Margaret Atwood denies being a "Bad Feminist" for defending due process

It's not really about that at all. It's about power within the formal power structures we've setup in our society/civilization.

Ex: Say you're a CEO of a company and you see a lower level employee at lunch from time to time. You start having conversations and share interests. Eventually you realize that you are attracted to this person and ask them to dinner.

Now, for you, it might be a simple "I like you, lets spend more time together" sort of thing. But for him/her, it is necessarily more. You have direct influence over this person's career/employment/financial security. They cannot reasonably answer your request without being influenced by that fact one way or another.

The same applies to political realm (PotUSA/Intern), financial, educational (professor/student), military, religious, etc...

Men occupy the majority of powerful positions, so in the majority of these cases, its the men who are at fault. I hope you can see that something innocuous for two coworkers/friends/people at a bar to do and talk about becomes sexual harassment when one of those people is in a position of power over the other. The power and responsibility structures that enable these institutions to function, can really throw a wrench into romance. That doesn't mean some romances don't work out, but there's a risk in engaging in these activities, and legally the risk is more on the person of power because socially the opposite used to be true.

/r/books Thread Parent Link - theglobeandmail.com