Good Feminist

[Phoebe]

To me that phrase is more meaningful from the perspective of whomever is with the lady, and carries the faint stench of the virgin-whore nonsense. That lady isn't going to embarrass you, her owner, by flaunting her sexuality in public, but she always makes it available to you in private in extreme fashion. It's very much about the you and not about the lady. Whatever that lady is, she's obedient.

The view of modesty I was reading the defense of is more about modesty as expressing a choice of relationship to the world or others, in a particular context. This is a ridiculous show and kind of a ridiculous illustration but it's the first one to spring to mind: on Ally McBeal, Portia de Rossi's character always had her hair done up in elaborate and rigid styles that communicated, I am here to do my serious lawyering job and I am not here to receive bullshit, flirting, or anything else. Same with the clothes. When she wanted to have a relationship with John, or started to want this, she would sometimes put her hair down or dress differently, which on the show was like a sign that she had decided to be receptive to some other mode of relationship with him besides law partner. I'm not endorsing the tropes about how modesty manifests in a braided bun or high buttoned collar - I mean, those are kind of silly - but the interesting part was the suggestion she made deliberate choices about how she wanted to be perceived, and the rest of the characters (unlike in Real Life) were made to go along with her decision. Put another way, when she wanted to be seen as attractive in the "street", so to speak, she decided to do that. In a reality where women dressed chin to heel in snow suits can be harassed on the streets, this is a weird concept because it demands the authority to bend reality. But then, modesty might often seem like a harmful or misguided cause, at the very least co-optable or complicit in sexist stereotyping, and if it's going to mean anything people will have to seize the reins of it.

To continue with the other side of the example, maybe the modest person is also modest in the sheets, if that's what s/he wants to be. Being modest in that situation helps to communicates one's desires for a certain kind of relation or encounter much as being a freak does, I would imagine. And as the flawed but inestimable Cardi B tells us, a bad bitch does indeed make many people nervous. Modesty is about how people comport themselves in the world as much as what they wear or how much skin they show, and again, that's often used as a sexist tool against women who are told not to occupy much space, and to fold themselves under into nothingness, or sit there quietly looking cute, or...

Or maybe it's just that I like the stealthy apparatus of boring clothes and hiding in plain sight like a shrubbery, until it's my time not to.

[bralbovsky]

As someone who basically wears exactly the same ensemble regardless of environment, I'm a little aware of the whole sumptuary laws pressure to signal one's role in the culture through clothing. It's tough to ignore, given how superficial most folks are.

I've been at it a long time, and though I wear what I want, it's not without cost, and I don't see any meaningful movement on that needle.

[Phoebe]

Where is the thumbs up. God I hate FB, it infects everything. Anyway, yeah. I'm also feeling pretty freaking happy because my pants are slightly too large now thanks to a merciless month of working out, so maybe part of the stealth thing comes from bad, deeply internalized desires to hide in a void of black pants.

[Phoebe]

I take a break, mentally pooped, and am hit with the most annoying array of further poop.
Louis CK apparently decided that the way to re-launch himself into the public eye after a brief time-out was to foist himself unannounced on a live audience, and then make jokes about rape whistles. Ahhh... no. Just no. It casts an even worse light on the past stories about his behavior. Why would he think this was a good idea?

Meanwhile, a bunch of other guys in a similar position - laying low after stories about acts ranging from alleged misconduct to pretty damn sure ya falsely imprisoned and then raped people! - have decided this is the right moon-season to discuss their return to public life. Matt Lauer imo should not be hired as a fucking dog catcher, much less a "journalist" or show host. Yet somehow he is lumped in with Aziz Ansari, when it's hardly clear to me why Ansari was being accused of something in the first place. It's a problem, you know? So then people will reason thus and so, that if Aziz can be doing his thing, well then, why not people like Louis CK, and if Louis CK, why not Matt Lauer? There are more examples in that chain but ... eh.

Meanwhile, FYI: I have to arrange my life such that I can pick up my child from the bus stop every day, or have her picked up, or watched, or something, because some public masturbator is roaming around harassing everyone from girls to women in the area. I hate these people. It has happened to me, at a time when I wasn't in the throes of angry, hotflashing menopause and figured I should just try to get the hell away from the person as fast as possible and call the police later. I tell you now, as God is my witness, if I should see a person like that near my children, he had better run the hell away from me.

[mimekiller]

Louie CK is funny and can continue to joke about anything in the world, I will laugh, I don't care if he masturbates for an audience. Good for him! Those harpies prob just wanted to a career boost.

Matt Lauer is a monster

Azi should voice apu!

[Phoebe]

Agreed about Lauer, if even he did only a fraction of what we have heard. I have totally changed my view of the Louis CK situation though. His publicist or whoever works for him was doing incredible acrobatics, because at the time the allegations and his self-aggrandizing apology came out, I hadn't heard any of the specific claims that he violated women's consent and harassed people who were his subordinates at work. I really wonder, and if I had time on my hands would check, if they purposely had people write overall negative but confused takes on what he actually did, so that he could stick to this hard line of "I always asked the women first". That was consistent with what I knew but it didn't add up, and of course for me that is a big deal, whether people had agreed to what happened but found it gross, or whether he had forced himself on people. Now come to find out, apparently he DID violate their consent. Allegations include him grabbing a woman, blocking the door so others couldn't escape him jerking off, jerking off on multiple occasions in front of an employee whose job depended on him. I mean, RIGHT NOW I am all eyes out for a guy who is pulling up on strangers and doing this, and God help him if he shows up near me. That's the type of thing Louis CK was doing - it was not at all how he painted it as, well, I asked them first and they agreed, and I worried that i was using my great fame and wonderfulness to sway them... Nah, dude, you forced it on them against their wills! It sickens me that a bunch of people were cheering for him after that, when he has shown no actual contrition and apparently expects to go on doing what he was doing before. Has he gone to therapy? Because you don't wave a wand and cure yourself of the desire to expose yourself to people. Shit, maybe he was the dude who did this to me in an interstate restroom, and if I had been brave enough to fight him into submission until the police came, maybe we could have stopped all of it! Seriously, fuck him, he's evil.

[bralbovsky]

I have a long knife in the car for just such occasions. I have extras. If you wish, I could send you one.

[Phoebe]

Maybe he's the one running around harassing people in our neighborhood, and will meet his justice that way. he probably figures nobody here will recognize him. We all need a Carbohal, loaded and carried in our handbag.

[mimekiller]

lmao

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2018/9 ... igh-school

[Phoebe]

I don't think we know enough to judge what Feinstein was doing. The other side of that coin is, she doggedly respected the wishes of a woman who wasn't ready to come forward publicly with this allegation.

[bralbovsky]

Also, my general distaste for Feinstein aside, what does it say about who we are as a culture when half the population is justifiably afraid to come forward with criminal allegations?
btw, we need to add to that the demographic that's male, but un-privileged enough to be met with suspicion instead of sympathy as a default. So, too brown, too effeminate...

The necessity to do the calculus is the problem. We have ceded all kinds of moral territory to the bad guys. Neighborhoods where "you shouldn't have been" parties where "you shouldn't have been drinking" ...all those places and times and situations where the empirically selfish or violent or evil action is somehow more permissible. (But, mind you, only when the perp is white and male, and rich enough to pass. Riches, by the way, can purchase a certain amount of whiteness.)

So, yes, on this thread or another, it should absolutely be disqualifying. Certainly any physical act, and certain social or verbal behaviors should count also.

If we need to figure out what the root problem is, It is an application of sex for demonstration of power.

[bralbovsky]

On the topic of old news: anybody who has had a mustache for any length of time knew/knows that Clarence Thomas is a craven liar.

It doesn't take too many cans of soda to lose a hair, painfully, to the modern push tab. Yes, it looks like what he crassly said it looked like. Yes, it was an opportunity to make a harmless, if tasteless, joke.
That he was too dishonest and cowardly to admit to it is an indication that many other things we suspected about him but lacked eyewitnesses, were likely also true.

He wronged Anita Hill, has been a lackluster and obtuse justice for decades, and thereby wronged all of us.

Yes, disqualifying. Even if she rebuffs you repeatedly because you just don't f-ing get the hint.

Can you be my auto mechanic, sure, can you design bridges, sure (behave at the office), should you be involved in any profession or occupation which requires sensitivity as a professional matter? Judges, Legislators, executives, HR, education, health care? Prolly not.

[Phoebe]

The things they did to Anita Hill were shocking. The lengths to which people went to concoct lies about her, to destroy her life in any way possible. And this is a woman who was accustomed to being harassed regularly by racist students who didn't think she had any business being their professor.

Now we see it happening again. The false attributions of motive - the effort to dig up anything about her or her family that could be used to cast doubt on her story. The death threats, forcing her from her home. It's horrifying that the price of making an accusation like this alone is to have your family's lives ruined at least temporarily, and your own life damaged forever. People still hate Anita Hill; she is still dealing with the aftermath.

The mendacity happens on the other side too: Now we have people digging through every throwaway remark Kavanaugh ever made, trying to turn it into support for the idea that he's a sexual predator. And why? Isn't it enough for this one person's claim to be investigated and heard? It almost feels like cheapening of her story when a bunch of tv talking heads are poring over some halfassed joke he made that pretty clearly could have been made by any innocent person. She's alleging a violent act that he never responded to and, if she's right, has been lying about. Isn't that enough? It should have been enough that he seems to have lied to Congress both years ago and again today. I don't see how we tolerate that in a federal judge, much less a justice.

[Phoebe]

Dissonance, disorienting:

In one ear: Caitlyn Flanagan skewering the notion that a 15 year old in 82 would even have known the term date rape, much less reported it; the polite version of her facts also here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... pe/571330/

An important quote from that piece is that 75% of men never assaulted or attempted to assault anyone. Whole gender being falsely accused by Republicans of being inevitably violent, like it's not a problem.

In the Other Ear: a leftist writer who exposes the white nationalist movement was fired from his job after Jezebel published a piece relating stories of him being a crap boyfriend, and suggested these "gray area" but legal actions need the metoo treatment: https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost ... 82f63a/amp

Apparent according to the young internet feminists, it's okay to agree to everything someone does but still expect him to lose his job because, after all, several past girlfriends agree he was an asshole who made them feel bad. Um, hello, can we please get to the happy place where the nation generally recognizes criminal assault as such and takes it seriously, before we try to attack shitty boyfriends? It's kind of unreal. One wonders how they would feel if men ganged up to get women fired with reports that they, as girlfriends, cruelly withheld sex or attention, made rude comments on their appearance, got into long arguments, demanded money, and so on.

[Phoebe]

"Gaslighting" meaning: a victim of abuse is maliciously convinced by others that nothing was wrong, and his or her memory of events is delusional. Variations on this theme too.

"Gaslighting" according to stupids whose stupidity undermines victims of abuse by voiding their autonomy completely: you grow accustomed to a certain level of attention from a man, and then he withdraws his attentions and maybe even gets sulky and sullen, making snide remarks or complaining about you. You think it was your fault and feel bad (the gaslighting) even though he was just being a bitch (intentional word).

Now let's complain to his employer.

[mimekiller]

[Phoebe]

This writer who was fired. It's unbelievable. A whole group of women were interviewed, agreed this dude (Jack something the IVth) was a crap and manipulative boyfriend, and that they had sex with him they felt bad about though it was all "legal", and then after an article about their complaints was published the other day, he was fired. Meanwhile behind door number one we have people in the highest offices who don't understand even one thing about sexual assault and apparently remain blissfully unaware that attempted rape is a crime!

[Bonefish]

It's fuckin weird. I am getting this theme of "if you are not vocally calling for Kavanagh's resignation and castration, you are a rapist!" from some folks. Like, look, I ain't defending the fucker or his actions, I'm just keeping my mouth shut and waiting to see what happens. That doesn't mean I secretly want to rape you.

It would be funny if I wasn't so desperately in need of human connection and interaction. But now, there's this whole minefield to be navigated before I can just relax and talk and feel a little less suicidal. But NOOOOOO, god forbid I don't have my hair in a man bun, wear a "I'm with her" shirt and make fun of Christians. I am obvious rapist, unlike the past five fuckin dudes you have dated who have all been serial abusers?

And I don't even want to fuck you. I just want to have a beer, talk to people, and not have to listen to vapid bullshit.

[bralbovsky]

Sadly no surprise that the hostile environment for victims creates paranoia and suspicion as a default. They're entitled to their paranoia and suspicion: it's what they've received from the folks in charge. Trust me, it wasn't their invention.
If we codify, at least in practice, protection for rapists, then people who are afraid of them have to develop protective behaviors of their own.
If you make it ok for police to shoot brown men on the slightest provocation, codes will develop that reduce the number of interactions, and all we end up with is mutual suspicion compounded by the ignorance born of a lack of interaction.

This is the best argument there is for an egalitarian society that treats everyone (really, everyone) as equals in courtrooms and classrooms and cafes.

If you feel the law or the authorities will not protect you despite a clear delineation between good guy/bad guy (and fairness is actually more critical when the line is less clear), you will take your own steps, even if they isolate you from worthwhile writers on this board.

This is why the men who built this system and deepen it have to go (I have stopped caring how). They may deserve the quasi handmaid's tale culture they've created, but the rest of us certainly do not.

[Bonefish]

It's a whole mess of shit. Ok, let's say we crucify Kavvie for this. We nail his dick to the fuckin' gate. What precedent does that set? What is the lowest bar for "proof" that we're going to accept, and how far back will we go?

It's... it's vaguely reminiscent of The Crucible.