@Mindysan33, @edjusted please direct the animosity at me. I can take it, and appropriately deal with it. Not to misdirect conversation, just to funnel pain and outrage that is clearly deserved.
This is a situation for women like we went through for in the nineties and millinia. None of of these issues have been solved. It sucks. Omg it sucks. No one should be silent.
Direct rage at me.
It’s very fair to say that most men haven’t been sexually assaulted. Of course that’s setting a very low bar.
If 25% of men were sexually assaulted in their lifetimes we’d all think that was a monstrous problem but it would still be true that most aren’t. “Most men haven’t been sexually assaulted” is a true but kind of ugly-feeling thing to say, because it feels like it’s saying we shouldn’t worry too much about the men who have been, or like it’s not a big problem.
I think we need to worry a lot more about the impact of statements than about the “truth” of them. You mostly need technical jargon to really say anything that is either completely true or false. So I want to acknowledge the validity of the sentiment behind “of course Matt Damon doesn’t know, he’s a man”.
If you post that on most message boards, the response you’ll get it basically disingenuous “that’s sexism against men” stuff that comes from a place of feeling hurt by the idea that sexism is a problem and wanting to throw it back in the face of people who call out sexism. So calling out the statement will put up antenna and make people think you might just be an asshole.
But I get that there are other reasons to call out the statement. I understand how the statement could be very painful for men who are victims of sexual assault (or people who care about men who have been victims of sexual assault), who are being reminded by that statement that they are still a special kind of outcast.
That being said, I think we all recognize that obliviousness towards sexual assault going on around us is a big problem. I think it’s also obviously the case that male victims of sexual assault are just as much as part of this historical moment as female victims of sexual assault (Terry Crews, Kevin Spacey’s victims). So I hope that the anger at obliviousness (which is much more of a male problem than a female one) can be uniting rather than dividign.
I thought of the same bit when I read the headline. It’s gold.
I have similar worry about zero tolerance policies in most cases. I worry that excluding or pushing out people because they’ve committed crimes in the past means they are more likely to commit those crimes again in the future rather than less. The example I think of is cases where people are socially shunned because it is revealed they have beaten their children. Making them angry and isolated puts the child at greater danger; we need to think of a better way of intervening.
But in hollywood and in congress, this doesn’t play the same way. We don’t have to worry about Franken or Weinstein becoming more dangerous because they lose their positions. We don’t even have to worry about the severity of the punishment, as it’s hard to imagine this placing either in a dire financial situation. Maybe it will put someone in a situation that feels dire because they are used to being wealthy, but a roof over their head, clothes on their back and the newest smartphone are probably all in their future.
A friend of mine had the insight that we have to go after powerful sexual abuser’s careers. If someone repeatedly injured or killed people while driving, we’d take their licence away. Just like the car is the weapon of a reckless driver, the position of prestige is the weapon of these sexual abusers. They are a danger to other people as long as they have it.
So I think we have to think of zero tolerance policies differently when they apply to people in positions of great prestige than we do for people in vulnerable positions. The problem with having no tolerance for bad behaviour is that we’ve inverted it. We should hold people in the highest positions to the highest standards. Instead we wield zero tolerance against economically disadvantaged children and use “boys will be boys” for presidents and CEOs.
So I agree that there are degrees. But people in extremely privileged positions, like hollywood actors and elected representatives, they should be held to an extremely high standard. A minimum wage worker who is patting co-workers on the bum should get a talking to from management as a starting point (though obviously that might escalate). A Hollywood actor who has millions in the bank from their successful career should leave the industry and never return, and I will express that opinion to Hollywood movie makers by refusing to pay for content that is made by people with histories of that behaviour. I’ll leave the differentiation between different actions to the police and judges if the actions warrant their involvement.
Pretty much this. I haven’t been assaulted thank god but i had a couple of creepy interactions with people. One in particular left me pretty shaken and afraid for my safety since it was close to where i lived at the time. And i still believe that my experiences does not even come close to what women deal with on a regular basis. I don’t pretend i know what its like but i have enough of an idea.
And to those that complain about feminism, or discrimination against men, civil rights issues, etc i think this appropriate as usual:
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