‘Cool Mom’ Threw Sex Parties for Boys
Do you think this would have been the headline if the “cool mom” had been a dad? Would we not have seen words like: rape, molestation, and child molester?
The woman is being charged, of course, but I think it is interesting the way the media is covering the story.
What do you think?
very observativ. now that you say it, you are absolutly right.
Observativ…Hmmmm…I like It! 
As I recall, though, from the story Dale posted in his thread, the words “cool mom” were a quote from the decidedly uncool mom–they were her way of explaining why she did it (to be a “cool mom”). But you raise an interesting point. I think there probably is a difference in the way the story is being handled: the woman is made out to be a complete idiot, while I think a man would have been made out to be plain evil.
Carol
sorry, just realized…observant would be the word… 
all that French exposure…
I think that’s the point in a nutshell: the “misfit/ditz/uncontrollable wanton” vs. “svengali/evildoer/rapacious opportunist” spins in the Media are something fairly stock in cases like this. Now I don’t expect that in the name of gender equity male miscreants be treated more fuzzily. I would hope to see more points to the negative in the case of the “Cool Mom” rather than being offered her rationalisations for my further amusement. Every wrongdoer has rationalisations, and they’re usually equally as lame whatever the gender. Big deal. The problem with putting rationalisations in such news articles is that there’s an implicit angling for sympathy when no countering observation is forthcoming. “That’s poor journalism,” I hear someone say; “You don’t editorialise in news articles. You just report the facts.” Fair enough as far as it goes, which isn’t very far at all. The act of information culling and selection is commentary (read: editorialising) in itself, and I think we’ve witnessed a cultural paradigm perpetuated in the name of reporting in this case.
What would be more helpful would be just the facts. Period. Example: “Man/Woman charged with holding sex and drug parties with minors.” Simple, no? I think the average reader is capable of forming his/her own value judgments without the help of the writer.
Don’t even get me started on this subject. Of course there is a double standard and it is so f***ing sexist it annoys me so much. A man would be called a child molestor but a woman is just stupid. 
Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that–prepare yourself to be jolted by a shocking revelation–men and women are different. At least, I have never known a man to become pregnant. While this doesn’t excuse the woman’s behavior, it does affect the way society reacts to it.
Is it really news to anybody that a double standard exists?
Not news, but it bears discussion. No discussion: not even a hope of change.
Most paedophiles appear to see no harm in what they are doing. We really ‘love’ children. They are also often very clever, giving the appearance of being capable of rehabilitation in much the same way they won the confidence of their victims and their parents.
From anecdotal evidence, one of the best kept secrets is the number of female paedophiles. I’ve rarely heard of females going for very young children; the cases I’ve heard of tended to be lesbians ‘seducing’ pubescent girls. What seems to be most disturbing is that young girls don’t seem to get warned that this can happen. Even if the churches claim to have been unaware of male predators, when growing up my friends and I were well aware to watch out for priests, school teachers, scout masters ..in short, the usual suspects. Even though actual incidents were hushed up, all but the most naive boys were aware that there were dangers and rumours about who to avoid passed around freely.
Many years ago Sinéad O’Connor tried to inform the world of the rampant sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, but she was shunned because nobody believed her or liked her methods (ripping up the Pope’s picture comes to mind). Unfortunately, all these years later everybody now knows she was right.
Well any schoolboy would have known she was right 40 years ago. My own parents, who were not known for being all that worldly about the world’s dangers, warned me to beware of strangers. Well, strange men to be precise. That was about all the sex education they gave me. Misbehaviour by priests was a standing joke amongst my catholic friends and cousins—I say joke because they were well aware of the hypocrisy and also canny enough to avoid being victims. But non-religious schools and the scouts did cover ups too. Perhaps parents were just too threatened by the idea that church people could be involved. But that is hard to believe. If I knew this stuff in the 60s, surely older people would have found out by the same word-of-mouth methods.
I really laugh when people claim that this stuff is just recent and a product of the decay in modern society, as church leaders have recently claimed. These leaders were smart enough to climb up the hierarchy. Do they really expect us to believe that they didn’t know what 8 out of every 10 schoolboys knew 30 or 40 years ago?
I’m not adding anything new to the conversation, but the double standard is pretty sociologically ingrained.
Classic movies/books:
Summer of '42
The Graduate
Particularly in the former, the “older woman” is looked upon as doing the kid a favor…helping him grow up.
Whereas, in Lolita,(or American Beauty,) the guy is considered a bit twisted and sketchy.
Men and Women are different, but individuals are different you can’t set a standard for so many people and say oh a man is a molestor and a woman is just stupid. Just because a Woman is a interested in younger people doesn’t mean she is stupid (ok maybe it does) it means that she is just as bad as a Man that is molesting little kids. Just because somebody is a Man does not mean their sex drive is that different from a Woman’s. Different people have different thoughts you can’t classify people just because of gender. YOu may hear about male pedifiles more but that doesn’t mean there are more it means they are just the ones in the newspaper that have been caught.
Actually, we might not have heard about it at all…
This sort of thing does go on… what a world.
Right… just like assuming someone who is homosexual is a molester, which is not necessarily true at all, and forgetting that many, many molesters are heterosexual… and “bi” sexual, though in the abuse use of it, I tend to just see as simply predatorily ‘sexual’…
I agree totally, and I certainly was not saying that there should be separate standards. I was only suggesting why society seems to apply separate standards. A man who attacks you with a knife will be seen as a greater threat than a man who comes at you with a banana. Many, it seems, tend not to see this woman’s crime as a big deal. I am not one of them.
Because she didn’t have a banana? 