How is that a problem exactly?
> 17 and 73
Would her being a 18 prostitute change anything in your eyes? Because I am pretty sure that most 17 year olds can easily be confused with 18 year olds and the reverse.
> Defending that situation - real or hypothetical - is very problematic. It gets you fired.
In our current "cancel culture" society, agree.
An 18 year old prostitute is extraordinarily likely to be in that situation as a result of a lifetime of abuse and desperation. Taking advantage of that for sexual pleasure, especially at the age of 73, makes you a terrible person.
An old man taking advantage of a young woman is the issue. One year and tiny permutations of the details which change the legal situation do not change the moral situation that in any similar situation, the old man is a indefensible scumbag.
It doesn't matter if it is a hypothetical or not, defending that old man by saying the victim would have presented herself as willing, is a big issue. Not a witch hunt, not mob rule.
The problem is defending a man accused of statutory rape by saying his accuser appeared willing. Everything else is irrelevant.
And it wasn't a situation where there was the slightest bit of ambiguity. 17 and 73. Billionare's private island.
Defending that situation - real or hypothetical - is very problematic. It gets you fired. There might be a very narrow context in which a discussion of that nature would be appropriate. Where it happened was a million miles from there.