would no more desire to be published by the Washington Post than to work in an abortion clinic or a bordello. It is a disgraceful stain on the conscience of our nation.

Fact: It’s hard to type when your fingers are trembling with rage.

UPDATE II: A couple of trolls got zapped. Wombat seems to be offline today, so I had to wield the troll-hammer myself, especially since one of these was a false-flag moby troll — the very worst kind, worse even than concern trolls. The comments are moderated and, while the proprietors obviously do not approve of everything in the comments (hell, I never even see most of them), there are certain lines that shall not be crossed, and vicious creatures who use bogus identities for deliberate evil will be zapped. If necessary, you will be IP-banned.

Go troll somewhere else, you monstrous fucktards.

 


301 comments

  1. There’s a line in Starship Troopers to the effect that, “I can’t understand why a thirty-five year old moron could vote while a fifteen year old genius couldn’t, but that was the system they had.”

    Is it possible for a seventeen year old – even a fourteen year old – to be mentally and emotionally mature enough to decide to have sex? Yes, there are probably cases where this is so (I leave out that the twenty- or thirty- or fifty-something who makes the decision to be her partner probably DOESN’T).

    But this is not the point. The law, whether we like it or not, is written to protect the vast majority of kids who, we believe, do NOT have the maturity to “consent”. This is not based on hysteria, emotions, prudishness, or any other disreputable impulse that a smart lefty can dismiss, but on the fact that (gasp!) WE WERE ONCE THAT AGE, TOO, and remember that our abilities to make good, thoughtful decisions, ESPECIALL about sex, were… not optimal. Karasik even admits that, “When it comes to having sex on the brain, teenage boys got nothin’ on [teenage girls]”. Maybe I’m a little cynical, but that doesn’t sound like a description of people who are emotionally sophisticated enough to make informed, thoughtful decisions. Rather, it sounds like a teenage boy’s – or older pervert’s – dream world. And if the girl finds that she’s “made a mistake” – and it’s amazing how often that happens – well… there’s always a Kermit Gosnell around.
    I’m curious how many parents with teenaged daughters would be cool with the idea that she’s banging it out with her third period geometry teacher. I’m guessing… not too many.

  2. “All who disagree with Betsy Karasik are irrational, or are too stupid to understand that “vast and extremely nuanced continuum” of which enligthened people like herself are aware.”
    You just described the president – and all liberal/progressives. And when a fourteen year-old girl gets pregnant, they’re advised to just kill the baby. Hey, it’s your life and it’s your body. A fourteen year-old girl may have the body of a woman, but emotionally, they’re still fourteen year-old girls.

  3. I think the age of consent is the best rule anyone has come up with so far.

    But let’s not kid ourselves.

    The whole post WWII extended childhood thing is an artificial American invention.

    The biology disagrees.

    Before we start talking about the morality, we need to acknowledge that.

    If we insist that kids wait until 18, 19, 25, or 37 we need a good reason.

  4. As a parent of girls in the stated age group, the filthy scrunt that wrote the WP article needs to have her brain washed with some trinitrotoluene.

  5. The dingbat author of the op-ed is probably the same kind of person that would RUN to a lawyer for having been exposed to overhearing someone taking about a dirty joke someone else was told. But banging a 14 year old is fine. They’ve got the full faculties and maturity to make that choice? She’s so full of bullshit her heads going to explode.

    Now I wonder if one of those teacher friends of hers is about to come up on charges for statutory rape and if this was an attempt at a preemptive exoneration.

  6. Where are the feminist on this? The whole position of power thing, or is that no longer valid?

    We get what we deserve.

  7. In some ways you are correct about the relative newness of age of consent and the laws governing them, but I think in another way you’re wrong. While biology says the body is ready, the rational thinking capacity of that age bracket is not ready. The idea that way back when girls and boy were getting married at those ages leaves out the part about a lot of those marriages were prearranged. Even back then it was known that kids didn’t have the brains to know what they were doing. So they were married off to keep them from making mistakes with their lives. And, for the record, no I don’t agree with arranged marriages.

  8. Did I mention that my oldest daughter graduated high school at 16? And that she married at 21, after graduating summa cum laude from college?

    See, if we’re going to ask kids to wait, the question will be asked, “Wait for what?” And if you answer, “Wait for marriage,” then the next question will be, “How long do I have to wait for that?”

    Your answer to that question — if you genuinely believe in the religious meaning conveyed by the phrase holy matrimony — ought to be, “As soon as you have an honorable offer from an acceptable suitor.”

    But our culture has become so overwhelmed by materialism, and we have so fetishized higher education and careerism, that young people are told marriage (and parenthood) are obstacles to achieving The Good Life.

    Thus the median age at marriage has risen from 21 to 26, because people belive marriage is incompatible with education and careers, as if education and careers were the only purpose of life, and as if no married person could go to school or get a job.

  9. “as if no married person could go to school or get a job.”

    My wife gives lie to the idea that you can’t do both. I married her when she was 20. She was in college and working full time at a prison as a guard( as was I) at the time. It took a few years, and me going back to trucking, but we paid her way through college.

  10. I was watching The O’Reilly Factor just last night (a re-run, I believe) wherein he interviewed Sam Slom (Hawai’i’s sole Republican state senator) about the persistant failure of the Hawaiian legislature to enact “Jessica’s Law”. Slom claims that one could get a bigger turn out for a rally on animal cruelty in Hawai’i than for passage of strong criminal penalties for child sex crimes. He says there are some subcultures in Hawai’i that do not see paedophilia as harmful or wrong…

  13. “Power” is, I think, a highly elastic concept for the feminist. Thus, stripping for a living is degrading, while walking about half-naked in public on a “slut walk” is empowering. By the same token, being forced – FORCED, I say – to listen to off-color jokes around the water cooler is degrading, while banging a teacher twice her age is (if she – somehow – believes that she’s made a smart, mature, self-empowering decision and WASN’T seduced because she’s too young to know the difference) is empowering.

  14. I think Karasik’s message is really that now that homosexual “marriage” is legal most everywhere in the civilised world, we simply must explain buggery and dildoes and such to your children, as well as sex, and that you haters had just better learn to deal with the inevitable experimentation and after-school lessons!

  15. I have to disagree.

    Sometimes the kids do know. Most of the time in fact, if they know they will be held responsible for it.

    Sometimes the adults don’t know, no matter what the age. Any one going to a bar to hook up isn’t being rational.

    Sometimes the experience of making mistakes and having to deal with the consequences are the things that make us wise.

  16. I know that for you, marriage and sex should be (ahem) wedded at the hip. I don’t think it’s a universal one size fits all solution though.

    I do like your condition of marriage though.

  17. Two thoughts crossed my mind when I read this. First, why just limit this policy to teacher/student sex? I’m sure she could have written the same op ed during the height of the Catholic church sex scandal, although I doubt that the Post would have published it and I’m positive she would have been shunned by all her prog friends. Second, is Karasik teaching somewhere? Even continuing ed classes? A summer keep the kids off the street community center gig, perhaps? It seems like something she’s put an awfully lot of thought into for someone who doesn’t have a dog in the fight.

    And then I went and read the whole op ed and came across this:

    I do think that teachers who engage in sex with students, no matter how consensual, should be removed from their jobs and barred from teaching unless they prove that they have completed rehabilitation.

    Why? If at least some of these are relationships between two people who are capable of consenting, why punish one of them with loss of employment? At least when it’s treated as a crime the accused gets the benefit of due process. Somehow it makes more sense to not treat it as a crime but to issue blanket punishment and place the burden of proof on the accused? And how does one prove rehabilitation from engaging in consensual sex?

  18. I am reminded by these “trial-balloon” articles and the general ramping up of depravity in our nation of the plea of the psalmist in Psalm 83:

    [1] O God, do not keep silence;
    do not hold thy peace or be still, O God!
    [2] For lo, thy enemies are in tumult;
    those who hate thee have raised their heads.
    [3] They lay crafty plans against thy people;
    they consult together against thy protected ones.
    [4] They say, “Come, let us wipe them out as a nation;
    let the name of Israel be remembered no more!”
    [5] Yea, they conspire with one accord;
    against thee they make a covenant —
    [6] the tents of Edom and the Ish’maelites,
    Moab and the Hagrites,
    [7] Gebal and Ammon and Am’alek,
    Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;
    [8] Assyria also has joined them;
    they are the strong arm of the children of Lot. [Selah]
    [9] Do to them as thou didst to Mid’ian,
    as to Sis’era and Jabin at the river Kishon,
    [10] who were destroyed at En-dor,
    who became dung for the ground.
    [11] Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb,
    all their princes like Zebah and Zalmun’na,
    [12] who said, “Let us take possession for ourselves of the pastures of God.”
    [13] O my God, make them like whirling dust,
    like chaff before the wind.
    [14] As fire consumes the forest,
    as the flame sets the mountains ablaze,
    [15] so do thou pursue them with thy tempest
    and terrify them with thy hurricane!
    [16] Fill their faces with shame,
    that they may seek thy name, O LORD.
    [17] Let them be put to shame and dismayed for ever;
    let them perish in disgrace.
    [18] Let them know that thou alone,
    whose name is the LORD,
    art the Most High over all the earth.

  19. But wouldn’t we be doing that fourteen-year-old more harm in the long run if we persist in criminalising her “sexual education”, in all its overwhelming diversity, at the loving hands of an older, much more experienced “peer”?

  21. Too violent for my taste! A humane injection of a strong solution of sodium hypochlorite into the cerebrospinal fluid should be sufficient…

  22. Leftists are so boringly yet frighteningly predictable because they’ve never made a secret about their ultimate goal: the attainment of arbitrary life and death power over others. Given that, their increasingly open desire to screw whomever they like, at will and regardless of age, really should come as no surprise to anyone. If they want to be able to kill you at will, why should they not want to screw your kids, too?

    Lake of Fire awaits all who refuse to repent unto Christ. Take solace in that. I do.

  23. You do have a point – we are an aberration from the historical norm. But with the loosening of foundational social mores over recent centuries (which is only accelerating), I admit to preferring our puritanical, antihistorical aberrence. It’s safer for the kids.

  27. They have no intention of limiting it thus. The goal will be that all will be at liberty to seduce anyone of any age, without regard to emotional or cognitive ability. Teachers are just the most logical (from their POV) place to “start the conversation.”

  28. This article is weapons grade stupidity, and a logical progression of the decivilization trend that the leftists have displayed this past decade.

    But I have to wonder if the WaPo is resorting to the same low-level troll baiting that Slate has been doing. Or rather, how much of this is troll-baiting, and how much is ideological?

  32. From Twitter, it appears that her article was a reaction to the 30 day sentence in Billings, Montana of Stacey Dean Rambold.

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