[skookumchuck]

Outlawing normal human behavior has never worked in the past, and it's unlikely to start working now. Office hookups are going to keep happening. Regulations against soldiers fraternizing with the locals all failed. Laws against interracial relationships never worked. Laws against homosexual relationships didn't stop it. Prostitution continues unabated. Adultery is so commonplace it is hardly worth mentioning.

[yontherubicon]

This is oddly enough, a lie.

Read Sexual Sabotage by Judith Reissmann. It's a reframing of Kinseyism and the Sexual Revolution, showing that the sexual statistics on Adultry, Pre-Marital Sex, and Homosexuality which precipitated the Sexual Revolution, were colored by massive selection bias, and motivated by Kinsey's own rather perverse proclivities.

EDIT: I'm not calling you a liar. I'm just saying that the societal narrative that any of the things that you're suggesting were always prevalent is not so. Another book worth reading is A Generation of Sociopaths by Bruce Cannon Gibney. There are statistics on marriage and divorce between the Greatest Generation and the Boomers that are insane. The average GG partner count was 1; the average for Boomers was 15, and has been going down ever since.

[skookumchuck]

> I'm just saying that the societal narrative that any of the things that you're suggesting were always prevalent is not so.

I read a lot of history books. A lot of these behaviors are mentioned in passing. For example, in "D Day Through German Eyes" by Eckhertz, fraternization with french women was forbidden by army regulations. That seems to have stopped nobody, as it was rampant so much that orphanages were set up to care for the resulting kids.

Of course, that isn't statistics, and it would be pretty much impossible to turn that into statistics, but to say it is a lie is not warranted.

[cycrutchfield]

Why are you making this about laws? This is about people that are employed voluntarily needing to follow certain rules of conduct for their continued employment.

This is not about some constitutional right to fuck your subordinates.

[skookumchuck]

Legal consenting adults do have a constitutional right to engage in consensual relationships, regardless of laws and moral codes otherwise. And history amply shows they will do so regardless.

Case in point - Clinton/Lewinski. That was a textbook case of sexual harassment according to Federal regulations, except that Lewinski maintains to this day that the only abuse she suffered was from the media.

[tptacek]

Your case in point is not in fact on point. Lewinsky described what happened to her as a "gross abuse of power", just a few months back. Moreover, what happened to Lewinsky served to corroborate the stories of several other women, most of whom have stories about WJC far darker than hers.

[skookumchuck]

Monica describes it as "consensual" and a "consequence of my own poor choices."

http://time.com/5130921/monica-lewinsky-now/

Monica's story doesn't "corroborate" anybody else's story about affairs with Clinton. She's not a witness to any of those others.

[tptacek]

I'm quoting her directly, and you're using a poor definition of "corroborate."

[skookumchuck]

My quotes are direct from her, per the cited article.

> poor definition

What's your definition?

[cycrutchfield]

That's nice, but completely irrelevant.

[skookumchuck]

Oh, it's completely relevant to the claim that there cannot be consensual affairs between people at different power levels, and it doesn't get much more different than literally the most powerful man in the world and an intern.

[GW150914]

Beating someone you don’t like to death with a jawbone is normal human behavior, but fortunately we’ve gotten better at deterring and controlling it with laws. If your standard for the value of a law is total 100% then yes, they fail. Rape, murder, and arson haven’t gone away, but I somehow doubt you’re arguing for laws against them to be repealed.

I hope.

Laws aren’t perfect, but they do tend to improve matters when society at large has decided that a behavior is harmful to others. Sometimes laws get it wrong, and then come under pressure to be repealed or changed. Laws against drug use for example, or laws against homosexuality not only tended to fail, but failed to target people for sound reasons.

There’s more nuance here than just “laws regulating ‘natural’ human behavior don’t work.”

[skookumchuck]

I'm talking about laws proscribing "immoral" behavior between consenting adults. Murder is certainly not between consenting adults. Neither is rape.

I don't believe this is a difficult concept to distinguish these behaviors.

[GW150914]

Outlawing normal human behavior has never worked in the past, and it's unlikely to start working now.

That’s what you actually said, and what I responded to. The normalcy of a behavior isn’t an argument in its favor, goalpost movement aside.

[skookumchuck]

Be careful about taking excessively literal meanings. It would be ridiculous to say murder should be legalized, and you should interpret what you read in the context of a reasonable interpretation. That is, if you're interested in something other than simply arguing with people.