#MeToo won't accomplish that. Not even if people would like for it to. It's not structured for that.

Of course the #MeToo movement won't accomplish that. I doubt very much anybody expects it to. I certainly don't.

The #MeToo movement is one expression of a much wider discourse. A much fucking longer discourse as well.

What #MeToo will accomplish is expending the public's attention span so a wider and more lengthy discourse is put on hold even longer.

Like the HuffPo article it seems the starting point for women is what kind of sexual assaults/sexual harassment/bad dates they have experienced. When women talk, it turns out they pretty much all have had those experiences. That's shocking.

As an empathetic person, I have an urge to compare my own notes. But I was never sexually assaulted. Just regular-assaulted. Then we compared notes as men and it turns out we pretty much all had those experiences. But nobody was shocked.

Because that's "just how it is". I suspect it's FAR worse for men physically, and a LITTLE worse for women emotionally; SCARIER for women, in general, because they are more vulnerable and are more likely to be killed in a one-on-one end-all conflict.

The fact you figure THAT'S important, is why there's no movement for the regular assault problem. We're serious victims, but we're also born perpetrators just by gender, so... kinda evens out, huh?

That's a wretched way to think about it. And, it's pretty much how everyone thinks about it.

Apropos of nothing I give you two statistics:

1. Percentage of men who are the victim in severe domestic abuse cases ("beaten, burned, choked, kicked, slammed with a heavy object, or hit with a fist"): 40% (source: CDC via Yahoo)

2. Height of Aziz Ansari: 5' 6"

:D because i knew you wanted this information :D

For those following the Grace story -

A great exchange happened between Ashleigh Banfield and the writer of the Grace story (not victim Grace, but journalist Katie Way). On Monday, Banfield criticized the story on HLN. On Tuesday, HLN asked if Katie Way wanted to come on and discuss it. She wrote an email in return. Here it is in full.

On Tuesday, Banfield read the letter on HLN, saying

My point about both types of violence mainly being perpetrated by men was not to suggest that it is less important that men face that kind of violence - it was to suggest you are focusing you're ire in the wrong direction if your concern is violence against men.

I've come down from my comfy spot in the Cellar tagline to say:

I get the impression he's drawing attention to the disparity between counter-violence movements for women and men exacerbated by the "Me" in #MeToo meaning just women. Why do the women need/have that while the men don't? They are both, after all, being victimized by men.

Now I'm going back up to the tagline to gaze down upon this thread an nod knowingly.

Yeah let us not have misdirection here, I am 100% in favor of the non-diluted #MeToo movement, as well as most brands of traditional feminism* which is why I am appalled at how it was, in my opinion, abused in or by this particular case. I don't think my ironic point bears on any of that. There are lots of ironies in life, that's just one of them.

I await my own movement. Perhaps I shall start one. Lol, in this environment. Lol.





*those broads are always yapping but, for chicks, they have some good ideas

Why didn't the people making it happen make it happen earlier when others were coming forward over Bill Cosby?

Oy. I'm changing your tagline.

I feel as though I've been violated ... #MeToo!

Anyone got Rose McGowan's telephone number?

True story: Once upon a time I had a fling with a gal named McGowan. Early in the relationship I asked if she had any siblings. She said "No ... I have a cousin named Rose." Then she denied it. She was just kidding; but, this topic reminds me of that. She was more attractive than Rose.

I vividly remember one night after months of dinners and small talk, she was naked, I was not. I was giving her a long slow backrub with an occasional kiss on the butt. She suddenly jumped up, ran in the bedroom and threw on her robe. Confused, I followed her and said, at least tell me what I did wrong. With fire in her eyes she spit out, you didn’t roll me over! Never saw her again.

I wasn't aggressive enough? WTF?

Could be that she was just really horny and became sexually frustrated when you didn't jump her bones right away.

Could be she thought you didn't like what you saw enough to go face to face and she was either insecure or vain about it.

Could be that she couldn't go through with it for some other reason and decided to let you think it was your fault.

Could be that she really wanted a foot massage.

"Suck my toes and I will follow you everywhere."

Maybe we don't want that ....

Maybe she wanted to tangle beards.

Whut?

The video failed for me. Not technically, but a few seconds in once I realized it was Samantha Bee, I started involuntarily projectile vomiting.

i'm sorry that was again too much overstatement. change it to

'i just have this weird semi-irrational dislike for her brand of snark'

i've had a bad day sorry

The video was OK, as humor. As a serious piece it would have at least a couple fatal chinks in its armor. One being that women (or anyone) gets a pass for not owning up to their conduct in threatening situations; because, they didn't want to offend or were afraid. They don't get to blame being indecisive; or, compliant on anyone else. You can't respect someone who kisses your ass and A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave person dies but once are a couple of the names that tune goes by.

Which brings us to another fatal flaw, the notion that women (or anyone) can demand respect. Respect, like trust, is earned, not demanded. Women's behavior has to change. Men who present as easy victims have to change. If not, they'll fall by the wayside. They can go in the #MeToo direction; but, the path of retribution is short and won't get them far. We have penal institutions; but, people still commit crimes and there are repeat offenders.

#MeToo is a reactionary measure. Anyone jumping on that bandwagon thinking they're being proactive is delusional. The movement is like trying to prevent getting a disease by taking a placebo that makes people think they'll be OK when in actuality their well being will deteriorate because they refuse to acknowledge the underlying vulnerability is their own ineptitude at prevention.

The idea that we will always have criminals only works if this kind of experience is the exception, rather than the norm. #MeToo is about the fact that it has happened to basically every woman out there. And when we try to fight our vulnerability like you suggest--say, by creating a list of shitty men in a particular industry, to quietly spread the word and help keep ourselves out of those very situations you blame us for being in--we get attacked for gossiping and wielding anonymous power to destroy random men's lives for fun. It's hard to be proactive when it's e v e r y w h e r e.

There has been both enormous societal change and also an enormous drop in crime over time.

If you can get a new cultural rule into place, and have it stick, it wins.

I remember last time. It was the early-mid 90s. My ex came home from work and said that her co-worker, who was an acquaintance of ours, had gotten a sexual harassment charge, and he now faced a serious career threat, if not outright firing.

That hadn't been the case just a few years earlier. But there was this sense of change in the air. HR departments everywhere were on guard. Everyone knew, a new normal was well on its way. Most of us felt it was totally overdue.

And then, that all suddenly came to a Full Stop, exactly 20 years ago, as -- incredibly -- many feminists went silent and many even actively considered how harassment wasn't really that terrible of a crime after all.

Politics Makes Us Stupid

Politics can normalize things we'd previously agreed were bad things. Even near-universally accepted bad things like pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. But especially under-the-radar things like racism, bigotry, misogyny, and xenophobia, that people had quietly clung to.

And it's always the other guy, on the other side--because we're the good guys and y'all are the bad guys.

Very true.

That's a mischaracterization even if it's a collective "you." I (we *Royal wave*) are not blaming you. Perhaps an analogy will help to clarify:

There are a lot of bad drivers on the road. You can drive along, exercising your right of way as a driver, even if it means having bad drivers crash into you. You can take their names, tell as many people as you can about them, sue them and maybe even have them put in jail. It's all reactive. You still have to deal with the aftermath of being in a crash.

So I point out that your situation isn't going to change unless you become proactive. You should do something to avoid the crashes in the first place. You should learn to recognize bad drivers before they crash into you and learn sound evasive action techniques.

Well lo and behold, there's a thing called a Defensive Drivers Course. Part of it is learning that it may be necessary to relinquish something (right of way) in the near term to gain something more (avoid a crash) in the long run. Suggesting you attend one is not blaming you for any crashes.

You can be proactive (even if you and others in a given situation have to devise the means); but, you don't have to be proactive. I'm not going to blame you for the crashes either way. I am going to get tired of listening to you complain about bad drivers crashing into you if you don't become proactive because I know there's a good chance it was avoidable with more effort on your part even if you weren't to blame.

My biggest assault was the aftermath of a crash, so I am a double loser in this blame the victim game.

I take it you hurt two fingers. I'm not sorry about one of them.

I'm not going to tell you which one.

See now if you had been proactive, say holding a gun, you wouldn't have been assaulted. :haha:

Sounds like xoB is sorry about your trigger finger.

Your cow orkers are not your friends.

Ah... you mean like the guy who I figured out was a whackjob after a few simple phone conversations, and quietly stopped interacting with, except he still stalked me for six months? Just getting out of the room/restaurant/neighborhood is almost never enough.

No, I didn't mean that. That was the driving analogy correlation to a countermeasure.

Let's try something else.

Those with formal leadership training know there are often two solutions to a problem, a short term (interim) solution and a long term (permanent) solution. The short term solution helps alleviate apprehension, confusion, and fear by giving people a direction, focus, and restoring a sense of control. It may not be a permanent solution; but, it may be the only solution available at the time ... perhaps during your lifetime. It isn't a placebo, it's a catalyst. It helps people achieve a long term solution sooner.

The long term solution lies in changing the way men treat women. The short term solution needs to be proactive towards that end. Simple evasion as you did doesn't accomplish that; because, it doesn't change men's behavior, it just avoids it. It's not an effective countermeasure like it was in the driving analogy.

NOTE: I'm talking about harassment here. In cases of violence, creating distance can be paramount. END NOTE.

An EXAMPLE of a short term solution that initiates changes in men could be for women to establish a protocol for what to say and do when they begin to feel harassed. With all of them saying and doing the same thing, there can be little doubt in men's minds that they're out of bounds as far as the woman is concerned whether they agree with it or not. Next comes a protocol for what steps to take afterwards.

Another EXAMPLE could be taking assertiveness training (even self help courses). Learn what behaviors work best on men to prevent untoward initiatives. It's a transferable skill and an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure.

I'm sure women are capable of doing more than just retribution in hindsight. Be women of vision.

no, he didn’t mean the thing that happened

See, Flint gets it.

He's still working on how to begin and end sentences though.

This weeks latest example:

A complaint filed with the Pennsylvania House of Representatives alleges Rep. Nick Miccarelli of Delaware County threatened to kill one woman and forced another to have sex after they broke up. The lawyer for two women confirmed what was first reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Caucus newspaper
Rep. Nick Miccarelli's accuser talks to investigators.

Nick Miccarelli is so paranoid as to carry a gun into the state house. He has been described with an obsession for violence and firearms. He is now the only legislator required to submit to metal detectors and had been banned from the State House underground parking lot. One forceably attacked woman was Luzerne County Representative Tarah Toohil.

When does Bill Cosby go to trial?

Ha, when the leadership of UAW local 1069 endorsed Miccarelli over a local member (Democrat) running against him. I told them he was an asshole. I was right. :yesnod:

confirmed