i remember watching the swearing in ceremony in 2015 and thinking to myself "why is the prime minister groping all of the female cabinet ministers?".

a few things crossed my mind as to what i was observing. and, while some of the ministers, the older ones, were visibly tense in the encounter, others seemed to almost interpret it as an opportunity. i would be hard-pressed to suggest that the female ministers were of one mind, on the topic.

it shouldn't be hard to find the footage. it's the swearing in ceremony, where he names the cabinet ministers on by one. and, it gets cringey. really.

but, this is the ambiguity attached to a person like justin trudeau, who is both a (to anybody's knowledge) straight white male with executive power and an international sex symbol. i think there's always been concerns that the dauphin may have a clintonesque streak, where the intersection of real power and real sex appeal makes consent and coercion difficult to disentangle, and the thrill of existing in this grey area almost addictive. the idea that justin trudeau might have an active sex life with multiple partners, many of them colleagues, is not at all unbelievable.

but, i don't buy it.

trudeau's a nerd. he gets squiggley and shy when you put him beside attractive women. it's a classic nerd inferiority complex. the media image is a fabrication.

if trudeau was that other person, a person into conquest, he could be a force for serious malice, it is true, and i think everybody around him should look for signs that he might be becoming that person.

but i actually think he's strictly into monogamy, and probably kind of sexually boring. really.


i'll give warren an out on this: while i don't think the prime minister is a conqueror, i do think he'd be prone to being conquered, and that he may be the type to develop romantic feelings for staffers he spends a lot of time behind closed doors with. kind of an inversion on lewinsky. if a sex scandal is going to take this prime minister down, i would expect it to be in the form of something like that.

http://warrenkinsella.com/2018/01/column-metoo-isnt-just-coming-to-political-canada-its-here/

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.