Good advice for the olden days when careers were only ruined for good reason, and this specific case as contains one of those good reasons. But in this modern witch hunt era we’re currently living, doing anything can potentially ruin your career. Someone snapped a picture of you enjoying a beer at a party? You’re done. I assume everything I do will ruin my career. If this comment weren’t anonymous, it no doubt would have already ruined my career as soon as I pressed submit.
I am here to study the arrow button pressers, who are known to be found in this particular landscape. It is a fascinating to watch the ritualistic button pressers press a button that does nothing in what is, to the best of our current understanding, intended as some kind of display of dominance used in an effort to attract a mate.
I agree careers get ruined more often over silly things now, but its not anywhere close to a modern issue. People have been getting some form of “cancelled” for pretty much all of time, sometimes for a good reason and sometimes for a bad reason. If you really live your life in constant terror over the idea, maybe you should become self-sufficient and move off the grid. Thats kinda the only solution to the problem. People are social animals and social animals sometimes make stupid social decisions such as “cancelling” one another and its just kinda unavoidable.
If you really live your life in constant terror over the idea
If there is any to be terrified of, it would be having only one career. Even if there is no risk of being “cancelled”, there are many other threats to careers that are completely beyond one’s control. No normally functioning person would need to be worried about having a career ruined as they would never put all of their eggs in one career basket in the first place.
Granted, a full grown adult who thinks having a sexual relationship with a teenage student is a good idea is not normally functioning.
So, basically he is being criminally charged despite no longer being her teacher and while age of consent in Canada is 16 (unless older person is in position of power)? Disguisting as it is, why is he being criminally charged? This case has no legs, right?
I’d say no, but the world is going crazy, so probably the guy is going to get the book thrown at him. At the rate things are going they’ll raise the age of consent to 30 and make it illegal if the other person earns less money than you.
Comsenting adults, fine. Consenting adults or close enough in range of statutory laws, morally dicey but I guess it’s socially acceptable. Add the fact that they were your teacher, ever, and it crosses ANOTHER line and I don’t think we can lump that many “exceptions” together without it being a big ol’ shit bundle.
But they’re all behind the line. If we want to pass a clearly worded ordinance about every allowed and disallowed behavior in society then this is the game we are playing. It’s not defending the guy, it’s pointing out that if you want to live under clear laws, you can’t just blur up the lines when it suits you.
Is the dude a scumbag? Probably. But I’ve lived long enough to see things go from legal but totally not OK, to illegal as it should be, to let’s make everything illegal because someone else doesn’t like it, and I fully expect one day that someone’s going to try to say you can’t fuck someone more than 3 years your junior no matter how old they are.
What this dude did is absolutely not socially acceptable, but what is socially acceptable is just fashion. Was it immoral? I don’t know, did he lie to her about what their deal was together? It was most certainly not illegal, and nobody was coerced.
To me it’s the fact that he abused his position of trust to initiate a private relationship that makes me feel that a crime may have been committed. (Due to compromised consent).
Also there may be an argument to be made that a highschool teacher remains in a position of authority while a former student completes post secondary education. As the former student is likely to perceive that a former teacher has potential influence over scholarships/bursaries or want to use them as a positive reference for a summer internship after their first year or something.
There’s a reasonable chance of conviction so charges are appropriate.
But he’s being charged with a crime he didn’t commit. He banged a 17 year old, legal in Canada, upsetting though it may be to those less desirable pantywads.
After her last day of school, before her last day of exams. Sounds like a position of trust to me… Did she even have her final marks in his class while they were texting each other?
I don’t necessarily disagree with you. But it also doesn’t magically make you a sexual predator either. We have rules to prevent sexual predation, such as that you can’t fuck your students and someone has to be over a certain age to have sex with an adult. From my view this is all panty wringing and the dude broke no laws. Maybe he is a predator, maybe the laws should be changed. Or maybe we shouldn’t infantilize sexually active mature human beings and maybe we ought to teach our daughters about dudes like this.
There are exceptions. Someone who was up until recently a teacher may fall into the category of being in a position of trust or authority towards the minor. Without knowing the legal precedents, it’s hard to know how much of an edge case this is.
From the JusticeThe following factors may be taken into account when determining whether a relationship is exploitative of the young person:
Sexual exploitationA 16 or 17 year old cannot consent to sexual activity if:
their sexual partner is in position of trust or authority towards them, for example their teacher or coach
the young person is dependent on their sexual partner, for example for care or support the relationship between the young person and their sexual partner is exploitative
The following factors may be taken into account when determining whether a relationship is exploitative of the young person:
the young person’s age
the age difference between the young person and their partner
how the relationship developed (for example, quickly, secretly, or over the internet)
whether the partner may have controlled or influenced the young person
To me it’s the fact that he abused his position of trust to initiate a private relationship that makes me feel that a crime may have been committed. (Due to compromised consent).
Also there may be an argument to be made that a highschool teacher remains in a position of authority while a former student completes post secondary education. As the former student is likely to perceive that a former teacher has potential influence over scholarships/bursaries or want to use them as a positive reference for a summer internship after their first year or something.
Rule of thumb is 1 year separation from the position of authority. At least, that’s what’s in the training from the Occupational Therapy regulatory body.
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