Truthfully, I was a little irritated on the front side of reading the article below.
The author spends some time talking about how some men are confused and scared that there are half a dozen women in their past, out there somewhere, furious because he asked some woman out on a date or said "Hey, new dress? Looks nice."
However, the author goes on to say how irritating for men to be so damn clueless about the difference between an implied threat due to a power differential and a flirtation.
To be honest I wasn't so much irritated that the author had sympathy for men, including her husband who said, "I didn't know it was this bad." I was irritated that men are married to women and have daughters and just didn't give a crap until now. How else do you not know?
It's just so clear that Louis C.K. and a bunch of these men think statutory rape is nothing. And I don't just mean the predators that have been exposed either. Entire literary houses, entire movie studios thought the book LOLITA was not just okay but genius and then made a movie of it.
I mean, was I supposed to be seeing something other than a grown man wanting to have sex with girl child who acted like a child so badly that he married her mother?
Was I not supposed to be throwing up in my mouth as I watched this?
(OH MY GOD, I had no idea this girl was supposed to be 12 until a few minutes ago. The actress was like 20 or so. OMG I couldn't figure out why she was acting too young...I thought she was just a bad actress. OMG. And the author of the book LOLITA had a friendship with a pedophile that admitted he was one.)
All the artistic crap you hear about this book is just that --crap.
And the white men of Hollywood were just about to do it again.
The movie I LOVE YOU DADDY was due out in the next week or so, but it was just shelved due to the sexual harassment accusations against C.K. Apparently the movie is about his character thinking it's okay to pursue underage girls....until some dude he admires starts pursuing his half naked daughter in the film
I hope his career is over forever. He is foul in a lot more ways than one.
But I doubt that's going to be the case.
A lot of powerful white men are losing their jobs. And that never happens, as the article below says. But they'll get new jobs when this dies down when "Well...that was a long time ago" can be said without too many people getting up in arms about it.
More importantly, I haven't heard one thing about changing laws so you can put a sexual harasser in jail before he's a sexual assault-er and/or rapist. I haven't heard one thing about extending the statute of limitations on rape and/or attempted rape. I haven't heard anything about standardizing definitions of sexual harassment, sexual assault, or any introduction of the blackmail aspect of sexual harassment.
A fair percentage of the white men reading article after article after article think the Sexual Harassment Scandal now spreading beyond Hollywood is some sort of "political correctness" thing because they are empathyless.
But the thing I liked about the article below --eventually-- is that she talks about how women participated in keeping these predators afloat without victim blaming.
There were women who said, when the Harvey Weinstein scandal first broke, how horrified they were. But Weinstein's crap was so extensive it's now clear that EVERYBODY KNEW and that includes the women in Hollywood that Weinstein never attempted to sexually blackmail.
Every last one of the women that have been in Hollywood for any length of time who said they were "horrified" had to have been lying via the sin of omission.
But there is more to women contributing to sexual blackmail (sexual harassment) atmosphere in workplaces across the country than than just pretending it's not happening for so long as it's not happening to you personally.
Women actively kept sexual harassers safe and supported. I've seen it. I just didn't know how to say it.
It's a good thing Rebecca Traister did know how to say it.
* * * * *
That last sentence? That is the core of the blackmail aspect of sexual harassment I've been talking about for a few days now.
The author spends some time talking about how some men are confused and scared that there are half a dozen women in their past, out there somewhere, furious because he asked some woman out on a date or said "Hey, new dress? Looks nice."
However, the author goes on to say how irritating for men to be so damn clueless about the difference between an implied threat due to a power differential and a flirtation.
To be honest I wasn't so much irritated that the author had sympathy for men, including her husband who said, "I didn't know it was this bad." I was irritated that men are married to women and have daughters and just didn't give a crap until now. How else do you not know?
For example, it really burned me up to listen to Matt Damon --who knows Weinstein and had to have heard stories about Weinstein-- say he's going to teach his daughter to avoid all this by having self-respect.
Some random guy on social media said of Louis C.K. "It was 10 years ago" Even if that statement about "10 years ago" was true, even if the foulness leaking out of Louis C.K. wasn't continuing to spew forth about things he did less than 10 months ago, I'm trying to figure out what these jackasses are thinking?
It's just so clear that Louis C.K. and a bunch of these men think statutory rape is nothing. And I don't just mean the predators that have been exposed either. Entire literary houses, entire movie studios thought the book LOLITA was not just okay but genius and then made a movie of it.
I mean, was I supposed to be seeing something other than a grown man wanting to have sex with girl child who acted like a child so badly that he married her mother?
Was I not supposed to be throwing up in my mouth as I watched this?
(OH MY GOD, I had no idea this girl was supposed to be 12 until a few minutes ago. The actress was like 20 or so. OMG I couldn't figure out why she was acting too young...I thought she was just a bad actress. OMG. And the author of the book LOLITA had a friendship with a pedophile that admitted he was one.)
All the artistic crap you hear about this book is just that --crap.
 |
| Rapist, Lolita, Mother |
The movie I LOVE YOU DADDY was due out in the next week or so, but it was just shelved due to the sexual harassment accusations against C.K. Apparently the movie is about his character thinking it's okay to pursue underage girls....until some dude he admires starts pursuing his half naked daughter in the film
-- which really seems to beart imitating life in Louis C.K.s case
I hope his career is over forever. He is foul in a lot more ways than one.
But I doubt that's going to be the case.
A lot of powerful white men are losing their jobs. And that never happens, as the article below says. But they'll get new jobs when this dies down when "Well...that was a long time ago" can be said without too many people getting up in arms about it.
More importantly, I haven't heard one thing about changing laws so you can put a sexual harasser in jail before he's a sexual assault-er and/or rapist. I haven't heard one thing about extending the statute of limitations on rape and/or attempted rape. I haven't heard anything about standardizing definitions of sexual harassment, sexual assault, or any introduction of the blackmail aspect of sexual harassment.
A fair percentage of the white men reading article after article after article think the Sexual Harassment Scandal now spreading beyond Hollywood is some sort of "political correctness" thing because they are empathyless.
But the thing I liked about the article below --eventually-- is that she talks about how women participated in keeping these predators afloat without victim blaming.
There were women who said, when the Harvey Weinstein scandal first broke, how horrified they were. But Weinstein's crap was so extensive it's now clear that EVERYBODY KNEW and that includes the women in Hollywood that Weinstein never attempted to sexually blackmail.
Every last one of the women that have been in Hollywood for any length of time who said they were "horrified" had to have been lying via the sin of omission.
But there is more to women contributing to sexual blackmail (sexual harassment) atmosphere in workplaces across the country than than just pretending it's not happening for so long as it's not happening to you personally.
Women actively kept sexual harassers safe and supported. I've seen it. I just didn't know how to say it.
It's a good thing Rebecca Traister did know how to say it.
* * * * *
FROM THE CUT
WE ARE ALL IMPLICATED
IN THE POST-WEINSTEIN RECKONING
I
WOMAN CHOOSES TO BECOME THE SEX OBJECT PLAYING THE TOXIC MASCULINITY GAME TO WIN
Other women who played along with their bosses expressed a degree of shame, as well as pride.
“Men have their fraternities and golf games to get ahead. Why shouldn’t I have used the advantage of my sexuality to my benefit? God, what else was I supposed to do?” says one woman in her early 50s.
Her attitude suggests something of a generational divide. On one side are women who came of age before Anita Hill’s groundbreaking testimony against Clarence Thomas, who were perhaps raised to assume they’d encounter harassment and resolved to tough it out. To this contingent, younger women’s complaints can sound hand-wringingly excessive: What did those girls expect?
What they expected was the world they’d been assured had arrived: a postfeminist one, in which they were something close to equal, in which their career paths were no longer supposed to be determined by big, swinging dicks — real ones.
II
WOMEN WHO COSIGNED
WOMEN WHO COSIGNED
THE PREDATORS DIVIDE AND CONQUER METHODS
RESPECTABLE WOMEN
vs
PROBABLY SCREWED SOMEBODY TO GET HER JOB
Then there are those who were never directly targeted, perhaps for reasons relating to aesthetic preferences, or perhaps because they resisted.
Several women have spoken to me with curiosity and concern about these colleagues, more than a few left to wither on the professional vine: What ever happened to them? Were their careers, their ambitions, irreparably damaged?
One woman, discussing a print journalist who harassed her in her early 20s, tells of an inverse dynamic: “Other female writers weren’t getting harassed, as far as we knew, which meant that they were the serious writers. We were silly little girls, not deserving of being thought of as real journalists if we were singled out for this treatment.” The slow-drip degradation, she says, led her to quit the profession. “He didn’t grope me, and he didn’t succeed in fucking me. But the way it made me feel — these insidious sexual advances you barely understand at that age, plus the constant professional undermining — it felt like you were never going to win, like you had no value.”
The reason that handsy colleagues exist on the same plane as violent predators is that the harm done to women doesn’t end with the original offense. It’s also how we’re evaluated based on our reactions to it. Do we smile or remain stone-faced, reciprocate or retreat, ignore or complain?
What becomes of us hangs on what we choose.
That last sentence? That is the core of the blackmail aspect of sexual harassment I've been talking about for a few days now.
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