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The 'me too' movement

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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 9:21 am
Post subject: The 'me too' movementReply with quote

We’ve already had a thread on Harvey Weinstein, but a lot has happened since late last year – it seems now that much of the Western world is having an earnest (and, perhaps, long overdue) discussion about harassment, consent and sexual ethics.

In the past, the odd celebrity (Rolf Harris, Roman Polanski) would every now and then be found guilty of heinous crimes and face the consequences; now, women en masse (as well as some men) are speaking openly about the things that have been done to them, ranging from rape to groping to uncomfortable encounters and everything in-between — and it genuinely starts to appear that nearly every woman on the planet has been victimised in some way (hence the ‘me too’ hashtag). For the first time, it seems, male public figures are having to face up to mistreatment of sexual partners and facing consequences for their actions. And, perhaps for the first time, ordinary men find themselves looking through their own memories and wondering if they too have committed violations.

It feels like a moment of reckoning, and something revolutionary. But it’s also raised a lot of questions along the way, such as whether people are still entitled to a presumption of innocence, whether victimhood is being fetishised, whether trivial acts are being conflated with genuinely violent and abusive ones, whether the ‘justice’ being enacted here – the ‘disappearing’ of alleged perpetrators from public life – is appropriate or deeply sinister, and whether such concerns are mere distractions from what’s really important here, the vast incidence of sexual harm.

Some points of discussion that have emerged over the past few months:

• Kevin Spacey’s last-minute erasure from the Oscar-bait film All the Money in the World, an act that has been compared to Stalinist airbrushing. (Other instances include James Franco being digitally removed from a Vanity Fair cover.) A website has sprung up helpfully listing every film that an alleged sexual misconduct perpetrator has worked on, so that viewers can avoid them.

• Comedian Aziz Ansari’s one-night stand with a young woman, recounted in intricate and painful detail on a feminist blog, leading to debates over sex that falls into a grey area – in which consent is given despite obvious discomfort, and ‘non-verbal cues’ are ignored – and whether Ansari too belongs in the ever-expanding Hollywood leper colony.

• The resurrection of 25-year-old (heavily contested, then and now) allegations of child abuse against Woody Allen from his daughter, with actors in his latest film donating their earnings to charity.

• A feminist backlash in France, in which 100 (mostly older) women sign a (heavily criticised) open letter condemning the movement as puritanical, a witch-hunt and a denial of women’s sexual agency, a position echoed to varying degrees by older feminist luminaries like Germaine Greer and Margaret Atwood.

• Local figures in Australia like Don Burke and Craig McLachlan being accused of serial harassment.

• Geoffrey Rush suing The Daily Telegraph, after they print a single, unsubstantiated claim against him while mocking him in headlines as ‘King Leer’.

I’m sure there’s much more to come, too; but there’s plenty there to discuss already. What I want to know is, how do you feel about all this? Do you find yourself supporting some things and not others? Do you think you’ve done anything in the past that might be the subject of such claims? And what do you think the long-term outcome of all of this will be?

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Last edited by David on Sat Jan 27, 2018 9:31 am; edited 3 times in total
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Joined: 17 Mar 2003


PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 9:26 am
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a thread on Harvey Weinstein but happened last year – it seems that much of the Western world is having an earnest and long overdue discussion about harassment consent and sexual ethics feels like a moment of reckoning and something revolutionary? What else feels like that?
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Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne

PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 10:12 am
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The presumption of innocence is precious, and there is no crime without law. If laws are broken, there is crime and it should be reported, investigated, tried and punished. If not, then it is shameful to publicly allow someone’s reputation to be shredded by untested and untried allegations.

We are now clearly moving into the next phase of the abolition of liberty. We have had the creeping prohibitions on free speech, the moral intolerance of opinions that are not politically correct, the forcing of small business owners to act against their conscience. We are moving through mob denunciations, and showing that people can be hounded from their jobs because of what they say and think, rather than what they have done.

And further, now, to the point where people are hounded out because of ancient allegations based on deeply ambiguous or negligible evidence. In Britain recently, a significant number of claims of molestation by public figures have been shown to be simply false, made either through psychiatric delusion or malice, yet police have made public pronouncements effectively vilifying individuals who were not charged. Cliff Richard, (UK Europe Minister) Leon Brittain and even the dead Ted Heath and Bishop Bell have been exposed to public humiliation by an overzealous police force on the basis of proven falsehoods or uncorroborated allegations of long-ago events by a single individual. The case of Bishop Bell will probably not be known in Australia, but it is worth reading, for it is truly shocking. After a report showed that there was no good evidence against a man revered in his time for moral courage, the Archbishop of Canterbury nonetheless re-stated that there “remained a cloud over his name” because of a single, rather contradictory allegation made by a woman in old age about events thirty-five years earlier.

And this is where we are : the victim must be believed, and so the accused is required to prove they are innocent. In our boundless arrogance and self-regarding superiority to history, we are undoing centuries of hard-won rights against arbitrary conviction and punishment. This will be the long-term outcome not just of #metoo, but also of the seemingly unstoppable rise of identity politics which pits the baying, uncritical crowd against the individual. The cultural revolution is gathering head, and I cannot see what will stop it from devastating our rights and safety.

In answer to your other question, I am male and no, I have never done anything that could make me liable to such a complaint. This is not because I am saintly - I am a firm believer that there is plenty of evil in all of us - but rather because I hated rejection in such matters, so I was uninterested in any woman who did not effectively make the first move. If I am innocent, it because of a personality type rather than moral goodness and not any credit to me.

I was, however, accused formally once by a very delusional female employee of “bullying” when I sought to terminate her employment for repeated incompetence. At the investigation, I was exonerated quite quickly, but in today’s climate who knows what might have happened as people in authority act with supreme cowardice and seek to show their automatic support for a victim ?

We are running headlong toward an abyss. It is a matter of time until far deeper and nastier ugliness breaks, though this feels nasty enough.

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Skids Cancer

Quitting drinking will be one of the best choices you make in your life.


Joined: 11 Sep 2007
Location: Joined 3/6/02 . Member #175

PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 12:45 pm
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Geez, if you went back to the 80's when I was doing my apprenticeship, EVERY tradesman was guilty of some sort of harrasment(going by todays sooks).

We just grew up and dealt with it.

The old style of picking up a chick would probably be seen as some form of sexual harrasment by the precious feminists and snowflakes of today.

Sure, nobody should be subjected to REAL harrasment of any sort but todays limits are a bit soft IMO.

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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 3:19 pm
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^ I well believe it! The question is whether anyone should have ever had to put up with that.
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stui magpie Gemini

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.


Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto

PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 3:28 pm
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it is an interesting view on modern society.

Firstly, the presumption of innocence must remain, but in the current cases the mere accusation is enough to ruin a career. At least temporarily in Hollywood. I don't like that. it's also pretty clear that in the case of Hollywood, there have been women who were more than willing to use their sexuality as a tool to get work in the early stages. The reference to directors and producers having a "casting couch" didn't happen by accident.

The range of accusations make it difficult to get a clear grasp on what is acceptable and what's not, along with this insistance that non-verbal clues or hints should be sufficient explanation. FFS, the way some of them carry on, the office romance is dead as no sane mane will be game to ask a co worker on a date for fear of being labelled a sexual harasser. Most blokes don't get subtle non-verbal clues that women think are crystal clear, subtle doesn't work.

personally, similar to Mugwump, apart from one short lived office romance more than 20 years ago, I made a clear personal policy to keep work and personal separate and adopted a hands off position, no physical contact with female co workers or staff at all in case it was misinterpreted.

I think what's happening is probably necessary to give the entertainment industry an enema and re-set the ground rules. At the moment, the correction seems to have swung too far (possibly influenced by the misandrist segment of the feminist movement), but it should come back and stabilise at a sensible central point within time which is what usually happens.

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PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 3:31 pm
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Are there any other interesting view on modern society ?
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swoop42 Virgo

Whatcha gonna do when he comes for you?


Joined: 02 Aug 2008
Location: The 18

PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 3:49 pm
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Skids wrote:
Geez, if you went back to the 80's when I was doing my apprenticeship, EVERY tradesman was guilty of some sort of harrasment(going by todays sooks).

Or perhaps it was blatant harassment then as it is now and women are only now finally calling men out on behaviour that has always made them feel very uncomfortable.

We just grew up and dealt with it.


As men we haven't had to deal with anything other than a damaged ego when advances weren't reciprocated. Women on the other hand have to worry and sometimes deal with unwanted or threatening behaviour whether it be physical or verbal when dealing with a mans bruised ego or his simple belief he can get away with it because it's a personality trait of his.

The old style of picking up a chick would probably be seen as some form of sexual harrasment by the precious feminists and snowflakes of today.


I think most people in social situations enter any engagement in good faith and inappropriate behaviour is generally obvious to most in reality. Of course their are always the odd exception to this.

Sure, nobody should be subjected to REAL harrasment of any sort but todays limits are a bit soft IMO.


More likely it's just the righting of the power balance between men and women we are now seeing and we as men have to accept and realise that behaviour we thought was okay until now actually wasn't and the non objection from women in the past was done more out of fear of reprisal, intimidation or strangely not wanting to embarrass the man in the moment.

Of course their will always be incidents that very much appear in the grey to those of us not witness to it like the one surrounding Aziz Ansari whereby two individuals can read a situation totally different and come to a conclusion at the opposite ends of a spectrum.

This can occur between any two individuals of course as well all have different life experiences and personalities that influence our perceptions and it's certainly not just a male and female thing on how we see the world.

These types of grey incidents or a minority where a person might have an agenda or be mentally suspect is where the problems will arise.

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ronrat 



Joined: 22 May 2006
Location: Thailand

PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 6:27 pm
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It is a modern day Salem witch hunt and McCarthyism. Some careers will/have been ruined and it won't all me male. Making movies is expensive and you wonder whether backers will keep doing it if there are screams every time a movie is released about some percieved slight or attention seeking claim made. Less intersting movies will be made and the public will stop going and find other things to do. It will be a feast for the lawyers as well if , as it should , these accusations are tested in a law court. Some actors will simply not be cast because the financial backers won't want to run the risk of nonsense claims derailing the project by known claimants.
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David Libra

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Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 8:20 pm
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You’re describing exactly the situation under Weinstein – except that these things really were happening, and those who wanted to speak out about them were having their careers ruined. Let’s at least acknowledge progress where it occurs.
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think positive Libra

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Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere

PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 8:46 pm
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David wrote:
^ I well believe it! The question is whether anyone should have ever had to put up with that.


No, they shouldn’t. I was lucky, whilst I copped sexist remarks from looks, body shape to my capabilities on the tools of, um all kinds, the things they did to the guys was unbelievable, I remeber one guy, sumith desilva, they called him smith refused to learn his name, he was a skinny little dude and they had him in tears quite a few times. And they really did have a cock block. With measurements on it. They shit in guys tool boxes and I heard about, though never saw, physical violence. Actually yes I did, one massive guy would knee me in the thigh every time he walked passed, I had a permanent bruise. He was a scary prick. Really glad when he left.

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stui magpie Gemini

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.


Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto

PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 9:13 pm
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The 80's were fun, weren't they?

Coming to Melbourne as a 19 year old kid from the bush, some of the shit I heard in the office made me cringe, and this was the era of dead baby jokes.

One woman, extremely attractive, late 20's had married a greek bloke so was subjected to a regular stream of anal sex jokes which she must have been able to hear. "Jill's sitting side saddle today, must have been a big night getting the shit chute rammed"

Big black Mauritian dude was casually referred to as "the Savage". The man could drink though. Early on, no one would get in a shout with me on a Friday night after work as I drank too fast. (Dad's training). Eric came down one night and said "I'll drink with you Stui, but I only have 3 pots". Say that in your head in a deep Jamaican accent and you're close. Basically skolled 3 pots in about 3 minutes and off he went. I went solo after that and slowed down a tad.

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think positive Libra

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Joined: 30 Jun 2005
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 10:51 pm
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Hehe
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ronrat 



Joined: 22 May 2006
Location: Thailand

PostPosted: Sun Jan 28, 2018 5:49 am
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Walk on girls in darts and maybe grid girls are gorn. Friend of mine who is now a Dr as in a PHD in gene therapy did a gig. 4 times the pay, free uniforms and free salon vouchers. Waved a few flags and went upstairs to serve beers.
I have worked as a marshall at golf (I was free) and the drink girls included the now wife of an ex Pie forward. She worked on a few quiz quiz shows. Without those gigs she was unemployable. Do you want attractive girls to do , Go on the game. They are not all bimbos.So either get rid of HECs or let them do what they do. Or just say so sorry you are too attractive to be employed. Have a look at the well paid sportsmans WGs. Ugly are they. Scrap the red carpet at the Brownlow then.

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think positive Libra

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PostPosted: Sun Jan 28, 2018 6:57 am
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whilst I’d gladly see some of those dissappear, the whole point is that men or women should be able to do any job they want without being molested or copping unwanted explicit banter. You really should be able to walk down the steeet totally naked without fear of being molested. The grid girls are there for their looks, and the job description doesn’t include groping.
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