What Female Teacher Scandals Tell Us About Sexual Desire and Social Currency

A close look at a misunderstood pattern

Every few months, yet another female teacher makes headlines for sleeping with an underage male student.

To understand why these women cross the line with male students, you first have to understand something uncomfortable about the psychology of desire, attention, and power.

It starts with a basic fact about female desire that almost nobody wants to say out loud. What I’m about to explain has less to do with predatory impulses than with something far more unsettling.