If you start thinking about the ways Candice Owens and Oprah are similar you will at first be mad at me for bringing this up (how dare) however there is more there than I think we might like.
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@petealexharris @catch56 @lienrag
Can we please agree that it is not possible for a teen to be a "prostitute" with an adult customer. Can we all just agree on that?
I don't care if she is 18 and 11 months of age, and looks like she's 28. I don't care if "she initiated everything"
Adult men need to be adults.
18 is age of majority in many countries.
Age of consent is between 14 and 16 in many countries too.
Shouldn't mean that teens are available for exploitation, but the world is a messy place. -
I keep thinking about how one of the reasons Epstein was not prosecuted in FL more seriously was due to the opposition research on his victims done by Alan Dershowitz . And Dershowitz was able to point to FL law that said that a teen, a 14 year old, could be charged with prostitution.
That is the conflict in our laws and values. A rich powerful man who gives a child pocket change to exploit her is a criminal. But we also regard the child as a criminal. It's monstrous.
In patriarchy, there are four genders.
Man, woman, child, whore.
"That child isn't a child if that child is a whore" is pretty much the insta scapegoat so necessary for making sure whatever powerful person (usually a man) is either a hero or a victim that it's often encoded into law.
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We've been living through a deeply reactionary moment. But a reaction to what? The first Black president? Maybe. But I don't think we can discount the momentum of "me too" -- This idea that every man, even the powerful, might be held accountable for their treatment of women and girls (even 'unimportant' women) made some people very very angry. (and also scared they could be next)
I'd say it's a reaction to austerity in government programs while the rich get overtly richer. There clearly is government money there, just not for tax payers. And that's been really obvious ink the last 15 years as people have taken hit after hit.
First there was 2009 - government had money to bail out banks but not forgive the forced debt. Then there was oil collapse (in Canada anyway) in 2015. Then the 2020 pandemic response with supply chain disruptions (ongoing illness, climate change). Now, in the US, the self inflicted tariff.
As soon as people think money is finite they vote in people who will bring in harsher austerity measures because conservatives supposedly manage money better and accept shitty conditions for themselves as long as someone else suffers. Even better if it's a black woman because how could you possibly be discriminatory …
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
