Arete
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Arete,
It was suggested in the thread that I might be getting neg reps for bad logic, not politics.
However I think it is the opposite. When I suggest people fill in the middle, many in politics just reject the complexities and go right to the easy, feel good position. Even if there might be complexities involved that would slow down the jump to conclusion.
Fallacy of the Excluded Middle is a common logical fallacy. Rare in serious analysis, it often appears as a rhetorical device that encourages audiences to reject complexity in complex situations, excluding consideration of range of mid-range choices to instead consider only extreme positions.
For instance you say if there is employee/employer relationship involved its harassment, and if there is unwanted sexual contact it is rape. So how do you parse what happens in the alley behind the bar when the client gives the stripper a couple 20s for a blow job?
Or if a house wife runs her hand up the leg of a cute handiman.
There are complexities involved in the Weinstein situation, and what a boss does in a button factory and what anybody does in Hollywood, can not be judged, and should not be judged by the same standards. And, the mindset of the people involved, and the relationship between the people needs to be considered. To not consider the complexities is using the logic of the excluded middle.
Regards, TAR
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I was citing legal definitions. Whether or not you personally consider those actions to be sexual assault/rape is irrelevant. In the eyes of the law, they are.
When you describe victims of sexual assault as "whores" you get neg reps from me - the views you expressed on appropriate and professional sexual conduct are abhorrent, outdated and deeply sexist. They have no place in a modern workplace.
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Arete,
Understood, but we are dredging up, as a society, sexual encounters that happened 20 or 30 years ago, and then, the definitions were different.
There is a certain understanding that people have between themselves that is not directly translatable to society's view of the situation. Even currently. Going back 20 years, you are doing Monday morning quarterbacking, and what we think now of the situation, is not what we thought then, and certainly not what the people engaged in the activity at the time were thinking.
For instance, when I was in the Army in Germany it was illegal to be gay and be in the Army. I knew some gay folk and never told on them, and the gay community on my base did not hide from me, as they would from most. I did not realize how many gay people there were in the Army until I was accepted as a non threat. However, your thinking that the law says a thing and therefore it is black and white, is not true. I was not wrong, at the time, to keep my mouth shut, although I was actually protecting people that were doing illegal things. If there had been an expose about our post, at the time, I would have been a wrong doer.
Such is why I ask for there to be a middle ground, to look at these situations as real situations between private individuals, and not situations that should be judged on a societal level, 20 years after the fact, when the rules have changed in between then and now.
I used the term whore, to point out, that at the time the female was using her female charms to get into the good graces of a powerful man, that would then hopefully pull a few strings for them. This, is basically selling your body.
Regards, TAR
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