Last week in Australia a female teacher was convicted of having sex with a 15 year old boy. Not only was it reported that she had sex with him, but she pursued him to do it. There has been a spate of female teacher pursuing underage male students of late, the most publicised I think was the Canadian Teacher who did it all again while on parole for the same type of offence.
My question comes after reading some of the mainstream media reports on these cases: Is the word pedophile, a male only term?
For me, it sure seems that way. It seems that if you are a women and you have sex with an underaged male then not only are you not called a pedophile by the media, but the crime and the punishment seem to be different. The Aussie teacher I mentioned got 4 months. Let me say it again. She got 4 months. I’m hard-pressed imagining a 4 month jail sentence for a male teacher convicted of having sex with a 15 year old female student in similar circumstances.
From wikipedia.org: Pedophilia, paedophilia, or pedophilia (see spelling differences), is the paraphilia of being sexually attracted primarily or exclusively to pre-pubescent children. Persons with this attraction are called pedophiles. In the United States and some other countries, the term pedophile is frequently used also to denote significantly older adults who are sexually attracted to adolescents[1], as well as those who have sexually abused a child.