Even by yesterdays standards, nope.
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I also imagine there are lots of men who were already supportive of it in word and deed before the term came to be. They’re not the point, but when someone says ‘everyone is signing up’ that rather leaves out the ones running a sign-up table and making sure to do it right, for their whole lives already. Nobody is perfect, but there are many of us leaps and bounds ahead of others when it comes to boundaries, seeing, setting, and respecting!
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Sadly, there was a strong undercurrent of this in the progressive politics of Europe also, even in the 80’s. There’s still a lot of bodies buried.
I’m honestly unsure if it was pedophiles infiltrating a ripe new movement or were the politicians just so deluded that they equated gay rights with having sex with children. It just seems so mind boggling.
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I can’t imagine a time where drugging and raping is anywhere near the current social mores…
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What they have in common is that they were ALL illegal at one time. For the most part now only one of them is in the US. It was in no way obvious or inevitable which particular combination of these would be legalized and to what extant.(edited to add following sentence) {The number of votes that Roy Moore got would seem to indicate that for a substantial number of Americans perving on children is not as bad as teh gay.}
Don’t get me wrong I believe that our current sexual mores and their emphasis on consent and who is capable of it are superior to those of the past, when the law was much more intrusive. But our current system is not the only one in the world, or the only one that we have always had, or even an inevitable improvement on the one that went before.
Inevitably any system to protect people also denys them agency. I believe in helmet laws and insurance requirements but they do deny people some amount of freedom. Age of consent laws also strive to protect the vulnerable from those who would prey upon them. But where exactly to draw the line is contentious and will fail to protect some that need it while it simultaneously limits the choices of others mature enough to make their own choices. We USED to draw the line at 21. Now, in most states it is closer to 16* Indeed the fact that the law still varies from state to state indicates that the “right” age is non-obvious.
*Highly variable, and in some states the difference in age is a factor. Which is probably a good thing, but it almost pre-supposes just because somebody is younger, they are not an asshole predator.
Oh I agree. There’s a REASON that he has steadfastly denied giving her Qaaludes despite her grand jury testimony that she gave. And why he only pled to having sex with a minor. It looks like there was a TON of victim shaming going on originally.
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Probaby both.
Social mores 1971:
“As he stepped back to begin, a room key hit him in the middle of the stage; he quickly picked it up and stuffed into his suit pocket and smiled, because after the show, he was going to visit each and every one of those rooms. He was going to hold and touch and tremble to the feel of every one of those 12-year old bald-headed girls.”
From “This One Will Kill You” satire written by Bill Cosby for Playboy magazine.
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If anything, that makes the case that he absolutely knew it was wrong as 13 is well below 20.
Age of consent and coercion aside, it was rape. She said no several times.
“We did photos with me drinking champagne,” Geimer says. “Toward the end it got a little scary, and I realized he had other intentions and I knew I was not where I should be. I just didn’t quite know how to get myself out of there.”[16] In a 2003 interview, she recalled that she began to feel uncomfortable after he asked her to lie down on a bed, and described how she attempted to resist. “I said, ‘No, no. I don’t want to go in there. No, I don’t want to do this. No!’, and then I didn’t know what else to do,” she stated, adding: “We were alone and I didn’t know what else would happen if I made a scene. So I was just scared, and after giving some resistance, I figured well, I guess I’ll get to come home after this”.[17]"
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And given that he gave her alcohol and drugged her (with a Quaalude), there was no possible way for her to give consent. Thus, rape, no matter how old she was. Even in the 70’s.
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yes, and he is EXACTLY the sort of predator that we want to protect people from. Really if you’d ever read the deposition in this case, it will remove any doubt that he needed serious jail time. Although his statements should be sufficient.
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I wonder if Whoopi Goldberg has changed her fucking mind about him yet? https://jezebel.com/5369395/whoopi-on-roman-polanski-it-wasnt-rape-rape
Oh whoopi. Pretty clear her opinion on the matter is informed entirely based on what other people have been saying about it, and not what the testimony actually says.
You read the testimony and you’re like, “SHIT THAT WAS RAPE-RAPE”. She clearly hasn’t.
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Its a shame because i used to think Whoopi was an interesting person but over the years i’ve seen her say some really dumb stuff and defend some really terrible people. The Polanski quote was a hell of a thing to say.
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Whoopi’s comments on Polanski really highlight for me the extent to which I’m willing to forgive and empathize with any woman old enough to be my mom.
Some of the other things she’s said that got her into hot water I’ve thought it was worth listening to her perspective even if it was problematic. The Polanski thing… I don’t know, there’s nothing redeemable to any perspective other than “to hell with that rapist”. It can be personally painful to find out terrible things about people when you really like their art, but we’re grownups and we have to just suck that up.
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The man is a monster and should be in prison. In the US or in Poland or France or Switzerland doesn’t really matter to me. His films don’t matter to me. He’s a child rapist. That matters to me.
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The idea that another non-child-raping auteur couldn’t use the oxygen this clown has wasted is such bullshit. Sociopaths rise to the top because acting like a sociopath is competetively adaptive in some fields. It doesn’t mean they’re The Best or irreplacable.
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She sure took a long-ass time to finally concede that Bill Cosby wasn’t just a victim of a baseless frame job.
In that case I guess the mitigating factor was that Cosby was one of the few successful black entertainers who were able to open up new opportunities in Hollywood for people like Whoopi, so facing up to the truth about him couldn’t have been easy. (Not to mention all the black men who get railroaded by our justice system.)
Still, she seems to have one heck of a blind spot regarding sexual assault by powerful men in Hollywood.
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This might have something to do with it…
…could it be because Whoopi’s own daughter got pregnant at 15? That fact, while seemingly salient (especially when Whoopi says “Would I want my 14-year-old daughter having sex? Not necessarily.”), is never mentioned.
