I laughed at this.

I’m sick of the term sexual assault being used for everything from stealing a kiss to gang rape in an alleyway.

my minds eye was telling me lewinsky was 19 im guessing that was off lol

now that u mention it 19 seems young to be working in white house lol

**** you

There's no consensus on that. My opinion is "no".

Agree.

One thing I have sensed, and I may be wrong here, is that Republicans are not really going that hard in the paint on Franken. I assume because even they realize it's not even in the same league as the other big story (i.e., Moore) and presumably many of them have even worse skeletons in their closets.

And because no one has taken a look at the dozen or so women who accused Trump of much worse than Franken.

Honestly I think they truly don't think it's a big deal at all. On forums I browse with Trumpers, they are laughing that we even care about it, saying it's no big deal, and laughing that " our pc culture " is coming to bite back to bite us in the ass. They truly think Franken did nothing wrong.

So that's why they aren't scoring political points imo, they know their base thinks this is just good ol' fun, and so do they.

That's probably true for the base, but that's definitely not the party line.
Otherwise Mitch McConnell isn't calling for ethics investigations.

If I had to guess, the number of Republicans in the house/senate who haven't done worse than Franken is probably single digits.

But I dunno if that'd stop them from going hard. I mean Gingrich was going after Clinton while he was having an affair while his wife was in the hospital with cancer.

I mean, maybe they've wised up but it's the Republican party we're talking about here.

.

I mean, DC is full of 22-25 yr olds interning and working at every level for everybody.

Which is the mirror image of the late 90s where Dems were laughing at the GOP for caring about casual consensual sexual conduct.

I had to vote for Franken because there was no Libertarian candidate unfortunately.

She got brow-beaten into a sleazy, gross kiss and then kinda-groped while asleep and vulnerable. She felt violated and came forward years later. She got an apology and seems satisfied with that. This seems like we're in a good spot and everyone is handling this like adults. But now we're gonna launch a senatorial investigation? What is it even gonna find? They are gonna try to determine just how disgusting it is to have to kiss Al Franken? (my guess: extremely).


Solid save, channeling "I never said they were black, you're the real racist".

Women like to **** men in power. It's absolutely paternalistic to tell them that they are not allowed to. But at the same time there are gross problems with bosses being able to basically extort sex for jobs or whatever. I think it's one of those things society will slowly work out as women stop being seen as exclusively low-level employees or chattel.

I don't even think there's any other interpretation possible. This is clearly what happened.

Can confirm. It's not pleasant to be accused of sexual assault and if you didn't do it you certainly don't give a half ass denial.

It's at least a few days fewer than the over/under on when Trump speculates on where Judge Moore claims his hands were instead of signing the yearbook.

Im sick of stealing being used for everything from candy bars to gold bars.

Blame the college orientation people imo.

I remember years ago arguing that it was disingenuous for them to lump survey results of "unwanted comments" and "made to feel uncomfortable" together with "forcibly raped or penetrated" as "sexually assaulted" in order to imply that an American college campus is the most dangerous place on earth for a female by like 5 orders of magnitude, but i was pretty much told that i was worse than Hitler and then stopped posting here.

What would you call giving a women an unwanted kiss? If she is pulling away and you keep going is it sexual assault?

He apologized and she seems to have accepted the apology but the thread lives on

.

This is a sign that we are progressing.

I'm not sure how inclusive that "we" is -- hopefully it's our culture as a whole -- but it at least includes a significant portion of people on the left.

In my opinion, the Franken issue is also creating all of this discussion (here) because it provides a certain lens that Moore and Trump and even many of the Hollywood douchebag cases don't. My sense is that there are a whole lot of 'enlightened' guys on the left (that Franken may or may not be a good symbol of), who sincerely believe in the need for feminism and shedding light on all kinds of terrible behavior that should no longer get a pass, but who also engaged in lots of ****ty behavior themselves. I'm not talking about sexual assault or even using power to pressure a professional subordinate; rather, I mean actively or passively objectifying women in their formative years (which in the US probably extends into young legal adulthood). Anything from demeaning women while yucking it up in their frat house, or driving around with friends in high school bumping gangsta rap in blissful titillation.

These are sort of nonsensical concerns though.

One is already introduced: we say fraud is anything from a landlord not returning a security deposit check to a tenant because of some minor, trivial damage to an apartment to Bernie Madoff style fraud totaling billions. Sexual assault can be anything from an unwanted kiss to some really invasive, violent sexual misconduct.

The second is how pedantry can come off. It's like the joke travelling around the internet about reddit creeps who, when you call Roy Moore types pedophiles will respond with "well, actually it's ephebophilia." That's true from a perspective, depending on the context, maybe. But most socially well adjusted people understand what we mean when we call him a pedophile. And *most* people view the guy who is stridently schoolmarming people about how to label such things pretty skeptically. Basically a big red flag.

Third, and related: use case testing these things can ALSO be a red flag. Take an analogy about racism. How many times have we seen clowns want to pedantically come up with a racism continuum and determine where they can fit on it and still be part of polite society?

The answer is always nowhere and still they persist. "Well, OBVIOUSLY I can't be a Klan member, but can I still call black people ***** and ********? No? Aw man. Well can I call them welfare queens and young bucks? Damn, all these rules, who can follow them? Well, what if I say black men should stick to basketball. THAT'S A COMPLIMENT! I'm saying they're great at basketball! Look at Lebron!"

Again, are we THAT confused about broad exhortations which are basically trying to establish the norm that you treat people decently? Anyone that needs an extremely tight definition about where to draw the line almost seems to be asking you to let them know how much of a dick they can be. So it goes with sexual harassment and abuse. "Sure, obviously, gang rape is out. But you're saying I can't tell these dames I love to see their butt jiggle as they walk outta the room? BUT THAT'S A COMPLIMENT!"

So I'd just remind you gents that "how you sound to people" is a two way street. I don't have any recollection of that thread JayTee, I don't know the tone of your college orientation, I don't know what is tilting about sexual assault being defined broadly. But just know that in almost ANY discussion where we're trying to inculcate norms about treating people decently, most forms of pedantry and sophistry are going to wear people down since there's very little social utility in drawing bright lines for you.

Last point: it's one of the things where you almost can't win. So your college orientation people aren't appreciating all of the degrees in which you might be violent or degrade someone, so instead of using a blanket term, they try a little harder to flush out the spectrum for you. We know how this goes? The woke types come up with terms like "microaggressions" and "continuum of sexual violence" and clowns STILL chortle, like lol, you just made up new thoughtcrimes, OMG WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO. LOL a 'micro'agression zomg hahaha that's not a thing! Who has ever been on a continuum?!? I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANY OF THIS?!?!

In another thread about sexual harassment at work, I am absolutely in favor of drawing huge, stark bright lines for people because of JUST these sorts of mentalities. And of course what do I get met with? DRACONIAN! Conservative sexual mores! But my human spirit! Freedom!

---------

Taken together, and I'm not accusing you guys of this. Just something to think about. But taken together, excessive sophistry and pedantry about such things is usually -- not always, but usually -- a signal of a patriarchal mindset. Just as we've all come to learn how much excessive concern with rules about "what's racism" is in fact not usually coming from woke SJWs but white supremacists who are basically taunting people trying to get them to act better.

The world is seemingly bending over backwards to beg and plead with *******s in both broad and extremely specific ways to please be better people, and either strategy is met with pushback. Your spidey sense starts to tingle that the pushback isn't well meaning criticism or thoughtfulness, but is in fact by design. Intentional obtuseness and sophistry seems to be like Chapter 1 in the 2017 Edition of How to Continue to be an ******* and Never Change playbook.

As I said, not accusing you guys, your head seems in the right place here JayTeeMe. Just reminding how much pedantry can be a bad look.

I think the world can and does appreciate the impetuousness and transgressive nature of youth. You can see it in how clowns will apologize for Roy Moore and try to get you to believe his 30s were actually his teens. They're trying to ply concessions that actually these were just the mistakes of a young horny teen dating his sorta peers, not a 35 year old man preying on kids.

They're doing that because we all get intuitively how a 15 year old dude is still sort of trying to figure out how to behave decently in civilized society AND spends 99% of their day trying to figure out how to get laid, self-control is a learned behavior, and so mistakes will be made and we treat pre-teen and high school years as a learning opportunity.

I'm not making light of a 15 year old girl's stress dealing with *******s and I certainly have zero ****ing tolerance for sexual assault, rape, whatever at any age. But I think we all intuitively get that young people are going to make mistakes and no one is looking to brand dudes with scarlet letters and mark up their school transcripts with that time they did some lewd **** with their buddies or tried to flirt in disastrous ways or sent unwanted sex banter over snapchat or whatever.

I think what we are asking parents, teachers, coaches, well-meaning people, whatever to take seriously their role with youth to not let clown behaviors perpetuate, don't chuckle along with them, don't ignore them. But I don't think anyone is looking to ruin young dudes lives for the sort of the way there are absolutely some people, myself included, that think the social penalties for harassment by men at work should have extremely punitive penalties.

So: Seems to me like the collective social pose on this is increasingly don't *tolerate* it, pay attention, take it seriously. But don't ruin the kids. Right? Pretty sure that's the common reaction. Obviously when we get into more serious allegations (e.g., kids trading nudes of teenage girls around, sexualized hazing rituals where school teams are sodomizing each other with brooms and that ****) then I'm guessing the collective social reactions of parents, school people, cops, whatever are different and rightfully so. But I just don't see a whole bunch of "oh that 15 year old made a lewd comment about his classmates breasts, GET HIM OUT OF SCHOOL" the way that norm is probably changing for men in professional settings. In the end, we are giving young guys the space to be clowns, for a bit. A 15 year old drooling over his classmate and pestering her to hang out or date or whatever is sort of expected. You look for it and try to teach the dude to back off but we don't ruin the kid's future over it. A 35 year old doing the same **** at work exhausted their learning opportunity time and needs to go.

That might still be unfortunately deferential to young dudes and leaving tons of teenaged women aggrieved, I dunno. But I think the much graver, immediate social ill is that there are still far too many adult men given the leeway we afford teens, or expect that sort of treatment. The shifting sociocultural norms which take this stuff seriously, as I see it, ARE sort of 'training for boys, punishment for men.' I don't know that it's perfect tact to take, but I'm pretty sure at the macro level, that is what's happening. It's glib but you could probably rightfully identify a huge amount of sexual harassment and bad behaviors by men ARE that they are just perpetuating the social ills typically seen in teens forever. That they never grew up to be decent men.