Because teachers have been taking advantage of, and sexually assaulting, students for time immemorial — and because heads of state and other powerful figures abuse their positions of power to rape and get away with it for even longer — we should reconsider criminalizing sexual relations between teachers and underaged students. You know, for the victim's sake. Also, Miley Cyrus's twerking is responsible for this rape culture we live in.
WHAT?!
This is the thrust of Betsy Karasik's editorial for the Washington Post, published on September 2, 2013. We will not link to it because we suspect that Fred Hiatt, editor for the Post, ran the piece as clickbait. But Fred Hiatt stood by his decision to publish the piece — get this — because it raised a legitimate question.
This is not the direction in which the Washington Post should be taking discourse on rape by teachers to the vulnerable students put in their charge. The Washington Post, as a paper of record, needs to take its position seriously and take responsibility for the viewpoints it decides to publish. Karasik's rape apologia does NOT raise a legitimate question; it lowers the quality of discourse on a phenomenon that's gone on for too long, the perpetuation of rape culture.
Dear Mr. Hiatt,
We the undersigned are writing to object to your decision to publish Betsy Karasik's rape apologia in your editorial section on September 2 of 2013. The Washington Post needs to take responsibility not for how many more pageviews it can generate by publishing harmful editorials passing as thoughtpieces by a person who decided to write out her "emotional reaction" to the Montana teacher sentencing after she had a handful of conversations with some parents and mental health professionals.
The controversy generated from this piece is nothing to relish. Sure, the pageviews must have driven your decision to double down on publishing the piece — but the Post can't leave it at that. You need to work actively to re-frame the discourse on rape culture by publishing pieces on how wrong you were on publishing Karasik's piece.
