Actually, he didn’t do it for that reason.
From your link:
Situations on Friends that have been played for laughs:
- Monica making sex noises when Phoebe was massaging her.
- Rachel’s boyfriend revealing himself to Phoebe and groping her
- Multiple men and women purposefully walking in on each other in the shower.
- Rachel think her boss wanted sex from her to get a promotion. (That actually happened twice. Once with a female boss and once with a male boss).
Monica having sex with a 17-year-old.
Actually, reverse that and imagine how it plays – Chandler having sex with a 17-year old girl.
The age of consent in NY is 17. Also, NY has laws that allow sex between two people when one of them is 16, if the age difference is less than something, although I’m not sure that Monica, at 24, was young enough. I think the difference is four years or less (yes, “less” is correct, because you can have a part of a year). I have not lived in NY for a long time, though, and IANAL.
That’s why Monica makes the joke that what they did made her a felon in “17 states,” (or something, I made the number up, but you get the idea)-- but NY was NOT one of the states. There are a few states with a consent age of 18, which means if a 19-year-old married a 17-year-old in, say, Indiana, where that is legal, don’t go honeymooning in California where the age of consent if 18.
I personally think it’s true that if the genders were reversed on much of the Friends material, it wouldn’t have been funny then, and it’s less funny now. But Friends is 20 years old. It holds up surprisingly well most of the time that it’s easy to forget how old it is, but it’s like watching All in the Family in the 90s.
Ross dating a student at his university.
Accepting that times have changed and Friends contains jokes that are now on the nose, it is still watchable and relatable.
But consider MAS*H. Hugely beloved show back in the day. Now unwatchable with all the endless harrassment of the nurses. There is barely a conversation with them involving Hawkeye or Trapper that is not sexualised. Yes, that was no doubt a feature of the historical time in which the show is set, but to modern eyes, it is awful and cringeworthy.
There’s also Barney on “How I Met Your Mother”.
That character is vile beyond the pale.
Didn’t he have sex with her in the library?
Anyway, people in 2040 will look back at us in embarrassment and shame so what’s the big deal?
This wouldn’t be a problem - marriage is one of the things that renders “age of consent” moot.
That whole show was filled with terrible people and Barney the Probably Rapist was actually the most likeable among them.
Sitcoms aren’t exactly known for their social sensitivity.
But certainly, there are some power dynamics which make consent impossible. I haven’t seen the episode in question but sexual coercion is not consent. If someone is threatened with the loss of a job unless they perform sexual favors, there isn’t consent. I’m not sure (legally) how the threat of not being hired would stack up under current harassment and assault laws, but depending on the individual scenario, I could see it looking, and feeling, a lot like a sexual violation, and being equally traumatizing. Especially because the default response for the vast majority of people when they are sexually threatened is to freeze up and do nothing, regardless of what their rational brain might want them to do. It can’t reasonably be called a choice.
Joey was auditioning for a role which involved frontal nudity playing a character who wouldn’t have been circumcised (Italian immigrant in the early 20th century); asking to see his genitals wasn’t sexual harassment, it was a legitimate part of the audition. He was told up front what the role involved, and the audition took place in front of a group of production people. It’s not like the director met him alone in his hotel room.
Well, luckily Leonard didn’t work for the woman and they weren’t in the workplace. So your concern doesn’t apply.
Not my concerns . . the law.
No, he worked for the University the woman was a major donor to.
Actually, their encounter did start at a University fundraiser. It was made quite clear in the episode that the postdocs were effectively being pimped out by the University President.
She specifically explained to Lenard that there was no “quid pro quo” here and she had already decided to donate the money.
That’s nice and all. But she wasn’t a client or a customer.
If I go to Dunkin Donuts today and tell the cashier “If you have sex with me, I’ll buy every donut in the place” is that sexual harassment or solicitation?
In a university, major donors are absolutely clients/customers. In some cases, more important than the students, business-wise. Faculty and staff who are entertaining donors would absolutely feel an imbalance of power and could feel that their jobs are threatened for non-compliance. All it would take is for a major donor to imply that they will report back to the President that they did not enjoy their evening for the employee to feel fear of reprisal.
If we sent an employee to meet with a donor, and the donor made a suggestion of quid-pro-quo like this, and the employee reported it, we would be obligated to investigate, and could be subject to a Title IX complaint. The donor telling the employee later that it was not a quid-pro-quo request is not necessarily grounds for the university to drop the investigation.
Harassment.
The fact that it’s 20 years old is the point the discussion. What was a joke then is not so funny now (to many people). And this specific aspect was kind of forgotten.