Now, the Nebraska teacher who was having sex with her sixth-grader has cost herself prison and him the good life in America. Turns out he’s an illegal immigrant from Mexico and, having fled with him there, he’s now stuck. What’s love got to do with it? Everything. Maybe women should do some re-thinking about their school girl notions of love and romance and how entitled to them they are. Maybe we should do that before we cross the line into child abuse and violence. Like Nowak, I don’t have much sympathy for Peterson, however much in love she thinks she is, however well she treated him. She’s turned this child from a munchkin who should be playing X Box too much into a smooth operator. She’s his “Baby Gurl” and — check this — he defends their relationship as “[not just] about the sex but that it was pretty good.”
“Pretty good”? That’s how he should be rating the latest Simpson’s episode, not sex. What little benefit of the doubt I had for her, sure she believed herself in love and wasn’t a habitual abuser, evaporated. Perspective restored. The great sex guru Dan Savage frequently reminds the older partner in a sexual relationship to treat the younger one like a campsite — left better than when found. There’s simply no way for an adult to accomplish that with a sixth grader.
