Opinion
Education Letter to the Editor

Gender Affects Language in Teacher-Sex-Abuse Story

November 06, 2007 1 min read
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To the Editor:

It’s interesting that in one of the Associated Press articles on teacher sexual misconduct you ran in your Oct. 24, 2007, issue, “Gender Affects Response to Teacher-Student Sex,” the author writes that a 17-year-old girl was “forced into sex by a male teacher,” while a 17-year-old boy was said to have been “seduced by his attractive female teacher.”

I wonder how differently people would view these cases if the descriptions were switched, and the 17-year-old boy was “forced into sex,” while the 17-year-old girl was “seduced by her attractive male teacher.”

People have different responses to the cases because the media portray them quite differently.

James Westrick

Alameda, Calif.

A version of this article appeared in the November 07, 2007 edition of Education Week as Gender Affects Language in Teacher-Sex-Abuse Story

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