@jeffcodes @Amoshias @futurebird I often reminded my colleagues who dated students, and claimed they just happen to be attracted to 20-year-olds, which is NOT A CRIME, that it's still bad pedagogy, and they would be more than welcome to date other 20yos. Oh no, they say, I need smart 20yos. OK, so date students at the college in the next town over. For some fascinating reason, those 20yos are not attracted to mediocre middle-aged academics. Just the ones in their classes.

@jeffcodes @Amoshias @futurebird Yeah, I don't see how marriage is a desirable outcome for of academic mentorship, or therapy. If you marry your professor or therapist, someone has done their job badly! Even long after a student is no longer in my class, I have to write recommendation letters for them and mentor them in their decisions. You can't write recommendations for your spouse. Even if it's a happy marriage, it is certainly not good teaching.

@futurebird @eco_amandine Another thing that Lolita gets right is how the pedophile comforts himself by thinking his victim is "fine" if she goes on to a hetero marriage with children. (I'm not claiming that these profs are pedos, but in the "barely legal" sense that what they are attracted to is this pretense of self-exploitation and alibi culture that is next door to the Epstein dynamic. Lots of academics in those emails.)

@eco_amandine @futurebird At our little college, all the men who slept with students got tenured and promoted, and eventually into administration so they couldn't abuse more students--and then took on roles in oversight of Title IX, etc. And anyone who questioned it was told that half the faculty spouses in town were former students, so clearly those relationships were "successful." Marriage is not a pedagogical goal of mine! None of those spouses pursued their own careers.

@futurebird Totally, and it changed the dynamic for everyone who worked there. I was constantly loudly talking about it, because it was so pervasive and acidic to the pedagogical purpose of being at college that I finally said, look, if it is fine, then we should talk about it, the way we do about things that are fine. If it is fine, then we can take a look at how many students who "date" professors attempt suicide or abandon ambitious paths, because it is so fine.

@futurebird A while back, I taught at a college where affairs between faculty and students were tolerated, and it was awful, seeing young people call themselves "jailbait" and prance around in front of professors who claimed they had no other choice. (None of the students were underage, but they clearly IDed some profs as pedophiles.) One student in sociology even wrote a thesis about how exploiting oneself is a map to power. But whose? The men got tenured and promoted. They lost.

@futurebird The weirdest wrinkle of this to me is that the adults who get off on exploiting young people also want to tell themselves that on some level, the child is aware and happily exploiting themselves. It's Nabokov's greatest insight in Lolita about pedophiles, that unfortunately pedophile readers thought he was celebrating. For young people, it makes it impossible to get predators to believe when you say no, not me, not anyone my age.

@mirabilos We named her 9 years ago right after my partner read Lolita for the first time. She is named for Dolores Haze.

It's #Caturday and Dolores is purring *so* loud.
#CatsOfMastodon

@adardis @VCP @futurebird Conspicuous hydration is such a flex in a toiletless city!

@futurebird One of the hardest things for my mom when she has tried to visit me in New York has been toilet access. If you are not used to just holding it for hours, which most of us are, the city is totally inaccessible. I showed her that most hotels will not stop you from using a lobby toilet if you look like you know what you are doing, and she was convinced the city has made me insane. And then you visit a place like Tokyo and have a luxury bidet toilet experience in a subway station...