Here is George admitting that he liked to grab reluctant guys in his home, and how it is different than Trump’s bus grabbing talk:
***
For those of you concerned about the media or police holding you accountable for your mating rituals (some of them, no doubt influenced by entertainment created by evil men like Weinstein), Orwell predicted this with the Junior Anti-Sex League.
You need to accept that you cannot touch or kiss anyone without their consent. May want to reconsider the benefits of not engaging in pre-marital sex, married monogamy, or celibacy. Millennials don’t have sex as much as previous generations, even with all of those dating apps. American reproductive rates are down. Just embrace the end.
I agree with all of the things you said here, so I’m not sure where the disconnect is. I am fine with the law operating on the principles of the law (I appreciate your info from earlier, by the way.) I’m talking about how we deal with these issues socially. I believe, as do most of my colleagues, that a majority of sexual assaults are not committed by evil mustache-twirling villains, but instead that they stem from ignorance about what consent is, and what sexual assault is. This ignorance is propagated by damaging mythology around the kind of people who are assaulted and under what circumstances, and proclamations that such-and-such behavior is ‘‘no big deal’’ or even invited, along with all the misogynistic notions about entitlement to women’s bodies which result in… shall we say, unsophisticated approaches to getting laid. I am far more concerned with the harm that does to us socially than whether it’s technically legal, or whether we burn all of our Star Trek DVDs, or whatever.
What I care about, when we talk about sexual assault as a social problem, is how the behavior impacts the victim. I find it offensive and damaging to society to hear anyone proclaiming that what happened to Takei’s alleged victim as ‘‘no big deal,’’ as obviously he wouldn’t be speaking up about it if it didn’t impact him in some measurable way. He gets to decide what’s a big deal when it comes to his personal experience.
In my ideal and perfect world, we would live in a society that had no tolerance for this sort of behavior, yet managed to express that tolerance without lynching every individual who engaged in it. Harvey Weinstein appears to be a truly evil person. People like Takei and CK appear to be extremely confused people in need of education. What we have is a social problem, not an individual one.
This interview is particularly disturbing. If your answer to “Did you ever grab anyone by the cock against their will?” is silence instead of “Hell no!”, you might just be a sexual predator. Especially if you go on to explain that some people need “persuading” to have sex with you.
I don’t have any specific knowledge about gay social mores in his era, but it wouldn’t surprise me if sexual coercion and assault of this nature were higher in his social circle than among the general population. At least with women, there’s a mythology of frigidity or whatever, but I could see men being held to a standard that there must be something wrong with them if they didn’t want sex at any conceivable time it was offered. This would likely result in more shaming and people not speaking out, which would add to the behavior becoming more socially acceptable.
So based on this theory, it’s probably less likely that George would be aware how very not okay this behavior is, than if he were a straight man. What I can’t understand is why he apparently is still, in 2017, as a staunch social activist, unaware that it’s not okay, to the point he’s willing to admit to it on tape.
Uh, yeah. One would have thought that that went without saying, or ought to.
:dubious: Why should affirming the principle of the importance of consent in sex lead to all this doomsaying about “the end” of sex?
Who are these people who are pessimistic about the continued existence of sex if it has to be consensual? That doesn’t speak very well for their own understanding of the importance of consent in sex.
If you like. My personal understanding of the contributions of feminist legal scholars isn’t really the point. The only point I’ve engaged you on, and the only one I’m going to, is this:
I’ve demonstrated that it’s trivially easy to find recent, very public cases where the neutral parties trying the cases are adopting this kind of rhetoric as justification for letting offenders off the hook, so it’s clearly not a one-way ticket to conviction. This matches my pretty substantial personal experience with the same phenomenon, but my cases weren’t reported in international news like these ones were. You haven’t done anything to back up this notion that you’re pulling back the curtain on how it really works, in the real world. I keep thinking that maybe you’ll try.
Your theory is, in my experience, dead wrong. Of course I’m not a celebrity nor have I been propositioned by one, but a polite “no thanks (with probably fake reason offered if you want to let them down easier)” was supposed to be enough even for men. Yes, men are generally horny more often than women but that doesn’t mean they’ll go with anyone who offers. Our standards may be different from women’s standards, but we still have them, varied as they are from one guy to another.
Also, there was generally no social stigma to hurting someone’s feelings by turning them down, and any further pursuit would probably be met with an angry response. It was also not normal to get someone into your house under false pretenses and use devious tactics to get into his pants. Not saying it never happened, but it was not considered kosher. Again, all of this is in my admittedly somewhat limited, non-celebrity-related experience.
Well, that’s comforting. I mean, not for understanding Takei’s actions, but comforting for humanity in general. I do know that a significant barrier for men talking about being sexually assaulted is the social expectation, real or perceived, that they should always want sex. I was just sort of building from there.
On Facebook, he’s trying to play the “I was playing the ‘naughty gay grandpa’ character”, IOW - the whole interview was a joke. I don’t see how anyone could listen to the interview where he tries to deflect from unwanted cock grabbing by insisting that the events were “never about power.” If he thinks that’s a joke, he has a truly twisted sense of humor.
I always thought of Takei as totally in line with modern culture despite his age, but I’m beginning to think of him like my grandmother who will deny and obfuscate pretty much anything in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety, no matter how ridiculous she looks doing it.
It would literally be as simple as, “I didn’t know then what I was doing was wrong. I know now. I deeply regret the pain my actions caused to those affected.” And I don’t think many people would hold a grudge. There is so much power, both socially and personally, in genuine reform.
It’s too easy for people to distort the truth decades later.
How on earth is someone supposed to remember one drunken night in the early 1980’s? How can they possibly defend themselves and their character?
It’s terrifying for everyone to realize a sexual encounter decades ago can be dragged up and used to destroy a lifetime of good work.
I fully support prosecuting sexual predators. But these decades old allegations that are totally unprovable are scary. People can say anything they want and there’s no way to defend against it.
People and society at large will be better served to err on the side of caution when it comes to consent. The idea that this would end all sex as we know it is silly, but it speaks to how careless many people are with consent when engaging in sexual activity.
The best way to safeguard yourself against accusations of sexual assault is to make damned sure you aren’t sexually assaulting anyone. That might mean adjusting your own mental definition of sexual assault to fit the law. It might, yes, actually mean drinking less or not fucking people when you’re insanely drunk. It really depends on the person to decide what changes in attitudes and behaviors are necessary for them to make in order to support a culture that doesn’t tolerate sexual activity without consent.
If we take Takei’s own words at face value, he knew the people he was engaging with were reluctant or uninterested and did it anyway. You don’t get to ‘‘persuade’’ people to have sex with you by grabbing their junk, sorry. That’s assault.
I used to think that too but it’s became painfully obvious he has changed since he became the darling of social media. He used to post clever quips about stories. Now it’s mostly links to clickbait sites that I’m sure he gets a nice check for.
You know, I always liked the guy, particularly for his activism, but it would be the height of hypocrisy for me to be horrified by that Trump tape and not by George’s. It’s just not okay.
Ah damn. What does it for me is when he talks about guys who were “afraid”, in context some people who are skittish… or er maybe afraid" He knew someone was afraid and he went ahead. And if that person was already afraid is he not aware that this did put him (Takei) in a position of power? This makes it a violation. If the reaction of the afraid person was to freeze rather than run or reject the advance did Takei take this as consent? He says he never did or would violate anyone but as with others it appears that this is according to his own definition.
