I really don't know about this one. All you can do is judge by your own experience. I think that if I had been 16 or 17 or 18, it wouldn't have been damaging. (And there certainly were a couple of my teachers that crossed the old fantasy telescreen!) Maybe even 15. But under that, well it is just too creepy, and I can certainly see how it would leave you confused.

It may be sexist and so on, but I really do think boys and girls, particularly as teens, really are quite different, with much different vulnerabilities and risk factors.

Let's put it this way: male and female adults that want to have sex with adolescents are sick and creepy and damaged goods and likely quite psycho (those that want to have sex with pre or barely pubescent children are deeply mentally ill and dangerous, and a different kettle of fish altogether). Furthermore, people in a position of power having sex with subordinates is pretty generally a bad idea. All givens.

And while there should be a presumption of victimization, increasing with age gap and power differential, it should not be absolute. I don't think victim status, or lack of it either, should be automatic, just presumptive, regardless of gender.

Actually, and I hate to drag out this hoary old chestnut but I think it applies, if "women trade sex for love and men trade love for sex" it is the emotional, not the sexual abuse of boys that is the problem. A fifteen year old male enjoying sex with a 24 year old female is one thing; a fifteen year old male declaring undying love for and wishing to marry an imprisoned sex-partner ten+ year older teacher is quite another.

The same thing does in fact happen with teenage gay youth. They aren't supposed to want to have sex with gay men in their 20s; it is a fact that very many of them do. Possibly with teachers, but more likely not, especially in this paranoid day and age. But it happens. With satisfaction all around, often enough, and abuse often enough too.

I don't think relative ages, after say 16 or so, for either gender, are an absolute metric for abuse. Probability, yes, degree, yes, but binary black/white, no. And there are many different kinds of abuse.

Well put, and true. Thankyou.

I used to think the only way to handle the situation was for reasonable folk to post a lot, and try and drown out the hatefulness in a warm bath of reason and intelligence. It doesn't work, a number of these guys don't seem to have jobs, and follow BroadSheet with an intense and beady eye (from their mom's basement?), posting obsessively; and the others who do appear to be employed and off-line for realistic periods, are willing to lay on a whack of wordy ranty posts in rapid succession, drowning everyone else out, and ending any possibility of interesting discussion.

There only are 7 or 8 of them, by my count (hard to tell which of the anonymice are sock-puppets), so it is a pity that they can do the damage that they do.

Once in a while we all snap, and lay into them, like you just did, and you know what? It changes nothing, nothing at all. It is just punching a sack of shit, the sack of shit doesn't care at all. These are some dudes with some serious issues that they just can't get past. Myself, I just do not grok obsessively hanging on a comment board where you hate and despise the authors and most of the audience, I just cannot imagine how you get through a day inspired only by hatred and negativity and pain.

Me, mostly I feel sorry for and greatly admire the writers. It can't be easy to be shit on all the time. To my mind, it just illustrates the need for a mainstream publication like Salon to have a women's space; perhaps if it didn't meet with such hateful vituperation I could buy into the proposition that it wasn't needed.

BroadSheet's trolls are the best possible argument for the need for BroadSheet to exist and continue. And if we can't drown them out, at least we can interject what notes of rationality and civility we can, and hope to win out in the long run.

Also, I hope that the writers don't take any of the commentary too seriously, I am sure that they see the hit counts and realize what a teeny minority we commenters are.

How exactly did this thread become about the dismal BS65 instead of about the brilliant and wise loose cannon Marjane Satrapi? Her ability to piss everyone off, to take insane chances, and tell everyone to kiss her ass, and on top of that to be pretty much right all the time, wow.

She is absolutely right, and what the hell is "reductive" anyway? A hijab/burka/chador may not be the best of all possible worlds, but neither are implants, collagen injections, and botox. She actually has a substantive point there, I think, and good for her that she makes it with a gross joke.

No, she isn't "well-behaved" and good for her.