Woody Allen: "I should be the poster boy for the #MeToo movement."

I have a deep Darth Vader’y voice, can it be me?

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Consider it your duty.

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Yeah, that. That was weird and/or gross.

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I had to double check that this wasn’t an Onion article. This is ones of those cases where you should have kept your mouth shut Woody, lest it start collecting shoes.

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He wasn’t involved in raising her as a child. Does a significant age gap mean that her consent is somehow not the complete and final story on their relationship? Do you think the age of consent should be replaced with some linear function of the person you’re consenting with? Or come with extra caveats based on whom they were last sleeping with?

Regarding the Moses v Mia versions of stories, it’s at least worth mentioning in the lead in to this that such divergence of reports exists.

Regarding being a poster boy, well that is just a dumb statement.

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Roger That!

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He was the de-facto spouse of Soon-Yi’s mother, who he was still in a relationship with at the time he began his affair with Soon-Yi. Ergo; he was effectively Soon-Yi’s stepfather even if he didn’t have any role in raising her.

Anyway, even Allen himself has at times described his relationship to her as a “paternal” one (even if he subsequently rejected that characterization at other times).

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It seems like you are arguing against the idea of him going to prison for marrying his stepdaughter. I don’t think anyone suggested that.

I wouldn’t support any criminal law against adults choose to marry family-members-by-marriage. But since we are discussing whether or not Woody Allen would make a good advertisement for a movement that emphasizes how people shouldn’t use their positions of power to extract sex from other people, the fact that he married his step-daughter seems awfully relevant.

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“I was paternal. She responded to someone paternal. I liked her youth and energy. She deferred to me, and I was happy to give her an enormous amount of decision-making just as a gift and let her take charge of so many things. She flourished.”

That’s a repugnant way to speak about your wife. You don’t give her autonomy - she’s born with it.

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Even if one were to 100% believe Allen that the allegations against him were totally fabricated, that would make Woody Allen a very bad “poster boy” for a movement that is about shifting our attitudes towards listening to victims and away from assuming the powerful, respected man is in the right, wouldn’t it?

Yes, yes it would. It’s a ridiculous, stupid statement from Woody Allen.

I just don’t like to hear the assertion that Woody Allen raped his daughter repeated so casually. It’s far from demonstrated fact, and if we’re listening to victims, we can’t ignore Moses Farrow.

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Y’know, I have to throw this out there;

I cannot fathom my own child coming to me as a defenseless 7 year old and telling me that anyone is hurting her, and then not trying to stomp a mudhole through that person’s face: not even her own father.

I just don’t get it how some people lack that protective instinct.

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Especially since people had noted his penchant for acting creepy around young girls for decades. For example, here’s snippet from an interview he gave to Playboy magazine when he was just a naive young 40-year-old:

He goes on: “I’m open-minded about sex. I’m not above reproach; if anything, I’m below reproach. I mean, if I was caught in a love nest with 15 12-year-old girls tomorrow, people would think, yeah, I always knew that about him.” Allen pauses. “Nothing I could come up with would surprise anyone,” he ventures helplessly. “I admit to it all.”

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It unfortunately happens waaaaayyyy too often. I know someone abused by her step father for years. My kid has a step father now and it worries me partly, but thus far he seems cool…

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It is a repugnant statement. It should also be taken in context of her growing up with a mother who, per her brother’s account, repeatedly and viciously abused her. Maybe marrying Woody Allen was her best way to escape her mother’s abuse? Per Moses Farrow, Mia Farrow drove three of her children to their deaths. Soon-Yi wanted to escape Mia Farrow, by her own statements, and it seems like marrying Woody Allen worked for that. Does she have no agency here?

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Apparently not - if you listen to Woody.

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Weren’t there also multiple eye witnesses to his creepy behavior with his own daughter Dylan? People who saw him sticking his face in her lap, and putting her fingers in his mouth?

O_O

Sadly, I know it does; and I think those parents who knowingly turned a blind eye to abuse are complete failures.

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I try to listen. Here’s Woody:

Q. Soon-Yi never treated you as a father figure?

A. Not remotely. She never said two words to me. For years I thought Soon-Yi was studying to be a nun. She was going to Sacred Heart, so I thought, well, I had no idea what she was doing. I was only interested in my own kids.

And here’s Soon-Yi:

I’m not a retarded little underage flower who was raped, molested and spoiled by some evil stepfather-not by a long shot. I’m a psychology major at college who fell for a man who happens to be the ex-boyfriend of Mia. I admit it’s offbeat, but let’s not get hysterical.

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“She had a very, very difficult upbringing in Korea: She was an orphan on the streets, living out of trash cans and starving as a 6-year-old. And she was picked up and put in an orphanage. And so I’ve been able to really make her life better. I provided her with enormous opportunities, and she has sparked to them. She’s educated herself and has tons of friends and children and got a college degree and went to graduate school, and she has traveled all over with me now.”

Nope - nothing paternal in his upbringing of her.

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Oh! I thought he meant he was agreeing that he’s a dipshit and that #MeToo can use him as an example of the jerky men they’re talking about. I was going to agree with him.

Nevermind

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Wait a minute.

In one batch of articles, he claims to have been “very paternal to her,” and that her response to ‘having someone be paternal’ was what started the initial attraction; in the one you just posted he claims “she never said two words to him.”

Both cannot be true.

Devil’s advocate bullshit be damned; everything about this man and his behavior towards females in his family reeks to high heaven.

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