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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: Mon Feb 12, 2018 6:50 pm
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The trouble with it’s-PC-gone-mad types is that they conflate everything. This Shakespeare thing is just standard old conservative “won’t somebody think of the children” stuff. It’s as old as the hills and has nothing to do with feminism or the current backlash against sexual harassment. The fact is that the right and the left, in their various iterations, each have various trigger points that the bland, apolitical corporate public-relations world sucks in and churns out as cautious censorship. It’s terrible, but it’s not ‘political correctness’, it’s just what capitalism does right now (and yes, that shapes the thinking in public schools and other public services too).
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stui magpie Gemini

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.


Joined: 03 May 2005
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:16 pm
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Umm, capitalism does it? Confused
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Wokko Pisces

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Joined: 04 Oct 2005


PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:26 pm
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stui magpie wrote:
Umm, capitalism does it? Confused


The voluntary exchange of goods and services is evil remember. Rolling Eyes
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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 9:19 pm
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Hey, I’m not your radical socialist straw-man. Laughing I don’t think capitalism is evil at all; it’s a primarily value-free, amoral force. I also (and this may surprise some of you, especially Mugwump Wink) don’t seek for it to be overthrown, because I’m not sure I can envisage a functional society without it.

Where I think capitalism is relevant here is that it aggressively seeks to place monetary value on everything. In theory, the law of supply and demand in a capitalist system dictates that a certain resource is required, and thus is produced and sold at a profit. When that is fulfilled, the next step is to artificially create demand, which companies do by convincing us through advertising that we’re lacking something that we never realised we needed (like male pubic hair waxing or fidget spinners). We all understand this basic process.

Another thing is that artificially created demand is not just about goods but brands. And companies have increasingly realised that they can sell themselves not just by convincing people of their business’s quality (‘the burgers are better at Hungry Jack’s’) but of their virtue, too (QANTAS supports same-sex marriage, which means that they want you to think they’re a forward-thinking company that people with money want to do business with). Never thought that you’d care what an airline thought about social issues? Well now you do! (Or, at least, enough do to make it a sound business decision.)

And that virtue is not just limited to their corporate practices and ‘values’, but the virtue of their employees, too, whose private lives now also have a dollar sign above them. The more virtuous a company appears in all its facets, the more positive news stories (free publicity) it receives, the better their PR looks and the more products it sells. (And schools, even public ones, have a budget to balance.)

Our culture influences the way companies behave, and the way companies behave influences our culture. Consider a sentiment I read several times over the past week: if the AFL [a ruthlessly capitalistic organisation] saw fit to expel two of their executives for sleeping with co-workers, why can’t the government do the same to Barnaby Joyce? Now transfer that to every workplace and institution in the country, public or private. Corporate practice becomes the benchmark, both expected and demanded.

So this is all that is happening when we hear of things being censored, or people being sacked for silly Twitter posts, or companies giving in to noisy interest groups. It’s not ‘political correctness gone mad’. Political correctness is primarily a concern of the left; corporations, generally speaking, are not leftist. They’d be sacking gay people and asking for witch-burnings tomorrow if there was a buck in it (that’s no joke, by the way; look at the way German industry cosied up to the Nazis). And for years, the film industry was happy to let a big producer treat every woman who crossed his path as a potential sexual conquest because confronting him would have been bad for business. Now feminism is a bit more in vogue, Weinstein has lost his earning power and been publicly disgraced, and suddenly anyone accused of the vaguest sexual misconduct, guilty or not, is PR poison.

The corporate response to the #MeToo phenomenon is just the latest chapter in a long process. What’s happening is an excessive concern about public relations, because public relations has a monetary value, because we live in a society in which everything – from bottled water to what you post on Facebook – has a monetary value. That’s capitalism.

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Last edited by David on Mon Feb 12, 2018 9:40 pm; edited 6 times in total
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HAL 

Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.


Joined: 17 Mar 2003


PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 9:23 pm
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In the Universe we know.
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stui magpie Gemini

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.


Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto

PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 10:25 pm
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far coff hal

David, I'll pay that.

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Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne

PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 6:53 am
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^ yes it was an excellent post by David. The question is why virtue has come to be associated with, and expected from, collective entities. David suggests it is because branding demands it. I think it is the othe way around. I think that brands are merely responding to a post-religious vacancy. Virtue, when it is real, is done in minute particulars by individuals. When you collectivize it, you take the responsibility from individuals, who can then achieve virtue by their orientations and opinions about brands (including celebrities), rather than their actions. This has the added attraction of requiring nothing disagreeable. It’s a boon.
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Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne

PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 8:41 pm
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^ one more comment on David’s post, having read it again and more carefully. The sentence “capitalism puts a monetary value on everything” might be true but it does not mean as much as it might seem, at first glance.

When you talk about an economic system, be it Capitalism, Communism, Feudalism etc, monetary values (economic values would be a better term) are contained within the terms of your analysis. You might as well say that religion puts a spiritual value on everything. The point is that capitalism (like Communism) sits in its monetising boat on an ocean of other considerations - power relations, moral concerns, technical knowledge, etc. abstracting it from those makes it look amoral and heartless (which it often is because many human beings are heartless or partially-hearted) but that is more about the abstraction than it is about the actual system as it needs to be practised.

The moral defense of capitalism is that, with relatively modest regulation, it allocates resources far more efficiently than any other known system. Since efficient allocation is the great engine of common wealth, and compassion and cooperation are all made easier by relative abundance, it is the most morally positive system devised by flawed humanity.

It also has the enduring benefit of embodying liberty, because it decentralises power into many property owning entities, rather than concentrating it in the state.

Last point - I don’t really know what to make of the “German industry cosied up to the Nazis” point. Nazism was essentially a pan-German Socialist project, as the name implied, and firms do what they must to survive, when confronted by an overweening state which takes control of economic decision-making. I’m not sure that is cosying up. Some German industrialists certainly supported the Nazis as a bulwark against Communism and the economic chaos that engulfed Germany from 1923-1933, but most tended to support the conservative leadership of Hindenburg and Von Papen et al, until survival made it necessary to accommodate National Socialism. It is well worth reading Adam Tooze’s outstanding book “The Wages of Destruction”, as the story of the Nazi economy (and its failures) is a very complicated one. I should add that Tooze is no ideological figure, but a decorated, neutral economic historian of the highest academic credentials and (not quite the same thing) the highest calibre.

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Last edited by Mugwump on Tue Feb 13, 2018 9:07 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Dave The Man Scorpio



Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Someville, Victoria, Australia

PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 9:02 pm
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David wrote:
I dare say not as much as women have been getting sick of being sexually harassed...


Well Women thing you look at a Women they say it's Sexual Harassment Rolling Eyes

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think positive Libra

Side By Side


Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere

PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2018 12:21 am
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Depends who’s looking
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Bucks5 Capricorn

Nicky D - Parting the red sea


Joined: 23 Mar 2002


PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2018 5:17 am
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^Exactly. The difference between flattery and creepy/harrassment is relative to how good looking the guy is.
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think positive Libra

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Joined: 30 Jun 2005
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2018 6:39 am
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- or rich, or influential, or a million other things.

And there’s is degrees. What creeps one person out, may be acceptable to another, who is to say where the line is?

It all comes down to respect.

The casting coach is an old joke, but like most jokes at so,ones expense, there is always a bit of truth there. I have no doubt plenty of men women and men have used it to their advantage. On both sides of the fence. That’s part of what makes it hard to differentiate between all these cases. Some so long ago, who knows what degree of consent there was. If someone says to you ‘you don’t get the job unless I get a, huh hmm, job, to me that’s just wrong. But then we have all bribed our kids too. Unfortunately it’s human nature. Basically it comes down to respect. You should not feel you have to subject yourself to something not in the job description to get the job. It’s no different from health and safety and having to use machines without guards. Some things should never be brought into an interview, and sexual innuendo is one of them. Keep your hands and your dirty mind to yourself.

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Pi Gemini



Joined: 13 Feb 2006
Location: SA

PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 2:19 pm
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Is this me too or something else...

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-worst-ever-child-grooming-12165527

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Wokko Pisces

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Joined: 04 Oct 2005


PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 2:26 pm
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It's something else. "Asian" is code for Moslem background, mainly Pakistani. The UK is £$%$ed up.
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thesoretoothsayer 



Joined: 26 Apr 2017


PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 2:55 pm
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Pi wrote:
Is this me too or something else...

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-worst-ever-child-grooming-12165527


I think it's called "cultural enrichment".
English girls are being taught what a true patriarchy looks like.
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