Sexual Misconduct Looks Different When a Woman is the Perpetrator

And like many such cases, the real story behind Iceland's former Minister for Children is probably complicated.

Last week, Ásthildur Lóa Thórsdóttir [above], Iceland’s Minister for Education and Children’s Affairs, was revealed to have had a sexual relationship with a teen boy decades ago, when she was 23 years old. The case vividly highlights the west’s double standards about sex between adults and minors, and it exposes grey areas in victim-centered sanctimony.

That the case occurred in Iceland, a feminist stronghold with a female president, a female prime minister, and a claimed “zero-tolerance policy for sexual abuse and exploitation of children,” is not at all surprising. No one seriously expects feminists to apply their touted compassion to male teenagers; and no one believes that their championing of gender equality includes sexual probity for women.

Iceland is so thoroughly feminist that in 2023, the prime minister herself joined other women on a one-day strike to demand, amongst other utopian objectives, “an end to unequal pay,” neatly sidestepping (while illustrating) that the so-called pay gap is caused primarily by women’s tendency to work fewer hours than men do. Female moral innocence is such a cherished belief of the Nordic island nation that it has designated 2025 as Women’s Year, with “12 months of events dedicated to progressing gender equality.” (Interested readers should consult a gushing Guardian article, “Women are the best to women,” which depicts Iceland as a near-idyllic women-led community in which men hardly figure.)

Clearly, when the most powerful woman in the country can take a day off to showcase women’s alleged lack of power, few women are prepared to consider their own potential abuse of it.

That brings us to the Minister for Children’s Affairs, who appeared flabbergasted last week to find that her long-ago sexual past has become fodder for unsympathetic public discussion and suggestions of serious impropriety. “I understand … what it looks like,” she is quoted as saying to reporters, seemingly exasperated at how difficult it is “to get the right story in the news today.” At 58 years of age, Thórsdóttir is being given a tiny glimpse into what thousands of men have experienced since feminism entered its Jacobin phase.

Over three decades ago, Thórsdóttir began a relationship with a 15-year-old boy who was attending her church group. He has been identified as Eirik Asmundsson. He was a troubled boy with a chaotic home life, and she was an adult member in the group; newspaper articles have said that she was a group counselor, which she denies. She claims that the relationship did not become sexual until the boy was 16, and that he pursued her.

Thórsdóttir eventually gave birth to a child—a son—when she was 23 and Asmundsson was 16. She claims, again contrary to news reports, that their sexual relationship was long over by then, having lasted only a few weeks. What is undisputed is that she forced the boy to pay child support for 18 years, long after she had met and married another man, which occurred about a year after the child’s birth. She also opposed numerous requests by her child’s father to form and maintain a relationship with his son. Overall, she treated the boy shamefully.

Naturally, if a male government minister had been found to have been sexually involved with, impregnated, and then split from a 15- or 16-year-old girl when he was 22, especially when he was part of a religious organization in which he had some degree of moral or spiritual influence over her, there would be no public doubt whatsoever about his culpability.

All news reports would have been condemnatory, and his protestations, if he had been naïve enough to make any, would have been in vain. There would have been a chorus of disapproving statements from his fellow politicians in the Icelandic parliament. He would have been forced to resign from government and would likely be facing criminal investigation, perhaps for custodial rape (sex with a youth in one’s employment, care, or custody).

In Thórsdóttir’s case, in contrast, there has been only a brief flurry of reports and limited personal fallout. She was forced to resign from her ministerial post, but she remains in government. That she has kept her job is extraordinary. The Daily Mail, while not defending her, waffled about her potential criminality, saying “The age of consent is 15 in Iceland, but it is illegal to have sex with anyone under the age of 18 if the adult holds a position of authority over them, as Thorsdottir is accused of doing.”

Even the Prime Minister, Kristrún Mjöll Frostadóttir, has withheld judgement, saying that she knows little about the story, and that “This is a very personal matter [and] out of respect for the person concerned, I will not comment on the substance.” If Thórsdóttir had been a man, of course, the Prime Minister would have been falling all over herself to condemn his sexual wrongdoing and to express support for his victim. He would have become a non-person immediately.

Thórsdóttir herself has had quite a lot to say, none of it apologetic. The closest she came to acknowledging responsibility was to point out in interview how long ago the incident occurred: “It’s been 36 years, a lot of things changed in that time and I would definitely have dealt with these issues differently today.” I’m sure many accused men have felt the exact same thing. The difference, of course, is that accused men are not given a fair hearing to defend themselves.

So far, so predictable: the usual double standards, the woman getting away with abusive conduct, the male victim ignored.

**

I was ready for that to be the end of the story—and I had written a whole essay on the above theme, confident in the woman’s guilt—until I read Thórsdóttir’s statement, which she released on the day after her resignation. The statement clouded my former clarity.

Not surprisingly, it showcases her refusal of accountability and complete lack of empathy for Asmundsson. Every word seems designed to defend against moral or criminal liability. Yet no matter how self-serving and blinkered, the story succeeds in humanizing the accused woman.

What I hate most about feminism is its manifold inability to acknowledge the humanity of men. I can’t deny Thórsdóttir hers. The following explains why.

**

Central to Thórsdóttir’s narrative is her portrayal of herself as a 22-year-old naif, “completely inexperienced in love affairs,” and worn down by an “aggressive” boy who engaged in “something that today would be called stalking.” At this point in her story, Thórsdóttir seemed on the verge of depicting herself as Asmundsson’s victim. Yet she drew back, focusing on her flood of emotions in a remarkable passage that combines rationalization with self-revelation. Their first sexual encounter is described as something that happened without her full volition despite the fact that it required her to invite Asmundsson, who had been sleeping in the barn on her father’s property, into their house:

“I felt guilty towards him and his feelings that he carried so openly and I couldn’t repay him even though I loved him. I was also worried about him and his circumstances, which were difficult in many ways, and I wanted to support him and help him in any way I could.

It was one such night at the end of September 1989 that I let him in. He was 16 years old and I simply couldn’t handle the situation.”

That final sentence seems intended to absolve Thórsdóttir of any responsibility: she was overwhelmed; he was of age to make his own sexual decisions. But it also reads like a bizarre self-indictment. If a 22-year-old woman could not “handle” the situation of a near-homeless, just-turned-16 boy seeking sexual comfort and love, at what point could she be trusted to do so? (Infantilization is the perennial feminist Achilles’ heel.)

The rest of the narrative builds a case against Asmundsson, and it does so with such moral conviction that it is easy to forget that she is describing a teen boy. By the time of her son’s birth, according to Thórsdóttir, she had almost completely lost contact with the father, who had made it clear to her that he was no longer interested in being with her. He did, though, show up at the hospital for her delivery.

After that, the relationship became distant and strained. Visits between father and son would be scheduled, but Asmundsson did not always show up. Thórsdóttir presents herself as having made repeated good-faith efforts to sustain a relationship before eventually relinquishing the attempt. It’s impossible to know, without corroboration, how accurate her picture is.

When the child was about two and a half years old, she received a summons from the Ministry of Justice to allow contact with the father. At that point, she refused. “Given what had happened before,” she wrote, “I simply did not trust him to fulfill that responsibility.” Limited contact was eventually mandated (a measly 2 hours per month at her father’s home), but Thórsdóttir insists that Asmundsson could never be relied upon to be there (she doesn’t say if she ever let him down).

The narrative at this point seesaws between contrasting accusations in a tangle of resentment and unacknowledged guilt. Thórsdóttir condemns her son’s father for “never” sending the boy a birthday or Christmas gift, never taking any initiative in communicating with him; in the next paragraph, she condemns him for “showing up unannounced” with a birthday gift when her son turned three. Out of pure spite, it seems, she didn’t let him see his son on that occasion, telling him it was “not going to happen. He would have to make an invitation in advance and we would have to find a common time for their meetings.”

A year later, the child’s father asked to have his son with him for a weekend, but she refused again, saying that he did not know his son. One can see the corner into which she was assiduously painting the father. Yet she disclaims any role in the various failures of follow-through, saying that she never knew where the father lived or what his phone number was. She vaguely remembers that perhaps he tried to establish contact again when their son was eight years old, but she does not record what happened then.

One can sense Thórsdóttir’s frustration and resentment mounting as she recounts this part of the story, telling of Asmundsson’s unreliability, her own burden:

“I believe that the father of the child thought about it four or five times that he wanted to meet the boy, and it always seems to have been on his terms and when it suited him. There was never any follow-up on his part or any willingness to take an effort to establish contact with the child. As the child’s guardian, I had a duty to take care of it and I have a completely clear conscience towards my son and the father of the child in this regard.”

This is Thórsdóttir’s truth: unfair but probably not unfounded. From the moment she became pregnant, she entered a world of responsibility that sapped her empathy for whatever struggles the father was also experiencing. As the years passed and he seemed to her uninterested in his son, she had some reason to stop believing he had any real right to him. Her taking of his money every month is one of the least defensible parts of her behavior, and she was certainly wrong to deny her son the chance to know his father; but she was helped along by the relentless anti-father propaganda of our time.

Asmundsson is rendered voiceless in Thórsdóttir’s story. He almost certainly experienced the events differently, not least because he was himself still quite young during the early years of his son’s life, something that Thórsdóttir never acknowledges. It’s a bit rich to condemn him for wanting to have contact with his child “when it suited him” (probably he was working a lot to pay child support), and it’s impossible to imagine such an allegation being used to justify denying a young mother’s requests. Thórsdóttir’s years-long obstructionism will be highly familiar to many fathers who have tried fruitlessly to make arrangements to see their children.

One can easily imagine how the mother’s unwillingness to trust or forgive would have hindered Asmundsson’s confidence and commitment. He may well have begun to feel that he would never be allowed to know his son. What a shame that, having found himself a father at such a young age, his tragedy is now broadcast to strangers as part of Thórsdóttir’s self-justification. We will probably never know his side.

**

Despite the likely omissions, exaggerations, and perhaps even outright untruths in Thórsdóttir’s account, it does not seem a complete lie. She seems to have been neither innocent nor consciously exploitative. Though I could be wrong, I suspect she was drawn to Asmundsson by egotism rather than lust, intoxicated by a turbulently attractive teen who made her feel he needed her. Later on, she lacked the good principles and compassion to overcome her resentment and see his point of view.

Her actions were wrong, and they must have harmed him. But I doubt that justice would be served by having her stand trial, even if a case for custodial rape were clearer than it is.

I have often had similar mixed feelings about cases of male sexual transgression. The offenders often seem clumsy rather than vicious, foolish rather than vile, and no more powerful—often less powerful—than those they hurt or didn’t hurt.

We have laws about consent for a reason, and we should prosecute clear sexual crimes. But we should also exercise appropriate caution. Our present system, which assumes male guilt and female innocence, and imagines that only girls experience sexual harm, is unjust and false to human nature. There are sexual predators of both sexes who cause suffering; likewise, there are young people who tempt weak adults. Thórsdóttir’s story, in which each party betrayed the other, invites us to consider these cases in all their human complexity, whether the accused be male or female.