Nope. What I’m saying is that one offense is different from a serial offender, there are different levels of offense, and not all of them are serious enough to cause job loss.
I was not aware of that claim until I saw your link. I will have to look into this new information.
This
Because they aren’t all the same. Because last year I watched way too many of my new age hippie friends fall into the trap of “They’re all alike, they’re all corrupt, I’m not going to vote” (or I’m going to vote for some idiot with the sole qualification of not being Clinton or Trump).
Now they are watching in horror as their workplace protections are gutted, as DACA immigrants face deportation, as their taxes are raised as the rich and powerful loot our Treasury, as our environment is being trashed and their healthcare taken away. And NOW they’re upset. And they don’t like it when I blame them. Which I try not to do because it’s negative and non-productive. But I still do.
Agreed with this.
It’s not just politicians or movie producers or CEO’s, it is pretty much every situation where you have women working for men (and even men working for men) that it can be a problem, and it is a problem more often than many think.
In low wage jobs, it’s not just common, it’s pervasive. In all of my experience, I don’t think I have ever worked for someone else where there was not at least some level of sexual harassment going on, and there have been many stores where it was not just accepted but encouraged among management.
I certainly do feel bad for these women coming forward now, but to be honest, they have far more power and ability to confront their abuser than a server at Applebee’s being groped by the General Manager. Many of these actresses that came out against weinstein didn’t make alot of sense as to why they waited (not saying I’m doubting, just saying that the desire to hide the abuse rather than expose it is strong, and harder to overcome than I would think). If Weinstein tells an actress with a household name that she’ll never work in hollywood again, how much authority does he have there? People want to see this actress in movies, and especially if she comes out saying why she is no longer in hollywood, people will flock to her side (as they did). Even if he does manage to blacklist her, and she doesn’t work again, well, she’s got a ton of money already, more than most of us would make in a lifetime. Server complains about being groped at work, OTOH, is going to lose her job immediately, probably get a bit blacklisted (there’s obviously no formal blacklisting system, but managers do get together and talk), and likely lose their home/car before they are able to find work and make ends meet again. These women have no power whatsoever.
I know many of these managers are still working (and just to bring up politics, they are almost universally republican,[but that doesn’t mean anything really, it’s 90% republican country here]), and still abusing. While I’m not entirely sure as to what should be done with Franken, I do think that it would be bullshit for him to have to resign while these truly repulsive people continue to have their little fiefdoms and centers of power where they abuse those under their employ. Franken may have caused some offense and discomfort to a woman, but these men ruin lives, dozens, maybe hundreds during their careers.
Addressing the sexual harassment, abuse, and assault that happens in entry level and low wage jobs is, IMHO, more important than bringing down celebrities or politicians. As long as it is accepted at that level, it is hard for your average voter to care all that much about what happens to politicians. So Moore as a 30 something DA was harassing 14 year olds? I’ve seen 40 something GM’s harassing 14 year olds. What Moore did was utterly unacceptable in my eyes, but in the eyes of the GM who grabs the teenage hostess’s ass, not so much. In the eyes of an employee who considers that environment normal? For anyone in the environment who doesn’t find those behaviors in the workplace unacceptable, why are they going to find the behavior of someone in politics doing the same thing that their boss did to be unacceptable?
There are quite a number of men who would like the environment of acceptable sexual harassment to continue, and the trends that have made it more dangerous to be reversed. These men will vote for and advocate for politicians who share their views on the treatment of people under their power. Roy Moore will be elected, because there are enough men in positions where they currently are enjoying abusing their employees. It’s not just that being a democrat is worse than being a pedophile, they don’t think that there is anything at all wrong with being a pedaphile in the first place.
I certainly don’t know what the solution is, but, while concentrating on high profile targets will certainly get you a daily dose of outrage, I don’t see it as actually helping any of the tens or hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of low paid women being abused every single day.
And who can even tell? One thing that’s been really, really interesting to me about the Weinstein stuff is that, as far as I know, no one has said 'he came on to me, I was repulsed, but I closed my eyes and thought of England while he did his thing because I’d worked so hard to get to this point in my career and I couldn’t stand to see it all disappear". Instead, all the people that have come forward have either claimed to be violently assaulted or they got to the hotel room, he came out naked, and they left.
Now, I think there must be tons of women who just bit their lips and submitted to coercion. I can’t imagine what I would do in that situation, with what would feel like my life’s work on a knife’s edge. But even now women can’t come forward with that story, because they’d be labeled as sluts and gold-diggers and seen as “complicit” and “part of the problem”. Whatever they accomplished would be discredited, because they used the old “casting couch”.
There’s something fundamentally fucked up that the woman who rejects a harasser’s advances is a victim, but one who feels like she can’t is morally deficient.
No, what you said and what I object to is that for you the “key thing” is that you like his politics and that changes what you think he should do. If you were just discussing whether what he did was bad enough to warrant a resignation, I wouldn’t have commented. But you specifically said that the “key thing” is his politics, not what he did. That means you’re doing exactly what the people who dismissed “pussy grabbing” accusations because they like Trump’s politics better than Hillary’s did; you’re not actually showing concern about the sexual harassment issue, you just want to use it as a political weapon.
Of course the apologies are weak, because if you’re the kind of guy who goes around grabbing women by the pussy you’re not going to be the kind of guy who could make a sincere apology for it.
I think this article sums things up:
Let me say, you are a very efficient packer.
Let’s see what we’ve got here.
I would think the obvious response to this would be “well, they’re not anymore.”
“Alleged” “indiscretions”?
I can understand (though not support) someone trying to defend these two homunculi by saying their vile crimes are still only “alleged” crimes; I can even understand (but not condone) someone trying to defend their already acknowledged/proven sleazy behavior (hitting on and “dating” underage girls, chasing after married women, barging into dressing rooms, kissing and inappropriately touching women without their consent) as mere “indiscretions”, but are you really trying to do both?
Please remember that the allegations against these turds include groping, spousal abuse, kidnapping, child molestation, attempted rape, and rape.
So, would you like to amend your statement to “alleged crimes” or “admitted indiscretions”?
Wot!?
I mean, genuinely, what!?
When and how did this happen? Please tell me.
Yours curiously,
Not Carlson
Jesus! You people are the fucking worst! How have you managed to turn a good old salty, well deserved fucking rant into a partisan spat? Nobody’s god damned politics have anything to do with them being a shit stain creeper, for Christ sakes!
The male bumbler is a fucking myth concocted by men who are far FAR more manipulative thaN women are routinely accused of being. There are no bumblers among them. Period. They are sly, clever, Machiavellian and they’ve been using this awkward/unaware horseshit for bloody centuries. It’s time for it to stop.
The next asshole man who tries to pull that shit deserves to be publicly bitchslapped and told to shut his cake hole. It’s over. That’s not gonna fly anymore.
Are we suddenly supposed to believe that Franken or Moore or Spacey are NOT smart, intelligent men who achieved fame and success, managed challenging careers but, Garsh are just so silly and awkward that they fucking accidentally stumbled into sexually harassing those around them? Bullocks! That’s a mountain of stinking horseshit and it’s time for the world to call them out for it, to their faces. I’m dying to see the next atoning missive, roundly announces as just more of the same bullshit we’ve all heard before.
Where are the men who are always screaming, ‘But she’s just a scheming gold Digger!’ What about this fucking scheming pricks? When you use the power of your position to sexually exploit the women around you, ON ANY FUCKING LEVEL, you put yourself in the same league as a child molestor groom a boy from a fatherless home who loves the male attention. You’re scheming to get your own sexual gratification and exploiting the power of your position to do so. In short, you are a shitstain. And you deserved to be driven from the company of decent people as a result.
And shame on every man who knew a woman was uncomfortable and did nothing, you’re pretty oily too, so don’t kid yourself.
Oh, and keep your stupid politics out of my blistering rant against oily, smarmy shit heads trying to dance around their actions. Take that horse hit somewhere else please!
Just FTR, my post was intentionally absurd and meant to toy with language to bewilder those who were asking you how you felt about Moore and Trump. Seemed like a non sequitur (not to mention you apparently are Canadian and spelled Al Franken’s name wrong), so it’s fine you were asked to specify within the initial posts but yeah, being quizzed about these specific politicians totally seemed to miss the mark or jump the gun.
I recognized that, and wasn’t really meaning you, just so you know. If I hadn’t been on the all night train out of Saigon I’d have totally gone off on the, almost immediate, “Moore?” poster. In hindsight, probably a good thing I was forced into a 24 hr timeout.
Well, looks like I got wooshed pretty good.
It has been enlightening to watch my daughter become a young woman in this era. It is a given to her that women, as with people of all colors and gender prefs and identities, should be recognized, respected and have access to a level playing field.
When that expectation slams into reality we talk. We discuss how, in the old days, the Male Gaze dominated 95% of our culture (made up measure; just illustrative). Now, there’s been a shift and the Male Gaze only accounts for, oh, 65% of our culture. Men (and anyone invested in the status quo) are scared and angry - they’ve lost a third of their power!! - and other folks are still like “are you kidding?! it’s still out of balance to a wrong degree”.
And here we are. And regardless, Men who cross this basic line of abuse of power are low hanging fruit of bad behavior, and yet it had been obscured in that prior 95% Male Gaze world.
I’m reading this book - The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, about how morals emerge and get put to use. In the part I am reading, he is discussing how observation is an essential part of keeping moral thinking present. In today’s digital world, more can be observed.
The second quote was in response not to the accusations but to the assertions that he would “surely” be replaced by an equivalent person. No, there is no such assurance.
And you conveniently failed to quote my statements that if he was guilty of something felony-level he should be removed regardless.
But go ahead and twist what I say into something more in line with your own agenda.
It’s a thread where anyone can go back and read, I don’t feel the need to quote huge blocks of text and think it’s actually counterproductive. “You didn’t quote X” is a pretty lame response to a post, especially when the statements you’re complaining that I didn’t quote prove my main point. The fact that you need to specify a level of offense where he should be removed “regardless” just proves my point; if you weren’t engaging in the 'It’s OK when Democrats do it" line of argument that I object to, there would be no need to add a “regardless” at the end. “Democrats should be removed for felony-level offenses, but Republicans for lesser offenses” is just not a good way to operate.
I also think that the ‘felony-level’ standard is not sensible in general - there are too many harassment actions that don’t rise to the level of a felony that are clearly not reasonable to allow, and too many things that are technically a felony that really aren’t worth worrying about (For example, before 2004 consensual sex that wasn’t PIV was a felony in many states). But that wasn’t the particular thing I was talking about so I didn’t sidetrack onto it.
So sorry that I have that terrible agenda of wanting sexual harassment/abuse by people in power to end regardless of party.
You are assuming my stance is based on politics when it is not - I would not advocate removing a Republican senator unless he or she had committed a felony as well. But you didn’t bother to ask that, you just assumed.
Secondly - I agree, there are highly objectionable less-than-felony offenses. I happen to think that the felony-level is where to start with discipline and work our way downward. You are, of course, free to disagree but I strongly object to the notion that that in any way implies that I’m ignoring or minimizing the issue. I want to see the offenses end as well, but unlike many I’ve given some thought as to how to go about that rather than just “BURN ALL THE OFFENDERS!!! LET GOD SORT THEM OUT!!!”
Great post all around.
I often work with kids, and watch how parents, men and women, raise their sons and daughters in ways that perpetuate this stuff.
It’s a daunting and almost sisyphean task to raise a child who is not going to internalize and want to participate in some of the gender/power structures they see all around them all the time.
With no Freudian references intended, it’s fathers and mothers (and the village, of course) who raise rapists, harrasers, and people who push boundaries of consent.
This is not an excuse or an attempt to deflect blame; all these people deserve punishment/consequences. “Society made me do it” is never(?) a get-out-of-jail-free card for doing something immoral.
However, I also think that on a larger scale we are all responsible, regardless of gender, and so all of us need to be part of the solution. The idea that if only the bad men would fuck off and die we’d be rid of this disease is laughable, because the patriarchy doesn’t die with them.
Evan Stephans Hall of Pinegrove’s response seems patronizing. Assuming the women being discussed are sober, of legal age and assuming they want to have sex with him (indeed seek sex with him) is the appropriate answer from him to condescend and pat them on the head as misguided women who do not understand the power dynamic and they should move on?
If he is uncomfortable having sex with them because he thinks they are misguided? Yes.
One of the annoying things about doing what you think is the right thing is that it can involve seeming patronizing to someone else who wants you to do what you think is the wrong thing.
(Wow, that was not succinct at all. But I think it gets the point across.)
He is, of course, free to not have sex for any reason whatsoever.
That said his rationale here is to protect the woman from herself. I submit that is a path fraught with trouble. Down that road lies all sorts of rationalizations men can do to “protect” women from themselves when the man decides what is in the woman’s best interest.