Scandals and accusations

I hope this is the right place for this topic.

Young people may wonder why the press is suddenly focusing on harassment and assault incidents that happened decades ago, involving many famous people.

Hollywood sex scandals

"What about Bill?"

Trump accusations

The sad truth is that people didn't believe women and children as readily as they do today. Also, there was, and is, a great deal of pressure not to come forward. Finally, sexual exploitation was considered funny, like a practical joke, during much of the twentieth century.

Using power and money for sexual exploitation is nothing new in Hollywood. Corey Feldman wrote in his 2014 expose that there was a "casting couch" for children as well as women. Vanity Fair reported in 2016 that studios pressured stars to have abortions in the 1920s through the 1950s.

I believe this cleaning of the closet long overdue. At the same time, I hope that false accusations don't arise to damage good people's reputations, or to damage the credibility of legitimate victims.

It also goes both ways. Fans and stalkers can get pretty aggressive toward celebrities, who are forced to shell out for round-the-clock security.

Agreed! Well stated Trollbabe!

I agree with you Trollbabe!

"Cleaning the closet", I like that. It is time it happened, even if the statute of limitations is long past. Unfortunately, people in power still don't seem to care that other people were hurt, so they dismiss the survivors, which just keeps the sick cycle going, and no one seems to know how to make it stop. :-/

Maybe there's no hope for the older generations. Maybe it's time to write them off as worthless and focus on the younger generations, the ones who can be taught and are willing to be taught about what is and isn't consent, safe sex, what is and isn't harassment, and more. My younger brother is already doing something similar with a young female friend of his. :-)

There's one thing about consensual,extramarital affairs and someone in their 30's forcing themselves on girls in their teens or powerful celebrities drugging fans. What happened between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky was consensual as opposed to the Orange Dotard bragging about grabbing them by the pussy.

Respectfully, I don't believe that comparing degrees of victimhood helps the problem. Second, consensual of not, there's an immense difference in power between a President and an intern. Third, I am really, really trying not to drag politics into this thread by comparing political leaders. It's about men, women, boys and girls who have been sexually exploited by those in power over them.

Agreed, Trollbabe. It didn't matter how the abuse happened; what matters is the damage it did, does, and keeps doing.

Multi-Facets wrote:

Maybe there's no hope for the older generations. Maybe it's time to write them off as worthless and focus on the younger generations, the ones who can be taught and are willing to be taught about what is and isn't consent, safe sex, what is and isn't harassment, and more.

Studies have shown the 20s and under crowd are more sexist than previous generations.

It's not about generations; it's about how people react when they perceive their status is being threatened.

The twenty and under crowd can at least be taught. The older generations absolutely refuse to learn.

Prism wrote:

There's one thing about consensual,extramarital affairs and someone in their 30's forcing themselves on girls in their teens or powerful celebrities drugging fans. What happened between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky was consensual as opposed to the Orange Dotard bragging about grabbing them by the pussy.

What happened between Bill and Monica maybe have been consensual between themselves (leaving aside for the moment the power differential issue) but it involved Hillary without her consent or knowledge. As Joss Whedon's wife said in her letter, Hilary - and any other spouse who is cheated on - was denied the ability to make decisions about her body and her safety based on the proper information.

Bill, Donald and all the other married people involved in these types of scandals stood up in public and took an oath to honor and cherish their spouse above all others. When their nearest and dearest can't trust them to keep their public word, how can we? There is far more to the outrage over an affair than just "prudish values."

FWIW, in the state of North Carolina, you can sue an adulterer for "loss of affections." The case I recall was a woman whose husband dumped her for one of his employees. The ex-wife sued the mistress and won.

If we really knew how many Hollywood icons have misused their power over vulnerable people, they would have to jackhammer half the stars off of the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The enemy isn't just people in power. It's attitudes.

I've been reading a lot about this topic today. Inevitably, I feel both glad that the cleaning of the closet has begun, and deeply saddened to examine so much evidence of humanity's predatory nature and predator-enabling societal structures. You're right Trollbabe that it's not just the people in power - it's all the systems of people below them who connive, conceal and make themselves complicit, so that they can benefit from that power.

I keep running up against the phrase "court of public opinion" when people try to deflect from such indefensible behaviour. But honestly, that's the only court I see handing out any meaningful consequences for sexual predation. Go to the actual justice system for justice and your odds are heartbreakingly low, at terrible personal cost for the attempt. Go to the media and things start to actually happen. I hate that this is the case (not least because I think media frenzies can be very harmful), but so it seems to be.

Yes. I have very mixed feelings about the way things are playing out. It is far past time that these issues be addressed but I don't like how fast things are happening. There's a good reason our judicial process is based on "innocent until proven guilty."

"And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.
...
Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything."

What about that one? Oh, wait. He is elected POTUS. OMG. He was elected even after that became public. LOL.

I think most of the western world is terminally broken. Shit like this, of course. But on the other hand also those ultra-feminist positions that would like to send all male humans to concentration camps. Or the change in language. I still cramp when I have to read some sentences in my native language. Yes, it's a rather complicated language, they say, but feminists make it even worse. To me this is not creating a positive awareness, rather a negative awareness if you don't add a (f/m) to every word you speak.

The problem is that all this gender-war uses a lot of energy. But the world has so much more problems - and we discuss gendered toilets (esp. for the 3rd and fourth kinds), we are told to speak and write differently and build really bulky word constructions. Meanwhile the climate, world energy problem and world nutrition/overpopulation problems happily go through the roof until we can't cope with it any longer.

Doesn't mean these harassing asshats would be any good. But I don't think it is anything male/female (by the way I am a white male and was also set back in my life by sexual discrimination). It's a matter of psychic disorders among persons in positions of power. Narcissists, dis-socials, pychopaths (missing synaptic connections) and the likes. They accumulate quite often in positions of power (or in openly criminal positions). It doesn't even have to be of sexual nature, it's more a power gradient / imbalance thing. And a matter of people who just take what they want - without any empathy for others.

On the other hand ""innocent until proven guilty", as manga mentioned, is something really important. In earlier days "one" would just shoot people that did not fit the establishment. JFK, Martin Luther King and so on.
These days you set up a girl and see people fall. Sometimes it's not even necessary to have a real lawsuit with evidence, people are discredited before anything is proven and that's it. This is also a dangerous thing and I fear we'll see many people jumping on exactly that train.

Moreover it's even the question what exactly is harassment? Sometimes a single word, even a glance could be mis-read, misinterpreted - even though it wasn't even remotely meant to be some sort of sexual assault. We need to be careful about that and separate harmless things from the actual matter. Of course, personal perception and susceptibility varies a lot.


The question why some who a witnesses still connive is a good one. But I assume that either those are mentally/emotionally crippled, too. Or, more likely, they are in positions that do hardly allow to take action openly against the person in question - just because they're under them in terms of power/influence level.

E.g. in my case nobody dared to speak up, since that person who suppressed me was considered to be very influential. We have a term that could be translated as "little mice that flee for cover as soon as the cat shows up" (found "moral cowardice" somewhere; that fits, too). If you speak too open against the government, secret services or anything like them you get suppressed as they have quite a lot of pull.
People witness that, get afraid and become silent.

To conclude:
I think the world's population really needs a huge psychology team. One that heals, but that also sorts out those terminal cases. The real nutjobs that DO actual damage. Folks who abuse power. Folk who feel no responsibility / empathy.
With that done, a lot of things should improve. Not "just" sexual harassment problems, but also all the other things that make living a pain. We shouldn't be short-sighted and just see the M/F (or whatever combination of that) issue, not just put things on a sexual level. The cause is different and further behind in the fog, but much larger and causing much more damage on all ends.

I see many of the points you're trying to make jaRF, but I feel at times you're in danger of the fallacy of relative privation a.k.a the appeal to worse problems a.k.a. "why should anyone be worrying about X issue when there are starving children in Africa?"

I do absolutely think that the "real nutjobs" - those who are relentless to get what they want without concern for the sexual, political, social, environmental or any other kind of harm they cause - are the ones humanity would be better off identifying and weeding out on a large scale. Unfortunately a lot of society is geared towards allowing those people to do what they do and it will take a tectonic shift to really start dislodging them.

Yes of course. The "children starving in Africa" is more regarding to the gendered toilets discussion. Just because things are worse somewhere else doesn't mean you need to tolerate bad cicrumstances in your own society.

I appreciate that, but the gendered toilets discussion was actually the one I had in mind. It is not a frivolous issue if you look into why it is being discussed in the first place, which is the personal safety of transgendered individuals. It shouldn't be just dismissed as a waste of time, and nor should systematic sexual abuse in the entertainment industry, although there are other and equally serious problems in the world than those.

Regarding the LGBT experience, while Hollywood has a long history of sexually exploiting both adults and children, and forcing actresses to have abortions, movie and TV studios maintained an extreme right attitude toward anything other than heterosexuality. Gay and lesbian actors remained in the closet if they wanted to keep their careers. They were very vulnerable to blackmail and exploitation.

It saddens me that people still bring up Bill and Monica, she admitted she pursued him. He was lonely and she knew it, Hillary also admitted her part in the whole event happening. Problem is, we now have a President that is a known womanizer, Melania, wife number 3, he pursued while married to Marla Maples. Our Electoral College gave Trump the presidency not the popular vote. The reports coming in astound me. young gymnastics abused by a so called trusted dr., elected officials screaming that they are part of the religious right and secretly into child porn. It goes on and on, sadly very few are brought to justice because they have the money to end things before it can ever get to court. The only way to improve things is to enact laws that benefit the victims of these crimes and that the sentences are uniform. That no matter how rich or poor you are, you will serve the same sentence.