Rebecca Joynes is currently serving a six and a half year prison sentence
A teacher who was convicted for having sex with two boys, becoming pregnant by one, has been banned from the profession.
Maths teacher Rebecca Joynes, 31, was jailed for six and a half years in July last year after being found guilty of six counts of sexual activity with a child, after sleeping with one pupil before falling pregnant by a second while on police bail.
The Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) convened earlier this month via a virtual hearing, which Joynes did not attend, to consider her professional conduct. A panel recommended she be banned from teaching.
I don’t understand how that comment was excusing anything. They explicitly said that it was inexcusable.
Yeah, but prefaced it by saying you can’t help who or what you’re attracted to. Right out of the MAP playbook. The thoughts and attraction in itself is a problem and requires counselling because “children” are not a sexuality. You can and should help what you’re attracted to when that what is a child! If you’re having suicidal thoughts, you should see a counsellor. If you’re having thoughts about harming others, you should see a counsellor. If you’re having thoughts about diddling kids, you. should. see. a. counsellor.
No one’s disagreeing that it’s wrong and needs to be addressed. The disagreement is on whether pedophiles get to choose who they’re attracted to. This is an important distinction because firstly, the origin of their thoughts/actions determines the course of action necessary to keep it in check. Second, shaming someone for something they can’t control is one of the most effective ways of discouraging treatment. Third, that wasn’t a preface. It was the answer to the question they responded to.
Regarding suicidality: I believe that the approach of stigmatizing and criminalizing was often taken in the past and found to be ineffective. I’ve been seeing a big movement towards more open dialogue and encouraging treatment in the past decades.
And I’m disagreeing that pedophiles can’t help their feelings. This dialogue only occurs because of the recent conflation between sexuality and pedophilia. I’ve always been of the opinion that they need to see a professional, and that needs to be a non-negotiable. I reject any conversation on their feelings being a choice because as evidenced in this thread, people conflate ideas that apply to sexuality to pedophiles. I just responded to someone who accused me of arguing for conversion therapy. It’s pedophilia, it needs to stay stigmatised because of how huge the consequences are if they act on it.
I think you and shalafi might be using different definitions of “gets to choose”. Using a depressed person as an analogy since I think this is better understood: You don’t get to choose to be happy, but you can choose to take steps towards getting help so that you can better manage it. It sounds like they’re talking about the former while you’re talking about the latter.
Similarly with stigmatization. It’s one thing to stigmatize acting on your suicidal ideation. It’s another to stigmatize having suicidal ideation in the first place.
Do you accept that people can prefer partners older or younger than them? If so, do you really think that’s something that can be dealt with by some kind of “conversion therapy”?
Bizarre equivalencies here. Firstly, regardless of my personal beliefs on large age gaps, those are consenting adults. You’re equating them to children. Children are not consenting adults, it is a problem if you feel sexual attraction to them. Same thing with animals. They cannot consent. You have some really messed up ideals if you’re equating psychiatry and therapy, especially modern-day versions of them, to conversion therapy forced onto gay people. This is exactly why I called it excusatory MAP bullshit because you go right down this slippery slope. Being sexually attracted to children is not a sexuality.
What does consent have to do with attraction?
If there is a conscious being that cannot consent, object, or otherwise appropriately respond to one’s attraction, then that attraction should not be held onto. Ways should be explored to move past that attraction, whether they be through counselling or self reflection.