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

Posted on | August 31, 2013 | 301 Comments

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:

@BradleySpeaks That really was my principle point, though you'd never know it from the tsunami of attackers.

— B Karasik (@PaintsNature) August 31, 2013

I have done my best to respond to those of you with questions but an opinion piece is meant to open discussion, not give all the answers.

— B Karasik (@PaintsNature) August 31, 2013

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.

 

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