Me Too!

[Emil El Zapato]

This is interesting, from one of the latest accused Tavis Smiley. I've never been a fan of his, but I commend his well balanced opinions here:





https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ons/?tid=a_inl

On that last one, where ARE the lines now? Can anyone define them?

Hey Fred, we are buzzing now...it isn't a straightforward problem, but it is hard for a man to discuss it without justifiably sounding like a neanderthal...

[Aragorn]

This is interesting, from one of the latest accused Tavis Smiley. I've never been a fan of his, but I commend his well balanced opinions here:

In a Facebook video posted early Thursday morning, Smiley said he was “shocked” to hear PBS’s sudden announcement and intends to “fight back” against the network’s “so-called investigation.”

He said he has the “utmost respect” for all women, and celebrates “the courage of those women who have come forth of late to share their own truth.”

“Let me also assure you that I have never groped, inappropriately exposed myself or coerced any colleague in the workplace ever in my 30-year career,” Smiley said.

“Let me also assure you that I have never groped, inappropriately exposed myself or coerced any colleague in the workplace ever in my 30-year career,” Smiley said.

“If having a consensual relationship with a colleague years ago is the stuff that leads to this kind of public humiliation and personal destruction, heaven help us,” he added in a written statement posted on Facebook.

“It is clear that this has gone too far,” he said. “And I for one intend to fight back. PBS overreacted and they launched a sloppy investigation. It’s time for a real conversation in this country about where the lines are, about how men and women can engage each other in the workplace. And I look forward to actively participating in that conversation.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ons/?tid=a_inl

On that last one, where ARE the lines now? Can anyone define them?

If you want my opinion, then this is turning out Yet Another Witch Hunt Hype™, just as there have been so many already.

• If you are of a somewhat darker complexion, then you are a Muslim terrorist.
• If you are friendly to a child, then you are a pedophile.
• If you happen to be romantically interested in a colleague, then you are sexually harassing them.

Nothing new under the sun, and you can bet that this whole thing is going to blow over in a couple of months, after which it'll be business as usual again, with the real predators continuing to do what they've been doing all along, and with the same level of impunity.

Don't get me wrong. Sexual harassment is a very real phenomenon — and I maintain what I've said earlier, which is that rape is the worst of all crimes — but what's going on right now is merely that the mainstream media have discovered a new milk cow, and that a couple of the usual busybodies would be standing up in demand of government regulations that would supposedly prevent this sort of thing from happening, like surveillance cameras everywhere, with the whole system — let's be all hip and modern here — powered by an artificial intelligence. (Microsoft has already developed such a system for the work floor.)

And if it were to come to that, then said regulations will once again — as always — make life much more unpleasant for the good people, while the true perverts and freaks will still be getting away with what they're doing. Color me a cynic, but has it ever been any different?

• Has the death penalty ever stopped anyone from committing a murder, or brought a murder victim back to life?
• Has the incredibly difficult way for Europeans to legally acquire a firearm ever stopped true criminals from acquiring them in the black market?
• Has the mass surveillance of the last 16 years managed to prevent the rise of ISIS and the influx of terrorists in western countries?
• Has the Catholic rule of abstention before marriage ever stopped Catholic priests from sexually abusing children?

Didn't think so either.

[Dreamtimer]

I think we're at the time right now where we're figuring out what lines to draw. We're in process. It's been most of my life that this has been happening. When I was a girl you didn't talk about "wife abuse". The idea of a husband being abused was almost taboo.

In the 70s, in one of Clint Eastwood's movies he had a whole dialogue with his co-star where he's saying he doesn't even believe in rape and she's saying, "Oh, please rape me", like it's some kind of joke.

In college, 80s, there were all kinds of campaigns to just try to persuade girls who were raped to even go get help. There was so much shame they were hiding pregnancies and STDs.

In the nineties, I heard man after man bitch and moan about having to go to sexual harassment training. I can't tell you how many guys said things like "I'm not going" or "I'm not paying attention" 'cause they just didn't want to deal with it as a reality.

So here we are where things have come to a head and we're forced to dialogue about it. And good thing because dialogue and cooperation were made bad words in the 80s and 90s. You were weak if you compromised or listened to the other side.

We're moving out of that now, but the swing takes a while.

Remember the Title 10 Dads? They never believed there was discrimination against female athletes in the NAACP until they had daughters and saw how substandard their facilities, etc. were. So they started fighting and now female athletes have a lot more respect.

It's not unlike the people who think services are a waste of money until they themselves need those services.

[Dumpster Diver]

I think we're at the time right now where we're figuring out what lines to draw. We're in process. It's been most of my life that this has been happening. When I was a girl you didn't talk about "wife abuse". The idea of a husband being abused was almost taboo.

In the 70s, in one of Clint Eastwood's movies he had a whole dialogue with his co-star where he's saying he doesn't even believe in rape and she's saying, "Oh, please rape me", like it's some kind of joke.

In college, 80s, there were all kinds of campaigns to just try to persuade girls who were raped to even go get help. There was so much shame they were hiding pregnancies and STDs.

In the nineties, I heard man after man bitch and moan about having to go to sexual harassment training. I can't tell you how many guys said things like "I'm not going" or "I'm not paying attention" 'cause they just didn't want to deal with it as a reality.

So here we are where things have come to a head and we're forced to dialogue about it. And good thing because dialogue and cooperation were made bad words in the 80s and 90s. You were weak if you compromised or listened to the other side.

We're moving out of that now, but the swing takes a while.

Remember the Title 10 Dads? They never believed there was discrimination against female athletes in the NAACP until they had daughters and saw how substandard their facilities, etc. were. So they started fighting and now female athletes have a lot more respect.

It's not unlike the people who think services are a waste of money until they themselves need those services.

This is the thing that always got me: most all these men have wives, GFs, mothers, sisters, or daughters. Why the F**k would you not want equal pay and respect for them? Save the money for some rich company owner? Protect some a**hole pervert boss or coworker? They have no respect for your women, and thus you, so why as a competing alpha-male protect them?

If anyone had harassed my GF, I would have gone in and done some ‘Southern Justice’ on them. If not overt, then covert. Btw, I’ve a vivid imagination.

I’m glad I wasn’t tested. In that area I’m totally sure I’d have unleashed some dark monster lurking inside. As a high-Octane, type A personality, I barely kept the rage under control even at the best of times.

...ok, back to my type B Bruce Wayne persona...

[Emil El Zapato]

This is the thing that always got me: most all these men have wives, GFs, mothers, sisters, or daughters. Why the F**k would you not want equal pay and respect for them? Save the money for some rich company owner? Protect some a**hole pervert boss or coworker? They have no respect for your women, and thus you, so why as a competing alpha-male protect them?

If anyone had harassed my GF, I would have gone in and done some ‘Southern Justice’ on them. If not overt, then covert. Btw, I’ve a vivid imagination.

I’m glad I wasn’t tested. In that area I’m totally sure I’d have unleashed some dark monster lurking inside. As a high-Octane, type A personality, I barely kept the rage under control even at the best of times.

...ok, back to my type B Bruce Wayne persona...

I can't speak for anyone else, but most of my early formative years there was no female role model in my life. All I had to gauge a 'woman' emotionally or psychologically was my father's super macho, I'm the boss talk. Until he remarried...and to be honest I've never really forgiven him for all the bs he fed me....

[sandy]

Well Fred...............here is the sad thing.....about drawing lines when it comes to how to treat a fellow Human Being; that it doesn't come naturally and has to be taught. I wonder if there ever was a time when it was natural to be kind, repectful and courteous to your fellow Beings including all of Mother Earths Creations and Creatures...

So if we drop the gender qualifications and just went with what is respect, kindness and courtesy behavior I think the hormonal wrinkles would work themselves out either by mutual agreement of by hand....................BWAAAUUHHH!!!

[Fred Steeves]

So if we drop the gender qualifications and just went with what is respect, kindness and courtesy behavior I think the hormonal wrinkles would work themselves out either by mutual agreement of by hand....................BWAAAUUHHH!!!

Sandy, I think that would go a long, long way.

Here's where it can get tricky though. People like to play little games, right? Example: Anyone remember "no means yes"? Sometimes she really means no, but sometimes no means she really wants it more than anything but wants to make a little cat and mouse game of it. Tricky, no?

There are other examples we are all well aware of that I won't delve into here, but again, where are the lines now between play, passion, and abuse? There certainly is real abuse that does occur, and I'm happy for the disinfecting light of day being shined upon it, but this broad drag net doesn't appear to have any apparatus to separate the wheat from the chaff. All are guilty until proven innocent so asses are covered, and even if innocence is somehow proven on down the road, the accused has already lost their reputation, and often times their means to make a living.

[Dreamtimer]

The 'zero tolerance' attitudes we developed in the nineties were stupid-ass in my opinion. Nothin' liberal about that. Liberty means innocent until proven guilty. We've turned that on it's head too.

"Lock her up!" Ain't no-one in those crowds who wants due process. And they got a Prez to back 'em up.

A day or two ago a 12-year-old black girl went out her back door to go to the store and got guns pointed at her, handcuffed and put into a police car because they were searching for a criminal in the woods behind her house. An adult white woman.

Yet they point guns at this girl, cuff her and put her in the car. Are they 'keeping her safe'? 'Cause that's bullshit.

Where's the human judgement these days?

It was only a year ago that people dismissed the many women who have come out about Trump and his sexual behavior. Now things are changing to a point that people are listening. In one year.

Men have been denying/avoiding dealing with sexual harassment for exactly the reason Fred says. They don't want to get caught up in a dragnet because of stuff they did years ago when it was "OK".

Ignoring women who have been raped, traumatized, affected professionally for real because of fears of false accusations is now catching up. Just like the pedophilia in the catholic church, the system has to stop protecting the perps.

Last year, when a discussion was occurring about the harassment of women, loss of health clinics across the entire south - you know, places where they go to get pap smears and pre-natal care - and other issues, Mark Halperin said, and I quote:

"Can we just drop this and talk about something significant for the next two weeks until the election?"

Let me just say I was not surprised at all when he was gone due to sexual harassment.

[Fred Steeves]

Ha ha, we're bumping into each other all over the place today eh?

Men have been denying/avoiding dealing with sexual harassment for exactly the reason Fred says. They don't want to get caught up in a dragnet because of stuff they did years ago when it was "OK".

Um, just for the record that's not what I said or meant.

but this broad drag net doesn't appear to have any apparatus to separate the wheat from the chaff. All are guilty until proven innocent so asses are covered, and even if innocence is somehow proven on down the road, the accused has already lost their reputation, and often times their means to make a living.

What you are talking about here is a slightly different matter: If consensual cat and mouse games back in the day are now considered sex crimes, to paraphrase what Tavis Smiley said "then god help us all"...

[Maggie]

Well Fred...............here is the sad thing.....about drawing lines when it comes to how to treat a fellow Human Being; that it doesn't come naturally and has to be taught. I wonder if there ever was a time when it was natural to be kind, repectful and courteous to your fellow Beings including all of Mother Earths Creations and Creatures...

So if we drop the gender qualifications and just went with what is respect, kindness and courtesy behavior I think the hormonal wrinkles would work themselves out either by mutual agreement of by hand....................BWAAAUUHHH!!!

Underneath the race and gender politics is a basic assumption about "the position" of men, women and children in society. I read a good blog a few months ago that stuck. The case presented: the establishment of rules for DOMINANCE of one person or group OVER another as the cultural meme in social relationships. This is the keynote IMO of the feudal patriarchy. It is seen when women have not the a priori right to control pregnancy. it is seen when vaccinations are mandated. It is seen to be increasing in the way that we are being spied on and etc.....

Sexual coercion is possible because a man (or a woman) can force a woman or a man to be the recipient of sexual acts. Underneath that capacity is "whio is dominant?" IMO.

To see the blow back for sexual abuse is a sign IMO that women HAVE been FREQUENTLY subjugated to the tool of sexual coercion. From my vantage point as a woman, the double standard and the threat of pregnancy and a permanent STD like herpes HAS BEEN coexistant with the threat of being ostracized as a "ball buster" and an irratuionally prickly about sex uppity female IN the DOMINANT culture. The tide may be turning or it may be that the blow back will create a further retaliation from the "masters of the Universe"

In my family, I saw first hand and I was also traumatized by my mother's unmarried pregnancy and her utter devastation afterwards. She lost her place in the world she hoped to experience when she was pregnant and unmarried. The shame was NOT if she had been raped or had sex consensually. The pregnancy which could not be hidden was her fault anyway. No matter if it was a stranger who raped her, a date rape, or a consensual act, she was FOREVER after scarred. She was forced to have the baby, nurture the child in a maternity home for weeks, then forced to give him up. She was "put down" and abandoned emotionally by her family who saw her as damaged goods. Yes, she was PROPERTY that had spoiled. She was then dropped to the lowest rank.

From a really really early age, I saw in my world (born in 1955), white men were the rulers. IMO they still maintain that position. IMO the scene would have been entirely different if we were not consumed by a deep belief in the pyramidal shape of "Power as measured by how much power one has OVER another". It's climb to the top on a slippery slope in this social matrix.

from "How Rape and “Pro-Life” Politics Are Intimately Connected"

By Katherine Ripley

.....................I suspect that in the coming years, with states passing more and more restrictive abortion laws, the United States will see an increase in young girls giving birth. Arbitrary requirements about hallway lengths, anesthesia, and waiting periods are forcing abortion clinics to close and making it more difficult for women and children to get abortions. John Oliver recently highlighted the case of a Texas clinic that had to turn away a 13-year-old rape victim because of these laws, and the next closest clinic was impossibly far away—in New Mexico. Of course, these restrictions have no exceptions for rape cases because they’re supposed to be about protecting women’s “health.”

The anti-abortion lobbyists who write these laws think they’re protecting the lives of “unborn children,” but they have no regard for the lives of the child rape victims whom they are re-raping by forcing them to deliver their abusers’ children. They claim that the cause of the pregnancy—the rape—is irrelevant to the “unborn child’s” status as a “human being.”

I’m going to make a radical assertion: the rape has everything to do with the “unborn child’s” status as a “human being.” Rape and pro-life ideology are both methods of dehumanizing women, and both are caused by the same sick flaw of society—the need for dominance.

In her book, Sacred Pleasure, historian Riane Eisler argues that all of the world’s problems can be traced to a single source: we live in a society that values dominance rather than partnership. Eisler argues that the first human societies lived by the partnership model, as she calls it, where there was very little violence, much cooperation, no hierarchy, and sex was holy. This way of life was replaced with the dominance model, where violence (including sexual violence) is rampant, hierarchies subordinate women and people of color, and sexuality is demonized.

Rape does not exist in a partnership society. The dominance model is what breeds rape. The dominance model is also what reduces women to birthing machines. Both are methods of control—methods of maintaining the hierarchy. Both are limbs of the same demon. How does that demon ensure that women remain nothing but birthing machines? Label a cluster of undifferentiated cells an “unborn child” and say it needs to be “saved.”

The anti-choice lobbyists do not force children to give birth despite their rapes; they force them to give birth because they were raped. In a world where rape didn’t exist—where women had full and complete control over their bodies—we wouldn’t need abortion.https://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathe...b_9791666.html

[Emil El Zapato]

Life is tough, and I agree with you on the balances of power. As a former committed mysogynist let me give you a little different perspective on the workplace.

An asshole is an asshole. Rather crude but it sums it for me. I don't play favorites in the very least in that regard.

[sandy]

If one is to take being responsible for oneself seriously then even one's sexual needs are not to be accomodated by others when the mood strikes unless others are interested in doing so..................having our sexual needs met BY OTHERS is not a given!! Why must there be coyness around sexuality to deem it sensual. Sneaky, stealthily, hiding, manipulating, lurid actions, etc along with unspoken hidden urges are made more demanding from suppression along with games, coyness, flirting etc. became a necessity because of all the taboo around addressing this seeming human need.

So; no games, no cutezy or grooming stuff, etc. until the agreement has been acknowledged by cognitively sound parties to consumate their desires with one another. Might sound cold and unromantic to some but things can always be added to accomodate or highten excite-ability after the facts are on the consenual table/bed/floor..... LOL

[Aragorn]

If one is to take being responsible for oneself seriously then even one's sexual needs are not to be accomodated by others when the mood strikes unless others are interested in doing so..................having our sexual needs met BY OTHERS is not a given!! Why must there be coyness around sexuality to deem it sensual. Sneaky, stealthily, hiding, manipulating, lurid actions, etc along with unspoken hidden urges are made more demanding from suppression along with games, coyness, flirting etc. became a necessity because of all the taboo around addressing this seeming human need.

So; no games, no cutezy or grooming stuff, etc. until the agreement has been acknowledged by cognitively sound parties to consumate their desires with one another. Might sound cold and unromantic to some but things can always be added to accomodate or highten excite-ability after the facts are on the consenual table/bed/floor..... LOL

I think Hollywood and the music video industry have been playing a great role in this, sandy.

[Dreamtimer]

Cat and Mouse. How about S&M? Talk about potential law suits. Don't people draw up contracts who engage regularly in that stuff?

Not only do you have to make sure it's consentual, you have to make sure someone is really old enough, and really not married, and really clean, and really on birth control, and really not a psycho... It's not an easy world out there.

There's a guy who got fired by NBC just recently. Then he got re-hired because they realized the stories against him weren't good. He's not the only one. Others will get their jobs back.

There are so many young men who lose jobs, opportunities and even their lives simply because they're black and they haven't done a goddamn thing. Life sucks quite often when you're innocent doesn't it?

[Aragorn]

Life sucks quite often when you're innocent doesn't it?

It's much worse than that, even. I have learned quite a long time ago already that no good deed goes by unpunished.