Wow, I think that's the most violence-inspiring blogpost I've ever read. I actually envisioned digging him up and punching him out.
Which, actually gives me an idea, but bear in mind that I haven't slept in a looooong time.
You've got yourself quite a global posse. Perhaps enough of them could be wrangled together to approach this jerk on your behalf. That way you don't have to contact him yourself.
Or really, maybe you ought to go through a lawyer. That's somehow the same and opposite.
I'm sure the smart people here will have better ideas.
It's not an ethical dilemma, it's a practical one: how do you get what you want? (It's clear that, at the least, you deserve those photos.)
Except in this case, I doubt it's much of a di-lemma anyway, since there's exactly one thing that he would say (if you asked him for the photos): "I don't have them anymore."
Which is either (a) true, or (b) he's lying, but you'll never be able to force them out of him.
All you can do is come to grips with not having photographic evidence of that part of your life.
Clearly, your post is not something to be reading over my morning coffee, which is what I just did. Aaaaaugh.
This isn't really an ethical dilemma. More like a tradeoff in disgust: something you say you want may or may not be at the bottom of this bucket of shit, and to find out you'll have to put your hands (and maybe your head) in the bucket. If you emailed him and asked him for them he could (a) tell you to fuck off because he doesn't have them anymore, you scheming bitch. This might be true or false -- but you wouldn't know either way. Or (b), sneak around behind the wife and kids, extract the carefully-preserved photos from the attic, look at them for a while, lovingly assemble a portfolio and ship it off to you via FedEx. Which option do you think is more likely? Which would you prefer? I'd say "none of the above." And why is this gnawing at you right now?
I think it's a practical dilemma, but it has another flavor, because you might be able to get them, but it might require approaching him in a way other than the way you should have a right to approach him, and would probably be your first impulse if you saw him on the street. A very carefully composed and manipulative email might flatter him into thinking he was doing something nice for you, helping you "remember who you were back then," and gawd, if you really wanted to be slick but truth-betraying you caould say something like "obviously, the way you saw me was a big part of that," or maybe, "It would have some symbolic importance, help me move on--it would be like you were giving my childhood back to me." (Depends whether you think he wants to still be important to you or to be forgiven or both.) But you probably don't want the pix bad enough to say something like that. But if you did, I wouldn't think it was in any way ethically wrong.
This is only tangentially on topic, but I was surprised when Clementine, my best friend, told me that a babysitter she had when she was six made her undress for him and touch his penis. (Surprised because we'd spent a lot of time talking about our histories before this, but she says she doesn't think about it.) She only had him a couple of times before she told her parents she hated him. This came up because he was getting married, and he sent her family a wedding invitation, which outraged her. She had an impulse to write is wife-to-be a letter, and wanted to know what I thought. I think she did not eventually write the letter, which overall I think was the just course.
The idea is probably that in raising them he'd think back on his own conduct and feel guilt and shame, but I don't think it would work that way, and it would be unfair to them. It would only be "hope" in the poetic justice sense. But poetic justice isn't actually fairness.
I still maintain (oh, I was #2, sorry) that there's zero-chance of Alameida ever getting these photos back.
Tia's idea in 5, the manipulative email, is a good one (the best one, I guess) for how one might practically go about getting them back. I just don't think it's going to work -- someone who would do this kind of thing has got all sorts of layers of justification surrounding him, all sorts of reasons, and those reasons have now extended to his children and his family. Even if he could do something for this woman he knew when she was 17, he'd probably find it as a way of casting it as a favor to her... or he'd figure out a means, to explain to himself, why he should be angry at her, or he'd feel threatened, or powerful again, or...
You get the idea. She's just never going to see those photos again, as surely as the sun rises and sets.
I think (and I can say probably say this only because I'm completely separated from the situation) that the best idea is essentially the voodoo doll -- secretly wish everything awful upon him. And maybe his family. Which probably Alameida's already done.
But the voodoo doll is just a way of helping yourself anyway. Take comfort in the fact that bad things inevitably happen to most people? I don't know.
as to why it's bothering me now, the sad thing it that it's bothering me much less now that in the past. but I make beautiful albums with pictures of my family now and it grates on my nerves. also, I dream about him sometimes and that pisses me off too. if I could take magic mental eraso-drugs his [conceptual, in my mind] ass would be grass right now. I guess I hope he has girls so that he will always suspect everyone they know of evil intentions, and thus reflect on his own bad character, but now that I think about it, that's not a very nice thing to wish on them, and they never did anything to me. and it's not like people never molest boys. ok, whatever. I wish upon him children of either gender, plus agonizing personal self-reflection.
But it's not sad if it's bothering you less now... this kind of thing breaks so many people, permanently.
I feel like, I read your blog(s), it seems obvious to me that some kind of sappy Comment of Support is almost unnecessary, so I have to admit I'm asking myself why I'm even writing any of this.
I bet everyone here agrees with the "agonizing personal self-reflection" sentiment -- most here are probably wishing much worse on the guy, now. Or they will be when they wake up.
Yeah I don't know. He probably has no self-reflection at all. It seems like, in the game of life, Alameida is the winner, even if he never realizes it.
Okay, I need to go read about kittens now. Stuff on cats, that sort of thing.
and tia, that's not actually a bad idea, and I have considered it but...I think you see the possible inflation of his self-regard which might injuriously result. is it a good tradeoff? no, because he might say no anyway, and then I would have to go to his house and shoot him. that would be bad for everyone. hey, but at least I could get an unregistered gun from my ex-stepdad! silver linings, etc.
Practically, I think that contact through an intermediary, perhaps a lawyer, might work, especially if it were amiable, polite and businesslike, but with just a hint of blackmail and threat. He might be more cooperative if he believed that the photographs themselves were the issue, rather than anything bigger. He may have remorse and might be willing to do something in the hopes that it will help make things right. You could let him think that even though it doesn't seem to be true.
On the other hand, Duras' "L'Amant" tells a story without a victimization theme.
This sort of puts a crimp on the age-of-consent jokes. Speaking non-jokingly, between 1970 and 1980 the liberation of desire led to an awful lot of this kind of stuff. One friend of mine (now about 45) says that her parents' friends started hitting on her when she was about 13. She just laughed at them. Another friend that age got involved with a charismatic psychopath when she was about 15 and ended up with substance abuse and emotional problems. Her memories of the fun times were in themselves happy, and part of the problem was that she had effectively used up a lot of her happiness in something ultimately shitty.
There was a famous case in the newspapers in Oregon involving ex-Governor Neal Goldschmidt, whose career as a rising star in the Democratic Party came to a puzzling end about 15 years ago. When the story came out, people knew why. The girl came from a seemingly non-problem family and was OK before the relationship happened, but the parents did seem to be enablers, or obtuse about what was happening. She's close to 40 and a mess today; she got a fair-sized financial settlement.
Here in small town Minnesota there was a series of cases around 1980 or so. In one case the couple got married when the girl turned 18 and stayed in town. They're still married and she's a lawyer now. A tentative happy ending. In a second case I don't know what happened to the girl, but the son of the teacher turned out to be a total mess who eventually committed suicide by cop. The third case isn't even gossip here, but my brother witnessed some compromising things involving between a guy track star and his coach.
Then I was in the public schools in Portland, the music teacher got canned when he got caught with a girl who turned out to be the daughter of a member of the school board. (There's got to be a lesson there for the pedarasts of the world).
I never believed in the liberation of desire and my hands are clean (Weiner, what kind of figure of speech is that, part-for-other-part?), but I understand the temptation. If you have any juice at all, it's unsettling to walk down the hall with all that hot-eyed Derbyshire jailbait radiating unfocussed desire, and when you realized how jerky the guys were in the school you had to believe, rightly or wrongly, that you'd be a betterlover than they were.
Years later I found out that a friend my age had a hot daughter in the school I had worked at at about the time I was there. My friend explained that while the girls were all crazy, that what they were all radiating wasn't specifically sexual desire. Guys couldn't help interpreting it that way, though, if they were hot looking.
On the other hand, Duras' "L'Amant" told a supposedly-autobiographical underage story without the victimization theme. That's the only case I can think of that didn't end badly, but the public mood is very receptive to victimization stories.
Actually, contact through a lawyer... that's not a bad idea. But then again, there are a ton of real lawyers who read around here, right?
I think there's a natural progression through the cute sites. One starts with something standard, like cuteoverload (did I actually register a bwo sighting over there? I think I did, yeah...)
Then one moves in the absurdist direction, stuffonmycat.
Finally, one takes a practical view: maximum cuteness, with a minimum of effort. Somethin' like kittenwar.com. Drinking from the cute firehose.
Gosh, I don't know what would be a decent thing to do. If you fecide to go forward, you could e-mail him and do any of the things Tia suggests. If he says,"no," then you can send a nasty e-mail back about what a jerk he is, but that might involve giving him too much power over you.
If you wanted to be nasty and you think that he really does have the pictures, you could hint that you would tell his wife (less evil) and/or his kids (truly evil) what he'd done to you.
that makes me want to go with the "show up with large scary men and take them back" route. and maybe beat him senseless. however, the talk of lawyers, and the subsequent realization that i'm sitting in lawyer school class, makes me think twice about the aftermath. then again, "i was threatened by a woman i took advantage of as a small child, who wanted all those pictures i took of her" might not look all that hot for a photo guy. unless its actually jock sturges.
13: As I was traveling to work it occured to me that pictures in hand, you could then write something like, "So it is pretty easy to get what you want out of someone when you're bigger than they are" or something similarly cutting, or if time passed and you despaired of ever getting them, you could just tell him the truth. But maybe the lawyer thing isn't a bad idea; I just wonder if it would work given that he (I'm sure only for self-preservation) waited until he dodged the AOC bullet, and they are his property. But maybe like Emerson said, if the lawyer letter contained a slight blackmail tinge, he'd cooperate.
17: I think personally issuing a blackmail threat is a bad idea, not least because I think blackmail is teh illegal (?), and because he would react unpredictably and angrily. A lawyer issuing a very deeply buried blackmail threat might work. (Just the involvement of the lawyer would constitute the threat.)
Involving a lawyer is a threat, sure... but carry this through to its logical end. Assume that this guy's halfway intelligent, and he still has the photos, but they're buried somewhere in his attic. He might not even hardly remember they exist... (although when the lawyer shows up, the possibility of their existence does spring to his mind).
And now what? He says, "No, I don't have them, I don't know what you're talking about."
Is there anything a lawyer can do, beyond that, to compel him to dig them up? To force a search of his personal possessions, and his wife's possessions, for the photos-that-might-not-still-exist?
I mean, the lawyer is a nice threat. But... what next?
Okay then never mind. I go back to my previous position that manipulative flattery, with the possibility of retraction later, is the best way to get them.
Yah. Being a hammer, everything does tend to look like a nail, but I'm thinking (a) probably nothing's going to work here, but (b) your best shot, both in likeliness of success and least damage to your ego, is a non-threatening lawyer letter. I'm not sure quite what it would say: "My client is aware that you are in possession of a collection of photographs of her from the years 1985-1989. For obvious reasons, she is both uncomfortable with your continued possession of those photographs, and would like them to be returned to her. Please return all such negatives and prints to our offices promptly.
Any communications on this subject matter should be made to my attention. Do not attempt to communicate directly with the mysterious Alamedia [real name of course substituted]."
But you'd want some claptrap in there about right to publicity or something -- there's got to be some legal argument by which you're entitled to them back.
It goes almost without saying that a legal letter should of course include claptrap -- isn't claptrap a necessary condition to something's being a legal document?
I think that the lawyer letter would be best if it wasn't even legalistic at first. Just saying, my friend A. has chosen me as an intermediary and I'm doing this as a favor to her in hopes that things can be worked out amicably.... [sous rature from here on, I don't know the HTML] though I do happene to be a lawyer.... and she may not be entirely committed to the "amicable" part, though that's what she hopes for....and I certainly think that that would be best.
I think that getting the photos and getting even are at cross-purposes, though.
Wouldn't it be worse if you hadn't gotten him fired at the time? He may be all right now, and relatively unscathed, but at least he's not working as a teacher. That's a concrete societal good that you are responsible for. You can think about all the girls who didn't end up in his charge.
I wouldn't attempt to charm the photos out of him. Your relations with him should be distant, and through a lawyer. If indeed you're going to pursue anything.
The thing I would do in the personal realm is talk about this stuff to your old friend.
There was a girl in my high school, two years below me, who had an affair with a teacher. Her friends seemed involved with--and very disturbed by--the situation, to the point that one of them, who is now a novelist, seems to write about nothing else. (This/be Nis/sen.)
I don't know if this is too earnest for unfogged, but: Jesus, Alameida, it sucks that that happened to you; I'm sorry.
The advantage of the lawyerly communication is that it puts some more remove between you and him; I can't believe that there's any conceivable good outcome from you being in direct touch with him.
On the other hand, even a letter from a lawyer puts him back in your life, and maybe you don't want that. And arthegall's hypothetical in 21 is pretty likely: then you've gone through a great deal of trouble for "nothing."
It's hard to say what I'd do, but I might let it go. (Obviously, modulo your actual desire to get those photos back.)
AC, I'll see your novel. "A / River Runs / Through It" by Le/if Eng/er, a best-seller, is about the same town where the HS sex-abuse cases took place. Enger's family had to be aware of the cases I'm talking about, and they ultimately moved from being liberal Democrats to conservative Christians. I haven't read Enger's book, but some events and people in it are said to be exaggerated and dramatized versions of local stuff.
And on the actual story, ugh. All of those underage-sex/statutory rape/relationships with a big age difference conversations are kind of disturbing because while I can listen to all the arguments about people being free to make their own mistakes, etc, everything is colored by how much I hated that feeling of being prey I had from 13-19.
I didn't even have any significantly bad experiences: I stopped going over to one friend's house to avoid being flirted with by her father; had a bookstore clerk in his 20s start undercharging me for books and then ask me out when I was 13; nothing that went anyplace, but it's still just uncomfortable and unpleasant.
I have the feeling, as you do, that there was a lot more of this beginning in the 70s, even though saying so in a way opens a can of worms for us would-be liberationists: it seems to concede the right's point that suppression saved a lot of people.
So my first reflex is to ask "How do we know there has been more of this? Might not suppression merely have hidden it?" I don't know, maybe somebody can take a stab.
I know this isn't the point, but the role of Alameida's mother in encouraging, then acting against this relationship jumps out at us parents. Maybe she thought there'd be stability and care, and she bought into the development as an artist thing? I'm trying to understand, and god knows, people make mistakes, particularly when there is a lot of other stuff going on.
I'd like some help not scoring this one for the moral right.
What if you just sue him for a totally unrelated purpose (perhaps he libelled you), without disclosing your past discussion, and then demand access to the photos as part of your discovery request.
That last step isn't quite as well worked out as I'd like, but I think the idea of using misdirection about what you're actually trying to get is the best way of having him just deny the existence of, or actually destroy, the photos.
28: Ac, there was a girl in our year who had an affair with a teacher (that is, at least one. I figure if there was one that I knew about, there might have been others, considering that I rarely knew much about what was going on.)
I don't have much to say, as IANAL, but you could, despite your hatred of the dude, just ask him for the pictures because, well, you don't have any of yourself from that time. but maybe I've not read closely enough, and that's right out.
Alameida, this sucks. Sorry you had to live through this. I think Tia has the only possible solution -- and the cutting followup would be necessary -- but probably it won't work. So I don't know, I'm not in the best position to advise, but if I were I would say just don't get involved with this guy again. And, as ac says, be happy you got him fired.
Your peers, their behavior I'd find really brutal. If you want to send someone a communication saying "You really sucked back then" I wouldn't blame you.
On to the non-earnest: Re 33, getting the book's title wrong is effective, though. (It's "Piece wike a wiver.") As for part-for-other-part, rhetorical figures are more the department of the mysterious Alameida, but I think it's a kind of metonymy; there's probably a more specific term, though.
I actually have one more story. (Whatever you say about small towns, the data isn't scrambled the way it is in cities. Most of the people I knew in Seattle 1969-72 I could never find again, but there's very little information loss about 1960-64 in HS.)
About 1959 my sister was babysitting and the father of the family exposed himself to her. She ran home and told our parents. They believed her and went to the family. The wife was mortified and went to the Catholic priest. The guy confessed and, as far as I know, never did anything like that again. Score one for traditional morality. (On the other hand, my father was eminent in town; usually fatherless or low-class children are the victims, as happened to one of my son's friends. And the perp in this case was not someone my dad needed to stay on the good side of.)
To me a loosening of the strictness of sexual rules was a good thing, but I kept hearing people saying that everyone should always follow every desire, and I don't think that people should. At a certain point, liberation trumped everything else whatsoever in people's minds, and to a lot of people that is what "liberalism" is.
this leads me to formulate what could be a helpful unfogged rule: no self-respecting adult man should want to have sex with anyone still wearing braces. and "but I had the hots for her before she had the braces put on" definitely doesn't help. also, I'm really never getting those photos; am I going to order prints from him? still, let's all commiserate about how he's an asshole. as to the question of whether sexual permissiveness from the 70s-80s engendered more bullshit hitting on kids than before...hmm. some, I guess; there have to be marginal cases. on the whole, though, I think there has always been a lot of assholes hitting on 12-year-olds, and the more open sexual frankness which might lead someone to say, hey, this asshole is hitting on me and that's not cool probably countervails the increased tendencies. my mom, for example, in addition to being raped when she was 14 by a family friend also got pregnant at 17 thanks to...her german teacher! and her parent totally blamed her on both occasions and treated her really badly! I have to think this played a role in some otherwise rather dubious behavior on her part. also, she was wasted. but now she's a great mom and we're totally reconciled, so...
To me a loosening of the strictness of sexual rules was a good thing, but I kept hearing people saying that everyone should always follow every desire, and I don't think that people should.
Well, you know, this is something that feminists do take a lot of heat for -- being on some level both slutty and anti-sex. A lot of what's going on there is the substitution of a new set of rules governing sexual behavior; neither the old-fashioned "Men do whatever the hell they want, restrained only by other men whose property they've interfered with; women remain chaste, and any deviations from chastity, whether actual or apparent, make them fair prey" nor "Anything goes".
46 -- that link makes a really weird read. It repeatedly refers to the woman as the guy's "wife" which makes me think okay, so they're married; but everything else in the article makes it seem like the contact between them is illicit or there is some kind of court-imposed separation. I can't quite reconcile those two.
41,42: Neither one, to be totally pedantic. Synecdoche is part-for-whole substitution, not part-for-other-part. Metonymy is attribute substitution (using "crown" to mean king, e.g.), although a lot of people use it generically to refer to this whole class of rhetorical figures (so you could probably get away with applying it in this instance). I'm sure if we searched Quintilian or something we'd find a specific name for this sort of thing.
The braces rule won't work because orthodontists sell braces to all ages. I think that the concept is good, however.
Speaking historically, the sexual revolution led to a raising of the age of consent, which was as low as 12 in the US 20 or so years ago, as well as what seems to have been an intensification of attention to age mismatches. For example, Monica was of age by any standard, but she's often spoken of as a girl.
I remember that first-wave feminism was explicitly a response to gross predatory sexism on the part of liberated New Left and hippie guys, especially the famous ones. I felt burned because I hadn't been predatory, but still a guy. The new rules for guys were pretty harsh.
One of the problems with the question is that it's hard to say what the data are. Lots of anecdotes, but few are motivated to talk about it. Though a survey of women asking specific questions must have been done by now.
I agree with John's point that the consequences of these acts in traditional society were all about power, and probably mostly still are.
And with everybody who says we don't need to and don't want to go back to traditional mores to make this at least as unlikely as it ever was.
But John is right that this is what "liberalism" means to a lot of people. We all know that ain't so, and that what we need is knowledge, autonomy and responsibility.
Still, there's no escaping this being the dark side of the general liberation of those days. Lots of (then) powerless people feel ruined by their experiences and the connection is all too obvious to them.
Speaking historically, the sexual revolution led to a raising of the age of consent, which was as low as 12 in the US 20 or so years ago, as well as what seems to have been an intensification of attention to age mismatches.
This makes perfect sense if what's happened is that we have changed our model of appropriate sexual behavior from one where women are property (and therefore don't need to be making decisions about who they're going to have sex with -- those decisions are made for them) to one where women and men are both expected to have sex only where they have given uncoerced consent. If a 12-year-old's father wants to hand her off to someone else, the fact that she's not old enough to make informed decisions isn't a problem. On the other hand, if we're worried about her agency, drawing the line at something more like the age where she'd be allowed to enter into a binding contract makes more sense.
57: Yes. That's the most maddening thing about being a teenage girl -- any behavior other than keeping your eyes downcast can be read as flirting. The friend's father I had to avoid? Actually, kind of an interesting guy, with some enlightening things to say about books, and funny. Talking to him about stuff unfortunately led to getting stared at dreamily, a lot of resting his hands on my shoulders, and attempted tickling. (Men: Do not try to tickle your daughter's teenage friends. They are so on to you.)
But, at the same time, you're told to be friendly. But if you're too friendly, it's your own fault, you gave him the wrong idea. But if you're demure and downcast, you look like an easy mark.
Or further, sometimes they are flirting. Heck sometimes prepubescent girls are interested in being perceived as pretty and sexual (whatever they perceive that to mean). This does not mean they understand what sex is, and/or are competent to make decisions about it.
The media did treat Monica Lewinsky as a girl; but on the other hand, I often wondered why it wasn't considered a classic case of sexual harassment. The power differential was certainly there.
Cala -- I thought I remembered some feminists describing the thing as sexual harrassment early on. I think that kind of got lost in all the heat and noise though, and there may have been some pressure for them to support Clinton as a Democrat against the right wing of Congress. Not sure about that last though, or rather about if such pressure was at all strong.
I suppose. But the framing always bothered me a bit. It's not like they were two interns, one married, fooling around. It does seem to be relevant that he was her boss, however abstracted. It just doesn't seem to be the same as two consenting, equal adults.
Junior faculty can't date undergraduates even though everyone involved could be consenting and is of age.
The lawyer letter is your best bet, imho, though it will cost some money---and will likely require more than one letter. I don't think, unless you are able to sue him for his actions and seek the photographs in discovery, you have a legal right to those photographs. Could be wrong. In any case, the real motivation on his part will be to avoid any more mention of the affair by simply sending you the photographs.
A possible disadvantage of the lawyer option, in addition to the cost, is that it may cause him to destroy the photographs. Rather than sending them in response to the letter, he may well immediately destroy the photographs, and write back that none exist. This is probably the safest option for him, actually. It's a possibility your lawyer will need to prepare against in his, or her, letter.
Even if you opt for the lawyer and he's successful, we're talking about a significant sum of money for the chance of retrieval, and you'd be opening up a chapter of your life that you might prefer to place in perspective in other ways. I'd also think about whether those photographs will really be pleasant possessions if you successfully retrieve them. Can you separate the fact that the photographs are of you, from the fact that he took them?
Right, but in the case of jr. faculty, it's not that it would be sexual harrassment, it's that the university has decided to make rules, internally, that govern prof's conduct, in a large part to maintain the appearance of fairness. To rise to sexual harrassment Clinton would have had to communicated that there were professional favors to be gotten from the sex, or that she'd be punished for not doing so. (or her coworkers would have had to have observed that interns who had sex with Clinton got those favors). Bosses can have sex with employees; it's frequently not smart or fair, but it's not sexual harrassment w/o other elements.
Junior faculty can't date undergraduates even though everyone involved could be consenting and is of age.
That actually varies from institution to institution -- not every institution has such a policy. And the prohibition, where it exists, isn't strictly about sexual harassment, at least not as defined by the laws that govern it (getting into serious IANAL territory).
I think the idea there is more like, "Even when the relationship is consenting, dating undergraduates is skeevy." And the Clinton thing was treated as a classic case of skeeviness.
why it wasn't considered a classic case of sexual harassment. The power differential was certainly there.
Generally, you need more than a power differential to have a claim of sexual harassment (that is, a legal claim): if we leave aside 'hostile environment' sexual harassment, you need a quid-pro-quo -- a threat or a promise. The greater the power differential is, of course, the greater the likelihood of an implied threat or promise, but from the facts that came out, that didn't appear to be what was going on between Clinton and Lewinsky. (That is, AFAIR, she approached him unsolicited, and while she did get some benefits (something to do with job-hunting?) the timing made them look much more like a pre-emptive attempt to avoid blackmail than a promise given to get sexual favors from her.) This doesn't mena I approve of Clinton -- cheating on your spouse, bad; sexual relationships with women half your age, generally distasteful -- but the story isn't really a sexual harassment story.
Young girls fairly often flirt with somewhat older guys -- the point is that the guys in question, if they are half-way decent human-beings, should know to stay the fuck away. The fact that some behaviour appears like flirting doesn't sanction any reciprocation on the part of the older party.
When my little niece flirts, she does want something -- she LOVES attention -- but it's not sex, obviously. And five years from now she'll still love attention without wanting sex or knowing what it is, but she might look adult by then and some guys will misunderstand.
My sister, now a family and substance abuse counselor, was very, very attractive in HS (her family nickname was "Marilyn Monroe"). She flirted like crazy with no sexual intentions. Decades later, as a counselor, she found out about the effect that that kind of thing has on guys. She had been completely unaware.
Exactly. That is what I found so infuriating about the media coverage. She was an adult. A fully legal, consenting, non-mentally handicapped adult who made a pass at an older man. To aver that he was taking advantage of her is just absurd.
More anecdotes: two members of my college class married faculty immediately upon graduation. One couple is still married and obviously very happy (I know them very slightly). The age differential was only about 8 years. The other marriage might have been less happy, but the faculty guy did get his wife a pretty good job with the school, and she made a career of it.
Re Alameida: I don't think that an actual lawsuit to get the pictures would be worth it. But having the threat out there might help. A revenge lawsuit might be fun too.
77: Yeah, apo, that's what I was getting at. It was insulting to Clinton because it implied a kind of predation that wasn't there, and it was insulting to her, and women everywhere, because it implied that women can't ever have sexual desires, and act on them, without being victims.
When my little niece flirts, she does want something -- she LOVES attention -- but it's not sex, obviously. And five years from now she'll still love attention without wanting sex or knowing what it is, but she might look adult by then and some guys will misunderstand.
I worry about my tall, gorgeous six-year old six more years from now. I think she's going to get an explicit talk around then: "Some grownup men are going to think you're a grownup, and be attracted to you. This is neither your fault nor your problem, and it happens to most girls. If any of them makes a pass at you: (a) they're doing something very wrong; and (b) get help if you need it -- no one will hold it against you."
On DeLong I suggested that if Monica had found a lower-ranking guy who wouldn't have made her famous, the whole thing might have been fun and she could have walked away undamaged. DeLong, who is very protective of his daughter, stiffly denied this.
Being made a public laughingstock nationally had to have been far worse than just a bad relationship.
I think pre-pubescent girls, even into their post-pubescent years, probably like to flirt with older guys because it's like practice. It's sort of (they think) a harmless way of learning how to do it.
Or at least, this is how it was explained to me when I was an assistant youth minister at a Baptist church. I've obviously never been a girl, pre-pubescent or otherwise.
37 rings a bell. The teacher I'm thinking of was in Ursula's department. He used to flirt with me, too, but I didn't find it skeevy at the time. The aim may have been creepy, but his manner wasn't at all, which is probably why it worked for him from time to time.
The Modesto Kid? And the relationship in our year was with an art teacher, all of whose identifying features I've forgotten, never having taken a class from him.
Germaine Greer says something similar in 'The Whole Woman' iirc - re; the practicing of behaviours that surround sexual desire, flirting and so on - and it's distinctness from the sending of actual sexual signals.
[it's been a while since I read it though so I may be mischaracterizing what she writes...]
85, 92: You know, taking it from the (remembered) perspective of the teenage girl involved, I don't think that's necessarily all of the dynamic. I wasn't practicing flirtatious behavior on men who went on to treat me inappropriately, I was sometimes being non-sexually friendly, and sometimes just standing there.
No LB, I think John was asking whether I was the female student who had the affair with the art teacher in your school. (I'm assuming someone you call "kid" would be a student not a teacher?)
Yeah. There are lots of creepy blokes out there misreading all of the signals or willfully interpreting perfectly ordinary friendliness as flirting.
My point was more that flirting sometimes happens but that is still no excuse for the older person to reciprocate or take advantage of the flirtatiousness. iyswim
Well, there are the girls who are flirting, and those who seem to be but aren't, and those who aren't doing anything remotely like flirting but whom horndogs interpret as flirting anyway. You should leave all of them alone.
This is non-gender specific, too; my mother, who went to a Catholic all-girls school in Dallas, has an anecdote about a nun who unexpectedly cornered her when they were alone together, saying creepily, "Why are you afraid to love?"
The normal decent male's response to hot, friendly 16-year-olds would be to be correct and distant, but this can be misinterpreted too. For example, such a teacher might be more engaged with his guy students than with his girl students, and that could be interpreted either as sexism or as personal rejection. But adult guys have impulses and emotions too, and staying away from temptation might be the only way to be safe.
I had a male drama teacher at school get a little too friendly when rehearsing once - definitely beyond the bounds of what ought to be appropriate between teacher and pupil but not anything worth reporting to the 'authorities'. It's definitely not gender-specific.
Well, it is sexism, if not personal, than systematic. Straight women teachers are expected to be able to engage with, help, and mentor their male students while keeping themselves under control, and it's not fair to take the attitude that young women, being so ripe and tempting, must be held at a distant.
I have less sympathy for the man described in 107 than maybe I ought to. I've been attracted to people who were off limits, and have managed to avoid either fondling or snubbing them.
Perhaps the women teachers typically feel more sure of themselves, less afraid of temptation. And because seduction by women teachers, although now reported, is still so far out of the range of normal expectation that the women need not be so concerned about appearances.
But there's no reason why men should be less able to control themselves than women. The appearance of impropriety is a more legitimate issue.
That's, at least potentially, a claim about biology. It may or may not be true, or may or may not be true at the margin. More generally, by far the bigger worry is the latter.
I personally would not trust myself. Just another reason for being glad I didn't teach. I don't know how guy volleyball coaches of women contain themselves, and actually, a lot of them don't.
The last time I did teach, as a stringer, I thought the cutest and smartest student was checking me out. Nothing happened, mostly because I wasn't up to it rather than because of ethics.
Keep in mind that we have to worry about appearances of impropriety as well as actual impropriety. If I think my eye contact is going to be mistaken for a leer, I'll stare into space in another direction.
Sure, but you can do plenty of self-protection -- keeping your office door open, having students around in groups rather than one-on-one -- without snubbing the girls (or, I suppose, at the University of the MineShaft, the boys.)
117: I don't know about that. I think the only claim about biology I'm making is that certain actions, like >Touch breast.
You can't do that yet
require positive signals from your brain to perform, and can be avoided if you want to avoid them.
I've been in bed with a man who I wanted, and wanted bad, but knew I wasn't supposed to respond to sexually (why were we in bed you ask? he had a thing about platonic cuddling, and was really needy) and managed to avoid touching grabbing his dick despite intense desire. I don't think it was my female experience of desire that allowed me to do that, but large motor coordination.
Another solution would be to be correct and formal with all students, while still teaching actively. Once the student/teacher wall goes down, risks increase.
122: I agree that one aspect of being a mature, responsible adult is the ability to maintain self-control and to restrain yourself from doing things you want to do but know you shouldn't.
I would add that another part of of being a responsible adult is knowing the limits of your own self-control and making damn sure to avoid situations that will put those limits to the test.
Re 122, being in bed naked with someone you want but cannot have = Bad Idea. But congrats on your self-restraint, must be nice to have some discipline in your consciousness.
My best teacher in college was gay, with a reputation for getting involved with students. (This was in the bad old Puritanical days when you pretended nothing was happening even though it was). I was a very pretty boy, and he was my piano teacher, which involves one-on-one teaching and hands-on contact.
I was a bit uptight, but he put me at my ease and everything went extraordinarily well. In later years I'd see him from time to time.
So either he was a very together guy, or else I wasn't really that pretty after all.
One of his other students was Ry Cooder, BTW, who was already a studio musician as a freshman in college.
JO, we weren't naked. No, Joe, just a regular bed. And MAE, I think that's right, but if you think your feelings toward your female students are going to be so intense that you won't be able to control yourself without treating your girl and boy students in noticeably different ways that would disadvantage the girls, maybe you shouldn't be a teacher.
A college professor of mine who always sort of seemed like he was a disembodied brain floating in a vat kissed me (on the cheek) either when I graduated or came back to vist (don't remember). It tripped me out because I didn't think of him as having lips, but I had no problem with it.
if you think your feelings toward your female students are going to be so intense that you won't be able to control yourself without treating your girl and boy students in noticeably different ways that would disadvantage the girls, maybe you shouldn't be a teacher.
Thank you Joe. My self-esteem has been low recently. The beauty products don't seem as effective as they once were.
A degree of informality might be OK, but familiarity would be hard to manage. There's a point at which I think that most people would have trouble maintaining a close familiar relationship with someone attractive, especially if there was any mutuality. You really have to be allowed to avoid temptation.
It shouldn't be a secret that successful adult guys can be pretty needy and hardup too. A super wonderful happy guy would probably be much better at resisting temptation than an ordinary hardup needy guy.
In the immortal words of one of the students of the fictionalized Philip Roth: "I can't save you. I'm only twenty years old".
If I think my eye contact is going to be mistaken for a leer, I'll stare into space in another direction.
Just don't let it get to be a habit. I recently went out on a fix-up date with a college professor who refused to make eye contact for at least 95% of the evening. Then he asked me out again. Too confusing. But now I understand--he found me frighteningly attractive!
Designate someone else--someone stubborn--to be your proxy. *They* can email him and say, "A. told me the other day that she doesn't have any pictures of herself when she was young, and she told me a long time ago about how you took pictures all the time, so I think you should send them to her." And if he says no, then they can browbeat him. Hence, he isn't saying no *to you*, AND he's getting browbeaten.
'Course, you'd have to figure out how to (1) reassure him that the proxy really was a proxy, and not some weird nutter trying to get old pictures of you; and (2) get the pictures w/out giving him your address (assuming you don't want to do that). But I have faith that those minor details can be ironed out.
I think that the ideal standard being set here (be friendly to all students equally, but don't come on to any of them) is unrealistic, though. Once there's familiarity, there's risk. I think that it might be true that temptation is easy for some to resist, but not for everyone I don't think, and the weaker ones might not be bad people.
I'm not sure whether we're talkign about HS or college teaching now. I agree to a strict standard for HS.
And MAE, I think that's right, but if you think your feelings toward your female students are going to be so intense that you won't be able to control yourself without treating your girl and boy students in noticeably different ways that would disadvantage the girls, maybe you shouldn't be a teacher.
Right you are: such people as you describe probably should consider avoiding teaching. (BTW, I am not a teacher, and my feelings are not such as you describe.)
The point point I was trying to get at (perhaps so obvious that it does not bear commenting on) was that we all have very different limits of self-control, and it is up to each of us to know our own limits and to avoid situations that put those limits to the test. I myself would avoid getting in bed with someone who I felt attracted to but was determined to avoid sexual contact with, but I tip my hat to you for being able to successfully control yourself in such a situation.
Instead of the lawyer letter, let me toss out another idea. It may be a really dumb idea.
Assume that the guy is feeling shame and guilt. Assume that he now believes that he really did love Alameida. A lawyer letter is likely to transform the guilt to fear and anger. Bad idea.
What about a therapist letter? Something like this: Hello. I am therapist for Alameida. I am helping her work through some issues from her childhood. She thinks you may have some photographs of her. It would help her if she got any pictures you might have. She has asked me to contact you, and asks that all communication goes through me, and that you not try to contact her directly. Your assistance would be greatly appreciated. Further claptrap, as per LB.
This would allow the guy to return the photos as expiation, out of guilt, rather than provoking defensiveness. I'm assuming that the goal is simply to get the pictures, and not to get revenge or make him feel bad.
Why does Photographs, by Expiation, out of Guilt, sound like the bloodline of a horse?
Why couldn't a lawyer letter work without provoking fear and defensiveness? The lawyer could explain that A. has asked him to be the intermediary for practical reasons, and no hostility is intended. Or something like that.
I, personally, wouldn't go with a therapist, b/c that could be taken as "oh, poor A!" and I wouldn't want that.
Most everyone I know tends to get an adrenaline rush when opening any letter from a lawyer. It tends to set one up to expect conflict. Your milage may vary. The lawyer letter doesn't give the guy a motive for sending the photos back. We need to give him a motive that won't make him clam up and burn any photos he may still have.
I, personally, wouldn't go with a therapist, b/c that could be taken as "oh, poor A!" and I wouldn't want that.
Well, yes. It depends what the goal is. If the goal is simply to get the photos, some loss of self-esteem or respect may be an acceptable price. Does A really care what the guy thinks at this point?
If the goal is to make the guy believe certain things about A, or feel certain emotions, that's a whole different question.
One of my friends (a grad student at the time) dated one of the professors in our department when I was in college. The department chair heard the prof was dating a student and went on a witch hunt to figure out which one it was, carefully scrutinizing who the prof talked with at length and who came and went from his office. The chair never figured it out because he didn't think to consider that the prof was dating one of his male students. It was a lot of fun – they enlisted me and a couple of the other girls to hang around his office a lot to provide cover. The prof quit his job after my friend graduated and they moved down to North Carolina together. They've been together about 7 years now. Awww.
I don't think, unless you are able to sue him for his actions and seek the photographs in discovery, you have a legal right to those photographs
I have read and heard about situations in which a model hoped to or tried to sue a photographer for the rights to the photo or image, but there's not a lot of legal leverage for the model. Is he still printing them?
So, I know a CSI:Art World lawyer (seriously, she does provenance—amazing stories) and if you like, I could ask her about the general parameters of the law in this regard. Assuming LB hasn't already sk00l3d you in comments above. It's just my ill-formed, incomplete reading here, but I can't imagine that you'll get them back by asking.
I'm not really great at this kind of thing, but the intermediary contacting the guy informally while letting him know that he is on fact a lawyer might be the way to go. The first thing he'll do when he gets a formal lawyer-letter will be to get his own lawyer, and I doubt, maybe wrongly, that his lawyer will advise cooperation.
145 - Labs has the additional problem that his students are all giving him chili peppers on ratemyprofessors.com and, therefore, want to take his comments the wrong way.
A. obviously is still angry. Revenge wise, a lawsuit really would work even if it were quickly dropped. You wouldn't want to give cause for a counter-suit, but just writing a letter of inquiry to a lot of the guy's associates would smirch his good name a bit.
Revenge wise, a lawsuit really would work even if it were quickly dropped.
Does no one think of the poor lawyers who have to suffer? Really, lawsuits as revenge? Bad, bad, stupid idea. You want revenge (which I think is probably not a good idea) write his wife and ask her for the pictures. Don't clutter up a courtroom and make a lawyer's life difficult. A lawyer letter is a reasonable and proportionate threat -- and actual lawsuit is a terrible, terrible idea. (For one thing, what do you do with the countersuit for slander, both back in the 80's and continuing now in the form of the lawsuit?)
Okay. I don't want to tell A what she's feeling, but that's a possibility.
Does she want to act upon that anger? In my limited experience, stories that begin when someone does something out of anger, in order to hurt someone else, don't usually end with And She Lived Happily Ever After. Acting out of conflicting and contradictory motives can lead to dissatisfaction.
Really, lawsuits as revenge? Bad, bad, stupid idea
hear. hear. Hear and heed. Generally, in revenge lawsuits, everyone loses. Everyone. Not worth the cost. Therapy is cheaper and much more effective. Lawsuits aren't an anger management tool.
I have a student who's left a big piece of paper with a heart drawn in red taped to my office door. My across-the-hall colleague was very amused. We agreed that when said student visits my office, the door stays open.
Maybe for the lawyers and Alameida it would be a bad idea, but for the Unfogged community whose interest I represent it would be a wonderful idea, and I am bound ny my oath of office to advocate for a lawsuit.
Hmm. Having met FL but not you, I can freely say either (1) male students are less inhibited about rating their professors as hot than female students or (2) you must be smokin'.
Not really fishing--just hypothesizing about what draws students to go out of their way to post on RMP. It's not required, so either someone has to be astonishingly great, astonishingly awful, or else the student has to have a crush on them. I suppose a fourth option is that RMP ratings have just become part of the campus culture.
Revenge lawsuits are *notoriously* unpleasant for the revenge-seeker. Has anyone ever had their deposition taken in a case involving some kind of painful, personal matter? Not fun at all; indeed it'd probably rank alongside FL's colonoscopy, but without the drugs. Plus, in the extreme case, a court can sanction the revenge-seeker for bringing a frivolous suit.
That said, I think the non-confrontational lawyer-as-intermediary idea is a good one.
I knew someone who married her tutor at Oxford--prewar-- but I don't think that anything happened before she graduated. Plus he was married to an insane woman (literally) and had a kid at the time.
Emerson right about the braces not being a good rule to go by. My sister didn't get braces until college, and I've known people who had them in their late 20's and 30's, married wih kids and everything.
It's hard to avoid one-on-one contact completely. I spent time with my thesis advisor, alone in his office in the bowels of Widener. He was a shy, gentle, absolutely brilliant man--and there was no problem. He had grown children who were older than I was and a young daughter. (His first wife had died, and he'd left Br/own to go to Prince/ton, because he couldn't bear to be in Providence which reminded him of her. That was the rumor, and even if it was a myth, it was still true.
I was really creeped out when a grad student in Government who was in my Greek class and was a TF to my friends tried to ask me out when I was 18. He was really creepy and awkward. He did it by composing a note in Homeric Greek.
A friend of mine was a grad student in a small department, and it was well known that one of the professors was having an affair with another grad student (one who was much further along.) Some friends of mine saw them walking by the river together onve. My friend was pretty disgusted, because this particular professor had given a lecture on the morality of Catholic scholars, you know, what it meant to be both a Catholic and a scholar.
At Oxford pretty much all the teaching is one-to-one in private teaching rooms, so warnings about not being alone with students, etc. are irrelevant.
I can't say I've ever really worried about it - I've only ever had (what I assume was) mild flirting from a student once and it was easily ignored and I *know* I'm not about to behave dodgily myself.
This is where one of those snappy pseudonyms would come in handy... [not that i have anything to be particularly secretive about - but it's easier without worrying about googlers-of-the-future]
Really, lawsuits as revenge? Bad, bad, stupid idea.
I'll join that chorus. No matter how right you are and how wrong the other side is, being in a lawsuit really, really sucks. Nobody wins.
I also agree that a lawyer letter has a good a chance of doing the trick as anything (i.e., poor but non-zero), but I don't think I'd include any legal analysis, threats, etc. I'd just keep it very short and very formal: We understand that you have these photos of our client. Please return them to us immediately. Direct all communications to the undersigned. Period. The idea is to get whatever impact you can from the lawyer's letterhead without giving the guy any kind of a handle on what you'll do next if he doesn't comply. If you include analysis, threats, etc., you invite him to focus on those and figure out that you're BSing. You don't want to give him that wiggle room.
This whole "student rating professors as hot" thing is icky. Especially in light of the post to which we're appending comments.
That said, I had the experience MM describes above. I mentioned it idly to a colleague and they didn't believe me. Is it because I'm not teh hott, or because students, we all know, can't possibly objectify their instructors?
So when RMP appeared in the above-linked thread, I tried to ignore it. But now it's come up again, I confess I looked.
So. I can say SL's hotness today>FL's hotness as previously reported.
Like I said: "Unless I am confused about Slo's gender..." I could certainly be wrong but I have formed my own hunch. Is that not allowed here at the Mineshaft? Sure the lights are low and the masks and prostheses will throw you off, but every spectator must gaze at the dancers and form his/her own impressions...
207: There was also a post directed at Ogged about how all swarthy people, e.g., Iranians, look like a bunch of Mexicans. "You people all look the same," was the tenor of the thing.
210: Take it up with JO, and Emerson. I'm not fighting this battle.
In fact, I didn't set out to be quiet on the subject, I just never mentioned. But since it emerged that there was some division of opinion, I thought I'd let it be there. It's a living experiment in the genderedness (or not) of rhetorical personae.
I mean, Osner thinks he can tell someone's gender by their prose; Cala thinks she can tell someone's height. For heaven's sake, folks, this is a little weird.
The experience I alluded to was nothing wildly inappropriate. It may even have just been a case of being friendly rather than anything flirtatious. I said no (to going for a drink with them). Issue over and never raised again.
FL is right - the appearance of the absence of impropriety is important. If this sometimes means being unable to be quite as friendly with one's students as one might like then that's unfortunate but may just be the reality of the situation.
I interrupt this open thread for a public service announcement. If you are a registered Democrat in Massachusetts (I'm looking at you, Tweedle), make sure to go to your caucus tomorrow. It's the way we get to vote for delegates to the convention.
I'm a Deval Patrick supporter, and if you are too, then get your butt in gear, because Tom Reilly is teh establishment insider Dem who knows how to work the party system. I'm not sure, though, that Reilly can beat a halfway decent-looking Republican after this week's gaffes--they're indicative of a larger problem. Plus Patrick seems a lot smarter, and despite his giant talk about vision does seem to have real policies and not just platitudes. Information about locations can be found on his website.
I know that that last comment of mine was dreadfully earnest, and I meant to put it in Becks's thread "Or you could correct grammar."
I love the cleverness of this blog, and I can't stand the excessively earnest, but I sometimes wonder whether we're not just frittering idly while Rome is burning. Isn't seriousness sometimes the right response--though, of course, it's important not to take oneself too seriously. But the idea that certain things are serious and that we should try to effect good change, to hold back the tide of evil in these dark days even as we have fun, seems sound to me.
237 - We do both get the emails. It's just that even if I approve it (which I just did) you know the minute Ben sees the email with your comment, he's going to go in and add his own.
BG, when I get serious I start telling people that democracy as we know it doomed, and so on. Or accuse them of being fascist-symps. So I come here to cool down.
Serious is good. I'm all for it. (I'm actually thinking that I have to do some more committed news-consumption than my usual snarling at a dozen or so blogs, now that I'll be putting up front page posts.) Anyone who has serious news or politics stuff they'd like to see posts on, do email me.
241: JE, I know, and you've said that in other contexts. I just wonder whether it isn't possible to combine the light with the dark a bit, to see the light side of the truly dark and to see the darkness in those things that are nominally light.
I do think that the current gov. is protofascist, although putting it that way doesn't go over well with the middle-of-the roaders we need to convince.
This is somehing of a personal demon for me. I hate the earnest young types. In college I couldn't stand the people who were politically active, mainly because they were too self-important, too much like that awful guy who took Becks to MoMa and told her that she did the Senator's wife thing well. Ugh.
But if all the cool, humane people just sit things out, then we're left with a crappy government (and I'm not just talking about the Federal level), and we deserve it.
This sounds pretty awful to me even as I'm typing it, but we tried, you know? and we lost. If the first term of GWB plus the self-evident Adequacy of JK / JE wasn't enough to wake people up then, God help us, nothing short of real catastrophe -- Real. Catastrophe. -- will be.
"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." - Hermann Goering
245: Oh, I know. I'mthinking about long-term change that might make the Demcrats better and stronger. And I'm also talking about the fact that I've got a lame-ass Republian Governor in an overwhelmingly Democratic state. More and more, people register as Independents, because in this state far too many of the Democratic politicians are simply hacks. Of course the hacks will always be with us, but it's problematic here, and it means that a lot of liberals are shut out--even in "ultra liberal" Massachusetts.
Here in the UK we have a government that lacks some of the more obvious proto-fascistic features of the Bush regime and has some genuine redeeming features -- but it doesn't seem to help.
They seem just as determined to ride rough-shod over the the rights of individuals and the rule of international law. In the absence of principled individuals taking the right moral stance within the Labour Party and the absence of a serious and committed opposition within parliament, the current political situation just seems hopeless.
Oh, well, then I probably shouldn't admit that, after being quite politically uninvolved for most of my life, the reasons I've been thinking about getting involved in serious political activism are pretty much the ones b-girl is talking about, warnings about the self-importance of activist types notwithstanding.
My serious political blog is "Seeing the Forest". I put it at my URL.
Oddly enough, given my persona here, one of the reasons why STF has only been moderately successful is that it's too serious and has no entertainment value. I've seldom been able to get my serious political side and my funny side on the same page.
So how is it that both the Tories and the Democrats have so spectacularly imploded? Is it an entirely spurious comparison? Or does it somehow prove that there's nothing ideological about it?
Wow, I think that's the most violence-inspiring blogpost I've ever read. I actually envisioned digging him up and punching him out.
Which, actually gives me an idea, but bear in mind that I haven't slept in a looooong time.
You've got yourself quite a global posse. Perhaps enough of them could be wrangled together to approach this jerk on your behalf. That way you don't have to contact him yourself.
Or really, maybe you ought to go through a lawyer. That's somehow the same and opposite.
I'm sure the smart people here will have better ideas.
Good luck!!!!
Posted by Saheli | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 4:58 AM
It's not an ethical dilemma, it's a practical one: how do you get what you want? (It's clear that, at the least, you deserve those photos.)
Except in this case, I doubt it's much of a di-lemma anyway, since there's exactly one thing that he would say (if you asked him for the photos): "I don't have them anymore."
Which is either (a) true, or (b) he's lying, but you'll never be able to force them out of him.
All you can do is come to grips with not having photographic evidence of that part of your life.
Clearly, your post is not something to be reading over my morning coffee, which is what I just did. Aaaaaugh.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 5:00 AM
Why do you hope his children are girls? I'm not quite understanding that. Is it because he would teach his sons to be manipulative jerks?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 5:47 AM
Yuck.
This isn't really an ethical dilemma. More like a tradeoff in disgust: something you say you want may or may not be at the bottom of this bucket of shit, and to find out you'll have to put your hands (and maybe your head) in the bucket. If you emailed him and asked him for them he could (a) tell you to fuck off because he doesn't have them anymore, you scheming bitch. This might be true or false -- but you wouldn't know either way. Or (b), sneak around behind the wife and kids, extract the carefully-preserved photos from the attic, look at them for a while, lovingly assemble a portfolio and ship it off to you via FedEx. Which option do you think is more likely? Which would you prefer? I'd say "none of the above." And why is this gnawing at you right now?
Posted by adrandom | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 5:50 AM
I think it's a practical dilemma, but it has another flavor, because you might be able to get them, but it might require approaching him in a way other than the way you should have a right to approach him, and would probably be your first impulse if you saw him on the street. A very carefully composed and manipulative email might flatter him into thinking he was doing something nice for you, helping you "remember who you were back then," and gawd, if you really wanted to be slick but truth-betraying you caould say something like "obviously, the way you saw me was a big part of that," or maybe, "It would have some symbolic importance, help me move on--it would be like you were giving my childhood back to me." (Depends whether you think he wants to still be important to you or to be forgiven or both.) But you probably don't want the pix bad enough to say something like that. But if you did, I wouldn't think it was in any way ethically wrong.
This is only tangentially on topic, but I was surprised when Clementine, my best friend, told me that a babysitter she had when she was six made her undress for him and touch his penis. (Surprised because we'd spent a lot of time talking about our histories before this, but she says she doesn't think about it.) She only had him a couple of times before she told her parents she hated him. This came up because he was getting married, and he sent her family a wedding invitation, which outraged her. She had an impulse to write is wife-to-be a letter, and wanted to know what I thought. I think she did not eventually write the letter, which overall I think was the just course.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 5:53 AM
The idea is probably that in raising them he'd think back on his own conduct and feel guilt and shame, but I don't think it would work that way, and it would be unfair to them. It would only be "hope" in the poetic justice sense. But poetic justice isn't actually fairness.
Posted by mealworm | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 5:55 AM
6 to 3
Posted by mealworm | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 5:57 AM
A very carefully composed and manipulative email might flatter him into thinking he was doing something nice for you
And the original post shows that this approach to interacting with people can get you quite a long way. This is what I meant about the bucket of shit.
Posted by adrandom | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 5:58 AM
I still maintain (oh, I was #2, sorry) that there's zero-chance of Alameida ever getting these photos back.
Tia's idea in 5, the manipulative email, is a good one (the best one, I guess) for how one might practically go about getting them back. I just don't think it's going to work -- someone who would do this kind of thing has got all sorts of layers of justification surrounding him, all sorts of reasons, and those reasons have now extended to his children and his family. Even if he could do something for this woman he knew when she was 17, he'd probably find it as a way of casting it as a favor to her... or he'd figure out a means, to explain to himself, why he should be angry at her, or he'd feel threatened, or powerful again, or...
You get the idea. She's just never going to see those photos again, as surely as the sun rises and sets.
I think (and I can say probably say this only because I'm completely separated from the situation) that the best idea is essentially the voodoo doll -- secretly wish everything awful upon him. And maybe his family. Which probably Alameida's already done.
But the voodoo doll is just a way of helping yourself anyway. Take comfort in the fact that bad things inevitably happen to most people? I don't know.
Posted by arthegall | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 6:05 AM
as to why it's bothering me now, the sad thing it that it's bothering me much less now that in the past. but I make beautiful albums with pictures of my family now and it grates on my nerves. also, I dream about him sometimes and that pisses me off too. if I could take magic mental eraso-drugs his [conceptual, in my mind] ass would be grass right now. I guess I hope he has girls so that he will always suspect everyone they know of evil intentions, and thus reflect on his own bad character, but now that I think about it, that's not a very nice thing to wish on them, and they never did anything to me. and it's not like people never molest boys. ok, whatever. I wish upon him children of either gender, plus agonizing personal self-reflection.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 6:21 AM
But it's not sad if it's bothering you less now... this kind of thing breaks so many people, permanently.
I feel like, I read your blog(s), it seems obvious to me that some kind of sappy Comment of Support is almost unnecessary, so I have to admit I'm asking myself why I'm even writing any of this.
I bet everyone here agrees with the "agonizing personal self-reflection" sentiment -- most here are probably wishing much worse on the guy, now. Or they will be when they wake up.
Yeah I don't know. He probably has no self-reflection at all. It seems like, in the game of life, Alameida is the winner, even if he never realizes it.
Okay, I need to go read about kittens now. Stuff on cats, that sort of thing.
Posted by arthegall | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 6:31 AM
there's always cuteoverload.com. mmmm, the cuteness. also, thanks.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 6:40 AM
and tia, that's not actually a bad idea, and I have considered it but...I think you see the possible inflation of his self-regard which might injuriously result. is it a good tradeoff? no, because he might say no anyway, and then I would have to go to his house and shoot him. that would be bad for everyone. hey, but at least I could get an unregistered gun from my ex-stepdad! silver linings, etc.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 6:45 AM
Practically, I think that contact through an intermediary, perhaps a lawyer, might work, especially if it were amiable, polite and businesslike, but with just a hint of blackmail and threat. He might be more cooperative if he believed that the photographs themselves were the issue, rather than anything bigger. He may have remorse and might be willing to do something in the hopes that it will help make things right. You could let him think that even though it doesn't seem to be true.
On the other hand, Duras' "L'Amant" tells a story without a victimization theme.
This sort of puts a crimp on the age-of-consent jokes. Speaking non-jokingly, between 1970 and 1980 the liberation of desire led to an awful lot of this kind of stuff. One friend of mine (now about 45) says that her parents' friends started hitting on her when she was about 13. She just laughed at them. Another friend that age got involved with a charismatic psychopath when she was about 15 and ended up with substance abuse and emotional problems. Her memories of the fun times were in themselves happy, and part of the problem was that she had effectively used up a lot of her happiness in something ultimately shitty.
There was a famous case in the newspapers in Oregon involving ex-Governor Neal Goldschmidt, whose career as a rising star in the Democratic Party came to a puzzling end about 15 years ago. When the story came out, people knew why. The girl came from a seemingly non-problem family and was OK before the relationship happened, but the parents did seem to be enablers, or obtuse about what was happening. She's close to 40 and a mess today; she got a fair-sized financial settlement.
Here in small town Minnesota there was a series of cases around 1980 or so. In one case the couple got married when the girl turned 18 and stayed in town. They're still married and she's a lawyer now. A tentative happy ending. In a second case I don't know what happened to the girl, but the son of the teacher turned out to be a total mess who eventually committed suicide by cop. The third case isn't even gossip here, but my brother witnessed some compromising things involving between a guy track star and his coach.
Then I was in the public schools in Portland, the music teacher got canned when he got caught with a girl who turned out to be the daughter of a member of the school board. (There's got to be a lesson there for the pedarasts of the world).
I never believed in the liberation of desire and my hands are clean (Weiner, what kind of figure of speech is that, part-for-other-part?), but I understand the temptation. If you have any juice at all, it's unsettling to walk down the hall with all that hot-eyed Derbyshire jailbait radiating unfocussed desire, and when you realized how jerky the guys were in the school you had to believe, rightly or wrongly, that you'd be a betterlover than they were.
Years later I found out that a friend my age had a hot daughter in the school I had worked at at about the time I was there. My friend explained that while the girls were all crazy, that what they were all radiating wasn't specifically sexual desire. Guys couldn't help interpreting it that way, though, if they were hot looking.
On the other hand, Duras' "L'Amant" told a supposedly-autobiographical underage story without the victimization theme. That's the only case I can think of that didn't end badly, but the public mood is very receptive to victimization stories.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 6:47 AM
Note the mis edit. Duras was supposed to be at the end.
e.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 6:51 AM
Actually, contact through a lawyer... that's not a bad idea. But then again, there are a ton of real lawyers who read around here, right?
I think there's a natural progression through the cute sites. One starts with something standard, like cuteoverload (did I actually register a bwo sighting over there? I think I did, yeah...)
Then one moves in the absurdist direction, stuffonmycat.
Finally, one takes a practical view: maximum cuteness, with a minimum of effort. Somethin' like kittenwar.com. Drinking from the cute firehose.
Sort of a unified theory of cute.
Posted by arthegall | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 6:57 AM
Gosh, I don't know what would be a decent thing to do. If you fecide to go forward, you could e-mail him and do any of the things Tia suggests. If he says,"no," then you can send a nasty e-mail back about what a jerk he is, but that might involve giving him too much power over you.
If you wanted to be nasty and you think that he really does have the pictures, you could hint that you would tell his wife (less evil) and/or his kids (truly evil) what he'd done to you.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 7:03 AM
that makes me want to go with the "show up with large scary men and take them back" route. and maybe beat him senseless. however, the talk of lawyers, and the subsequent realization that i'm sitting in lawyer school class, makes me think twice about the aftermath. then again, "i was threatened by a woman i took advantage of as a small child, who wanted all those pictures i took of her" might not look all that hot for a photo guy. unless its actually jock sturges.
Posted by matty | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 7:04 AM
13: As I was traveling to work it occured to me that pictures in hand, you could then write something like, "So it is pretty easy to get what you want out of someone when you're bigger than they are" or something similarly cutting, or if time passed and you despaired of ever getting them, you could just tell him the truth. But maybe the lawyer thing isn't a bad idea; I just wonder if it would work given that he (I'm sure only for self-preservation) waited until he dodged the AOC bullet, and they are his property. But maybe like Emerson said, if the lawyer letter contained a slight blackmail tinge, he'd cooperate.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 7:11 AM
jinx BG!
17: I think personally issuing a blackmail threat is a bad idea, not least because I think blackmail is teh illegal (?), and because he would react unpredictably and angrily. A lawyer issuing a very deeply buried blackmail threat might work. (Just the involvement of the lawyer would constitute the threat.)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 7:18 AM
Involving a lawyer is a threat, sure... but carry this through to its logical end. Assume that this guy's halfway intelligent, and he still has the photos, but they're buried somewhere in his attic. He might not even hardly remember they exist... (although when the lawyer shows up, the possibility of their existence does spring to his mind).
And now what? He says, "No, I don't have them, I don't know what you're talking about."
Is there anything a lawyer can do, beyond that, to compel him to dig them up? To force a search of his personal possessions, and his wife's possessions, for the photos-that-might-not-still-exist?
I mean, the lawyer is a nice threat. But... what next?
Posted by arthegall | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 7:30 AM
Okay then never mind. I go back to my previous position that manipulative flattery, with the possibility of retraction later, is the best way to get them.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 7:33 AM
Yah. Being a hammer, everything does tend to look like a nail, but I'm thinking (a) probably nothing's going to work here, but (b) your best shot, both in likeliness of success and least damage to your ego, is a non-threatening lawyer letter. I'm not sure quite what it would say: "My client is aware that you are in possession of a collection of photographs of her from the years 1985-1989. For obvious reasons, she is both uncomfortable with your continued possession of those photographs, and would like them to be returned to her. Please return all such negatives and prints to our offices promptly.
Any communications on this subject matter should be made to my attention. Do not attempt to communicate directly with the mysterious Alamedia [real name of course substituted]."
But you'd want some claptrap in there about right to publicity or something -- there's got to be some legal argument by which you're entitled to them back.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 7:36 AM
It goes almost without saying that a legal letter should of course include claptrap -- isn't claptrap a necessary condition to something's being a legal document?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 7:44 AM
Necessary but not sufficient, thank god.
Posted by arthegall | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 7:45 AM
I know this is a serious topic, but must we pretend that the link in comment __ isn't funny?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 7:49 AM
I think that the lawyer letter would be best if it wasn't even legalistic at first. Just saying, my friend A. has chosen me as an intermediary and I'm doing this as a favor to her in hopes that things can be worked out amicably.... [sous rature from here on, I don't know the HTML] though I do happene to be a lawyer.... and she may not be entirely committed to the "amicable" part, though that's what she hopes for....and I certainly think that that would be best.
I think that getting the photos and getting even are at cross-purposes, though.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 7:53 AM
Wouldn't it be worse if you hadn't gotten him fired at the time? He may be all right now, and relatively unscathed, but at least he's not working as a teacher. That's a concrete societal good that you are responsible for. You can think about all the girls who didn't end up in his charge.
I wouldn't attempt to charm the photos out of him. Your relations with him should be distant, and through a lawyer. If indeed you're going to pursue anything.
The thing I would do in the personal realm is talk about this stuff to your old friend.
There was a girl in my high school, two years below me, who had an affair with a teacher. Her friends seemed involved with--and very disturbed by--the situation, to the point that one of them, who is now a novelist, seems to write about nothing else. (This/be Nis/sen.)
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 7:56 AM
John, is 27 intended ironically? -- Like you are cross-posting as a joke about the tangled nature of comments thread conversations or something?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 7:58 AM
I don't know if this is too earnest for unfogged, but: Jesus, Alameida, it sucks that that happened to you; I'm sorry.
The advantage of the lawyerly communication is that it puts some more remove between you and him; I can't believe that there's any conceivable good outcome from you being in direct touch with him.
On the other hand, even a letter from a lawyer puts him back in your life, and maybe you don't want that. And arthegall's hypothetical in 21 is pretty likely: then you've gone through a great deal of trouble for "nothing."
It's hard to say what I'd do, but I might let it go. (Obviously, modulo your actual desire to get those photos back.)
Posted by Matt #3 | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 7:59 AM
Oh my dog -- never mind -- it is I who am cross-reading. Somehow I thought John had posted that on the 31337 thread. Geez my face is red.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:00 AM
AC, I'll see your novel. "A / River Runs / Through It" by Le/if Eng/er, a best-seller, is about the same town where the HS sex-abuse cases took place. Enger's family had to be aware of the cases I'm talking about, and they ultimately moved from being liberal Democrats to conservative Christians. I haven't read Enger's book, but some events and people in it are said to be exaggerated and dramatized versions of local stuff.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:01 AM
John, slashes do not have their desired effect when you put them in between words.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:05 AM
And on the actual story, ugh. All of those underage-sex/statutory rape/relationships with a big age difference conversations are kind of disturbing because while I can listen to all the arguments about people being free to make their own mistakes, etc, everything is colored by how much I hated that feeling of being prey I had from 13-19.
I didn't even have any significantly bad experiences: I stopped going over to one friend's house to avoid being flirted with by her father; had a bookstore clerk in his 20s start undercharging me for books and then ask me out when I was 13; nothing that went anyplace, but it's still just uncomfortable and unpleasant.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:07 AM
John Emerson:
I have the feeling, as you do, that there was a lot more of this beginning in the 70s, even though saying so in a way opens a can of worms for us would-be liberationists: it seems to concede the right's point that suppression saved a lot of people.
So my first reflex is to ask "How do we know there has been more of this? Might not suppression merely have hidden it?" I don't know, maybe somebody can take a stab.
I know this isn't the point, but the role of Alameida's mother in encouraging, then acting against this relationship jumps out at us parents. Maybe she thought there'd be stability and care, and she bought into the development as an artist thing? I'm trying to understand, and god knows, people make mistakes, particularly when there is a lot of other stuff going on.
I'd like some help not scoring this one for the moral right.
Posted by John Tingley | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:12 AM
What if you just sue him for a totally unrelated purpose (perhaps he libelled you), without disclosing your past discussion, and then demand access to the photos as part of your discovery request.
That last step isn't quite as well worked out as I'd like, but I think the idea of using misdirection about what you're actually trying to get is the best way of having him just deny the existence of, or actually destroy, the photos.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:14 AM
28: Ac, there was a girl in our year who had an affair with a teacher (that is, at least one. I figure if there was one that I knew about, there might have been others, considering that I rarely knew much about what was going on.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:15 AM
I don't have much to say, as IANAL, but you could, despite your hatred of the dude, just ask him for the pictures because, well, you don't have any of yourself from that time. but maybe I've not read closely enough, and that's right out.
In that case, I am pwned.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:17 AM
"best way of having him" s/b "best way to avoid having him"
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:19 AM
Alameida, this sucks. Sorry you had to live through this. I think Tia has the only possible solution -- and the cutting followup would be necessary -- but probably it won't work. So I don't know, I'm not in the best position to advise, but if I were I would say just don't get involved with this guy again. And, as ac says, be happy you got him fired.
Your peers, their behavior I'd find really brutal. If you want to send someone a communication saying "You really sucked back then" I wouldn't blame you.
On to the non-earnest: Re 33, getting the book's title wrong is effective, though. (It's "Piece wike a wiver.") As for part-for-other-part, rhetorical figures are more the department of the mysterious Alameida, but I think it's a kind of metonymy; there's probably a more specific term, though.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:20 AM
Synedoche?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:22 AM
I actually have one more story. (Whatever you say about small towns, the data isn't scrambled the way it is in cities. Most of the people I knew in Seattle 1969-72 I could never find again, but there's very little information loss about 1960-64 in HS.)
About 1959 my sister was babysitting and the father of the family exposed himself to her. She ran home and told our parents. They believed her and went to the family. The wife was mortified and went to the Catholic priest. The guy confessed and, as far as I know, never did anything like that again. Score one for traditional morality. (On the other hand, my father was eminent in town; usually fatherless or low-class children are the victims, as happened to one of my son's friends. And the perp in this case was not someone my dad needed to stay on the good side of.)
To me a loosening of the strictness of sexual rules was a good thing, but I kept hearing people saying that everyone should always follow every desire, and I don't think that people should. At a certain point, liberation trumped everything else whatsoever in people's minds, and to a lot of people that is what "liberalism" is.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:24 AM
this leads me to formulate what could be a helpful unfogged rule: no self-respecting adult man should want to have sex with anyone still wearing braces. and "but I had the hots for her before she had the braces put on" definitely doesn't help. also, I'm really never getting those photos; am I going to order prints from him? still, let's all commiserate about how he's an asshole. as to the question of whether sexual permissiveness from the 70s-80s engendered more bullshit hitting on kids than before...hmm. some, I guess; there have to be marginal cases. on the whole, though, I think there has always been a lot of assholes hitting on 12-year-olds, and the more open sexual frankness which might lead someone to say, hey, this asshole is hitting on me and that's not cool probably countervails the increased tendencies. my mom, for example, in addition to being raped when she was 14 by a family friend also got pregnant at 17 thanks to...her german teacher! and her parent totally blamed her on both occasions and treated her really badly! I have to think this played a role in some otherwise rather dubious behavior on her part. also, she was wasted. but now she's a great mom and we're totally reconciled, so...
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:28 AM
To me a loosening of the strictness of sexual rules was a good thing, but I kept hearing people saying that everyone should always follow every desire, and I don't think that people should.
Well, you know, this is something that feminists do take a lot of heat for -- being on some level both slutty and anti-sex. A lot of what's going on there is the substitution of a new set of rules governing sexual behavior; neither the old-fashioned "Men do whatever the hell they want, restrained only by other men whose property they've interfered with; women remain chaste, and any deviations from chastity, whether actual or apparent, make them fair prey" nor "Anything goes".
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:29 AM
"parents." though it would be pretty ballsy for wolfson to call me out on it.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:30 AM
it's not like this has gone away. shit, just today, I read this.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:39 AM
46 -- that link makes a really weird read. It repeatedly refers to the woman as the guy's "wife" which makes me think okay, so they're married; but everything else in the article makes it seem like the contact between them is illicit or there is some kind of court-imposed separation. I can't quite reconcile those two.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:45 AM
Oh, it's certainly not all male on female abuse; and its deplorable regardless of the sexes of the people involved.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:47 AM
I just want to thank Jeremy for giving me a hint that the period in tweedledopey's post was a link. Sneaky!
And yeah, weird story. I feel like we're not quite given enough background information.
Posted by Matthew Harvey | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:48 AM
41,42: Neither one, to be totally pedantic. Synecdoche is part-for-whole substitution, not part-for-other-part. Metonymy is attribute substitution (using "crown" to mean king, e.g.), although a lot of people use it generically to refer to this whole class of rhetorical figures (so you could probably get away with applying it in this instance). I'm sure if we searched Quintilian or something we'd find a specific name for this sort of thing.
Posted by bza | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:51 AM
yeah, I don't know what happened in 46. the link should be here as well.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:52 AM
You didn't notice that the period was a rich, dark blue?
Posted by arthegall | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:52 AM
I fixed 46.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:53 AM
The braces rule won't work because orthodontists sell braces to all ages. I think that the concept is good, however.
Speaking historically, the sexual revolution led to a raising of the age of consent, which was as low as 12 in the US 20 or so years ago, as well as what seems to have been an intensification of attention to age mismatches. For example, Monica was of age by any standard, but she's often spoken of as a girl.
I remember that first-wave feminism was explicitly a response to gross predatory sexism on the part of liberated New Left and hippie guys, especially the famous ones. I felt burned because I hadn't been predatory, but still a guy. The new rules for guys were pretty harsh.
One of the problems with the question is that it's hard to say what the data are. Lots of anecdotes, but few are motivated to talk about it. Though a survey of women asking specific questions must have been done by now.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:53 AM
I agree with John's point that the consequences of these acts in traditional society were all about power, and probably mostly still are.
And with everybody who says we don't need to and don't want to go back to traditional mores to make this at least as unlikely as it ever was.
But John is right that this is what "liberalism" means to a lot of people. We all know that ain't so, and that what we need is knowledge, autonomy and responsibility.
Still, there's no escaping this being the dark side of the general liberation of those days. Lots of (then) powerless people feel ruined by their experiences and the connection is all too obvious to them.
Posted by John Tingley | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:54 AM
Speaking historically, the sexual revolution led to a raising of the age of consent, which was as low as 12 in the US 20 or so years ago, as well as what seems to have been an intensification of attention to age mismatches.
This makes perfect sense if what's happened is that we have changed our model of appropriate sexual behavior from one where women are property (and therefore don't need to be making decisions about who they're going to have sex with -- those decisions are made for them) to one where women and men are both expected to have sex only where they have given uncoerced consent. If a 12-year-old's father wants to hand her off to someone else, the fact that she's not old enough to make informed decisions isn't a problem. On the other hand, if we're worried about her agency, drawing the line at something more like the age where she'd be allowed to enter into a binding contract makes more sense.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:59 AM
Another very relevant rule is that behavior which seems flirtatious and sexy in a girl, isn't.
My 9-year-old niece seems like the most amazing flirt, but she's just friendly, outgoing, and funny, and likes to show off.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 8:59 AM
Will no J.E. comment go un-pwned?
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:04 AM
57: Yes. That's the most maddening thing about being a teenage girl -- any behavior other than keeping your eyes downcast can be read as flirting. The friend's father I had to avoid? Actually, kind of an interesting guy, with some enlightening things to say about books, and funny. Talking to him about stuff unfortunately led to getting stared at dreamily, a lot of resting his hands on my shoulders, and attempted tickling. (Men: Do not try to tickle your daughter's teenage friends. They are so on to you.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:05 AM
54: If you're talking about Monica Lewinsky, I often found the way the media treated her as a child annoying and anti-feminist.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:06 AM
But, at the same time, you're told to be friendly. But if you're too friendly, it's your own fault, you gave him the wrong idea. But if you're demure and downcast, you look like an easy mark.
I'm not sure how we ever made it to adulthood.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:08 AM
Or further, sometimes they are flirting. Heck sometimes prepubescent girls are interested in being perceived as pretty and sexual (whatever they perceive that to mean). This does not mean they understand what sex is, and/or are competent to make decisions about it.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:09 AM
I'm not sure how we ever made it to adulthood.
Pissed off and cranky, let me tell you.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:12 AM
The media did treat Monica Lewinsky as a girl; but on the other hand, I often wondered why it wasn't considered a classic case of sexual harassment. The power differential was certainly there.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:14 AM
Disclaimer: I don't remember/never knew all the details.
Because she was Clinton's consenting lover? You have to have a nonconsenting party to get to sexual harrassment.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:18 AM
Cala -- I thought I remembered some feminists describing the thing as sexual harrassment early on. I think that kind of got lost in all the heat and noise though, and there may have been some pressure for them to support Clinton as a Democrat against the right wing of Congress. Not sure about that last though, or rather about if such pressure was at all strong.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:18 AM
I suppose. But the framing always bothered me a bit. It's not like they were two interns, one married, fooling around. It does seem to be relevant that he was her boss, however abstracted. It just doesn't seem to be the same as two consenting, equal adults.
Junior faculty can't date undergraduates even though everyone involved could be consenting and is of age.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:20 AM
The lawyer letter is your best bet, imho, though it will cost some money---and will likely require more than one letter. I don't think, unless you are able to sue him for his actions and seek the photographs in discovery, you have a legal right to those photographs. Could be wrong. In any case, the real motivation on his part will be to avoid any more mention of the affair by simply sending you the photographs.
A possible disadvantage of the lawyer option, in addition to the cost, is that it may cause him to destroy the photographs. Rather than sending them in response to the letter, he may well immediately destroy the photographs, and write back that none exist. This is probably the safest option for him, actually. It's a possibility your lawyer will need to prepare against in his, or her, letter.
Even if you opt for the lawyer and he's successful, we're talking about a significant sum of money for the chance of retrieval, and you'd be opening up a chapter of your life that you might prefer to place in perspective in other ways. I'd also think about whether those photographs will really be pleasant possessions if you successfully retrieve them. Can you separate the fact that the photographs are of you, from the fact that he took them?
Posted by Andrew | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:21 AM
Right, but in the case of jr. faculty, it's not that it would be sexual harrassment, it's that the university has decided to make rules, internally, that govern prof's conduct, in a large part to maintain the appearance of fairness. To rise to sexual harrassment Clinton would have had to communicated that there were professional favors to be gotten from the sex, or that she'd be punished for not doing so. (or her coworkers would have had to have observed that interns who had sex with Clinton got those favors). Bosses can have sex with employees; it's frequently not smart or fair, but it's not sexual harrassment w/o other elements.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:25 AM
Junior faculty can't date undergraduates even though everyone involved could be consenting and is of age.
That actually varies from institution to institution -- not every institution has such a policy. And the prohibition, where it exists, isn't strictly about sexual harassment, at least not as defined by the laws that govern it (getting into serious IANAL territory).
I think the idea there is more like, "Even when the relationship is consenting, dating undergraduates is skeevy." And the Clinton thing was treated as a classic case of skeeviness.
Posted by Ttam R. | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:25 AM
why it wasn't considered a classic case of sexual harassment. The power differential was certainly there.
Generally, you need more than a power differential to have a claim of sexual harassment (that is, a legal claim): if we leave aside 'hostile environment' sexual harassment, you need a quid-pro-quo -- a threat or a promise. The greater the power differential is, of course, the greater the likelihood of an implied threat or promise, but from the facts that came out, that didn't appear to be what was going on between Clinton and Lewinsky. (That is, AFAIR, she approached him unsolicited, and while she did get some benefits (something to do with job-hunting?) the timing made them look much more like a pre-emptive attempt to avoid blackmail than a promise given to get sexual favors from her.) This doesn't mena I approve of Clinton -- cheating on your spouse, bad; sexual relationships with women half your age, generally distasteful -- but the story isn't really a sexual harassment story.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:25 AM
Or, what Tia said.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:26 AM
Anticipated by 69! Anyway, previous discussion of that issue here and here. (And this has no relevance to my life either, so there.)
Posted by Ttam R. | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:28 AM
re: 62 - totally.
Young girls fairly often flirt with somewhat older guys -- the point is that the guys in question, if they are half-way decent human-beings, should know to stay the fuck away. The fact that some behaviour appears like flirting doesn't sanction any reciprocation on the part of the older party.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:29 AM
When my little niece flirts, she does want something -- she LOVES attention -- but it's not sex, obviously. And five years from now she'll still love attention without wanting sex or knowing what it is, but she might look adult by then and some guys will misunderstand.
My sister, now a family and substance abuse counselor, was very, very attractive in HS (her family nickname was "Marilyn Monroe"). She flirted like crazy with no sexual intentions. Decades later, as a counselor, she found out about the effect that that kind of thing has on guys. She had been completely unaware.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:30 AM
From the first link in 73, -gg-d says "a long thread" on Crooked Timber and it has 40 comments. Ha!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:32 AM
she approached him unsolicited
Exactly. That is what I found so infuriating about the media coverage. She was an adult. A fully legal, consenting, non-mentally handicapped adult who made a pass at an older man. To aver that he was taking advantage of her is just absurd.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:34 AM
More anecdotes: two members of my college class married faculty immediately upon graduation. One couple is still married and obviously very happy (I know them very slightly). The age differential was only about 8 years. The other marriage might have been less happy, but the faculty guy did get his wife a pretty good job with the school, and she made a career of it.
Re Alameida: I don't think that an actual lawsuit to get the pictures would be worth it. But having the threat out there might help. A revenge lawsuit might be fun too.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:35 AM
A revenge lawsuit might be fun too.
Nope.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:36 AM
78 bears a surprising resemblance to this anecdote. Guess they didn't accept zizka's authority after all!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:38 AM
77: Yeah, apo, that's what I was getting at. It was insulting to Clinton because it implied a kind of predation that wasn't there, and it was insulting to her, and women everywhere, because it implied that women can't ever have sexual desires, and act on them, without being victims.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:39 AM
Correction: I did not mean to say that a "revenge" lawsuit might be "fun". Just a slip.
What I intended to say is that a lawsuit might help Almeida with the healing process and closure.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:40 AM
When my little niece flirts, she does want something -- she LOVES attention -- but it's not sex, obviously. And five years from now she'll still love attention without wanting sex or knowing what it is, but she might look adult by then and some guys will misunderstand.
I worry about my tall, gorgeous six-year old six more years from now. I think she's going to get an explicit talk around then: "Some grownup men are going to think you're a grownup, and be attracted to you. This is neither your fault nor your problem, and it happens to most girls. If any of them makes a pass at you: (a) they're doing something very wrong; and (b) get help if you need it -- no one will hold it against you."
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:41 AM
On DeLong I suggested that if Monica had found a lower-ranking guy who wouldn't have made her famous, the whole thing might have been fun and she could have walked away undamaged. DeLong, who is very protective of his daughter, stiffly denied this.
Being made a public laughingstock nationally had to have been far worse than just a bad relationship.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:43 AM
I think pre-pubescent girls, even into their post-pubescent years, probably like to flirt with older guys because it's like practice. It's sort of (they think) a harmless way of learning how to do it.
Or at least, this is how it was explained to me when I was an assistant youth minister at a Baptist church. I've obviously never been a girl, pre-pubescent or otherwise.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:46 AM
37 rings a bell. The teacher I'm thinking of was in Ursula's department. He used to flirt with me, too, but I didn't find it skeevy at the time. The aim may have been creepy, but his manner wasn't at all, which is probably why it worked for him from time to time.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:47 AM
The Modesto Kid? And the relationship in our year was with an art teacher, all of whose identifying features I've forgotten, never having taken a class from him.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:48 AM
when I was an assistant youth minister at a Baptist church
You all never cease to surprise me.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:49 AM
Modesto kid? Osner?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:49 AM
Drymala, you belong on Kotsko. This is a secular site.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:50 AM
In Texas, no less, apo.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:50 AM
re: 85
Germaine Greer says something similar in 'The Whole Woman' iirc - re; the practicing of behaviours that surround sexual desire, flirting and so on - and it's distinctness from the sending of actual sexual signals.
[it's been a while since I read it though so I may be mischaracterizing what she writes...]
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:51 AM
Having met Osner, he was not a teacher at my high school.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:52 AM
Having met Osner, he was not a teacher at my high school.
After I met Osner, I didn't want to teach anymore either.
Posted by Sam K | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:54 AM
85, 92: You know, taking it from the (remembered) perspective of the teenage girl involved, I don't think that's necessarily all of the dynamic. I wasn't practicing flirtatious behavior on men who went on to treat me inappropriately, I was sometimes being non-sexually friendly, and sometimes just standing there.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:58 AM
The Modesto Kid?
Yep.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:59 AM
No LB, I think John was asking whether I was the female student who had the affair with the art teacher in your school. (I'm assuming someone you call "kid" would be a student not a teacher?)
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 9:59 AM
Obviously, as LB points out, mine was a broad generalization, with many mileage variations.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:01 AM
re: 95
Yeah. There are lots of creepy blokes out there misreading all of the signals or willfully interpreting perfectly ordinary friendliness as flirting.
My point was more that flirting sometimes happens but that is still no excuse for the older person to reciprocate or take advantage of the flirtatiousness. iyswim
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:02 AM
(perhaps I should adopt "The Modesto Kid" as my pseud. I feel so jealous of all you creative types with the beautiful, beautiful pseudonyms!)
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:02 AM
Well, there are the girls who are flirting, and those who seem to be but aren't, and those who aren't doing anything remotely like flirting but whom horndogs interpret as flirting anyway. You should leave all of them alone.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:03 AM
Ymerej Renso is still available.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:04 AM
But is it not in the very nature of a horndog, to horn in on jailbait? Would you have the horndog deny the very core of his being?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:05 AM
Yep. (and oh, dear. The MK did always seem a little inappropriately teenage, but I hadn't heard the story you refer to.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:05 AM
The "Yep" in 104 is to 101, but works to the second question in 103 as well.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:06 AM
This is non-gender specific, too; my mother, who went to a Catholic all-girls school in Dallas, has an anecdote about a nun who unexpectedly cornered her when they were alone together, saying creepily, "Why are you afraid to love?"
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:06 AM
The normal decent male's response to hot, friendly 16-year-olds would be to be correct and distant, but this can be misinterpreted too. For example, such a teacher might be more engaged with his guy students than with his girl students, and that could be interpreted either as sexism or as personal rejection. But adult guys have impulses and emotions too, and staying away from temptation might be the only way to be safe.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:09 AM
re: 106
I had a male drama teacher at school get a little too friendly when rehearsing once - definitely beyond the bounds of what ought to be appropriate between teacher and pupil but not anything worth reporting to the 'authorities'. It's definitely not gender-specific.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:17 AM
No to the first question in 103 as well. Lots of horndogs horndog only the grown, thankyouverymuch.
And 101 is pretty much the last word on that.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:17 AM
Well, it is sexism, if not personal, than systematic. Straight women teachers are expected to be able to engage with, help, and mentor their male students while keeping themselves under control, and it's not fair to take the attitude that young women, being so ripe and tempting, must be held at a distant.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:18 AM
systematic s/b systemic. distant s/b distance
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:20 AM
I have less sympathy for the man described in 107 than maybe I ought to. I've been attracted to people who were off limits, and have managed to avoid either fondling or snubbing them.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:20 AM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:22 AM
I've been attracted to people who were off limits, and have managed to avoid either fondling or snubbing them.
You're a woman. I know many male doctors, for example, won't examine a female patient without another female on hand. Things aren't always symetric.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:23 AM
Perhaps the women teachers typically feel more sure of themselves, less afraid of temptation. And because seduction by women teachers, although now reported, is still so far out of the range of normal expectation that the women need not be so concerned about appearances.
Posted by John Tingley | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:25 AM
But there's no reason why men should be less able to control themselves than women. The appearance of impropriety is a more legitimate issue.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:29 AM
But there's no reason why men should be less able to control themselves than women. The appearance of impropriety is a more legitimate issue.
That's, at least potentially, a claim about biology. It may or may not be true, or may or may not be true at the margin. More generally, by far the bigger worry is the latter.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:30 AM
still so far out of the range of normal expectation
But getting closer every day.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:33 AM
I personally would not trust myself. Just another reason for being glad I didn't teach. I don't know how guy volleyball coaches of women contain themselves, and actually, a lot of them don't.
The last time I did teach, as a stringer, I thought the cutest and smartest student was checking me out. Nothing happened, mostly because I wasn't up to it rather than because of ethics.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:38 AM
Keep in mind that we have to worry about appearances of impropriety as well as actual impropriety. If I think my eye contact is going to be mistaken for a leer, I'll stare into space in another direction.
Sure, but you can do plenty of self-protection -- keeping your office door open, having students around in groups rather than one-on-one -- without snubbing the girls (or, I suppose, at the University of the MineShaft, the boys.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:39 AM
118 -- Yowza -- the things people find to occupy their thoughts.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:41 AM
117: I don't know about that. I think the only claim about biology I'm making is that certain actions, like >Touch breast.
You can't do that yet
require positive signals from your brain to perform, and can be avoided if you want to avoid them.
I've been in bed with a man who I wanted, and wanted bad, but knew I wasn't supposed to respond to sexually (why were we in bed you ask? he had a thing about platonic cuddling, and was really needy) and managed to avoid touching grabbing his dick despite intense desire. I don't think it was my female experience of desire that allowed me to do that, but large motor coordination.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:41 AM
Another solution would be to be correct and formal with all students, while still teaching actively. Once the student/teacher wall goes down, risks increase.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:41 AM
What a tale. To make a little light, you know you could totally write a memoir and go on Oprah, don't you?
Otherwise, failing lawyer letters, a third party could drop by or call. I could call.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:47 AM
123: Sure, and that goes with my 120.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:48 AM
122: I agree that one aspect of being a mature, responsible adult is the ability to maintain self-control and to restrain yourself from doing things you want to do but know you shouldn't.
I would add that another part of of being a responsible adult is knowing the limits of your own self-control and making damn sure to avoid situations that will put those limits to the test.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:51 AM
Re 120, I'm pretty sure "having students in groups" happens more at the Mineshaft than in RL.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:51 AM
I also think that it's not all that hard to be informal without hitting on a student.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:51 AM
Was this at a cuddle party, Tia?
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:52 AM
D'oh! My eyes skipped right over a preposition and imbued your post with pornographical qualities which were not innately a part of it.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:52 AM
Re 122, being in bed naked with someone you want but cannot have = Bad Idea. But congrats on your self-restraint, must be nice to have some discipline in your consciousness.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:54 AM
My best teacher in college was gay, with a reputation for getting involved with students. (This was in the bad old Puritanical days when you pretended nothing was happening even though it was). I was a very pretty boy, and he was my piano teacher, which involves one-on-one teaching and hands-on contact.
I was a bit uptight, but he put me at my ease and everything went extraordinarily well. In later years I'd see him from time to time.
So either he was a very together guy, or else I wasn't really that pretty after all.
One of his other students was Ry Cooder, BTW, who was already a studio musician as a freshman in college.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:55 AM
You still is a very pretty boy by my lights, JE.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 10:55 AM
JO, we weren't naked. No, Joe, just a regular bed. And MAE, I think that's right, but if you think your feelings toward your female students are going to be so intense that you won't be able to control yourself without treating your girl and boy students in noticeably different ways that would disadvantage the girls, maybe you shouldn't be a teacher.
A college professor of mine who always sort of seemed like he was a disembodied brain floating in a vat kissed me (on the cheek) either when I graduated or came back to vist (don't remember). It tripped me out because I didn't think of him as having lips, but I had no problem with it.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:00 AM
if you think your feelings toward your female students are going to be so intense that you won't be able to control yourself without treating your girl and boy students in noticeably different ways that would disadvantage the girls, maybe you shouldn't be a teacher.
Ding ding ding!
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:03 AM
Thank you Joe. My self-esteem has been low recently. The beauty products don't seem as effective as they once were.
A degree of informality might be OK, but familiarity would be hard to manage. There's a point at which I think that most people would have trouble maintaining a close familiar relationship with someone attractive, especially if there was any mutuality. You really have to be allowed to avoid temptation.
It shouldn't be a secret that successful adult guys can be pretty needy and hardup too. A super wonderful happy guy would probably be much better at resisting temptation than an ordinary hardup needy guy.
In the immortal words of one of the students of the fictionalized Philip Roth: "I can't save you. I'm only twenty years old".
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:04 AM
I read Breakfast at Tiffany's the other day, and now I'm again reflecting again on how odd it was when Doc made his revelation.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:09 AM
If I think my eye contact is going to be mistaken for a leer, I'll stare into space in another direction.
Just don't let it get to be a habit. I recently went out on a fix-up date with a college professor who refused to make eye contact for at least 95% of the evening. Then he asked me out again. Too confusing. But now I understand--he found me frighteningly attractive!
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:09 AM
Not reading the comments.
Designate someone else--someone stubborn--to be your proxy. *They* can email him and say, "A. told me the other day that she doesn't have any pictures of herself when she was young, and she told me a long time ago about how you took pictures all the time, so I think you should send them to her." And if he says no, then they can browbeat him. Hence, he isn't saying no *to you*, AND he's getting browbeaten.
'Course, you'd have to figure out how to (1) reassure him that the proxy really was a proxy, and not some weird nutter trying to get old pictures of you; and (2) get the pictures w/out giving him your address (assuming you don't want to do that). But I have faith that those minor details can be ironed out.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:12 AM
And I wasn't a teacher.
I think that the ideal standard being set here (be friendly to all students equally, but don't come on to any of them) is unrealistic, though. Once there's familiarity, there's risk. I think that it might be true that temptation is easy for some to resist, but not for everyone I don't think, and the weaker ones might not be bad people.
I'm not sure whether we're talkign about HS or college teaching now. I agree to a strict standard for HS.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:12 AM
And MAE, I think that's right, but if you think your feelings toward your female students are going to be so intense that you won't be able to control yourself without treating your girl and boy students in noticeably different ways that would disadvantage the girls, maybe you shouldn't be a teacher.
Right you are: such people as you describe probably should consider avoiding teaching. (BTW, I am not a teacher, and my feelings are not such as you describe.)
The point point I was trying to get at (perhaps so obvious that it does not bear commenting on) was that we all have very different limits of self-control, and it is up to each of us to know our own limits and to avoid situations that put those limits to the test. I myself would avoid getting in bed with someone who I felt attracted to but was determined to avoid sexual contact with, but I tip my hat to you for being able to successfully control yourself in such a situation.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:19 AM
Instead of the lawyer letter, let me toss out another idea. It may be a really dumb idea.
Assume that the guy is feeling shame and guilt. Assume that he now believes that he really did love Alameida. A lawyer letter is likely to transform the guilt to fear and anger. Bad idea.
What about a therapist letter? Something like this: Hello. I am therapist for Alameida. I am helping her work through some issues from her childhood. She thinks you may have some photographs of her. It would help her if she got any pictures you might have. She has asked me to contact you, and asks that all communication goes through me, and that you not try to contact her directly. Your assistance would be greatly appreciated. Further claptrap, as per LB.
This would allow the guy to return the photos as expiation, out of guilt, rather than provoking defensiveness. I'm assuming that the goal is simply to get the pictures, and not to get revenge or make him feel bad.
Why does Photographs, by Expiation, out of Guilt, sound like the bloodline of a horse?
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:28 AM
I would try to convince myself I didn't really want the photos anyway. I don't think there is a reasonable way to get them.
I used to read this comic book as a kid and I never realized how skeevily ridiculous the whole situation was.
Poor Marv Wolfman: The break up happened in Team Titans after I left it. I disagreed with it and said so, but the writer did it anyway. It was wrong in my mind to do it--Donna and Terry would not suddenly split up that way. They may have split up if we saw a real problem between them but I just had them occasionally have Donna's power come between them--something they would have gotten through.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:31 AM
Why couldn't a lawyer letter work without provoking fear and defensiveness? The lawyer could explain that A. has asked him to be the intermediary for practical reasons, and no hostility is intended. Or something like that.
I, personally, wouldn't go with a therapist, b/c that could be taken as "oh, poor A!" and I wouldn't want that.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:33 AM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:34 AM
Most everyone I know tends to get an adrenaline rush when opening any letter from a lawyer. It tends to set one up to expect conflict. Your milage may vary. The lawyer letter doesn't give the guy a motive for sending the photos back. We need to give him a motive that won't make him clam up and burn any photos he may still have.
I, personally, wouldn't go with a therapist, b/c that could be taken as "oh, poor A!" and I wouldn't want that.
Well, yes. It depends what the goal is. If the goal is simply to get the photos, some loss of self-esteem or respect may be an acceptable price. Does A really care what the guy thinks at this point?
If the goal is to make the guy believe certain things about A, or feel certain emotions, that's a whole different question.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:42 AM
One of my friends (a grad student at the time) dated one of the professors in our department when I was in college. The department chair heard the prof was dating a student and went on a witch hunt to figure out which one it was, carefully scrutinizing who the prof talked with at length and who came and went from his office. The chair never figured it out because he didn't think to consider that the prof was dating one of his male students. It was a lot of fun – they enlisted me and a couple of the other girls to hang around his office a lot to provide cover. The prof quit his job after my friend graduated and they moved down to North Carolina together. They've been together about 7 years now. Awww.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:43 AM
(Oh, and it must be said: What did my gay computer science professor teach? Lisp. Yes, really.)
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:45 AM
I don't think, unless you are able to sue him for his actions and seek the photographs in discovery, you have a legal right to those photographs
I have read and heard about situations in which a model hoped to or tried to sue a photographer for the rights to the photo or image, but there's not a lot of legal leverage for the model. Is he still printing them?
So, I know a CSI:Art World lawyer (seriously, she does provenance—amazing stories) and if you like, I could ask her about the general parameters of the law in this regard. Assuming LB hasn't already sk00l3d you in comments above. It's just my ill-formed, incomplete reading here, but I can't imagine that you'll get them back by asking.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:46 AM
That's an awesome story, Becks.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:47 AM
I'm not really great at this kind of thing, but the intermediary contacting the guy informally while letting him know that he is on fact a lawyer might be the way to go. The first thing he'll do when he gets a formal lawyer-letter will be to get his own lawyer, and I doubt, maybe wrongly, that his lawyer will advise cooperation.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:53 AM
145 - Labs has the additional problem that his students are all giving him chili peppers on ratemyprofessors.com and, therefore, want to take his comments the wrong way.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:54 AM
It's just my ill-formed, incomplete reading here, but I can't imagine that you'll get them back by asking.
I think this is pretty much right that you don't have a strong legal claim, the idea of the lawyer's letter is as an impersonal threat.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:54 AM
A. obviously is still angry. Revenge wise, a lawsuit really would work even if it were quickly dropped. You wouldn't want to give cause for a counter-suit, but just writing a letter of inquiry to a lot of the guy's associates would smirch his good name a bit.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 11:58 AM
Revenge wise, a lawsuit really would work even if it were quickly dropped.
Does no one think of the poor lawyers who have to suffer? Really, lawsuits as revenge? Bad, bad, stupid idea. You want revenge (which I think is probably not a good idea) write his wife and ask her for the pictures. Don't clutter up a courtroom and make a lawyer's life difficult. A lawyer letter is a reasonable and proportionate threat -- and actual lawsuit is a terrible, terrible idea. (For one thing, what do you do with the countersuit for slander, both back in the 80's and continuing now in the form of the lawsuit?)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:05 PM
LB, everyone in the world hates lawyers. No one thinks of their needs. So sue us.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:08 PM
Class action:
"LB and All the Other Lawyers in the World
v.
Everyone in the World Who Hates Lawyers, especially John Emerson."
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:10 PM
A. obviously is still angry.
Okay. I don't want to tell A what she's feeling, but that's a possibility.
Does she want to act upon that anger? In my limited experience, stories that begin when someone does something out of anger, in order to hurt someone else, don't usually end with And She Lived Happily Ever After. Acting out of conflicting and contradictory motives can lead to dissatisfaction.
Really, lawsuits as revenge? Bad, bad, stupid idea
hear. hear. Hear and heed. Generally, in revenge lawsuits, everyone loses. Everyone. Not worth the cost. Therapy is cheaper and much more effective. Lawsuits aren't an anger management tool.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:10 PM
I have a student who's left a big piece of paper with a heart drawn in red taped to my office door. My across-the-hall colleague was very amused. We agreed that when said student visits my office, the door stays open.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:17 PM
a big piece of paper with a heart drawn in red
Wait now, you teach 4th grade? For some reason I thought you had older students.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:19 PM
Maybe for the lawyers and Alameida it would be a bad idea, but for the Unfogged community whose interest I represent it would be a wonderful idea, and I am bound ny my oath of office to advocate for a lawsuit.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:20 PM
Huh, I just compared my RMP ratings with FL's. I am easier, less clear, and slightly less helpful; overall I am not as good a professor as he is.
I am, however, hotter.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:21 PM
Hmm. Having met FL but not you, I can freely say either (1) male students are less inhibited about rating their professors as hot than female students or (2) you must be smokin'.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:23 PM
The heart is drawn around a picture of a popular author who I once said sucks. Written underneath it is, "I love ___."
I've left it up, and it draws a lot of comment.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:23 PM
Or, alternately, my looks are my primary classroom asset, whereas Labs, though gorgeous, offers other things for the students to think about in class.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:24 PM
Is it drawn in crayon or marker pen?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:29 PM
my looks are my primary classroom asset
Now you're just fishing for intellectual compliments, which shouldn't be necessary. Everyone is awed by the massiveness of your brain.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:29 PM
Whereas with Labs, it's the massiveness of his...
Check please!
Posted by Matthew Harvey | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:31 PM
I don't want to tell A what she's feeling, but that's a possibility.
"as my daughters get older I start to burn with white-hot rage." I think it's fair to assume she's angry.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:31 PM
Marker pen.
Not really fishing--just hypothesizing about what draws students to go out of their way to post on RMP. It's not required, so either someone has to be astonishingly great, astonishingly awful, or else the student has to have a crush on them. I suppose a fourth option is that RMP ratings have just become part of the campus culture.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:33 PM
Revenge lawsuits are *notoriously* unpleasant for the revenge-seeker. Has anyone ever had their deposition taken in a case involving some kind of painful, personal matter? Not fun at all; indeed it'd probably rank alongside FL's colonoscopy, but without the drugs. Plus, in the extreme case, a court can sanction the revenge-seeker for bringing a frivolous suit.
That said, I think the non-confrontational lawyer-as-intermediary idea is a good one.
Posted by jw | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:34 PM
I knew someone who married her tutor at Oxford--prewar-- but I don't think that anything happened before she graduated. Plus he was married to an insane woman (literally) and had a kid at the time.
Emerson right about the braces not being a good rule to go by. My sister didn't get braces until college, and I've known people who had them in their late 20's and 30's, married wih kids and everything.
It's hard to avoid one-on-one contact completely. I spent time with my thesis advisor, alone in his office in the bowels of Widener. He was a shy, gentle, absolutely brilliant man--and there was no problem. He had grown children who were older than I was and a young daughter. (His first wife had died, and he'd left Br/own to go to Prince/ton, because he couldn't bear to be in Providence which reminded him of her. That was the rumor, and even if it was a myth, it was still true.
I was really creeped out when a grad student in Government who was in my Greek class and was a TF to my friends tried to ask me out when I was 18. He was really creepy and awkward. He did it by composing a note in Homeric Greek.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:36 PM
163: As someone who's recently concluded she looks like Bphd, I think the answer is (2).
And if you ask how I know, fine, fine, Bphd and I are having an affair; the truth comes out.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:40 PM
He did it by composing a note in Homeric Greek.
Good lord.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:41 PM
Tia, what comment is this mysterious option to mentioned in?
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:42 PM
The mysterious comment 163, mysteriously written at the beginning of my commen.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:43 PM
163
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:43 PM
Okay, that was really dumb; I must have some sort of tracking disorder. So,Tia, are you saying that you're smokin?
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:45 PM
A college friend of mine had an affair with her thesis advisor. They were officially together the year afterwards, as well.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:45 PM
Just trying to hitch my wagon to a star...
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:46 PM
Huh, I just compared my RMP ratings with FL's. I am easier, less clear, and slightly less helpful
Wait a minute, FL only posted his hotness rating. Where did you get all his other stats?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:49 PM
I'd figure she knows his secret identity.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:51 PM
Oh. Duh.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:54 PM
A friend of mine was a grad student in a small department, and it was well known that one of the professors was having an affair with another grad student (one who was much further along.) Some friends of mine saw them walking by the river together onve. My friend was pretty disgusted, because this particular professor had given a lecture on the morality of Catholic scholars, you know, what it meant to be both a Catholic and a scholar.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:56 PM
I'm two-timing Tia with Labs.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:57 PM
Two-timing Tia sounds like a dance step.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:59 PM
At Oxford pretty much all the teaching is one-to-one in private teaching rooms, so warnings about not being alone with students, etc. are irrelevant.
I can't say I've ever really worried about it - I've only ever had (what I assume was) mild flirting from a student once and it was easily ignored and I *know* I'm not about to behave dodgily myself.
Posted by M/att Mc/Grattan | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:59 PM
ac -- more like a C&W song title.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:01 PM
Good thing you anonymized yourself in 188, MM. 185 might get you in trouble.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:02 PM
Huh. You want 185 deleted, MM?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:10 PM
re: 191 - if you don't mind!
Didn't even notice I posted twice.
Posted by M/att M/cGrattan | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:11 PM
This is where one of those snappy pseudonyms would come in handy... [not that i have anything to be particularly secretive about - but it's easier without worrying about googlers-of-the-future]
Posted by M/att M/cGrattan | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:14 PM
Unfogged -- We try harder to make your blogging experience safe and secure.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:15 PM
Really, lawsuits as revenge? Bad, bad, stupid idea.
I'll join that chorus. No matter how right you are and how wrong the other side is, being in a lawsuit really, really sucks. Nobody wins.
I also agree that a lawyer letter has a good a chance of doing the trick as anything (i.e., poor but non-zero), but I don't think I'd include any legal analysis, threats, etc. I'd just keep it very short and very formal: We understand that you have these photos of our client. Please return them to us immediately. Direct all communications to the undersigned. Period. The idea is to get whatever impact you can from the lawyer's letterhead without giving the guy any kind of a handle on what you'll do next if he doesn't comply. If you include analysis, threats, etc., you invite him to focus on those and figure out that you're BSing. You don't want to give him that wiggle room.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:17 PM
This whole "student rating professors as hot" thing is icky. Especially in light of the post to which we're appending comments.
That said, I had the experience MM describes above. I mentioned it idly to a colleague and they didn't believe me. Is it because I'm not teh hott, or because students, we all know, can't possibly objectify their instructors?
So when RMP appeared in the above-linked thread, I tried to ignore it. But now it's come up again, I confess I looked.
So. I can say SL's hotness today>FL's hotness as previously reported.
Ick. Or maybe Not-ick. I can't tell. Help.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:20 PM
See my 163.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:21 PM
Unless I am confused about Slo's gender, your 163.1 would not be relevant here.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:24 PM
Nice try, but I won't be lured into saying whether 163(1) applies.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:25 PM
Then 2 is the only explanation, looks like.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:25 PM
jinx!
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:26 PM
Yeah, but still ick, either way. I think.
JO, I'm officially not saying. See, et seq.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:28 PM
Why couldn't Slo's students all be gay? Heteronormative oppressors, the lot of you.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:29 PM
Of course, does FL teach at an all-boys' school?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:30 PM
I think it's equally disturbing whether they're gay or straight. It's not the flavor of the assessment, it's the assessment.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:31 PM
Why couldn't Slo's students all be gay?
Or Mexican?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:33 PM
Oh, it is disturbing. But since they're gonna do it regardless, you might as well just lie back and enjoy it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:35 PM
Apos, are you saying that Mexicans objectify everyone?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:36 PM
I'm officially not saying.
Like I said: "Unless I am confused about Slo's gender..." I could certainly be wrong but I have formed my own hunch. Is that not allowed here at the Mineshaft? Sure the lights are low and the masks and prostheses will throw you off, but every spectator must gaze at the dancers and form his/her own impressions...
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:37 PM
you might as well just lie back and enjoy it
Okay, seriously, ewww.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:37 PM
Slo, you're obviously a girl.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:39 PM
Apos, are you saying that Mexicans objectify everyone?
Not exactly.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:39 PM
You can't point to that; you disallowed it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:41 PM
Stop oppressing me.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:41 PM
207: There was also a post directed at Ogged about how all swarthy people, e.g., Iranians, look like a bunch of Mexicans. "You people all look the same," was the tenor of the thing.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:42 PM
210: Take it up with JO, and Emerson. I'm not fighting this battle.
In fact, I didn't set out to be quiet on the subject, I just never mentioned. But since it emerged that there was some division of opinion, I thought I'd let it be there. It's a living experiment in the genderedness (or not) of rhetorical personae.
I mean, Osner thinks he can tell someone's gender by their prose; Cala thinks she can tell someone's height. For heaven's sake, folks, this is a little weird.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:42 PM
Baby, you need oppressing so bad.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:43 PM
Wait a minute? I didn't know slol was undeclared. Did I fall for the assumed-a-non-gender-declared-commenter-was-male fallacy? How did this happen?
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:43 PM
This is all a little weird
Hm.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:45 PM
Becksist.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:45 PM
#216 --> #213. NOT #215.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:45 PM
I didn't know slol was undeclared
Slol is the undergrad! Oops, wrong thread.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:46 PM
all swarthy people, e.g., Iranians, look like a bunch of Mexicans
Not look like, are.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:47 PM
How did this happen?
See. Also, note the way Wolfson won the thread by waiting four months to comment on it. Sheesh.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:50 PM
#216 --> #213. NOT #215.
See, now, that just makes me sad.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:52 PM
Four months?? Looks like less than one to me. Or is that rhetorical hyperbole?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:52 PM
No, never mind, it is inability to read dates even when I know what to look for on my part.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:53 PM
The experience I alluded to was nothing wildly inappropriate. It may even have just been a case of being friendly rather than anything flirtatious. I said no (to going for a drink with them). Issue over and never raised again.
FL is right - the appearance of the absence of impropriety is important. If this sometimes means being unable to be quite as friendly with one's students as one might like then that's unfortunate but may just be the reality of the situation.
Posted by M/att M/cGrattan | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:54 PM
How can I oppress you if I can't figure out what gender, or even what sex you are?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:54 PM
From 6-18-05 to 10-9-05 is almost four months, isn't it? Or are we looking at different things?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:54 PM
How can I oppress you
I'm sure I can think of something, and I'm sure if I can, you can.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:57 PM
I interrupt this open thread for a public service announcement. If you are a registered Democrat in Massachusetts (I'm looking at you, Tweedle), make sure to go to your caucus tomorrow. It's the way we get to vote for delegates to the convention.
I'm a Deval Patrick supporter, and if you are too, then get your butt in gear, because Tom Reilly is teh establishment insider Dem who knows how to work the party system. I'm not sure, though, that Reilly can beat a halfway decent-looking Republican after this week's gaffes--they're indicative of a larger problem. Plus Patrick seems a lot smarter, and despite his giant talk about vision does seem to have real policies and not just platitudes. Information about locations can be found on his website.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:58 PM
Damn, I cooked up a scheme, but I think the spam filter may have spoiled it.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 1:58 PM
229, see 226
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:00 PM
I cooked up a scheme
I did that once, but it fell.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:01 PM
the appearance of the absence of impropriety is important
As is the absence of the appearance of impropriety. But they are not the same.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:01 PM
232 - Even funnier, Tia - guess who the spam filter emails go to? Wolfson. You aren't gonna win this one.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:02 PM
I thought you and Wolfson got the spam filter emails?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:04 PM
I know that that last comment of mine was dreadfully earnest, and I meant to put it in Becks's thread "Or you could correct grammar."
I love the cleverness of this blog, and I can't stand the excessively earnest, but I sometimes wonder whether we're not just frittering idly while Rome is burning. Isn't seriousness sometimes the right response--though, of course, it's important not to take oneself too seriously. But the idea that certain things are serious and that we should try to effect good change, to hold back the tide of evil in these dark days even as we have fun, seems sound to me.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:05 PM
I sometimes wonder whether we're not just frittering idly while Rome is burning
I think of it as our own personal Algonquin Round Table.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:06 PM
237 - We do both get the emails. It's just that even if I approve it (which I just did) you know the minute Ben sees the email with your comment, he's going to go in and add his own.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:11 PM
BG, when I get serious I start telling people that democracy as we know it doomed, and so on. Or accuse them of being fascist-symps. So I come here to cool down.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:11 PM
238:
Serious is good. I'm all for it. (I'm actually thinking that I have to do some more committed news-consumption than my usual snarling at a dozen or so blogs, now that I'll be putting up front page posts.) Anyone who has serious news or politics stuff they'd like to see posts on, do email me.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:12 PM
Both 238 and 239 get it exactly right.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:13 PM
241: JE, I know, and you've said that in other contexts. I just wonder whether it isn't possible to combine the light with the dark a bit, to see the light side of the truly dark and to see the darkness in those things that are nominally light.
I do think that the current gov. is protofascist, although putting it that way doesn't go over well with the middle-of-the roaders we need to convince.
This is somehing of a personal demon for me. I hate the earnest young types. In college I couldn't stand the people who were politically active, mainly because they were too self-important, too much like that awful guy who took Becks to MoMa and told her that she did the Senator's wife thing well. Ugh.
But if all the cool, humane people just sit things out, then we're left with a crappy government (and I'm not just talking about the Federal level), and we deserve it.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:20 PM
This sounds pretty awful to me even as I'm typing it, but we tried, you know? and we lost. If the first term of GWB plus the self-evident Adequacy of JK / JE wasn't enough to wake people up then, God help us, nothing short of real catastrophe -- Real. Catastrophe. -- will be.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:24 PM
"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." - Hermann Goering
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:26 PM
245: Oh, I know. I'mthinking about long-term change that might make the Demcrats better and stronger. And I'm also talking about the fact that I've got a lame-ass Republian Governor in an overwhelmingly Democratic state. More and more, people register as Independents, because in this state far too many of the Democratic politicians are simply hacks. Of course the hacks will always be with us, but it's problematic here, and it means that a lot of liberals are shut out--even in "ultra liberal" Massachusetts.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:28 PM
Here in the UK we have a government that lacks some of the more obvious proto-fascistic features of the Bush regime and has some genuine redeeming features -- but it doesn't seem to help.
They seem just as determined to ride rough-shod over the the rights of individuals and the rule of international law. In the absence of principled individuals taking the right moral stance within the Labour Party and the absence of a serious and committed opposition within parliament, the current political situation just seems hopeless.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:34 PM
By the way, bostoniangirl? totally a girl.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:34 PM
Re: 235.
Yeah.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:36 PM
Oh, well, then I probably shouldn't admit that, after being quite politically uninvolved for most of my life, the reasons I've been thinking about getting involved in serious political activism are pretty much the ones b-girl is talking about, warnings about the self-importance of activist types notwithstanding.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:38 PM
My serious political blog is "Seeing the Forest". I put it at my URL.
Oddly enough, given my persona here, one of the reasons why STF has only been moderately successful is that it's too serious and has no entertainment value. I've seldom been able to get my serious political side and my funny side on the same page.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 2:38 PM
So how is it that both the Tories and the Democrats have so spectacularly imploded? Is it an entirely spurious comparison? Or does it somehow prove that there's nothing ideological about it?
Posted by slolernr |