That's up to him not me! Anyway, I'll pick up this convo again tomorrow.

OK, fair enough, but I would have thought it obvious that seeing as many liberals (at least those old enough) voted for Clinton or at least supported him they would find it very difficult to admit they voted for or supported a (possible) rapist. Nobody voted for Weinstein or Cosby and their political affiliations are both much less well known (was Cosby even a liberal?) and much less important.

+ Some of your references relate to Trump vs Clinton, which is even more obvious. I feel sorry for anyone who feels the need to write an article on why conservatives and liberals cover for their own teams. Americans are tribal? Really? How curious...

I doubt anyone else is confused but if you want to go around scratching your head about stuff everyone else understands, feel free.

Why did the liberals abandon Cosby and Weinstein, but not hold Bill Clinton accountable? That is the question. I find it curious. — fishfry

Political partisanship. That's the third time I've answered. Why is it difficult for you?

but rather that which puts those desires in our mind in the first place. — Agustino

The root cause is biology. Chinese emperors knew that. Hence Eunuchs.

And Baden's answer is that the left gives Bill a pass because the right gives Trump a pass - retroactive justification — Agustino

Stop confusing causation and correlation. Even as a joke.

I'm not against you in principle by the way, Agu. In fact, I'm on your side but you are not demonstrating how power and desire won't work to achieve their goals in sexual beings such as we are.

EDIT: Cross posted. I'll read your latest then.

The same reason the right gives Trump a pass. Political partisanship. I already explained that.

But this seems laughable. As if those in power won't still be sexually corrupt.

Not at all. I think @unenlightened was more taking that position, but of course he can speak for himself. I came to the conversation this time to raise the example of Trump in order to answer fishfry's question.

You refute yourself. Hollywood becomes irrelevant. The behaviour remains regardless. If it's not one cultural stimulus, it's another. So what then?

Haha. You know if I didn't have sisters I think I really would be a worse person.

Damn you. That's gerrymandering.

OK, I was able to do it and didn't.

Yes, and some of us have actual experience of being in that situation as I have.

I don't know what you think I said to be honest, Wos. You need to quote me. If you think HW was some kind of victim of his position though, no, I disagree. But go ahead and clarify.

Non-sequitur.

. But in our society, culture is dictated by Hollywood - manufacturing culture is what they do. — Agustino

Yes, but in my view you tend to overestimate their influence and underestimate our natural tendency towards "evil" or "sin", or whatever you want to call it, in the sexual arena.

Meaning that human sexuality is 99% not biological. — Agustino

Non-sequitur. Time to get out your references.

Did Attila the Hun need high heels to turn him on. Give me a break.

You don't think there were Trumps and Clintons before Hollywood? There are Trumps and Clintons in chimp tribes, Agu, not to mention throughout human history.

Desire and the power to satisfy it.

Hollywood is a correlate not a cause in my view. The cause is deeper. With or without Hollywood, power will have its way.

Again, I don't hear you making these excuses for Clinton. Who taught him? Who cares? They did it. They're responsible.

I clearly said that the two cases play a different political role. Bill's case suggested there's something wrong with the President, but not with us the people. Trump's case, quite to the contrary, suggests that not only is there something wrong with the President, there's also something wrong with us. That plays an entirely different role.

Now you could accuse Trump of playing his role too well - he learned it from the media and Hollywood - the only difference is that he does it in the open and does not pretend to be ashamed of it, while Hollywood does it behind closed doors and pretends that it's wrong to do it. Now that hypocrisy is a greater problem than Trump. — Agustino

Maybe but I don't think a long story is necessary here as it comes across like a politically motivated attempt at mitigation. They are both scumbags and Hollywood collectively is a scumbag (in terms of how it works).

No it can't, that's precisely the point. But people may try to justify it in that manner, the same way they try to justify abuses of power. Neither of them can be justified retroactively. — Agustino

OK, I was going to say that maybe you were trying a reductio. I'm not quite sure that works. I'm open to the point and I can see the hypocrisy but I'm not completely convinced that in every case of the student / professor relationship there is moral wrongdoing.

Okay sure, but the rape could be interpreted as retroactively justified — Agustino

Nope, rape can never be justified, retroactively or not. Asking a student out and raping someone are two entirely different categories of moral transgression.

There you go answering @fishfry's question for him. The reason liberals ignore the scumbaggery of Clinton and conservatives make excuses for the scumbaggery of Trump is political partisanship.

I don't accept it's a fair analogy Rape in never consensual by definition. It's not impossible though that a student would fall in love with her professor and he with her and the relationship be consensual. The relationship may be corrupted by the power differential of course, and there is hypocrisy. That's what I was pointing to.

(Note that we've gone several pages of posts with no-one mentioning the fact that the President is an admitted sexual harasser of women, a disgusting predator who sees them as pussies to be grabbed. Clinton is in the same ball park in my view but not much in play right now. Trump is and so should be front and center. Wonder why he isn't? )

Same reason Trump gets a pass from conservatives. I don't see how it's difficult to understand.

Paradise island is surrounded by shark-infested waters. But we need a few wild boars in the jungle to keep things interesting. Just don't break Piggy's glasses. (I'm regretting this metaphor already.)

I don't necessarily see anything wrong with that so long as the use of power isn't involved. — Agustino

But it is as you've recognized. It's kind of paradoxical though. These sorts of situations tend to be retroactively justified. So, a professor who ends up in a happy loving marriage with a student he asked out has his approach somehow justified by the result. "He did nothing wrong. Look how happy they are together!" Whereas the one who horrifies the student with the inappropriate come on doesn't and may lose his job. "The creep!"

It's not clear to me that running afoul of academic norms is sufficient reason for censorship in our community, and I wouldn't support such a policy. Neither is it clear to me that current academic norms are entirely irrelevant to our community standards, and I wouldn't support that policy either. — Cabbage Farmer

That's about where we are. Clearly we allow posts and OPs that question or do not adhere to academic orthodoxy, but academic norms are also clearly relevant here. There is a lot of space between those two poles in which to maneuver, it's true, and that may result in some uncertainty, but no set of guidelines of reasonable length is going to explicitly and unambiguously cover every moderating context anyway. The feedback forum comes into play here in helping both to clarify and guide our decisions as does our own mod forum and discussions like this one, which are welcome.

You think I didn't know that? Wow. I genuinely had no idea that you'd feel the need to explain yourself like that you grammar Nazi. See this and this!

Find your insulin!

I find that article to be rather empty of anything besides anti-rational and pro-theology rhetoric and false descriptions of Dawkins opinions. — Jake Tarragon

I agree. It's a hit piece. It's as easy to caricature Dawkins as it is to caricature religion and its adherents. His doing the latter doesn't justify his critics doing the former.

"Word of warning, I'm never serious. Except when I am. (Which is never)."

Then again maybe @Michael was joking too. Who knows how deep the rabbit hole goes?

Didn't have Gulag Archipelago on Kindle. This is pretty good though. Also got a sample of Street's Oyama ontogeny of info recommend.

Lol

Others. Inconvenient to search for refs right now, but those are easily found online.

The nitty gritty of individual incidents is not so important in my view as the general discourse that surrounds these incidents. That's where the issue is for me, the discourse seems to get skewed in direct proportion to the degree of power and wealth of the abusers and the power disparity between them and the abused. There's talk of dinosaurs, rehab and second chances, the focus being more on the abusers' psychological and behavioural failings rather than the individual crimes and victims. Whereas for the not-so-privileged that conversation becomes less and less relevant and the focus tends to be more clearly on punishment. It seems then that Weinstein and his ilk are in a way insulated by the level of scandal that surrounds them and the debates it generates and that the fact that the scandal is an outpouring of what we already suspect makes it more of a catharsis than a serious disruption in terms of the social fabric. Here we are confirming our suspicions again and so our outrage becomes dissipated and defocused. So, let's not distract ourselves from the fact that Weinstein has all but admitted the abuse excepting the rapes and the likelihood he committed those increases with every new report. The focus then should first be on justice for the particular women who were abused and the talk in the media should be of courts, prison sentences etc (in so far as those measures are possible given statutes of limitations and so on). After that's out of the way, let's focus more about general prevention and awareness. But there has to be justice.

(I agree about Clinton incidentally and the same thing applies. It's quite possible he's a rapist but people just shrug as if that's what the rich and powerful do and now we've got it out in the open everything's OK as if he's been punished enough. No, these people need to be behind bars not podiums.)