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News Hulu's "A Teacher" series

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This is a miniseries about a predatory teacher and the teacher's student victim. It's gotten some pretty good reviews.

Notably, the teacher is female and her victim is male.

I won't be watching it, but apparently it's a worthwhile watch that treats its subject matter seriously.
 
I find the trailers triggering. I also won’t be watching it. Just my opinion but it seems they are trying to make entertainment out of abuse and I find it sickening. I would be curious if anyone watches it if this is true. I believe bringing awareness to abuse is important I hope I am wrong on my opinion
 
Hm...ok, I've been watching this some, and it's just sort of blah...

I posted somewhere else about consent, and I think this movie illustrates the very thing I am conflicted about.

This is a miniseries about a predatory teacher and the teacher's student victim.

This is not how it starts, though. And I don't see her behavior in the first two episodes as "predatory." And I guess I just don't view consensual behavior like this as creating a victim in the student. I think I just have a very different definition of that. Ugh. So confusing and hard to explain. I understand that people see a teacher in a place of power and a student in a more submissive and vulnerable position. And that a relationship of this kind should never happen because of that.

I turn it around and imagine the teacher as male and the student as female. I had issues with teachers in high school (and a principal in elementary school) and it was not anywhere close to being consensual. It felt horrible.

I don't know. Struggling some with this.
 
@whiteraven - I struggle to make sense of some teacher things too from when I was a teenager.

I mulled it over in this thread quite a while back, in case it’s of any use/interest to you - I remember there being some helpful insights for me in the thread:

I didn’t ever have a physical relationship with either of the teachers but there was a weird dynamic and sort of sexual undertones and I do now think that they/their behaviour were inappropriate.

I actually ended up becoming a teacher myself. And I was always very very clear and certain - I would never have been with my students the way those teachers were to me. I wouldn’t have been suggestive/flirtatious. I wouldn’t have over-shared about my personal life and taken them into my confidence to tell them about my unhappy marriage. I wouldn't have chosen a favourite who got to come into my office for tea and cake and a private chat when no one else had that. I wouldn’t have gone to a students bedroom on a residential trip, gone into the room and shut the door as they were standing in their night clothes and given them a kiss goodnight. I wouldn’t have fed them a bit of my meal off my fork, making a suggestive comment as I pushed my fork between their closed lips.

^^^ none of these things are highly abusive. But, as a collection of things, wrapped up in a weird, skewed dynamic, they were not appropriate. And, even though I was very clear that, as a teacher, I would never have dreamt of doing any of those things, it was still very confusing for me, trying to unpick it and work out what was what and whether things were ok or not. I also think I still have more to do on that!

In terms of it (this TV programme, which I haven’t seen) not showing her as predatory to begin with, I guess a lot of predators aren’t overtly predatory - otherwise they wouldn’t ever get what they wanted/kids wouldn’t like them and would stay well clear/they would get caught. Grooming makes for a huge head f*ck.

How old is the student meant to be in the series? Because, I guess that’s another thing about the dynamic and around consent with teacher/student relationships. The teacher is an adult. Their job is to put their students’ needs first - not to have students meet their own emotional/sexual needs. The teacher is in loco parentis- trusted to look after the student’s welfare as the trusted, professional adult in the relationship. Even if a student is 17, they are not an adult and the teacher/student relationship is not an equal one.

If we’re talking about university age, I think the lines become more blurred - as the student may be legally defined as adult age. It could still be a problematic dynamic though - will the professor be grading their papers and deciding whether they pass/fail etc.

This can be really difficult stuff to work through - if we have been groomed, it can feel like we were special, we had a special relationship with them, they treated us differently because they cared more or because we just clicked in a way that they didn’t with other students...we can like them, like spending time with them. And if the relationship became physically intimate, we may well have enjoyed it, wanted it and perhaps even loved them. So, to think that it may have been ‘wrong’ or to hear labels like ‘abuser’ and ‘victim’ and ‘grooming’ can be very confusing and we may really push back on that.

I think it can be even more complex for boys/men when the predator is female. I saw a case in the news in America about this on social media recently...female teacher had just been sentenced to a jail term for having a sexual relationship with a teenage boy - and other kids in the class got to witness some of it and were even asked to cover for them. And the comments on the story...my God! The amount of ‘good on him, having the time of his life’, ‘why did none of my teachers look like her?!’ and ‘why couldn’t this have happened to me?!’ was just mind-blowing. Because boys don’t get groomed and abused in this way - they have sexual relationships with the woman who makes a man out of him. Hundreds and hundreds of comments like that from men. Horrifying.

Anyway...it’s hard and I’m sorry you’re struggling with this stuff @whiteraven

@somerandomguy - I hadn’t heard of this tv show and am partly intrigued to watch, though I suspect this is me being drawn to seek out triggers, which I’ve written about recently in another thread. So I think I should resolve to not watch it. But I’ll be interested to hear what others who have watched it think about it.
 
How old is the student meant to be in the series?
17. Then turning 18.

If the student is 17, it's a crime, of course. If the student is 18, it's no longer a crime, but is still against the rules of every school in the country and the teacher will be (and should be) fired with extreme prejudice.
 
Sometimes I wonder if the teacher predator is acting on behalf of a “part” that is a teenager.
Not an excuse. Any teacher has a ton of power over their students. It fails to be a relationship between equals in any way.

How would you feel about a male teacher and a female student? How about a much younger teen?
Here it's legal, and if I remember right, legal in parts of USA too.
Most parts of the USA this wouldn't be legal. In the miniseries it's apparently supposed to be happening in a place where it's a crime.
It's still a bit of a boundary issue, but I'm not sure I view it as child abuse.
Not just a "boundary issue" - a power issue. There is no ethical justification for any kind of sexual or implied sexual relationship between a teacher and a student as the teacher holds all the power in this kind of relationship.
 
Most parts of the USA this wouldn't be legal. In the miniseries it's apparently supposed to be happening in a place where it's a crime.
I get it. But if it happened in the UK (UK being where I draw most life experience from) it wouldn't be a crime so I find it hard to buy into it. Not because of the gender of the people involved, purely because here it's totally legal, just frowned upon.
There is no ethical justification for any kind of sexual or implied sexual relationship between a teacher and a student as the teacher holds all the power in this kind of relationship.
What about 22 year old students in college with a 22 year old teacher? I guess I don't see it massively differently.
 
What about 22 year old students in college with a 22 year old teacher?
Still ethically wrong. The teacher should be fired. (The problem then fixes itself if they still want to have a relationship.) There is no situation where a sexual relationship between a teacher and a current student of theirs can be justifiable.

It's the same situation as between a therapist and a client.
 
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