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Thread: Sexual Abuse/Assault in the News

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    Sexual Abuse/Assault in the News

    I can't believe we even need this...but to me, it feels like filling up "random" headlines thread with conversations about sexual assault is a little bit disrespectful to the seriousness of the topic.

    I'm not going to start anew with a running list of whose been accused in just the last few weeks, but this thread has been spurred by the ongoing accusations against Roy Moore and the new allegations against Al Franken.
    Last edited by theimage13; 11-18-2017 at 01:51 PM.

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    Can we get all the posts from the random celebrity thread transferred over? There's been a lot of good discussion in there that shouldn't be lost.

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    Quote Originally Posted by DigitalChaos View Post
    Are we lumping celebs and politicians into this? If so I'll adjust the thread title.
    Celebrity (noun): a well-known person

    Yes, politicians count as celebrities.

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    Quote Originally Posted by DigitalChaos View Post
    Are we lumping celebs and politicians into this? If so I'll adjust the thread title.
    Yes, lets just put all of them in here.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mantra View Post
    Can we get all the posts from the random celebrity thread transferred over? There's been a lot of good discussion in there that shouldn't be lost.
    I'd do this myself if I had the permissions. Alas, I am but a lowly general user.

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    https://twitter.com/ejdickson/status/931153558375890944

    I'll be honest - I thought it was a parody at first considering his profession.

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    Things are now getting worse for Jeffrey Tambor: https://www.thewrap.com/jeffrey-tamb...trace-lysette/

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    Quote Originally Posted by thevoid99 View Post
    Things are now getting worse for Jeffrey Tambor: https://www.thewrap.com/jeffrey-tamb...trace-lysette/
    Do you ever listen to yourself, Tambor?


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    Al Franken?! Just WHAT THE FUCK...

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    Ya... it’s probably 50 percent of the male population that has at least once engaged in sexual harassment.

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    I wouldn't venture to offer a percentage, I don't think there's any way of knowing since this is just a character thing vs. some genetic thing, and society has looked the other way for so long, and will continue looking away I imagine.

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    I would say maybe even 50% of the population in general.

    edit: hypothesis
    Last edited by allegate; 11-17-2017 at 02:42 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by cashpiles View Post
    Ya... it’s probably 50 percent of the male population that has at least once engaged in sexual harassment.
    Where did you pull that statistic from? Not questioning, just asking.

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    It's not a statistic, it's a wild guess in the face of what seems like an overwhelming number.

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    Harvey Weinstens Mirimax films was probably the best independent film company of the 1980s. some real great documentaries and all those great movies and directors he spotted and helped unleash on the world with their amazing films like Sex Lies and Videotape, Pulp Ficiton, The English Patient, Roman Polanski is one of my favourite directors, The Pianist is one of my favourite films, yet he drugged and raped a 13 year old girl in 1978, and Harvey Weinsten is a Sex Pest.

    remember feeling this way about Phil Spector, its hard to divide the person from the art.

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    And now making the list: Girls writer Murray Miller raping the then-17 year old Aurora Perrineau: http://www.indiewire.com/2017/11/mur...on-1201898829/ and to make matters worse, Lena Dunham is defending him: http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/..._medium=social

    & Ryan Seacrest: https://www.thewrap.com/ryan-seacres...drobe-stylist/

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    Quote Originally Posted by botley View Post
    It's not a statistic, it's a wild guess in the face of what seems like an overwhelming number.
    I thought he was stating it as a fact. Being a father, son, husband and victim of abuse myself, I find all these actions and the people that have committed these acts deplorable. It hits me to the core and I don’t often talk out on much, but this shit has to end now. I hope that this is the sea change that allows our children to feel comfortable enough to confront abuse like this at the point of attack. The abuse of any person should be considered a crime and anybody in the public eye should be ostracized.
    Last edited by OSLIN; 11-18-2017 at 02:35 AM.

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    I say hold ‘em all accountable, for everything. Trump, Clinton, Franken, Moore, for sexual harassment, sexual assault, and anybody for anything illegal or unethical, regardless of their party affiliation. They’re a cancer and they have to go.

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    Quote Originally Posted by allegro View Post
    It's not surprising, it's AN EPIDEMIC that's been around for hundreds of years, if we started outing everybody I think the Pope will eventually be implicated.

    Sad thing is, I don't think it's gonna change, much, either. A few years from now, nobody will remember any of it. People are still blaming MONICA LEWINSKY for Bill Clinton's shit. The saddest thing about that entire Ken Starr report wasn't Bill Clinton - he was a liar in denial - it was how they treated that young woman. She was TWENTY-TWO when that shit started. And, back then, people were calling her "fat."

    Then, today, I see a thing on Facebook where people are blaming Leeann Tweeden, showing her on the cover of Playboy, because of course she's just a slut who must be a Trump supporter. *eye roll*

    My husband said today that we look at people like Tom Hanks, Barack Obama, lots of guys who will never be implicated in something like this because they are good guys who'd never do anything like this, then why do so many "bad" people think it's okay? Beyond just "male privilege," which the good guys possess, too, but somehow these other guys think it's just perfectly okay to do this stupid shit because society teaches them? Or are they just doing what they think they can get away with? Dunno.
    Why does your husband assume Obama and Hanks are good guys who “will never be implicated in something like this”?

    I mean, he doesn’t know them personally, does he? And even if he did know them personally or worked with them, he can’t be certain of what they do in their private life.

    Why can’t that statement apply to most or all men?

    I find it interesting that “innocent until proven guilty” has become a privilege that a few can enjoy while others have to deal with the opposite statement just because.

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    Quote Originally Posted by tremolo View Post
    Why does your husband assume Obama and Hanks are good guys who “will never be implicated in something like this”?

    I mean, he doesn’t know them personally, does he? And even if he did know them personally or worked with them, he can’t be certain of what they do in their private life.

    Why can’t that statement apply to most or all men?

    I find it interesting that “innocent until proven guilty” has become a privilege that a few can enjoy while others have to deal with the opposite statement just because.
    Legal terminology isn’t being discussed, we are saying that people aren’t BORN to be harassers or abusers, they either strive to not do it and to be upstanding citizens or they ... don’t. Why they do or don’t is the point. What happens? Is it conscious? Is it lack of awareness? Is it power combined with a personality flaw? The other point, dunno why he chose those two guys, I don’t think he was being overly literal.

    I don’t know why all men can’t be upstanding citizens who don’t do this; it should be possible. But us females generally don’t bother trying to explain that this isn’t news to us, that we have all seen it, we have all experienced it at some level (harassment and emotional abuse all the way up to assault) because it often feels like a futile effort, nothing will change. Why should it?

    When enough citizens in this country considered Trump’s Access Hollywood quotes to be “harmless locker room talk” and elected him to be President, we know how the country feels about this?

    We should ALSO note, here, that not ALL harassers are men; women do it, too. They’re just as wrong if they do it.

    Education + Consequences = how a civilized society corrects itself.

    Al Franken certainly presents himself as a Moral and Upstanding Citizen Who Obeys Laws these days, and he’s been highly respected. A friend of ours is CRUSHED by this news and Franken’s admission. The guy stuffed his tongue into a woman’s mouth during a USO tour, then treated her like shit for two weeks because she rebuffed him. Then made her the butt of jokes pretending to feel her up in front of people while she was sleeping. WHO thinks that shit is FUNNY? The same people who thought Trump bragging about kissing and grabbing women is funny? They were laughing on that Access Hollywood tape. Or pretending to laugh? Can we change, as a society, so that most of us think this is bad? Rhetorical question.

    The things this SHOULD’T be about: Men vs. Women, Democrats vs. Republicans. That’s just more diversion from solutions. Also, the idea that this will create a giant Witch Hunt where thousands of innocent people will be destroyed was floated a lot back in the 80s when the work training started, but it all settled in and not a whole lot changed. No system is perfect. But we try in an attempt to be civilized.

    Our legal system has another thread, I think we have one for that.

    Sorry for typos, I’m on my iPhone 7+, still not big enough to see what I’m typing.
    Last edited by allegro; 11-18-2017 at 01:29 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by allegro View Post
    Legal terminology isn’t being discussed, we are saying that people aren’t BORN to be harassers or abusers, they either strive to not do it and to be upstanding citizens or they ... don’t. Why they do or don’t is the point. What happens? Is it conscious? Is it lack of awareness? Is it power combined with a personality flaw? The other point, dunno why he chose those two guys, I don’t think he was being overly literal.

    I don’t know why all men can’t be upstanding citizens who don’t do this; it should be possible. But us females generally don’t bother trying to explain that this isn’t news to us, that we have all seen it, we have all experienced it at some level (harassment and emotional abuse all the way up to assault) because it often feels like a futile effort, nothing will change. Why should it?
    We have to consider context and what it feels like to be a man to understand male behaviour.

    Down to our most primal nature, men are biologically “designed” to breed and procreate and continue the survival of our species, just like women are, with a big difference: while women ovulate once a month aprox., the equivalent process in males is completely blown out of proportion. Men produce millions of sperms non-stop from a very young age pretty much until death. Women will never understand what it is like to have the average man’s sex drive, being “up for it” pretty much 24/7 for 30-40 years (the prime of our lives). That strong drive is always there, it’s just natural and normal. We always want to fuck. Trying to understand it from a female perspective might be difficult.

    The point is how much control do we have over those impulses? And I think that depends mostly on 2 factors: childhood (how we were raised, pretty much we are all the result of the job our parents/tutors did raising us), and social context. I think the former (how we are raised) has the most impact on our permanent behaviour, the set of values and the environment where we are raised shapes our behaviour as adults, and it even goes as deep as shaping the way our brain cells connect and form networks. Social context is different, cause we can adapt to it or reject it completely (as adults), but of course this is conditioned by our own behaviour and values.

    I’m gonna go a bit backwards here:

    Social context is constantly changing and it dictates what is socially acceptable and what is not. Today, end of 2017, there are a lot of things that are deemed unacceptable that were not perceived in the same way 20 or 30 years ago. Judging the past based on today’s standards doesn’t seem right to me, since that means we wipe out the social context and judge actions just by themselves. And it works the other way around too: things that back then were considered awful and terrible today are perceived as ok, or not so bad, or even awesome.
    I think behaviour based on social context is easier to change unless it clashes with how we were raised.

    Childhood, how we were raised, values, model figures, etc... it’s a neverending mess. Some of us were lucky enough to be raised in a certain way with certain values, which keeps us out of trouble and make it easier to adapt to social context. Personally, I was raised under the concept that women shouldn’t be touched, even with the petal of a rose. Never hit a woman, never do anything as low as grabbing a tit or pinching a woman’s ass just because the opportunity arised... be a gentleman, hold that door open and let them go through first, stand up and let them take your seat if the bus is full, etc. Why? “cause they are women, and your mother is a woman”. I was pretty much conditioned to project my mother on every woman I’ve met, and when it comes to respect, sexual assault, etc, it has worked great for me. There is absolutely no woman in the world who could say I havebehaved inappropriately towards her, or anythinglike that. But of course that backfired in other ways (women taking advantage, me not having the same disposition towards men, etc). The values that I was taught have helped me in many ways to be a decent human being, but that doesn’t mean I have many flaws, they just don’t happen to fall in the sexual harrassment department. Even back then when grabbing an ass would have meant absolutely nothing socially and i could have done it without any consequences, i never did, but I know that it wasn’t the same for others.

    I will never understand where is the pleasure in grabbing a piece of flesh or abusing someone. To me sex is a wonderful thing that can be almost a spiritual experience when it is consensual and my partner is enjoying it. Anything less than that is a waste. But that’s just the results of my upbringing and my own perception of sex and human beings in general.

    I think people who harrass, molest, rape, abuse, or do anything like that are not evil, they are sick, and there is a reason for them to behave the way they do, which is probably the result of a fucked up childhood. That doesn’t mean they can just use it as a trump card and be free of guilt. But maybe they have never thought of it. I do believe though, that if anyone has thought of it and has become conscious of their own actions and mistakes, they have the responsibility to take control of themselves and do something to change it. Once you are aware of your own wrongdoings, you can’t keep on going and blaming others.

    I think we, humans, are less evolved than we claim to be, we are closer to being animals than these enlightened beings that we aspire to be. I think it’s still in out nature... taking advantage, the inability to handle power... we haven’t got even close to be as “good” as we think we are.


    So yeah, the impulse is there by nature. The control over that (very strong) impulse depends on how we were raised. How much we are willing to bend or cross those lines depends on what our society dictates as acceptable and unacceptable (and all the greys in between those 2 ends of the spectrum).

    And it should change. The key is finding out “how” to change it.

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    Note that this thread is also about sexual harassment.

    Types of Harassment: Quid Pro Quo and Hostile Work Environment

    There are two different types of sexual harassment claims, although the manner in which a court will distinguish between the two for purposes of deciding whether harassment has occurred has become blurred in recent years:

    Quid Pro Quo: Sexual harassment that occurs when a supervisor or one in an authority position requests sex, or a sexual relationship, in exchange for not firing or otherwise punishing the employee, or in exchange for favors, such as promotions or raises.

    Hostile Work Environment: Sexual harassment that occurs through the presence of demeaning or sexual photographs, jokes or threats. The inappropriate behavior or conduct must be so pervasive as to, as the name implies, create an intimidating and offensive work environment.

    Each state is different with regard to protections against sexual harassment. For example, Alabama allows for an employee to sue an employer for sexual harassment based on a theory of invasion of privacy. Vermont law, in comparison, requires every employer to adopt a policy against sexual harassment. Other states have no specific law prohibiting or punishing sexual harassment, and thus rely on federal law.
    Also, to help the conversation regarding sexual assault, this is from the University of Michigan (which, straight out of the gate, has a really annoying "loose" error, argh, but it's the general stuff that's being used as educational material in colleges and universities these days).

    "How" to change it probably comes a lot from discussions, awareness, what constitutes harassment and assault, etc. ?

    We all have "impulses" of some nature, most of them not even driven by any kind of hormones. (E.G. I have had an impulse, for YEARS, when I pass the pastries on the way out of the grocery store, to steal some pastries. I don't know why. I can just BUY the fucking things. But, I have never and will never ACT on that impulse. Probably because of the LAW and fear of CONSEQUENCES. In the case of HURTING people, we generally don't do that in society for the same reasons: fear of consequences, or the knowledge that it is "wrong," or empathy. Or all of the above.)

    The idea that men can't control themselves is why lots of Islam and Orthodox Judaism and Christianity require women to cover themselves, dress modestly, cover their hair, etc., to not "tempt" men. So what's that saying about men? Rhetorically, of course. I'd like to think that men are capable of more than that, aren't just a bunch of stupid walking dangerous impulsive hormones and the women (or girls and boys) gotta hide.
    Last edited by allegro; 11-18-2017 at 04:17 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by DigitalChaos View Post
    Are we lumping celebs and politicians into this? If so I'll adjust the thread title.
    To me, the title should be a catch-all of sexual harassment and sexual assault, by politicians and celebrities. I don't know the PURPOSE, exactly, but I guess the main purpose is to stop filling up the Celeb and the Trump thread with this stuff, since it was taking over. But, not all of the allegations are of sexual assault; many were of sexual harassment.

    You have a good point re Moore and Franken, since there is actual discussion about political strategies behind what to "do" with them, playing it like pawns on the political chess board, which is a whole different thing than just listing the celebs who have been outed.

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    Thread title adjusted. Maybe. Maybe I only changed the title of my post and not the thread itself. I don't know how to ETS.

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    It still says "Celebrity Sexual Assault Claims," I think only an admin can really change it, which I think @DigitalChaos was inferring.

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    Quote Originally Posted by DigitalChaos View Post
    That said, "famous people" is still too narrow, IMO. A lot of the politicians who will probably be implicated are people you have never heard of. I sure didnt know who the fuck Ron Moore was before the allegations.


    edit: ROY Moore. Not fucking RDM. god
    If they're in the headlines of national media for sexual misconduct, they're famous.

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    Now you can Russell Simmons to the list: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...onduct-1059839

    And Brett Ratner watched it with glee.

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    Watching football and not exactly sober enough to comment on this. So just sharing the news instead.

    Tambor leaves Transparent amid sexual assault allegations

    Playing Maura Pfefferman on Transparent has been one of the greatest privileges and creative experiences of my life. What has become clear over the past weeks, however, is that this is no longer the job I signed up for four years ago. I’ve already made clear my deep regret if any action of mine was ever misinterpreted by anyone as being aggressive, but the idea that I would deliberately harass anyone is simply and utterly untrue. Given the politicized atmosphere that seems to have afflicted our set, I don’t see how I can return to Transparent.

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