The biggest issue to me in all of this, like most of life, is the absolutes being thrown out. This isn't a black and white issue. There is so much grey it's not even funny. The lumping together of all these accusations is wrong. The over simplification of the problem is wrong. The overreactions and under reactions are equally wrong. Not every man accused is guilty. Every case is completely separate and should be treated as such. I worry about the false accusations as well but a lot of women that make those accusations are found out. Companies are definitely going to overreact so I understand some men being fearful....but in the end if you don't do anything wrong then you typically don't have anything to worry about. Not every man that makes a comment towards a woman is a pervert. Uninvited groping is always wrong. Misinterpreting signals happens....but putting your hands on a woman when you know you shouldn't can't be mistaken. The "she was asking for it" defense doesn't apply anymore and it never should have in the first place. Telling a woman she looks nice in a dress is okay. Telling a woman a dress makes her tits look great is wrong. Unless she wants you to tell her that...in which case she will probably let you know. But assuming she wants you to tell her is wrong. Taking a chance and doing it in the work place with a woman you barely know....is just stupid. Don't do that. Hollywood had this coming for a long time. Men in general had this coming for a long time. And yes...there are women that use sex and their sex appeal to their advantage. Women in Hollywood have gotten ahead by giving head and more and made money doing it. To pretend they didn't would be silly. To pretend that makes anything else okay would be asinine. There is good reason to be suspect of accusations that come out years and years after the alleged incident or incidents. There is also good reason why victims don't always come forward. We don't spend enough time trying to understand the victims because unless you are a victim you can't truly understand. My wife has been sexually abused. It happened long before I met her when she was a teenager. But she still carries mental scars of it. My oldest son was accused, falsely, of sexual abuse. He was arrested, charged, and found not guilty after the alleged victim recanted her story in court and admitted to lying and falsifying her testimony and evidence. He still carries mental scars of that. It nearly derailed his entire life and career. That happened over ten years ago and it still feels fresh to him. I have a cousin that did indeed commit sexual assault. On an underage girl, no less. She didn't come forward after the crime. She was afraid to because my cousin was a state police officer and a former high school football star in a small town where being one makes you sort of a god....but she told a friend who told a friend who told a friend and the story got back to someone who decided to investigate and talked the girl into finally coming forward over two years later. My cousin, the piece of crap he is, lost his job and did some serious time behind bars. I'm certain he still carries mental scars...the girl he violated carries mental and physical scars. This issue runs deeper than most people are willing to imagine. There is a lot more than meets the eye and probably a lot more than most will comprehend. It's definitely not black and white. Personally, I'm glad the movement finally came. I hope it's sustained and I hope it's culture changing. I hope it opens the eyes of many men and women that didn't take sexual harassment seriously. I know it's going to come with problems...overreactions and false accusations mainly....but I also know that we can work past that. The problem will never be solved...problems this big never can be. But it can get better...and it needs to. A man most definitely can misread signs. But...where you misread them and how you try to make that advance on her is important. Was it in the office breakroom? Probably bad. Did you reach in for a kiss at the end of a date? Maybe she didn't want you to....but doing so wouldn't make you a bad person or sexual deviant. Did you try a second time after she said no? Now, you're crossing the line. Do you stare at her boobs during a conversation while you're in the work place? Maybe you should stop. Do you tell her that her top makes her boobs look nice.....now you definitely crossed the line. There's a fair amount of common sense in all of this. But there also has to be an understanding that it changes from person to person. Harassment, sexual or otherwise, is so murky because what qualifies as harassment to one person doesn't to another. It's the reason most workplaces overreact...because they need to set the baseline really low for the most sensitive of, for lack of a better word, victims. If a person says they are offended by something....be it a man showing his penis to them or the wrong colored christmas lights....then modern day workplaces must take action and do so fairly across the board or risk their own ruin. That is the world we live in, like it or not. Is the world too sensitive? Yes. But we got here because we are overcompensating for thousands of years of gender, sexual, racial, and moral inequality. As a previous poster said...we made that bed and now we must lie in it. Pretty sure the majority of feminists (because it's a word that doesn't require quotations) are simply seeking gender equality.
I put the word in quotes because it is a non inclusive word in the way it is being marketed by liberals. There are millions of smart women in the world who are highly capable and highly educated women who do not believe in aspects of what these liberal women believe including women who do not believe in abortion and other liberal causes but do believe in action against sexual predators, equal pay for equal work, and other harmful aspects of society. And these same women are somehow not called "feminists". Otherwise I agree with most of your post.
So telling a woman who had a boob job her tits look good is wrong? Why did she get them done? So men would notice, but noticing is sexual harassment.
Where and when are you telling her? Is it someone you already know? At work? At home? If you don't know a woman you work with very well and barely talk to her....just walking up to her, while she's working, and telling her she has nice tits is probably wrong. Would you tell your guy friend his dick looks good in his tight pants? And a lot of women get breast implants for other reasons than just impressing men. I don't recall saying noticing a woman is sexual harassment though....maybe you could point out where I typed that?
Feminist is a label you give yourself...not a label someone else gives you. If you support feminism...you are a feminist. Men can be feminists. The basic principles of feminism is simply advocating sexual and gender equality.
Wasn't aiming at anyone in general BWW, just making a blanket statement. Just thinking about my days at FRB when this one woman had a breast implant done and guys talked about it all the time. No one would have dare said anything to that bitch because she had already sued and won a sexual harassment case. Not sure what it about because it happened before I got to that branch.
Maybe she actually was sexually harassed. Or maybe she was just manipulated someone. That isn't isolated to women...men play the game to in order to get what they want. For me, at work, it always came down to knowing your audience. Anyone here ever tell a racist joke? I know I have. I've told lots of inappropriate jokes. When I was at work I knew who I could tell them to and who I couldn't. There's a time and a place for everything. The men that are truly guilty of being slime are the ones that use their position of power to manipulate women. To abuse them physically and mentally and to violate their personal freedom. Men like Weinstein, Roy Moore (allegedly), and Matt Lauer. There's no grey area with those guys. Nothing taken out of context. No excuses to be made. They used their positions in life to prey on others. And they should be held accountable.
Sometimes it takes some people a really long time to feel comfortable enough about their experience to talk about it or report it. Some NEVER feel well enough to discuss it. Like most people, I have a story too. But why blame people and their 'coping mechanisms"? Victim blaming. Sorry the world can't be as tough as you and do it the way you would, Chuck Norris. That is a prime example of another hurdle that keeps people quiet. When they hear the murmurings of how their way of dealing is wrong and will eventually be wrong for the perpetrators as well because it TOOK TOO FUCKING LONG. Now, that's fucking bullshit, and honestly, its another form of victim blaming. Well, you shoulda done this... you shoulda done that... you shouldn't have been wearing that... you shouldn't.... Fuck that shit. It takes as long as it takes.
Just as I suspected... #VaginaDentata edit: Also, I was looking back at babyfan's comments and I couldn't find where she was calling all men sexual abusers, as you allege. Care to point that out specifically?
no one claimed to hear of the rapp-spacey story bf rapp said it ? he was 14 when he happened and acted for years afterwards and he was in one of the biggest plays of all time and was one of the leads, if not the main lead. he kept acting, so he kept quiet. spacey wasn't as famous either when this event happened. he was an almost unknown actor. he wasn't a 2x Oscar winner, Tony and Emmy winner like he was when Rapp came out.
the movie Disclosure is exactly what some of you guys were referring too with the woman in charge and using her body to sexually intimidate a man.
Why would anyone have known? I'm not saying not coming forward is okay. But there are reasons people don't. In Hollywood a big reason is they want to keep working. For years whistle blowers in Hollywood have found themselves on the outside looking in. It's a ugly, corrupt world in glamorous tinsel town. I don't see how Spacey's stardom plays a role. Is the idea that Rapp only came forward because Spacey is a star? Maybe he only finally came forward because others have and it's been a watershed moment. Safety in numbers.
If you were to take every 100 work place sexual harassment incident....what percentage of them do you think would see the woman as the aggressor? And that movie sucked.
bears - stardom does play a huge role. if Rapp came out when it happened in 1988 and said "some actor tried to seduce me." People would say "who was it?" "Some actor named Kevin Spacey." "who?" Now tell the same story in 2017. "Some actor tried to seduce me at a party when I was 14 and he was in his late 20's." "Who was it?" "Two time Oscar and Emmy Award winner Kevin Spacey." Holy shit ! It's a huge difference. Hollywood had their blacklist of people tied to Communism in the 50's and McCarthyism and were banned for life. Some kept working under a different name and 1 guy won an Oscar under his changed name. Rapp coming forward Bears was really the huge stepping stone in the Metoo campaign. One came forward about Weinstein and then when Rapp came out the floodgates opened! Soon Spacey victims came forward and Weinstein had 5 accusers. Then Louis CK victims came etc. Rapp brought people out of hiding bc he came forward on Spacey. Netflix gets rid of Spacey from a show he was the star and Executive Producer in and Ridley Scott replaces him in 10 days with Christopher Plummer, who just got an Oscar nomination, for "All the Money in the World."
1% - the movie sucked but it was mentioned as women using their sexuality to get ahead and dominate men. that movie was about that.
Its interesting to me how many people who've posted seemed to have no interest in answering the question of the OP, which is the primary reason for this thread being here. Do you even know what the question was? Did you take it in? Or was it just too minor an issue to be bothered with when presented with the opportunity of lumping everything into the one category and putting the world to rights? I'll answer the question Jeanquev. Underdog made a good point in his unfashionably thoughtful and well-reasoned post. It is a slippery slope and we must be vigilant of that. I'm not a law expert, i have no tangible knowledge/experience to bring to bear on this. Nevertheless, in cases like the ones you've mentioned, where serial predators have been able to commit continued crimes, often over many years because people with knowledge of said events stood by and did nothing....my personal opinion is there should def be consequences for these people involving the law. Dunno how you go about that? Looking at some way of re-writing the legal requirements for how a person can be charged with being an accessory in cases involving serial sexual assault? I'm not a judge or a law expert. But i do know that in cases involving serial predators, if people can't be relied upon to act out of human decency(and we know from the cases mentioned in the OP that they often can't), then fear of prosecution and the destruction of their reputations should absolutely be on the table. Because F their cowardice, ruining lives that could've been saved from being ruined. And F losing their job being considered an adequate level of punishment. It isn't. The tacit suggestion in your question is that men being sexually harassed in the workplace matters less/is more acceptable compared to women because the % is much smaller. This minority doesn't matter somehow? Hopefully thats not what you were getting at buddy. Also, baby, i see you liked bww's comment. I hope you're going to tell me its because you didn't like that movie either.....
I agree stardom plays a big role in the impact of things like this. My point is more this.....it feels to me like a lot of people believe that Rapp, and others, have only come forward because people like Spacey are huge stars. Like that's the only reason. I don't agree with that. I don't think Rapp stayed silent before because Spacey was a relative unknown. I don't believe stardom plays a role in the motivation of the victim to come forward. I don't see how this relates to McCarthyism. With McCarthyism you had innocent people being blacklisted for no good reason. Today you have celebrities being outed for abusive crimes they allegedly committed.
I'd actually be willing to bet the number is higher than that and it would surprise me if it was 10%. There are a lot of women in power these days and I'm certain more than a handful of them have abused their powers. The difference being that most men who have been on the receiving end either don't mind it or would be embarrassed to come forward as it's somewhat emasculating to do so. Just an opinion.
