I realize I was proposing a hypothetical, but it wasn’t an abstract hypothetical. It was speculation about how this particular trial might go, not some imaginary thought experiment. It isn’t a “gotcha” and it isn’t “bait”. It’s an attempt to illustrate my argument that age of consent shouldn’t be an issue in this…

I’m not framing an abstract hypothetical here, I’m raising a very real possibility. You are the one who said age, not coercion, will be the deciding factor here. We know that one of the boys was older than the girl, but do you know if every single one of the 25 boys was older than her? It doesn’t seem all that…

In a situation where a 16 year old has sex with a 15 year old without coercion, how does one decide who is the victim and who is the perpetrator? Does the older one automatically become a perpetrator? If one of the boys had been 14 would you think she was guilty of raping him?

By the same token, the sexism a successful actress in America faces is such a drop in the bucket compared to what, say, women living under the Islamic State faces. Does that mean we should scoff dismissively whenever an actress brings up sexism she has faced in her career, or that we should demand that she constantly…

Why does he seem like a douchecanoe? He’s always seemed pretty bland and inoffensive to me. And he’s a pretty good producer.

He’s maybe only moderately famous by pop star standards, but he is incredibly rich and well-connected. He was #17 on the Forbes highest-paid celebrities list for last year. He made 66 million.