I at no point said anything remotely like "its the same."
But trying some "it only counts as assault/harassment if they were under that magic line" is bullshyt. The behavior that Kevin Spacey is accused of was wrong every time he did it, and most of those who have come forward are adults.
There's a difference between a 14yo (one Spacey victim, several R. Kelly victims), a 17yo (most R. Kelly victims, some Cosby victims) and a 20+yo (most Spacey and Cosby victims). But when it is a powerful person committing sexual harassment and sexual assault against a much younger, much less powerful person, the difference is only a matter of degree. The same dynamics are in play, and harassment is still harassment, assault is still assault, whether they are over 18 or not.
If this was a friendly, consensual relationship between equals, it would be a different story. But we're not talking friendly, consensual relationships. We're talking people who used their power to abuse far less powerful people who were not interested.
Of course, you completely leave out:
4. The ones who were not willing but didn't think anyone would believe them
5. The ones who were not willing but who thought that speaking out would only lead to public shame and cause their own name to be destroyed
6. The ones who were not willing but who thought the powerful man's reputation and lawyers would lead him to beat any case they tried against him
7. The ones who were not willing but were told by others that what happened was "the norm" or "expected" and there was nothing to do
8. The ones who were not willing but didn't even know what had happened was illegal, because it was so normalized by society for so long
9. The ones who were not willing but were just too ashamed, or too scared, to do anything
There's a reason that virtually NONE of these accusations were coming out in the 1970s and 1980s, and few in the 1990s. Until the 1980s the term "date rape" wasn't even a thing. Women were told that if he didn't hold a gun to your head or beat your head in, then it wasn't rape, even if you said no and never wanted to do it but were too frightened or too drugged to fully resist physically. You can hardly find ANYONE managing to get a powerful man for date rape in the 1980s, hardly even in the 1990s.
Same with sexual harassment - until recently most women had nothing to even report, because such stuff was completely tolerated in the office environment.
And look at the ones who tried. One of Cosby's accusers went to the cops in 2002, the D.A. wouldn't press charges. Another went to the cops in 2005, again the D.A. wouldn't press charges. Kobe's accuser went to the cops, and had her entire life publicly destroyed because she was sexually active with multiple partners, despite having physical evidence of the sex and not otherwise having any of her accusations proven wrong. R. Kelly had a fukking VIDEO of his abuse, went to court and had 12 people identify the 14-year-old in the video, and somehow got the jury to get him off anyway.
Not to mention that we're hearing now that many of the Cosby, Weinstein, Spacey, etc. victims have told all SORTS of people, that all SORTS of people knew about it, and yet nothing changed. If you were a young 20yo girl new to Hollywood, and someone did something like that to you, and you told people you trusted and they did nothing...would you have the guts to go against what everyone else you knew was doing, go above all their heads, and take it to the cops? Perhaps you would, but a hell of a lot of others wouldn't. That doesn't make them any less of victims.
