Barbara Ellen is a writer at the prominent British publication The Guardian. She is a staunch Feminist, and is quick to inform us how using sexist slurs against women should be taken seriously. I only wish she took violence against men and boys as seriously as name-calling.

A title of a recent article of hers makes a bold statement in its headline: “It’s simply not the same if a man is hit by a woman.” One might think that, being a Feminist, she would support the idea that men deserve equal rights too! She clears up any confusion with her article titled/subtitled “Get your grubby male hands off my equal rights: sexual discrimination laws are for everyone – but it still jars me to see men using them.”

So I suppose you could say she has some “issues.” But don’t worry – we haven’t seen her at her best yet. In this article, again at The Guardian, Barbara Ellen lays out her case as to why older women who commit statutory rape should be given a free pass, even when they are nearly three times the age of the boys they sleep with. She begins:

Looking at the case of Madeleine Martin, the 39-year-old RE teacher and mother of two, jailed for 32 months and placed on the sex offenders’ register for sleeping with a 15-year-old male pupil, do we seriously think that a female teacher sleeping with a male pupil is on a par with a male teacher sleeping with a girl pupil?

Yes.

I don’t.

Color me surprised.

Certainly, she has been severely punished for her nine-day tryst with the teenager, who, his mother says, has been mocked by peers. If anything, one would have thought they might be jealous.

Curious question: by saying “one might have thought,” does she actually mean she thought? Of course she does.

The internet is awash with sites dealing with ‘older woman teacher-pupil’ fantasies. And there lies the rub – should the law be treating male and female pupil victims equally when male and female teenagers are so different?

Barbara Ellen is right – men and women are different. But that doesn’t automatically make her argument work. If society predicated legalities upon fantasies that far are removed from their flesh-and-blood social context, they wouldn’t just be condoning the sex of teenage boys with “MILFs,” but also women’s rape fantasies – which would no longer be just fantasies.

Something tells me that if a man were to seriously advocate such a thing, making arguments similar to Ellen’s, he would (A) not have a position at The Guardian, and (B) Barbara Ellen would be writing about how evil such a man is. Continuing down Barbara Ellen’s moral contortions:

There are always exceptions, but surely one of the essential differences between the teenage sexes lies in the onset and manifestation of sexuality. Which is a posh way of saying that teenage boys mainly want sex, while teenage girls mainly want attention. Likewise, while teenage boys are usually sexually driven, teenage girls tend to be validation-driven.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that her statement here is completely true. Because again, I’ll show you how her argument fails, even if circumstances were most favorable to her (which they aren’t).

So teenage boys want sex and teenage girls want attention. Therefore, based on Ellen’s reasoning, teenage boys can’t be raped because they always want sex. But based on that same logic, teenage girls can’t be sexually harassed by anyone because they always want attention. They always “want it.”

Right, Barbara?

Again, reverse the sexes. We know well what would happen if a man were to walk around saying such things. As they say in Britain, he would be sacked!

From here, it is not too much of a leap to surmise that sexual contact with a teacher would have entirely different effects on the teenage sexes. For most boys, it would be the score of all scores, for girls, the ultimate exploitation of their genetic vulnerability.

Not so fast. Actually Barbara, in case you haven’t noticed, older women aren’t exactly high on the sexual totem pole. Having sex with a woman who is well past her prime isn’t a grand “accomplishment.” Furthermore, in the world of students, teachers can have incredible status – which is the primary criteria upon which male attractiveness is determined.

But again, even if that was true, it really doesn’t matter. Ol’ Barbie misses the big picture by a kilometer, and reveals that she really is quite ignorant – willfully ignorant – about the law. When it comes to statutory rape, whether the younger party “wants it” or not is irrelevant. In legal terms, statutory rape is a “strict liability” offense, a crime where mens rea (intent, state of mind) is irrelevant. The crime hinges not upon desire, but upon an age difference which negates the ability of the very young to make decisions that could impact their lives in the long term.

For example, a boy may indeed desire sex at 15, or 14, or even 13. But he is not ready to be a father at 15 if his partner becomes pregnant. He is also certainly is not ready for an STD at 15. And the older people are, the more likely their chances that they have contracted an STD – something that should give anyone over 25 pause when they consider having casual sex with someone in their age cohort.

But Barbara just doesn’t get any this. She just keeps going:

While a large proportion of teenage boys may not have the sense to make the best choices, they are “up for it,” none the less. This is why, in my view, a male teacher sleeping with a girl pupil amounts to statutory rape, whereas a female teacher sleeping with a 15-year-old male is a far greyer moral area.

…maybe it is time for society to address this issue honestly. Why do we blithely accept that “men and women are different”, but refuse to acknowledge that the teenage sexes are also different?

Again, let’s remember that this is a Feminist. And now that treating the sexes the same works to her disadvantage, she is all of a sudden demanding that we “be honest” and treat the sexes differently. Something tells me that Barbara Ellen is one of the last people on earth who should be lecturing others on honesty when it comes to gender issues.

And here’s something else, in case it isn’t obvious: yes, both Feminism and the Men’s Movement have their extremists. I have never denied this. But the question of “are there extremists” is really quite irrelevant. The real question is “where are the extremists in the movement.”

I have never seen a member of the Men’s Movement in such an influential and mainstream position like Barbara Ellen’s making the kind of extreme claims she is making. The extremists in the Men’s Movement are (thankfully) isolated and marginalized on the corners of the internet.

The Feminist extremists, by contrast, are in our mainstream institutions. They are in academia, the mainstream media, our legal system, and increasingly in our military. It’s long past time for everyone – both men and women – to clean house.