Except that both you and Dr Modern erroneously think that I think Franken should resign. No, my problem with your post is that her forgiveness should not be a factor as to whether a US Senator should resign. (unless that forgiveness changes the price she was telling the truth). Suppose the harasser was was a cancer researcher or chief engineer for an ongoing bridge building project? Those weighing in on whether that person should resign should only be those who fully understand the impact of that resignation. For instance, in this case, you.

Her desires should be considered when she says whether she wants him "punished". Or, if he was a coworker in a run of the mill job, whether she wants him still working there. And, of course, she has the legal right to express an opinion about whether he should be working at an essential job she is not fully familiar with. But you are not supposed to be taking that into account unless it cnanges the chance she was lying. (Again, I say this in spite of the fact that your original opinion is ridiculous if there is even a one percent chance his resignation changes the result of critical legislation.)

I should also point out that there was no suggestion that you might condone it. You should know me well enough that I was simply using a logic technique to prove that the forgiveness criteria is flawed.

The things Franken stands for should have had a much greater influence on whether you wanted him to remain a senator than whether she wanted him to remain a senator. And you know it.

The forgiveness criteria valid for two reasons. One because the issue at hand here is consent. Another is because justice is about two things, it's about the victim and it's about society in general. Forgiveness from the victim is relevant to the first. And for this reason, a victim's testimony or their family's can be given at sentencing (at least on TV anyway).

The thing that doesn't come with a bright line here and is impossible to logic is that there is no bright line for what his punishment should be. Do we think he's a dick? Will we vote for him in the future? Should he resign? Should he go to prison? Should he be removed from office? There are only two people involved in the kiss and how Leeann feels about this now is definitely material to how we can estimate the degree to which this was a violation and hence what punishment we might recommend.

I wouldn't have him resign because of the picture because I don't see non-contact as an assault, even though it's disrespectful. And then her attitude after the fact matters as well. The degree to which it's inappropriate depends on their relationship and her feelings after the fact are material to any estimation of that relationship we could make from which to form a judgement.

And if I wouldn't condone Roman Polanski's behavior, which I don't and I wouldn't pay to see one of his films because of it, why would he want me around? I don't fit in some category who think the victim's forgiveness is always relevant just because we agree regarding Franken. Specifically in Polanski's case it's not relevant because the victim could not give consent.

In a conversation i wasn't even involved in somebody tried to claim that some large percentage of college girls are sexually assaulted every year and they provided a link. I actually clicked on the link, and checked out the study it was referencing, and presented without comment the data behind the claim. I guess that counts as rape apologia now since we're supposed to let people claim anything they want with totally specious evidence so long as they're "on the right side". The post-fact world is still new to me.

I'm mad because you +1 DS's post where he says Roman Polanski, who drugged and raped a 13 year old, wishes there were more people like me around.

The point about SMP isn't about where you stand on the political spectrum (I consider myself a left-libertarian as well). It's about what I consider is a very backwards way of deciding what's right and wrong. I'm not sure if this is exactly an apt description of what I'm getting at, but it's close: it's the tail wagging the dog.

If this has something to do with his US Senatorness, then I don't see the connection with Roman Polanski. And I consider whether he resigns or not to be punishment self-imposed.

"lying" is overstating things. As I said in the post before last, her forgiveness or not is a piece of evidence to weigh the degree of his offense. It's not simply a matter of lying or not.

I take it your point also is that character is trivial for a Senator and should not interfere with selecting people who vote the way you want on legislation. That's a totally separate issue and if you're going to be utilitarian about it like that you also need to consider the effect on the Democratic Party - and her forgiveness is going to be important as to whether or not his not resigning is going to hurt the party. Personally I think a less cynical approach will have benefits more far reaching than one Senator's votes.

Isn't the principle: should victim's forgiveness dictate what sort of consequences (social, professional, legal, whatever) someone who causes harm should face? What does consent have to do with it? Victims' inputs matter, up until the assault becomes non-consensual, and THEN we ignore the victim's opinion? That seems almost backwards. You don't mean that.

David's point is obvious, I think. And it's the same response I made to senorkeed: the things Franken represents should have had a much greater influence on whether you wanted him to remain a senator than whether she wanted him to remain a senator.

Still, I take her opinion seriously and I don't think it's irrelevant. It's just a factor to weigh against others. It's not dispositive.

DUDE. Get meta here. See my post earlier about how *you* sound.

Again: people with deep concern about this issue are in a bind. Narrowly define the issue with extreme pedantry and people pick apart the data to decry this as really being no problem. Broadly define it and get met with the criticism that they are engaged in hysterics that they are implying American college campuses are the most dangerous place on earth for a female by like 5 orders of magnitude.

In the midst of just startling, troubling numbers of women reporting sexual harassment and abuse, you're STILL carrying on about some wounds from years ago or some **** about how the meanies made you not post anymore?

Let's ask it differently. Perhaps women just haven't yet asked *this* question yet. How would men like to hear about sexual harassment and abuse in ways that get everyone to take it seriously WITHOUT guys on internet message boards nursing years' long wounds about how *they've* been victimized by a post-factual world?

I dunno man. Men just want incredibly amounts of ****ing patience. I can see how women struggle to communicate about their problems here.

Women of society: we're sexually harassed and abused pretty regularly, check out twitter feeds and polling data or just ask us about this
Men of the internet: this one time I saw a stat I disagreed with years ago so I've sort of checked out of the whole issue, sorry. Blame the college orientation people for overselling this.

The entire issue is consent. There's no offense at all here if there's consent. If there's consent, there's no victim. When there's no consent (like with a 13 year old) there's very clearly a victim. At that point her forgiveness doesn't lessen the offense at all. In either case though, the victim's feelings can be a factor in determining punishment.

We have no information with which to estimate how bad of an offense he committed here than her testimony and feelings. How she feels now is certainly relevant to how we can judge him.

Leeann Tweeden doesn't seem to be taking back her story and saying she consented to any of this though.

I mean you seem to be workshopping up a theory here that Tweeden's posture that she doesn't want Franken to resign means in fact she was kinda exaggerating like, last week, when she wrote how aggrieved she felt. I don't see that argument as at all credible or good.

The story, her version of it, is pretty difficult to evaluate the consent or not of the kiss. She says she agreed to it, but that he went too far. So we have that and how she feels about it now to judge his offense.

I don't think he's touching her in the picture.

My theory is that her feelings on the matter like forgiving him and not thinking he should resign are relevant to determining what her feelings are on the matter, and yeah, even what her feelings were on the matter.

This is the problem with the SMP way of thinking and you're doing it. It's not the same in all cases and all the information matters. If she said something like "Rapists should never resign. I always forgive rapists." That would matter.

That's one definition of "agreed to it," I guess.

Anyway:

Leeann Tweeden: "I feel disgusted and violated. It's up to the people of Minnesota what to do with Al Franken"
microbet: "we have to examine how she feels about his role as Senator to judge how she felt."

She wrote how she felt less than 1 week ago. Why are we working backwards from her opinion on whether he should resign to edit her feelings retroactively? She says she felt disgusted and violated. Perhaps she's a wonderful person and forgives him. That's not "I take it back" or "no harm done."

I added something in an edit relevant to that.

I'm not sure whether to call that consent or not really or what the appropriate response is at this point and it's more like she's a tie breaker than solely determining whether or not he should resign. I'm not saying it wasn't bad behavior just to be badgering her in the first place. But it's a matter of degree. I mean if someone comes along and says Al Franken should get life in prison, you are then in the position of saying it doesn't merit that.

I dunno. I'm ambivalent at the moment.

I am not posting this to make the point that Tweeden is a groper or was "asking for it." I'm posting it to suggest that the norms of a traveling comedy and music show performing for servicemen in a dangerous foreign land are not the norms of the "standard office".

Thought you might find this interesting since it's a better articulation of my view than I would provide had I not read it. From Elizabeth Bruenig:

https://medium.com/@ebruenig/a-bette...c-19e0e55a0e4e

Consent is necessary but not sufficient. This is a good ethical rule in all kinds of areas of life, not just sex. But including sex.

The law may simply require consent. Privately, we can expect more. People should obviously, it goes without saying, be sure they have consent before they have sex with each other. But consent alone can produce murky results (see Louis CK saying he got consent from women to jerk off in front of them, as we discussed).

Expect more from people. And I think reduce a lot of the harms we see reported. IF we could count on people to think in this fashion by default, we wouldn't need the DVault1 Insane Standards of Office Propriety.

We can extrapolate out to Franken. Is taking a picture of yourself pretending to grab some women's breasts while she sleeps ever going to be good for her? Probably not. The offense becomes clear when we think of it in these terms.

I actually had no idea whether you thought Franken should resign. I just thought your post was a good burn.

I'm not sure what this means, but I'll say that even when I was an ACist, the idea that you could derive the whole system from some minimal set of principles (self-ownership, yada yada) was never part of the appeal for me. In general I'm very skeptical of efforts to ground politics in Grand Eternal Logic or whatever, but I do think that the basic tenets of logical reasoning should apply to political argumentation.

Thanks for sharing. I agree with a lot of what Bruenig is saying there. Emma Green at The Atlantic--who I've worked with--said something similar a few years back when the debate over kink was heating up around 50 Shades.

The reason I'm so adamant about lumping this all under the umbrella of consent is that we have to work within the normative framework of the law as it stands now if we want to see justice done in our lifetimes. In other words, I'd rather ratchet up the standards for what constitutes consent than hope for a feminist awakening among men. In other words, sure, it's reasonable to wish for a world where people would think through their sexual behavior more thoroughly and adopt higher ethical standards for themselves (this is part of why I felt it necessary to be honest with you about my history of cheating etc.), but as we're seeing, lots of men haven't even figured out the basics.

In that light, I'm not sure I see that consent--even without ratcheting up--would produce an ambiguous result in the Louis C. K. case? Leaving aside the fact that I just flat-out don't believe him, there is some fact of the matter, and if his victims say they didn't consent, that ends the inquiry (in my understanding). Like, Tweeden saying "okay" does not necessarily mean the kiss was consensual. For instance, if you demand sex by threatening a woman with a gun or a knife or losing her job, her saying the word "okay" to sex doesn't magically make it not rape. She can't reasonably refuse, so her saying "yes" doesn't mean anything.

Consent = every time you have sex, you know from objective facts like words and movements etc. that your partner is actively and freely choosing to have sex with you. Once we get people to understand that, we can work on getting them to care about their partners etc.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/20/politi...010/index.html

Can he just resign now?

If her feelings at the time, as articulated last week, are relevant, then why aren't her feelings now relevant? It seems like you're working backwards from your conclusion here, that is completely inconsistent.

microbet, Dr. Modern:

wtf is a "left-libertarian?"

lol, GTFO please

Well the probability that he's guilty certainly just went up. I find it interesting that CNN felt the need to include that she's a Trump voter in the article.

Offenses that were known to the voters before an election shouldn't be grounds for impeachment. Impeaching someone for offenses that the voters knew about at the time of the election is highly undemocratic.