When We Said We Wanted Equality, Err, Well, We Didn't Mean It...

The 'Guardian' seems to have a few problems judging its audience lately.

Following the nurse specialist debacle comes Barbara Ellen's extraordinary column on the Madeleine Martin affair:

...do we seriously think that a female teacher sleeping with a male pupil is on a par with a male teacher sleeping with a girl pupil? I don't. And neither, I'd wager, would most 15-year-old boys.

Say what..? We are letting the 'Phwoar, lucky sod!' contingent decide sentencing now?

Certainly, she has been severely punished for her nine-day tryst with the teenager, who, his mother says, has been mocked by peers. If anything, one would have thought they might be jealous. The internet is awash with sites dealing with "older woman teacher-pupil" fantasies. And there lies the rub – should the law be treating male and female pupil victims equally when male and female teenagers are so different?

Ahh, yes. It's the old 'No, actually, we don't want equality, we need appreciation of our differences and assistance for the designated victim classes' approach that has been creeping in to other issues, most recently race and religion.

In Martin's case, with her hefty prison sentence, and placement on the sex offenders' register, she has effectively been punished exactly the same as a man.

This, Barbara is saying, is a bad thing...

The commenters disagree. Oh, boy, do they disagree!