Grrl Power #720 – Beat the press… to the parking lot
Aren’t most news sources these days “The Daily Panicker”?
Arianna chose her job, not because it was easy, but because it was hard. She didn’t count on Sydney, whose presence adds a minimum of three standard deviations to… well, pretty much anything she’s involved in. The amount of spice she likes in food (that’s like, +10 SDs), knowledge of pop-culture trivia, chance of spontaneous distractibility, and of course, ease of doing public relations involving her.
Although for height, she’s actually only like -1.5 standard deviations, weirdly enough. That assumes the average woman in the US is 5′ 4″, which seems short to me. Maybe because most women wear some sort of heel all the time, but they seem taller to me. I would guess 5′ 5″ or 5′ 6″ honestly. This is from the same source that says the average male height is only 5′ 9″, which again, seems short to me. I probably have some sort of observation bias for tall people.
But much like Sydney, I digress.
Arianna’s been playing her deadly game with the press, and after Sydney made huge and repeated splashes with the press, any absence is sure to be noticed.
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Special forces training does include being dropped into a remote location and having to fight and/or evade hostile forces. Usually played by members of rival regiments mind, rather than actual enemies.
I guess that being dropped many light years away, on her own, and facing a force capable of global genocide against an advanced alien race, is commensurate with Halo’s abilities.
Well, as a feminist, I should point out why I believe your comment that “a girl has the right to decide when she is old enough” is flawed. Firstly the age of consent laws are framed in a gender neutral manner, so it applies to both boys and girls. As such it is not a feminist matter, rather it is to do with general moral principles.
The only aspect where it comes into feminist debates is because of the prevalence of girls being raped, hence the topic being commonly associated with that. However the same principles apply to boys in that situation as girls.
I recall a news article where a female teacher had absconded with a male student, and had been hunted down by police. Whilst the boy had gone willingly (and I imagine eagerly), he was below the age of consent, therefore the act was illegal and immoral (by the standards of the country in question). I say the latter because the actual age varies from society to society and thereby is different in other countries.
Importantly although some individuals mature faster, and thereby could make well judged decisions, at a younger age, not all do. So although (as with all laws) there are cases where it would not be necessary, it is vital to protect the vulnerable, that the law is enforced vigorously.
So even though I may feel that, at that age I would have been perfectly happy having the same thing happen to me, that should not be used as the rule of dewclaw to determine if it was OK for the kid in question (boy or girl as the case may be). Even if entered into willingly and knowingly the emotional consequences can actually scar someone for life if they turn out to be unprepared for it. And that is not something that we can judge in advance, so simply should not take the risk.
However it does not mean that society does not allow the individuals a way to be together if they wish. They simply need to wait until the circumstances are appropriate. Namely that the youngster passes the age of concent and (importantly for school situations and the like), that they are not in a relationship with someone in a position of authority over them.
I went to school with a teacher who had married one of his students. But he had not acted inappropriately, whilst she was underage, and (even though she turned 18 whilst still a student of his) they waited until she had left schooling and he was therefore free to date her as an independent adult.
Whilst the student would have happily rushed things, and felt that she was grown up enough to make up her own mind, it was not appropriate and the adult was right not to allow her to do so.
Grr, that comment was posted as a reply to David Argall, in this thread, but got detached.
TIP: To avoid making the same error as me, should you post a reply and get an error message (in my case saying that a valid email address was required), be aware that your post will cease to be associated with the comment you were replying on. Rather it will appear as a new post (which I forgot about).
Hopefully DaveB may be able to find a fix for this.
Until such time though it would require: copying the body of the text; cancelling the comment; finding the relevant post; clicking on the reply button again; pasting in the comment; and, finally, remembering to correctly fill out the name and email address details.
This comment section has always had a lot of bugginess…
…being un-editable and un-deletable by the poster the main one.
Uneditable minimizes trolling.
Sadly the benefits of uneditable comments outweigh the negatives these days, annoying as it is to deal with.
I had a teacher in the mid-1970s who almost got fired when one of his students became pregnant with his child. It turned out the girl was 18 and was also his wife. Obviously they couldn’t fire the guy, the union would never have let that go unchallenged. However many of the parents were still up in arms about the situation. That’s how he became a teacher at our school. The school board had him transferred to our school since our parents knew nothing about his pregnant student wife. I suspect that should the same situation come up today the board would probably drop the issue entirely once they became aware that the couple were both adults and legally married. Some things just don’t rate the panic that they’d cause 45 years ago.
Assuming that the relationship prior to the marriage was not one of ‘adult male and adolescent female’ and assuming that in all other ways it was legitimate and legal, the issue here should be one of:
Why was the wife of a teacher allowed to be a student in a class where her husband was the teacher?
That entire situation is inappropriate and rife with potential for favoritism and biased grading. It is certainly not fair to the other students, who might receive much less of the teacher’s time and attention when his own wife is in the class and is a competitor for that limited resource.
How is that different from having a parent be a teacher at the same school (if not same class(es)) as a child? Other than obvious ‘sleeping with the student’ bit
Your way of thinking would preclude teachers being friendly with students, and must be hostile or indifferent to all, that, does not lead to a healthy or productive environment
Yorp, I just want to mention, legally, that the age of consent is not 18 in every state. It actually ranges from 16 to 18, and in half of the states (25 or 26 of them), there’s a ‘close-in-age’ exemption, meaning if you’re within a certain age difference from each other, it’s still consent. For example, in Delaware, the age of consent is 18, but a 16 or 17 year old can consent with someone over the age of majority as long as they are under 30 years old (ie, it’s illegal for a 15 year old to have sex with a 19 year old, but it’s legal for a 17 year old to have sex with a 29 year old). There are also exemptions nicknamed ‘Romeo and Juliet laws’ which protect young people from being labelled as a sex offender when two young people who are both under the age of majority engage in relations.
Also in a few states, there’s a marriage exemption – ie, if the partners are married (assuming it’s legal for the younger party to be married), the younger party may consent but only with his/her spouse.
If one objects to the sexual advances, it’s called Rape.
*nods*
In the case of the news article I cited, it was actually a British teacher, and she had taken the child across the Channel. The UK’s age of consent laws do not vary region by region (but they do between different EU countries). Not that it was a particular issue, in tat instance, as the absconding teacher was caught in France, which has the same age as the UK, so the pair were promptly sent back to face UK justice.
It is interesting how the USA is considered a country, despite the fact that it is actually a block of multiple countries, like the EU and the (now defunct) USSR. Of course as a Cornishdog I view each component part (such as Cornwall or Louisiana) as being a distinct country in its own right, which simply is choosing to act closely enough with its neighbours to also be part of a larger country.
You know Mexico is the same way, right? :)
Los Estados Unidos de Mexico! Almost as many States as the USA has actually, each with distinct regional cuisine and often whole other minority cultures and languages (such as Zapotec or Nahuatl if we’re looking at the indigenous ones, but also minorities of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent, believe it or not; they’re called Asio-Mexicanos and there’s literally thousands of them). You wanna know HOW MUCH Mexico varies regionally? Look up the Mux, a Cultural Third Gender that exists only in areas where the Zapotec people live. ;) (Actually do it anyway, it’s really interesting!)
(sidebar: I had known that about Mexico having “States” of its own for a while and then one day casually mentioned Mexican States to my spouse and he was like “WHAT!?! THEY HAVE ‘STATES’ LIKE WE DO??? WHY WAS I NEVER TAUGHT THIS IN SCHOOL??” So like. It’s not just you who doesn’t realize or remember Mexico is made of “states” either :P)
It used to be even bigger, in fact but the USA…pretty much stole a lot of the Southwest from them, perhaps most famously including California (“Baja California” in fact, is still the name of a region right BELOW Southern California,that is part of Mexico still), but more infamously including Texas, which was VERY violently annexed from Mexico after Mexico banned slavery and the white ranchers from the USA who wanted to keep their slaves pitched a fit (yes, really. Hey, I’m American, I can call my country…empire…whatever, out on this thanks!)
…this thread got all over the place didn’t it. Er. Hope it was helpfully educational?
I have got to be honest and say that I was not aware of it. Although the fact that both were formed using similar systems, heavily influenced by the colonial powers, makes it unsurprising now that you have pointed it out. The surprising part being the number of divisions, as if asked to guess I would have assumed each would be about the size of California, and thereby only have a pawful.
yeah, I know about this. Texas could have gone either way, but Santa Ana was such a vicious fucking thug that he made slavers look good. Most the guys who died at the Alamo weren’t even pro-slavery, and very few on either side wanted to see him win.
Like Molotov sang, “If it weren’t for Santa Ana just to let you know, where your feet are planted would be Mexico!”
I remember hearing of a fun case some time around 1992-1997 or so. There was a couple who were a couple years apart in age, both minors, who were know to have an intimate relationship. When he turned reached the age of consent for their state, they were still a couple. I don’t remember who, but some other person not directly involved then did whatever it took to charge him with statutory rape, because the Romeo and Juliet exception for their state explicitly stated that the couple needed to both be minors for it to apply, much like you did.
At least some states are not so idiotic in their Romeo & Juliet exception, instead stating a minimum age for the Romeo & Juliet exception and a maximum age difference, because sometimes couples do stay together when the older of them reaches the age of consent, and that shouldn’t be a crime.
Some changes in lyrics apply…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-u_92yfljY
SWAG (Simple Wild-@$$ed Guess) = Guess Who?
We all know how Sydney LOVES taking Arianna’s news conferences into unexpectedly strange new territory.
Did anyone else notice that Arianna is whining about getting the same 5 questions over and over again and there are exactly 5 reporters visible? Sounds like you should have invited more reporters Ari old girl.
Sounds like she was press-bushed (ambushed by the media)
Just because we see only five, doesn’t mean there are only five (most artists hate drawing crowd scenes)
it just occurred to me that the name Halo is in use at DC comics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(comics)
After three iterations of the same questions, it’s not an interview, it’s interrogation. Poor Arianna knew that came with the territory before she signed on. She could call them out on it, but then they’d modify their tactics. Not by much, just enough to chip her down while remaining wearyingly predictable.
And that’s the glamorous life of a press secretary.