Timo, many people have dating experiences that are less predatory than you suggest.
Which is wholly irrelevant, as they can still be described in the predatory terms, opening the way to prosecution.
Calling a potential dating partner an "unsuspecting victim" is a rather disturbing choice of words. If you see them as "victims", I hope said victims are fit enough to run away real fast.
The point is that it is up to
them to decide that they are victims; I get no say in it, regardless of what I do. Worse still, third parties can decide these victims are being brutalized by my smiling at them. Love is hate when you speak legalese.
I'm curious as to what "completely normal dating practices today" are now "essentially illegal." Specifics, please. Can't wait to hear this.
All of them, obviously. After all, if the intent is to initiate a relationship, that's by (legalese) definition an attempt to get the victim to submit, and thus the first to act in any fashion is an offender. Until the point where the second to act says "No, it's fine, nothing wrong here - please put the handcuffs and tasers away", that is. But alas, it's not always his or her right to issue such a statement.
Bashir was being a bit creepy but to me, the much more blatant sexual exploitation by Quark of his female employees is especially gross because it's played for laughs. It's meant to make Quark look like a disgusting creep, which it does, but... why is it even allowed? Does Bajor not have laws against sexual harassment, or against employers pressing their employees for sexual favors?
I'm interested in specific examples here, actually. What evidence is there of Quark "pressing" for favors? Witnesses such as Mardah don't refer to such, even though today's legislation would automatically stamp them as victims regardless. As far as onscreen explicit evidence goes, Quark may be a Class A sleazebag, but he is no pimp and he is no rapist. Except of course by implicit lynching.
I also wonder what a "sustainable state of affairs" would be like in Timo's opinion if today's standard isn't that.
Obviously some sort of a balance between the conflicting pressures, as it would never come to dating becoming wholly illegal and it would never come to the society totally losing interest in regulating dating. But which way it swings depends on issues external to the actual dating issue: conservative forces might go for legalizing what we now consider rape because that's how it went in the Good Old Days,
or for banning most types of personal interaction we today consider fine because banning is the conservative thing to do and how it was in the Good Old Days. Reverse this for the radical forces, to the same net effect.
Clearly, it's always going to be a case of interpretation against interpretation - and with the issue at hand, it almost always is a case of a single person's word against that of another, complicating any attempt at objective resolution.
Timo Saloniemi
