Letter: Gender Discrimination Against Boys
By admin | 4th December 2007
In the recent spate of national and local news concerning women teachers being sexually involved with young make students, a recurring question arises: isn’t there gender “discrimination” in the public’s reactions and in the legal sanctions involved? There’s no question that there’s been a detrimental long-standing attitude on the part of the public. Remember such movies as Summer of ‘42, which perpetuated the stereotypical “a consummation devoutly to be wished” sexual initiation idea.
But evidently forgotten in all the reaction and discussion in recent months, is the disastrous Supreme Court Decision some twenty years ago, with Chief Justice Rehnquist leading the vote, which said that Statutory Rape Laws were chiefly intended to protect girls. He clarified it by saying that it was because girls could become pregnant.
Most feminists were outraged at the time, as many of us have sons as well as daughters. Since then, the states have had to deal with protecting young boys as best they can.
– Dolores M. Klein