Gotta say, this isn't a good look from him. It sounds like he didn't do anything illegal but he sure did take advantage of a young, inexperienced woman who was both star-struck from meeting a rich celebrity and also working for him. She had very little sexual experience and he was instantly leading her into some sort of intense sub/dom thing.
This is the sort of thing where I think "me too" actually makes sense. He doesn't deserve any legal repurcussions but I'm OK with trashing his public reputation over this. Especially since it apparently wasn't just this one woman but at least 14 according to his wife (herself a famous feminist celebrity).
you know how the internet likes to take old-fashioned words and re-use them? Words like "lewd" and "grinch" and "ruse?" I wish we could do that with "cad." It's the perfect word for the modern age. A guy who didn't actually do anything illegal but still behaved immorally towards women.
BahRamYou
1yr ago
who is "you?" me? I didn't make the rules. No one does, it's a massive freewheeling anarchy. Let's just look on the bright side and be happy that it has some positive benefits, even if overall I hate feminism and anything related to it.
CRT: Critical Race Theory.
It's important to add that this is mostly an internet slang term used by people making fun of it. It's based on something real- Critical theory - where there really are people calling themselves "critical theorists" and doing stuff like "taking a critical theory approach to sociology with an emphasis on issues of racial justice." But no one in academia officially uses the term Critical Race Theory. It sounds a bit cringe when Republicans say they want to ban CRT, because officially it doesn't exist.
I think part of what makes it so pernicious is that its fiercest advocates won't even admit they're fighting for it. It's just taken as a given- like, of course they believe in racial justice, that's just "being a good person." They can't admit that they have this belief system, because that would admit that there are other, competing belief systems which might also be valid.
edit: I guess there are a few people in Academia who use the term and embrace it, like this guy: https://law.seattleu.edu/faculty/directory/profiles/delgado-richard.html but I still think it's very rare. More often they're just teaching English or history or something and they're like "oh by the way 99% of this class will be about race."
You say i should stop "reasoning from first principles", but that's what you're doing. The 1960s weren't some golden age of American prosperity. The average wage was far, far lower back then than it is today. The average person lived in a small, low quality house shared with a large family or many roommates. The average job was shit. They also had a huge underclass of both black Americans and refugees from 3rd world countries, in much worse poverty than we have today.
Please, show me your ideal society so that we can stop using reasoning.
BahRamYou
6mo ago
Do you think the last 4 years has been good for American cohesion? Because we've gotten pretty much what you describe- higher wages at the low end, paid for by higher inflation overall. But people don't seem happy about it, especially people on the low end.
And I think there's a pretty significant difference between literal slaves and migrant workers, don't you?
BahRamYou
9mo ago
Man, screw you. This started with you posting something you had just read and apparently you've devoted a huge chunk of your life to reading this nonsense. I admitted in good faith that it was hard to understand, as I think any normal person would, and you just look down on me with this obvious snobbishness. That's exactly the same feeling I get from Mercuse and all of his ilk. Go enjoy immersing yourself in Freudian pseudoscience, I'm sure that will get you a tenured humanities position.
BahRamYou
3mo ago
You say "just enforce laws" but what you mean is prison. All the homeless people will be sent to prison, because that's what happens when you enforce laws and prosecute people every time they break laws. This would of course cost 10x more money than the current library system, and lead to horrific human rights abuse in prison but... oh well, out of sight out of mind, right? You call it a strawman to to talk of executions, but your proposed solution is really not much better, and I'm tired of people like you who sneer that there's some quick easy solution that could be implemented overnight if only the local government could stop being pussies or whatever.
BahRamYou
5mo ago
There are many forms of power besides just physical force, which is the entire reason we have laws against underage sex or sex with drunk people. Please don't tell me you think it's fine and dandy for a boss to tell his female employee that she must have sex with him to get a job because "she has agency and can say no."
the jobs Americans don't want to do
the jobs that the left is unwilling to pay an American to do
But those are functionally the same thing. Pay us enough money and sure, you can get an American to work in a chicken processing plant or wherever. But you'll also have to massively jack up prices. It doesn't raise overall prosperity, it just raises inflation. People have this fantasy that the entire country can all be rich and prosperous, but it's never been like that, there's always an underclass doing unpleasant work for shit wages, it's just a question of who is going to be that underclass.
BahRamYou
6mo ago
White-collar migrants are even worse since you are making college admissions and jobs even harder for your kid but you are also ensuring votebanks, unstable coalitions
That's how I (and I think a lot of Trump voters) feel about it. For a long time now the standard line has been that immigration is good, as long as it's legal and limited to people with some credentials. Which basically means either middle class white-collar migrants, or students aiming to enter that class. We cracked down hard on the lower classes of migrants workers, so now there's no one available to build houses, process poultry, nanny babies, or basically do any of the other low-wage jobs that no sane person wants to do. But instead there's millions of them here competing for scarse positions in the upper-middle class.
I guess from the point of view of Musk and other billionaires, the middle class is so far below them that he feels no threat there. For me in the middle class, I don't see much threat from the lower class, but I can see how a low-wage worker in the border states might feel more of a threat. I'd like to live in a society more like Dubai or Singapore, where we have lots of migrants workers but only for the low-wage jobs, and Americans are given a huge boost to help them enter the middle class.
BahRamYou
7mo ago
i can't find it right now, but someone linked a substack here a few months ago that laid out in brutal detail just how bad the entire process of childbirth is for women. Of course maybe it pays off in some longterm, ineffable, spiritual joy, but you should be able to appreciate why a lot of women wouldn't willingly take that deal.
BahRamYou
1yr ago
I don't know, what are "the rules" of society here? I don't even know anymore.
BahRamYou
1yr ago
lots of 21 year olds like heroin, too, but I would feel, you know, kind of bad if I was a rich guy trading them heroin for sex. Just because someone likes something in the moment doesn't mean it's ok to make an elaborate effort to set up an environment where they feel good temporarily but feel terrible in the long term.
BahRamYou
3mo ago
man, what? I'm in favor of allowing them to stay and chill at the library. It seems like you're just venting and want to yell at someone on the internet at this point.
I'm skeptical that you're getting a "normal" view of society from reading novels. Basically, anyone who can write a novel is above-average intelligence and motivation. Even more so if it's a famous novel like "On the road."
As a teenager, I worked a few shitty minimum-wage jobs. One I particularly remember was being a dishwasher at a fancy restaurant. It was basically like you described- I showed up, the manager told me bluntly that it was minimum wage, I told him I had no experience but I was friends with another kid who worked there, we shook hands and I started the next day.
It sucked. It wasn't "a step on the jobs ladder." It didn't teach me any useful skills. It mostly just sucked up all my time and energy and made me too tired to concentrate on my schoolwork. It also injured my body with scalding hot water full of sharp metal objects, which I had to work in like a maniac to keep up with the pace of dishes. The only way to get a break was to go smoke, so basically everyone in the kitchen was a hardcore smoker. Also, almost everyone there had a prison record. Most of them were not young people on the path to a better job- they were pretty much stuck in shit jobs for their entire life.
So no, I don't think I could "hop in and hop out" of a job like that, and be on my merry way to my "real career" as a novelist or whatever. A lot of jobs just suck, that's why we pay someone else to do them for us because we don't want to do them. Most of the people who do those jobs get stuck their for their entire life (or in a similarly shitty job). That's why we call it a "dead-end job."
BahRamYou
7mo ago
Sure, babies too. the whole package deal is kind of a crappy deal when you think about it logically. worst deal in the history of deals, etc. It's not surprising that women are choosing not to take it.
BahRamYou
9mo ago
These things are always hard to tell when you're hearing about it second-hand, since so much depends on the precise body language, tone, and wording. Adding in a foreign language and culture just makes things even more confusing. From what you said it certainly sounds suspiciously like he was trying to hit on her and take advantage of the work heirarchy, but there's reasonable doubt.
What do you think should have happened here? Should the temp worker just smile and accept the sexual harassment, shouwa-era style? Should she "take the law into her own hands" and scream at the guy or punch him? Just quietly quit her job and go someplace else? Sic a big mob on him on the internet? What she did (complaining to the corporate heirarchy) sounds pretty reasonable.
BahRamYou
11mo ago
Yeah I know that was the original reference. But when you start to repeat "coconut" or an emoji of a coconut, over and over, with no further context... well, it's hard not to see the racial angle. It doesn't seem like it was a particularly inspiring speech, and no one is quoting the actual contents of it. I don't see why it would have gone viral without also being a little bit edgy as reclaiming the racial slur (which not everyone knows, but should be well-known enough among brown-skinned people who are super into politics).
BahRamYou
11mo ago
Is homework a subjective measure? IIRC girls, especially teenagers, do a lot better at getting their homework done and turning in assignments on time. Granted, a typical middle school homework assignment is not some tough test of intelligence- it's more like "read a chapter of the book, then write a paragraph of plot summary to prove that you did actually read it." But then, that's what a lot of real-life work assignments are like too- "do what i tell you, get it done, don't complain about being bored."
BahRamYou
1yr ago
I'm going to be contrarian and say I thought Biden's debate performance was horrifying but I think it's still fine to run him if voters were like me and not like normal people.
Yeah I'm actually with you on this. This could be a good learning opportunity for the general public- they need to realize that the president is just one man and a human being, not some superhero working 24/7 who personally runs the entire government by himself.
I thought Biden looked old and tired, and it was hard for me to hear half the things he said, but he didn't actually seem senile. It's actually OK with me if he wants to take a low-key approach where he only handles president business from 10-4 and lets other people handle things the rest of the time. Trump was a better speaker but just sort of rambled from soundbite to soundbite with no logic.
BahRamYou
1yr ago
what is the right place to go to be a bum?
Normies would say "go to the homeless shelter, they'll give you the help you need." But that help usually comes at a high price, like: no alcohol, no drugs, no pets, no coed habitation, no noise, and strict hours.
Outside of the park, you can't just go and "hang out" because it's all owned by someone who will kick you out for loitering. Like I can't just go camp on some random person's lawn, even if it's otherwise empty and not being used for anything. You can maybe get away with it on a sidewalk, but you have to keep moving along constantly.
I kind of think what we need is to normalize favela's/shantytowns. Set up a space where the normal laws don't apply, and it's just a giant free-for-all. Something like Kowloon Walled City, but in every major American city. The bums get a place where they can stay for free and do whatever drugs they want. The normies can exile bums guilt free. Everybody wins.
BahRamYou
4mo ago
My opinion as an American: it would make more sense to break Canada up into 3 pieces. Let Quebec go free or be a territory of France if it wants. Let Vancouver and the surrounding area be an autonomous city state. The rest should become part of the US, because "the rest" (so the prairie provinces and the maritimes) really has a lot in common with the US, and it's just an unnecessary hassle having a border.
BahRamYou
5mo ago
I don't think it's an "irrational bias" to say that hurting someone emotionally is wrong. What about hurting someone physically? Can you logically prove that it's wrong to hurt someone physically, or is that also just an irrational bias?
I think it's fine to turn emotions into a moneyed exchange. Normal people do it all the time with therapists, and maybe with all service jobs like bartenders, salesmen, etc. But those people know what they're getting in for, it doesn't get sprung on them by surprise from someone with power over them. It would also be wrong to trauma dump all of your psychological problems on some poor retail cashier.
BahRamYou
5mo ago
Well, the short easy answer is that it's clearly illegal, and almost everyone would think that it's morally wrong. So this feels like you're asking a weird academic question like "can you logically justify from first principles why murder is wrong?" I'm not an ethical philosopher, I'm just some guy, going off of what feels right and wrong.
But sure, I'll play along. To start. this:
you are intuiting, as many do, that sex is sacred and people who trade it it engage in sacrilege.
Absolutely not me lol. I'm a lifelong atheist, and a huge degenerate who has often paid for sex. I also have some friends who were former sex workers.
I think I can confidently speak on this topic because I have so much experience with it. When you're paying for sex, it's not just a simple business transaction. It's still an intimate act that triggers strong emotions. Scientifically, it causes a huge spike of oxytocin, which is a hormone linked to pair-bonding, especially in women. So it's actually really hard to just wham-bam-thank you maam with no emotions. The girls I met who could do that seemed incredibly damaged. Most still liked to talk a little and have some sort of emotional intimicy (and I liked that too).
They also usually have a pimp/manager who can handle the business side of things. Partly that's for pragmatic reason (they can bring in customers and chase down the deadbeats who don't pay up). But I think it's also an emotional need, to separate the business side away from the sexual side. Most working girls have strict rules that they do not have sex with their own manager, and the less-shady managers should also follow that rule. If they do, they usually end up horribly abused. In that sense, even asking for sex is wrong, because it turns what used to be a strictly business relationship into this weird mixed thing, and the woman will have to constantly think about that every time she's with her boss now. Sex work is work, but it's emotional work in a weird way that's very different from normal jobs, and part of that emotional work is just dealing with men constantly propositioning you for weird sex acts.
The market will price in the value of it
In my experience there's not much of a "market price," you have to haggle for everything like an old-school bazaar. So that's another area where it gets weird, and the girl can get taken advantage of if she doesn't know how much to ask for. (or the customer can get ripped off also). I guarantee this 20-yr-old Au Pair did not know how much to charge a famous rich guy for kinky BDSM sex.
as you do, that taken to their logical conclusion make any sort of arrangement involving sex (including marriage) into rape.
Also that is totally not my position. I was trying to explain why I think what he did was morally wrong, even though it wasn't rape. There should be a middle ground of scumminess, where there's deception and coersion but not actually rape.
@FiveHourMarathon this is also my answer to you
I'm feeling rather insane right now so I'll post a screed.
Do you ever feel like there are just... too many men on this planet? Not humans. Just men, in particular.
Humans are like 1.05 males: females at birth, so there's a natural imbalance. I can only assume this was balanced in the past because males died more: from war, or hunting animals, or just generally taking more risks.
None of that happens now, in our ultra-safe modern feminized society. So we just have a bunch of surplus males sitting around.. doing nothing... simping for women. Taking up body building, or feminism, or prostitution, or onlyfans, or whatever else will give them a drop of female attention.
Everybody knows "Ender's Game," but did you ever read the sequels? It has one (Speaker for the Dead) where they find an alien race that can only reproduce through a chemical change caused by war. That's... how I feel. Like, our species basically requires war in order to sort out our psychology. Otherwise there will be this latent male aggression caused by intra-sexual competition, and it won't end until we have some stupid fucking war over nothing, just to reduce the surplus male population.
There's too many dicks on the dance floor
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