If both people are telling the truth, then it sounds like you're saying that although very sad, a community "gatekeeper" sexually exploiting a vulnerable newcomer is just part of life and we should move past it.
I'm not sure I agree with this, and I think we can and should do better.
Where exactly is the "sexual exploitation" part? He didn't blackmail her, he didn't force her, he didn't offer her favors/status in return for sex. She was not a child, she made her decisions, she regretted them. Yes, there's a power imbalance, but it's not as if this was some sort of Bill Cosby type of situation.
I'm not sure if you can't see the power imbalance posed here, or if you just can't see it as a problem, but I don't really care. You need to improve.
Too many people (of all genders) see the value that men provide to their potential sex partners as being status and power, and therefore they believe that men should seek to acquire status and power and use these things to bargain for sex.
This leads to all kinds of shitty problems like the potential (I don't want to assert that the proposed situation in this comment thread is the actual ground truth) miscommunication we're seeing here where a man has done what society expects of him and a woman comes to be abused and we can't even agree if that's a bad thing. We focus on her "regret" as if consent were ever possible in such a lopsided situation and she's retracted it after the fact.
When people talk about the rape culture, this is exactly what they mean. If you see no problems here, you're lost in it.
> I'm not sure if you can't see the power imbalance
:) Did you read the part of my comment where I said, "Yes, there's a power imbalance..." ?
> as if consent were ever possible
To say that she could not consent is to infantilize her. At the age of 21, we are responsible for our own decisions and their consequences.
I did miss that, I suppose I should have said "underestimate the effect of the power imbalance" then. But you've made it clear you do understand but don't care.
You actually think it's justified for an older man to recruit a younger woman, hold his influence in a professional community over her head, suggest that they share a hotel room (making her feel bad for trying to invite a chaperone), suggest that she become intoxicated, and suggest that they have sex? Simply because she accepts this slow erosion of her boundaries and autonomy?
Anyone who seeks to be accommodating and accepting by default, who harbors doubts about the intent of others is "responsible for the consequences"? This exact attitude is why women are choosing to default to assuming malice on the part of men, so they don't fall into traps like this. It's extremely ironic when men hold both positions of "they went along with it so it's not my fault" and "it's not fair that women don't trust men".
What are your boundaries for what constitutes inappropriate behavior here? Merely the law? Do you not understand that people can decide to create consequences in their social communities that go beyond what is prescribed by law? Law provides free speech but doesn't provide consequence-free speech. That you've chosen a throwaway here is telling, knowing your comments here would have consequences if you were to associate them with your public figure.
Consent must be enthusiastic and sober. I'm sorry for men who've never had a woman be excited to have sex with them and who feel that a kind of begrudging intoxicated acceptance is the closest they'll ever get to that. If you're in that category I suggest sex work is significantly more ethical (and less effort).
> You actually think it's justified...
Well, I agree it's morally questionable, but it's all a big spectrum. I'm not really trying to say what is or isn't "justified" in the abstract. Both of these people made bad decisions in different ways, and both suffered mighty consequences.
> Consent must be enthusiastic and sober
If two people each drink a beer and then have sex, did they rape each other? It's just not so black and white.
> If two people each drink a beer and then have sex, did they rape each other?
That's too concerned with post-facto labels.
Better framing:
If I am sexually interested in someone and value their consent, should I ensure that our first sexual encounter is negotiated while both of us are entirely sober?
My answer to this question is unequivocally "yes". I understand that's not broader culture's answer, I am suggesting that this is a problem with the broader culture.
And before you deem me prudish, I regularly attend BDSM or other kink events where power is exchanged and sex occurs, regularly explore altered states of consciousness via controlled substances for fun and philosophical insights. It is exactly because of this openness to and experience with these ideas that I confident that most people lack discipline around sexuality, power exchange, altered states of consciousness and are unskilled in how they combine them.
And it's not a sexism thing either, I'm not misandrist, I actually think men suffer from this cultural deficiency more than they benefit from it. It might feel unfair but the stakes of "I got canceled for not being careful" or "everyone assumes I'm being a predator until I prove I'm not" or "I don't know how to walk the tightrope of expressing interest in women but not also creeping them out" which has been ramping up in modern times just simply do not register in a context of the consequences women experience around it for all of human existence that includes everything up to and including being murdered.
In the limit you'll end up right back around to where we were a few centuries ago with sex outside marriage effectively being illegal.
You'll just call it something other than marriage.
I don't follow. I don't practice monogamy so I'm really unclear how my arguments promote monogamy.
Based only on this comment thread—because I have no interest in adjudicating the actual dispute here—I see playing out in your post, for about the 1000th time in my life, the motte-and-bailey of "prosecuting rape culture".
The OP, pretty.direct, is almost certainly guilty of SOME social "crime"—some kind of a failure to understand and adhere to a responsibility, as you are describing; a responsibility which derives from the status he held in that community, and the power that status grants, whether or not he recognized it at the time.
If accused of THAT crime, in an appropriate "court", he would almost certainly have been able able to recognize the part of the harm that was his responsibility, and would hopefully have made appropriate amends, or at least would have learned not to repeat the harm.
At the same time: this is not what happened, and it's almost never what happens—because the impulse to make such harms seen and known and to force the people who caused them to take responsibility is not really an instinct for justice, and is unable to see with any grace, or to distinguish what part of the onus to "learn" from the harm falls on each person involved.
Instead the instinct to make things right overreaches, attempting to get satisfaction not only for the present case but for the whole cumulative history of similar cases, leading to a punishment (the complete destruction of a life, with no appeal) far exceeding any which a clear-eyed judge would deem appropriate to the actual crime, that being closer to: learning not to repeat the harm, and recognizing his responsibility.
Note that it is an "overreach" in the sense that it exceeds what the hurt person actually wants or needs—usually to be seen, to be feel heard, to feel safe, and to feel that others in comparable cases are safe. Destroying a life doesn't accomplish this, and also produces no learning at all in either the defendant or in any other onlookers.
In fact it is counterproductive. What tends to happen is:
- when men within rape culture repeatedly get away with things, the prosecutions grow more fervent, to the point where they regularly overreach
- when such overreaches get out of control, there's a backlash, discrediting such prosecutions in future cases of all degrees. (This is where we are now.) But then this lets the men get away with all kinds of things, and prevents any of them from ever learning from their errors.
A feedback loop. The way out is for "justice to be served"—for such cases to be resolved fairly, such that neither the defense or prosecution is left with the feeling they were treated unfairly, which is what drives the feedback loop. Historically it has almost always been the prosecution (broadly, the women) who were treated unfairly, but to treat the defense (the men) unjustly also fails, and perpetuates the loop, in the long run, serving no one. Apparently that is what has happened in this case.
Everyone is part of rape culture, the same way that everyone is part of racism. I am not trying to point out certain people as criminal but rather certain behaviors and ideas as perpetuating the situation and others as being disruptive to it.
The antidote to the cycle you describe is to do as I have done, to point out people acting in bad faith and for people with privilege to hold other people with privilege accountable. We must create consequences for bad behavior but it's more important that we must create consequences for the people that promote or condone the behavior.
I actually dislike when professional circles or other social groups "solve" the problem they create by permanently exiling individuals in the way of "cancellation" because in many ways the cancelled individual is also a victim of the culture of the group. It's often a performative way to be seen not to have whatever problem the individual exemplifies without addressing how that person came to be an example. It also, from a game-theoretical point of view removes any incentive for those individuals to improve. The individual may not understand that they've done anything wrong, because the culture clearly expects and promotes this behavior. I feel neurodivergent people in particular are likely to fall into the trap because they'll interpret the rules as shown to them by the cultures of oppression they exist in and then not read the room that while the way people behave suggests the behavior is overtly permitted, "everyone knows" it's actually horrible and you're supposed to be covert about it to not get caught.
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What does "gatekeeper" even mean in this scenario? There was no employment relationship, no ability for either party to fire someone or impact pay or job responsibilities.
And is "exploiting" synonymous with "having sex with"?
You seem to be saying two people in the same community can never have sex, because one or the other will have more power within that community making it exploitative.
If not, are the circumstances where it's not problematic?
When you're a new member of a community, you're dedicating a lot of effort to working out its norms and customs. How frank are you in giving feedback? Is it OK to swear? When is it appropriate to go out with the group for dinner or a round of drinks? There's no right or wrong answers to these questions, so you can't reason about them from first principles; you just have to learn by absorption what the community finds normal.
As an established member of the community, especially one who routinely organizes events for it, your actions heavily guide that process of absorption. So you can't sleep with anyone in the community until they've been around long enough to understand that the sex has nothing whatsoever to do with community norms. It's not just about whether they think they have to; they have to know that it's not a default, that it's not something a typical community member would do in their shoes, that nobody's going to think they're weird or a prude for turning you down.
"Why would anyone think that in the first place?" There really are communities, including big ones that organize events, where sexual access is part of the norm. Everyone knows what's up when a rock star invites you to share his hotel room. You and I understand that the analogy to a programming conference is ridiculous - because we're deeply acculturated into what a programming conference is and what kinds of things are or aren't normal at them.
She didn’t accuse him of sexually exploiting her though. She accused him of making her uncomfortable after she tried to end their relationship. Having consensual sex is not exploitation.