I heard about this story on the radio yesterday, accompanied by the typical conservative chest-thumping along the lines of “if that were my daughter, he’d have something coming, I tell you!” To their credit, the on-air morons at least pointed out that the student – sweet, innocent, blameless little Jordan Powers – didn’t happen to have a father at home, which may go some ways toward explaining her attraction to a much older man. Her former teacher, 41-year-old James Hooker, quit his job and left his wife and kids to move in with his teenage flame, acknowledging that he was hurting a number of people in the process. However, he justified this act of selfishness with the “happiness” excuse, which is curious in that it’s almost always used by women, and shamelessly at that.
Mr. Hooker’s sleaziness aside, something’s been missing from the dialog. Namely, the fact that Jordan Powers bears some responsibility for her behavior here. As a legal adult, she is currently in an adulterous relationship with a married man. She is, to put it plainly, a homewrecker. However, what do we hear from her mother? That Mr. Hooker is a “pervert” and should be thrown in jail. Conservatives make noise about beating him with a baseball bat. Much shock and outrage is being expressed across the land, and Hooker is portrayed as the sole villain, acting alone.
If Jordan had a father (he died some years ago), and he did beat Mr. Hooker with a bat, he would go to jail, and rightly so. I personally would feel little pity for a man who acted in that manner in response to his daughter’s sluttiness. On the other hand, if he apologized to Hooker’s wife and children for not raising his daughter correctly, I would feel quite a bit of sympathy for him. As I pointed out recently in comments, holding men responsible for your daughter’s sexual behavior is the stupid, caveman approach to raising a girl, and doesn’t work. American men are terrible fools in this regard, and this is why the “slutty preacher’s daughter” stereotype is so often true.
Most people have never been teachers, but perhaps some women can think back to that time they had a crush on a teacher. It’s a natural, common occurrence. Most students and teachers are pretty good at controlling themselves, but not all. I’ve seen teachers messing around with underage students before. Once, after hours in the darkness of winter during my freshman year in high school, I walked past a well-lit student lounge, and looking through the window saw one of the teachers and a student inside, locked in a passionate embrace. Later, as a junior and senior, rumors floated around about one of the English teachers, who would attend non-school events with female students on weekends. Even as a kid, I could tell what was going on, but back then (early 90s) people tended to keep their mouths shut about these things — it was kind of shameful and the girls involved in it knew that, too.
Later, I did some teaching myself, when I was in my early 20s. Some of the girls quite literally threw themselves at me, and very openly. It was more embarrassing than anything else. There was one 14-year-old girl who would embrace me at every opportunity, including once when her parents visited her class(!). I remember looking helplessly at her father while she clung to me as if to say “I have nothing to do with this, really!” The father looked amused, although slightly embarrassed himself. She gave me a picture of herself in a field of flowers (a perfectly innocent one, I thought) which my girlfriend of the time soon discovered and ferociously ripped to shreds before my eyes; women have far fewer illusions about adolescent girls than men. Aside from her schoolgirl crush, she was a sweet girl, and very bright; I’m sure she grew out of it soon enough. However, to pretend that young females are completely passive actors in the relationships that occasionally occur between students and teachers is no more than willful ignorance.
Examples of this kind of thing abound. Male teachers developing relationships with female students may be frowned upon, but it has always happened, and there’s probably no stopping it as long as mixed sex education is the norm. I personally know at least one teacher who married a former student; he grew close to her as a young teacher on a cycling tour in Europe, if I remember correctly. Their marriage has lasted, and they have children. Nobody was arrested, and the man kept his job, although I’m not sure he still teaches at this point.
In the case of Mr. Hooker and Jordan Powers, however, there is a bit more of an age difference than usual, and he happened to be a married man with children. The age difference, although it may strike some people as odd, really isn’t anyone’s business. The marriage, on the other hand, is problematic. Both Mr. Hooker and Jordan did something wrong in that regard. That is the only aspect of this affair that is worth making any fuss over. As for why Mr. Hooker did it, we can only speculate, but he certainly doesn’t come off as a particularly empowered man. Powers’ mother, who is expending effort to have the man jailed, called him an “arrogant pervert,” presumably because of his attraction to a young adult female. Are women really that clueless? Do they really believe it’s abnormal for a man to be attracted to young women? What a bunch of sour grapes!
If the mother succeeds in having Mr. Hooker brought to trial, I’m afraid she’s going to do little more than expose her daughter as a shameless tramp. After those thousands of text messages and photos she sent go public, little Jordan isn’t going to come off as such a sweet, innocent little thing, I’ll bet. The mother is the arrogant one, and if she knew what was good and proper she’d apologize to Hooker’s wife and children for having raised a daughter who would do such a thing, and then cut her losses by shutting up about the affair.
One of the lessons of this story is that there are only a couple ways to prevent young women’s sexuality from having an inordinately disruptive influence on society. Either we can follow the Saudi method, which absolves women of all responsibility, covers them up from head to toe, and shuts them up in the home, or the traditional Western method, which granted women relative freedom balanced by responsibility. Unfortunately, it appears that we are moving toward the former, which is a shame, because I’d rather not be tasked with being my daughter’s jailer. However, if women continue to insist on never being held responsible for their choices, that’s inevitably where we will end up.
