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Comment by frickinLasers | Hacker News Reader

It is difficult to distinguish genuine romantic feelings between two people, from the case of a superior using their position to get their genitals wet and a subordinate capitulating for fear of losing their job.

Since feelings are only a biological impulse, and we humans frequently suppress our impulses in the form of self control, it's much easier to look for that oxytocin fix in a more appropriate arena.

The military has been doing this for ages, forbidding officers from fraternizing with enlisted. And plenty of civilians abusing positions of power have proven the wisdom of such a policy.

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It's difficult to distinguish genuine romantic feelings from exploitative lust everywhere. It's a constant of human experience and has very little to do with power dynamics.

>It's difficult to distinguish genuine romantic feelings from exploitative lust everywhere.

Huh?

They're saying people are assholes. For instance, in some American cultures (see my previous comment for which culture), it's a given that perhaps 40-60% of married individuals are cheating on their spouse. That's not love--that's doing what feels good, and then doing someone else that feels good.

Where there's a power imbalance, it's easier to ban a class of abuses than to figure out the small percentage of cases where both parties are genuinely afflicted by mutual biological imperatives.

That's pretty easy to distinguish, I don't see any trouble at all in forming those categories.

Okay, I got a little off track. Let's say you're an HR person (or whoever is at legal risk if an employee decides they've been taken advantage of), and someone come in with just such a complaint.

How would you, an outside party, determine whether the superior was really [infatuated, in love, whatever], and not simply taking advantage of their situation? Or how would a judge determine that? Is it worth it to the company to work through that process every time it happens? What about the people who really were victimized, but the evidence is circumstantial and the court says otherwise? Isn't it easier to exclude the small pool of people that are subordinates and tell the supervisor to find romance anywhere else?

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