Most mainstream Americans favor equal rights between women and men, at least in theory. In practice, however, some long-standing prejudices still hold. For example, a promiscuous boy is likely to be considered a "stud," while an equally promiscuous girl risks being branded a "slut."
Legal process should always be above such knee-jerk biases. Yet in some instances a particular sex offense committed by a male may be treated as a horrendous crime, while the same offense committed by a female is considered only slightly worse than jaywalking.
For example, take some cases from a west Texas county. In one, a 37-year-old woman, former president of a high school parent-teacher association, admitted to having sexual relations with two boys, 15 and 16, who were students at the same school. She was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge and was sentenced to ten years probation. Although she cannot work at a school or daycare, she will not even be required to register as a sex offender.
About a year earlier, a teacher at that school received ten years probation, a fine, and community service, after admitting to a sexual relationship with a 9th grade student. She also is not required to register as a sex offender.
But in the same jurisdiction, a 41-year-old male teacher was sentenced to twenty years in prison for having sex with a 15-year-old student!
What effect this kind of experience has on the victim is determined more by the circumstances than by gender. The simplistic stereotype is that sex with a woman authority figure is mostly a thrill for boys, but that girls who have sex with a male authority figure are automatically scarred for life. The truth is that the age of the child, the difference in age from the perpetrator, how much coercion or manipulation was involved, the marital status of the older person, the use of drugs or alcohol, reactions of family, and many other factors, could result in an experience that, while illegal, has little or no negative effect or one that grievously intereferes with the victim's sexual, mental, and emotional development.
There are obviously some real differences in self-expectations of boys and girls. The two genders are certainly equal, but not identical. If a teenage boy has been told by an adult woman that she loves him and needs him, he may believe that it is his "manly duty" to protect her, and to feel anguish over his inability to do so. Girls, on the other hand, may be more prone to feel used and devalued by the older person.
In other words, a crime is a crime. Many of our sex laws are unrealistic and moralistic, and there are legitimate questions as to the age at which a minor is competent to consent to sexual activities and under what circumstances, but what is a crime for a man is a crime for a woman as well. Women have as much right to positions of authority as men, whether the position is that of a teacher or president of the United States. A society that treats abuses of authority as more forgivable when committed by women is denying that they are equally qualified.