School bus driver gets 10 years. Boy's parents say sex case has led to taunts, vandalism.
The short version is that this is just another story of an adult with boundary issues taking advantage of a child- an adult female bus driver having a sexual relationship with an 11-year-old boy. Yeah, I know; pretty despicable stuff. Honestly, though, I wouldn't have had anything to do with this story, except for the reaction of the bus driver's mother.
"The parents knew that this had been going on," Hale said. "They knew before everybody knew. It was OK with them ... until CPS (Children's Protective Services) got involved and then suddenly they're innocent victims now ... All the people who want to defend him just because he's a child, I think you're hypocrites because if that child pulled out a gun, you would sentence him as an adult. You wouldn't have any problem finding that child to be man if he pulled out a gun. But not if he reaches for his zipper?"
The utter ignorance displayed by this statement is almost too much to imagine, but that's not my point here. This woman actually does address a valid point, albeit in a spectacularly half-assed manner. Why IS there a double standard in this society when it comes to sex vis-a-vis violence?
I'm not going to address this case, because it involves and 11-year-old boy, and the woman involved SHOULD be put away. How many times, though, have we heard of cases where a female teacher is sexually involved with a 15- or 16-year-old boy? Society's general reaction is to condemn the teacher and to hold the boy blameless. If that same boy used a gun to commit murder, how quickly would be demanding that he be tried as an adult?
Another question I find myself pondering is the double standard inherent in the media's depicition of sex and violence. Why is it that the depiction of graphic violence is greeted with a much higher degree of acceptance than graphic sex? I'm not necessarily saying that the depiction of either is proper. It does strike me as somewhat contradictory that it is acceptable to show a woman being murdered, but to show to show someone caressing that same woman's naked breast is beyond the pale.
I understand that societal attitudes towards sex and violence are changing and evolving. It's just too bad that the double standard isn't evolving as well.
