December 20, 2017

It's not just about breaking the silence anymore. It's about breaking The Silent.

Time made a Person of the Year cover out of "The Silence Breakers," but the implication is, there was a long silence: Who was responsible for the silence? If you care enough about the silence that a few people managed to break this year, you're probably going to want to go after the people who created and maintained the silence. It's not enough to slay the beast. You have to wonder who kept and fed that beast all these years.


Via "Meryl Streep #SheKnew posters pop up in Los Angeles amid backlash over Harvey Weinstein comments" (Daily News).

I'm reading quotes about silence:

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." — Martin Luther King Jr.

"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself." — attributed to Robert Frost and Harvey Fierstein

"I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more." — C.S. Lewis

"I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity." — Nadezhda Mandelstam (the wife of Osip Mandelstam, whom I learned about last month as a consequence of googling "Who died for poetry?")

160 comments:

rhhardin said...

Where was the discussion that led to sexual deals being decided to be a public problem.

Hysterical women is all I saw.

SDaly said...

Meryl Streep claims she didn't know, but her standing up and cheering for child rapist Roman Polanski, when all the world knew of his crime, is on film. She can't lie and say she didn't know about Polanski.

Rick said...

I'm looking forward to activists applying this policy to the campus accusers whose refusal to go to police allows their supposed attackers to move on to new women. Activist on activist fights are the best.

Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.

Ann Althouse said...

@rh

Here, in 1970.

rhhardin said...

Who's is being silent on the evil streak in women being cultivated right now.

Wilbur said...

OMG, this may hurt the box office for "The Post".

Oh, the humanity.

rhhardin said...

I don't understsand the argument. No pussy hats that time but it's definitely a women's self-entertainment vulnerability.

An argument would have something about the war between the sexes and what it involves. Be careful to find what people get out of it on both sides.

Like those women, finding a way to get something without a man involved. But there are more engaging forms with men, which is where the war comes from.

Larry J said...

Sexual abuse in Hollywood is as old as the movie industry. "The Godfather" was set in the 1940s and filmed in the 1970s. The classic scene about the movie producer describing an actress as the best piece of tail he's ever had "and I've had them all over the world!" is old news. How many other industries have the equivalent of the casting couch?

The Harvey Weinsteins of the world had friends in high and low places that helped keep his activities out of the news. These friends included politicians (e.g. the Clintons), lawyers, private investigators, reporters, and publishers. The same is true for politicians in DC. The mainstream press still hates Matt Drudge to this day because he exposed the story about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski that the press was attempting to bury. So excuse me if the same people who covered for these assholes are now honoring the people they refused to help before.

rhhardin said...

The casting couch is a public problem because what.

dreams said...

Sometimes it's best to keep your mouth shut.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Props to the Professor, that was a serious burn.

Gordon Scott said...

At this point, it's all battlefield preparation. People will push for the industry to implement "watchers" on all sets, so they can look for potential problems, and to whom the oppressed can talk. Of course, these will be union jobs, and they'll pay well for someone to sit there every day. Straight white men need not apply, of course.

Ken B said...

The only thing Streep knew nothing about was Alar.

Nonapod said...

If someone is just another cog in the vast complicity machine, it's costly to actually go against it. So you go along with it, look the other way, pretend everything is fine. It's an old story. The banality of evil and all that. Human beings are extremely good a rationalizing and even justifying abhorrent behavior. It's a gift.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Meryl Streep and other prominent actresses are going to wear all black to the Golden Globes ceremony as a "protest." There will probably be much sermonizing to the plebes on how awful it all is. But, everyone knows that the "protesters" knew. They chose complicity and advancement. I understand why they would do that. Humans are weak and very prone to conformance. Fear is a motivation, especially when everyone else is going along. However, you don't get to benefit from the corruption, and then lecture the rest of us about it while donning a mantle of virtue. How about having someone who actually did fight back up on the podium for once?

Ken B said...

https://www.google.com/search?q=hillary+weinstein&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS752US752&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIwePw85jYAhWmUd8KHXj5AesQ_AUICygC&biw=1536&bih=831

dreams said...

It's a liberal mob, don't run with the liberal mob.

Lyle Smith said...

Silence is a virtue.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

@rhhardin

Because people exploiting other people as if they're objects is considered to be morally abhorrent.

Ken B said...

Incidentally, Althouse's go-to girl now denies she accused Streep of what she accused Streep of.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/mcgowan-accused-streep-knowing-weinstein-article-1.3709256

#RoseScattershot

Big Mike said...

@Larry J, the book included a scene which implied the Hollywood producer had taken the virginity of an adolescent girl, with the full acquiescence of the girl’s mother. Mario Puzo was a Hollywood script writer; I suspect he wrote that scene based on something well-known in Tinseltown.

Anonymous said...

Ron Winkleheimer: However, you don't get to benefit from the corruption, and then lecture the rest of us about it while donning a mantle of virtue.

Since when?

Looks like that's exactly what they're doing, and getting away with it, too.

You know those religious cults where the concept of sin doesn't apply to the elect and the purified? It's like that. No action is intrinsically bad or sinful. Only people are bad or sinful. So there is no hypocrisy in good people condemning the actions of bad people, because good people are good because of who they are, not because of what they do.

Big Mike said...

We are assuming Streep did not provide sexual favors but why is that (I’m counting watching him masturbate as a sexual favor)? Because of her talent? Have any of you claiming Streep is talented watched “Momma Mia”?

Curious George said...

Inga #sheknew

rhhardin said...

"In the process of owning or attempting to own a problem, those in the public arena claim to represent a societal consensus, to speak for society. The definition of the condition as a problem, as calling for public action, is presented as beyond need of argument. The language and rhetoric of "social problems" is a language which assumes and points toward a basic consensus about a problematic character of the condition deplored. In the same fashion a physician can assume that his or her patient wants to be cured. Child abuse, alcoholism, mental illness, prostitution, gender and racial discrimination, crime and drug addition are just a few among many social problems which are imbued with an aura of consensus about their status as problems. To challenge their status as social conditions requiring eradication or at least minimization is unthinkable in the contemporary public arenas."

sociologist Joseph R. Gusfield _Contested Meanings_ p.22

not the passage I was looking for but it will do.

rhhardin said...

Because people exploiting other people as if they're objects is considered to be morally abhorrent.

It's a deal between adults. Each comes out ahead.

What part of each comes out ahead is morally abhorrent.

LincolnTf said...

Oh geez, like it's a big mystery why the "Silence" lasted so long. Two words, Bill Clinton. Of course, everybody who voted for the Arkansas scumbag is now "shocked, shocked" that Harvey or Al or Tavis would ever use their position of power to abuse women. Hypocrites and clowns, all of them.

Mike in Keller said...

If someone touches you inappropriately, the appropriate response is to poke out their eye, or throw them into the wall. Not next year, not 38 years later, but right then.

Chances are, someone will then pipe up, "He [or she] did it to me last year but I was afraid."

rhhardin said...

"The personal is the political" assumes the conclusion.

Anything I don't like is a public problem.

Put on your pussy hat, as the song goes.

Fernandinande said...

Harvey Fierstein

Pretty close.

Lyle Smith said...
Silence is a virtue.


" ".

Ron Winkleheimer said...

What part of each comes out ahead is morally abhorrent.

Not every human transaction is purely economic in nature. Human society does not, and never will, work that way. Is it morally abhorrent for someone to chop off their arm and sell it to someone else to consume? They made a deal. Both came out ahead.

MadisonMan said...

The Silence. Great Dr. Who villain.

Have either Bill or Hillary been anywhere public in the last month? You can't talk about the Silence without including Democratic Politics reaching all the way up into the Executive Branch.

mockturtle said...

Does this mean we're in for another year of this crap?

rhhardin said...

Not every human transaction is purely economic in nature. Human society does not, and never will, work that way. Is it morally abhorrent for someone to chop off their arm and sell it to someone else to consume? They made a deal. Both came out ahead.

Maybe it's a starving child and a father who, having lost one arm, needs to buy another from a stranger. Lifeboat awaiting rescue or something.

rhhardin said...

Money is just a ticket in line to tell the economy what to do next. Something for you, presumably.

Gahrie said...

Is it morally abhorrent

In order for something to be "morally abhorrent", you first have to agree on a system of morality. The Left has spent the last sixty years destroying moral codes and even the concept of morality. Most of our cultural and political "elites" have been protecting Polanski and Clinton, and accusing the right of moral prudery.

Because people exploiting other people as if they're objects is considered to be morally abhorrent.

..and the Democrats and the Left have been doing so since 1828.

Bob Boyd said...

Why are they beating up Meryl Streep, but Hillary still gets to go on the talk shows to pose as fighter for women and flog her book?

Bob Boyd said...

#Sheknewwhathappened

rhhardin said...

Assuming consensus is a rhetorical move in trying to get consensus.

Larry J said...

mockturtle said...

Does this mean we're in for another year of this crap?


Absolutely, because the long game is to use this against Trump. It has already started.

tcrosse said...

It reminds me of the Catalog Aria from Don Giovanni. It's a long list of the hero's conquests, and ends with the words 'You know what he does'.

Chuck said...

I can't think of anybody who has discussed this whole issue -- Weinstein, The Reckoning, The Silence, The Silent -- better than Althouse. This is another truly great blog post.

I honestly did not appreciate what was so special about Weinstein as the story first developed. I did not see all of this coming.

Now, I just watch, and read, and take in Althouse with appreciation and cruel neutrality.

chickelit said...

What if the "artist" turns out to be straight, or white, or male, or have other victim disqualifying attributes? Wouldn't that exonerate Streep?

Mike Sylwester said...

There is a virtue called grace, which means essentially that you allow some offenses to be ignored, forgiven or punished less than maximally.

Christians believe that their sins are forgiven because of God's grace, because God is gracious.

Because God is gracious to us sinners, then we should be gracious to people who have offended us.

In contrast to gracious people, there are zealots, who strive to apply maximum vengeance against anybody and everybody who might have failed to live up to the zealots' demands for absolute perfection.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Maybe it's a starving child and a father who, having lost one arm, needs to buy another from a stranger. Lifeboat awaiting rescue or something.

And this demonstrates that a Libertarian society is as untenable as Communism. Both views human beings as purely economic creatures and all interactions as transactional.

Suppose someone is starving and needs to raise money to buy food for their children? Is it morally acceptable for someone who has a hankering for Long Pork to pay him for his arm? What if someone is a drug addict and needs some money for their next fix? Go to the Organ Bank and donate a kidney? Should society be OK with that?

William said...

i can remember when Hollywood made movies that propagated against "the blue wall of silence". Cops were expected to report on each other's misdeeds.. Silence is consent.......The exception to not ratting out evil doers applied to HUAC. It was wrong to name people as Communists...... Now I guess Hollywood has come around to the opinion that it's ok to name rapists and disapprove of child molesters. Their morality is evolving, but, at all times, it is superior to yours.

rhhardin said...

Because God is gracious to us sinners, then we should be gracious to people who have offended us.

Levinas's interpretation is that everybody is the Messiah.

Religion as a poeticization of ethics.

rhhardin said...

Go to the Organ Bank and donate a kidney? Should society be OK with that?

Actually trading kidneys for cash has huge support as good public policy. Or rather its prohibition as bad public policy.

William said...

I don't think Streep is conspicuously evil, but she is conspicuously hypocritical. One of the disadvantages of being considered the grande dame of Hollywood is that you are sometimes obligated to act like the grande dame....,.Maybe Polanski deserved an award, but, my God, what's with the standing ovation. Maybe Harvey made some good movies, but the kissy face and comparisons to God are not seemly actions for the grande dame of Hollywood.......She owes us an apology and not a sermon.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

trading kidneys for cash has huge support

Among like minded Libertarians. I noticed you didn't address the drug addict doing it for a fix issue.

NSFW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deoNAOfkXxc

mockturtle said...

Ron W. asserts: And this demonstrates that a Libertarian society is as untenable as Communism. Both views human beings as purely economic creatures and all interactions as transactional.

Both Communism and Libertarianism are untenable because both are idealistic systems that ignore basic human nature.

gnossos said...

re Ann's oblique reference to Shulamith Firestone in her "here" link above.

I believe Firestone's "The Dialectic of Sex" was what really got the ball rolling so to speak.

I used to judge how "woke" folks were by commenting that it was the "seminal feminist text." Watch their reaction...

rhhardin said...

Libertarianism as no fraud no force is good for men. Women have the mind changing issue going against for them.

mockturtle said...

William contends: I don't think Streep is conspicuously evil, but she is conspicuously hypocritical.

She, like most Hollywood celebrities, is conspicuously stupid. And yet, like most Hollywood celebrities, she presumes to instruct.

Sebastian said...

"like it's a big mystery why the "Silence" lasted so long. Two words, Bill Clinton." But even if they take down Bill, the silence will reappear. Two words: prog power.

Of course, if we knew half a century ago that the personal is political, and that women are equal, the Silence and Complicity become even more telling.

It's almost as if progs don't really care about sexual ethics and don't really believe women are equal.

Come to think of it, it's almost as if progs have no ethics but power.

Fabi said...

#TheReckoning becomes #TheBoomerang

rhhardin said...

Women aren't equal. They're women. Taking them as women is neither taking them seriously nor failing to take them seriously.

As Sollers said in a quote yesterday, when feminists look at a man, they want to see themselves, not a man.

LincolnTf said...

If I had the time and patience, I would like to compile a digest of every newspaper article, blog post, editorial and campaign statement from the Clinton/Lewinsky era and compare the way Bill was treated with how Harvey, etc. are being treated. CNN alone would be a treasure trove of hypocritical pap. NPR would be even better.

John Nowak said...

@rhhardin

I assume Weinstein had backers and investors. Was "I will then hire the actress who does anal" part of his agreement with them?

Fernandinande said...

mockturtle said...
Both Communism and Libertarianism are untenable because both are idealistic systems that ignore basic human nature.


What facets of basic human nature does libertarianism ignore?

Ron Winkleheimer said...
"Maybe it's a starving child and a father who, having lost one arm, needs to buy another from a stranger. Lifeboat awaiting rescue or something."

And this demonstrates that a Libertarian society is as untenable as Communism.


No it doesn't.

The US was a libertarian country - or as close as any have gotten - for over 100 years.

There was no government welfare system, yet, excluding people lost on the frontier, nobody starved.

Both views human beings as purely economic creatures and all interactions as transactional.

Not at all. Libertarian doesn't mean "no charity", it means "no involuntary charity".

Suppose someone is starving and needs to raise money to buy food for their children? Is it morally acceptable for someone who has a hankering for Long Pork to pay him for his arm?

Why not? And while you're at it, why not pick a more bizarre example that will never actually come up?

What if someone is a drug addict and needs some money for their next fix? Go to the Organ Bank and donate a kidney?

How would giving away a kidney help him buy anything?

Should society be OK with that?

If you meant selling a kidney, sure, why not? "It neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket."

I guess you support the idea that other people should be forced, essentially at gunpoint, to buy food for the junkie and support her children.

rhhardin said...

Sex was part of Weinstein's pay. Whether he kept the investors happy or not is a matter for the investors, not a public problem.

Anonymous said...

Ron Winkleheimer: And this demonstrates that a Libertarian society is as untenable as Communism.

At least a Commie can understand that your differences with him arise from fundamentally incompatible premises. So, unlike the Libertarian, he recognizes the pointlessness of attempting to question-beg his opponents into submission, and will just kill them off when he gets the chance.

Libertarians keep repeating themselves at you because they're unable to grasp that other people don't share their daft premises. If you don't see the correctness of his views it can only be because you didn't hear him the first 500 times.

Sometimes I wonder which approach is more inhumane.

Big Mike said...

@Lincoln, do you have a spare century or so?

The recent discovery that Lisa Bloom has been recruiting women to testify that Trump harassed them with cash offers up to $750,000 makes me believe that all or nearly all of the complaints against him are made up. Not so the complaints against Bill Clinton.

Jay Vogt said...

I honestly don't get it.

Didn't everyone, and I mean everyone, assume that the casting couch was an enduring and entrenched component of the Hollywood ecosystem. I'm the least woke person imaginable, and I assumed it; cost of doing business in the "Godfather" sense. "This is the business we've chosen"

Not excusing it, but if everyone knew (which they must have), then, I don't get why certain people should be shamed for being silent while others are not.

Fernandinande said...

Libertarians keep repeating themselves at you because they're unable to grasp that other people don't share their daft premises.

Please name two daft premises.

Ann Althouse said...

""The personal is the political" assumes the conclusion."

It's the title of a famous essay. Have you read it? It's not really fair to accuse a title of making an assumption. The question is whether the essay supports the proposition.

The Personal Is Political by Carol Hanisch February, 1969

"For this paper I want to stick pretty close to an aspect of the Left debate commonly talked about—namely “therapy” vs. “therapy and politics.” Another name for it is “personal” vs. “political”... Therapy assumes that someone is sick and that there is a cure, e.g., a personal solution. I am greatly offended that I or any other woman is thought to need therapy in the first place. Women are messed over, not messed up! We need to change the objective conditions, not adjust to them. Therapy is adjusting to your bad personal alternative....

"There are no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action for a collective solution.... When our group first started, going by majority opinion, we would have been out in the streets demonstrating against marriage, against having babies, for free love, against women who wore makeup, against housewives, for equality without recognition of biological differences, and god knows what else. Now we see all these things as what we call “personal solutionary....

"Women have left the movement in droves. The obvious reasons are that we are tired of being sex slaves and doing shitwork for men whose hypocrisy is so blatant in their political stance of liberation for everybody (else). But there is really a lot more to it than that. I can’t quite articulate it yet. I think “apolitical” women are not in the movement for very good reasons, and as long as we say “you have to think like us and live like us to join the charmed circle,” we will fail. What I am trying to say is that there are things in the consciousness of “apolitical” women (I find them very political) that are as valid as any political consciousness we think we have. We should figure out why many women don’t want to do action. Maybe there is something wrong with the action or something wrong with why we are doing the action or maybe the analysis of why the action is necessary is not clear enough in our minds."

mockturtle said...

Those who have been feeding at the trough for years suddenly decide it is in their interest to 'speak out' about the trough's past behavior. Why am I unimpressed?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

The golden Oscar statue and the golden globe statues are symbols of rape and corrupt lie-filled leftwing progressive politics.

Come on Kimmel - hand em' out.

Bay Area Guy said...

There's an old quote by Edmund Burke I used to cite a lot:

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

So, this new meme about "Breaking the Silence" is consistent with Burke's time-honored admonition. To that extent, I'm for it.

The problem our liberal friends have is APPLYING this good theme to SPECIFIC situations, ahem, cough, cough, Bill Clinton, cough, ahem, particularly when it goes against their political wishes to do so.

For example: There is a live woman, who exists today. She is 74 years old, Her name is JUANITA BROADDRICK.

She made credible allegations that Bill Clinton raped her in Arkansas. She described, in detail, how and when it happened, she told friends about it, and she explains why she felt powerless to go the police (because her nursing home business had contracts with the State of Arkansas).

The Dems ignored her and, there is some evidence tried to silence her.

So, #metoo and #breakthesilence are great ideas and great slogans. But I'm not interested in listening to liberals espouse them until they examine faithfully the claims of JUANITA BROADDRICK.

Ann Althouse said...

Also at the link is a 2006 essay about the essay by the author (Hanish), who says she didn't put that title on it and that the word "political" should be understood "in the broad sense of the word as having to do with power relationships, not the narrow sense of electorial politics."

Also:

"[In 1969,] many on the [Southern Conference Educational Fund] staff, both men and women, ended up joining the criticism of women getting together in consciousness-raising groups to discuss their own oppression as “naval-gazing” and “personal therapy”—and certainly “not political.”

"They could sometimes admit that women were oppressed (but only by “the system”) and said that we should have equal pay for equal work, and some other “rights.” But they belittled us no end for trying to bring our so-called “personal problems” into the public arena—especially “all those body issues” like sex, appearance, and abortion. Our demands that men share the housework and childcare were likewise deemed a personal problem between a woman and her individual man. The opposition claimed if women would just “stand up for themselves” and take more responsibility for their own lives, they wouldn’t need to have an independent movement for women’s liberation....

"Recognizing the need to fight male supremacy as a movement instead of blaming the individual woman for her oppression was where the Pro-Woman Line came in. It challenged the old anti-woman line that used spiritual, psychological, metaphysical, and pseudo-historical explanations for women’s oppression with a real, materialist analysis for why women do what we do..."

rhhardin said...

Thanks for quoting the argument.

Therapy is not the alternative to political action.

LincolnTf said...

I wonder if there's a single Democrat voter in America who would be willing and able to today defend their support of Bill Clinton back in the Nineties. Every sentient human being knew Bill was a philandering liar, and yet half the country chose to embrace his deviant behavior, and even reward him for it. How many freaking "Women's Rights" groups have feted Bill over the course of his sordid career? Dozens? Hundreds? Pathetic bitches.

Gahrie said...

Please name two daft premises.

Everyone is capable of, and willing, to act like an adult.

People are basically good.

Bad Lieutenant said...

“The director of the theater I was working at showed me some photographs he got from women who were wanting jobs, they were actors,” McKellen explained. “And some of them had–I think these were the initials–at the bottom of their photograph, ‘DPR’–director’s rights respected,” he continued. “In other words, ‘If you give me a job, you can have sex with me.’ That was commonplace from people who proposed that they should be a victim. Madness. DRR–director’s rights respected.”

rhhardin said...

What would the argument look like if women were actually wired with different interests and obsessions than men.

Say that they make men and women mutually attractive.

You can spin difference as a problem but that's clubbing it to death.

mockturtle said...

The Personal Is Political by Carol Hanisch February, 1969

I was in the movement at the time and know very well of which she spoke. However, her statement, Maybe there is something wrong with the action or something wrong with why we are doing the action or maybe the analysis of why the action is necessary is not clear enough in our minds." is very telling. We wrongly supposed a collective consciousness that wasn't really there. And even supposing a collective female consciousness negates individualism and even the humanity of women.

Bay Area Guy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
rhhardin said...

"Please name two daft premises."

Everyone is capable of, and willing, to act like an adult.

People are basically good.


"Through the ages [man] had believed (eyelids fluttering under the mignonettes of modesty) that he was compounded only of good and a minimal amount of evil. Sharply I showed him, by laying bare in broad daylight his heart and life's weave, that on the contrary, he is compounded only of evil and a minimal amount of good which the legislators have difficulty managing to preserve." - Lautreamont

Bay Area Guy said...

I guess I want a world with strong, attractive, healthy, funny, flirtatious, women who love men, love raising babies, work hard, and would smack a man who grabbed her ass (or some other suitable response) AT THE TIME and not whine about it or stew on it for decades, and then try to use the offense to help a preferred candidate (cough, Democrat) win an election.

Is that so wrong?

Ann Althouse said...

"Therapy is not the alternative to political action."

She also says (as quoted above: "The opposition claimed if women would just “stand up for themselves” and take more responsibility for their own lives, they wouldn’t need to have an independent movement for women’s liberation...."

That is basically what you have been saying, that individual women should take responsibility to make better individual transactions in the marketplace (and not use larger strategies).

rhhardin said...

You can walk away and find a deal you like. Is something special needed for women?

The alternative isn't a women's movement. Probably the opposite, it compounds the problem. The power doesn't go to the individual woman but to the new power holders.

rhhardin said...

That women don't like the same stuff as men makes all sorts of new deals possible. They're not competitors for everything.

They don't crowd each other.

What will equality improve.

Bay Area Guy said...

Most often, when the Left touches something or pushes something, they seek some form of political or cultural advantage. Take the abortion issue:

Back in the 70s, many, if not most, Catholic Dems were against abortion. Jeez, even the Rev. Jesse Jackson was against abortion. Not to mention Bill Clinton, and Al Gore.

But at the national level, the Dem party issued a political fatwah, that Pro-Life Dems were no longer viable or welcome in the upper echelons of the Party. Despite the fact that many Dem voters in the South and industrial states remain Pro-Life.

In California, I've voted for several Pro-Choice Republicans, including Pete Wilson and Ahnnold. There hasn't been such a strident political fatwah in the GOP.

Leftwing feminism has, I must confess, opened doors for women in the workplace and at home. No doubt about that. But at what cost? The Left rarely asks that question, let alone answer it.

Are American women generally happier, more content, more financially self-sufficient, than in past generations? To me, it's an open question: in some ways, Yes, but in many under-reported ways, No.




Thorley Winston said...

Have any of you claiming Streep is talented watched “Momma Mia”?

Yes, it was a silly fun movie, but Streep performed about as well as the material would allow. I wouldn’t call her a great singing talent (I don’t remember her being awful at it either) but she’s performed in enough serious acting roles that calling her “talented” is an understatement.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

I guess you support the idea that other people should be forced, essentially at gunpoint, to buy food for the junkie and support her children.

Look everybody, a false dichotomy! You're either a Libertarian or a tyrant.

I'm actually a minimal government guy who thinks charity is by nature voluntary and should be handled locally because local people have a better handle on who needs what and can do a better job of accessing need and preventing free loading. But hey, everybody who thinks Libertarian philosophy is Utopian nonsense because its model of human nature is incorrect must be a statist.

John Nowak said...

>Sex was part of Weinstein's pay. Whether he kept the investors happy or not is a matter for the investors, not a public problem.

Taking money to make a film and spending it on whores isn't fraud? Fraud isn't a public problem? Kickback schemes are honest business?

kentuckyliz said...

Don't get your meat where you get your bread and butter.

Make your bread and butter from your pink taco.

Which philosophy do you want your mom, wife, daughter to embrace?

William said...

So far as sexual morality goes, there's quite a lot of variation among individuals, among cultures, and among different epochs of those cultures. Even a specific individual has different views of what's right and wrong depending on their age and hormones. So far as I know, no society and no individual has ever fashioned a sexual ethos that perfectly fosters liberation, equality and fulfillment among all its members. (Heh, heh I said members.) That said, I think it's possible to do business in such a way that career advancement is not dependent upon watching a slob masturbate. Can we all agree on some base lines regarding sexual morality?

Yancey Ward said...

The real problem is you can't believe anyone- those who claim to have known all along and those that claim to have not known. I think some have probably boxed themselves in by lying about having actually known all along- that narcissistic need to not appear a dunce bites you in the ass sometimes.

Anonymous said...

I want to know about those who cavorted with Harvey and got the part.
There must be a long list.

kentuckyliz said...

>Sex was part of Weinstein's pay.<

The women that Weinstein targeted were not a party to that contract.

If that were literally true, why didn't the investors or Weinstein just keep a particular call girl on retainer? Why not contract with literal whores?

Why was that not satisfying enough for Weinstein?

kentuckyliz said...

Lars said, I want to know about those who cavorted with Harvey and got the part.

IKR? There are surely those who took the deal and have no complaints. I would applaud their courage if they would stand up and say so. What are they afraid of?

John Nowak said...

>The real problem is you can't believe anyone- those who claim to have known all along and those that claim to have not known.

Someone's telling the truth. No idea who it is, and I don't think we ever will.

So there's someone out there who thought it was all nasty rumors and total strangers think he or she is lying. I'm glad I'm not that person.

Anonymous said...

kentuckyliz said...
Lars said, I want to know about those who cavorted with Harvey and got the part.

IKR? There are surely those who took the deal and have no complaints. I would applaud their courage if they would stand up and say so. What are they afraid of?

12/20/17, 12:26 PM
----------------------------------------
Prurient interest only ,plus , for feminists, identify the collaborators.

mockturtle said...

Streep is undeniably a highly talented and highly skilled actress. I just wish she would STFU off the set.

Darrell said...

Make your bread and butter from your pink taco.

Damn it! Now I want a pink taco for lunch.

mockturtle said...

There are surely those who took the deal and have no complaints. I would applaud their courage if they would stand up and say so. What are they afraid of?

Agree, kentuckyliz. It would be a refreshing contrast to the feigned moral outrage of the 'victims'.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Bay Area Guy said...
I guess I want a world with strong, attractive, healthy, funny, flirtatious, women who love men, love raising babies, work hard, and would smack a man who grabbed her ass (or some other suitable response) AT THE TIME and not whine about it or stew on it for decades, and then try to use the offense to help a preferred candidate (cough, Democrat) win an election."

Last night, Tucker Carlson interviewed a DJ who was fired from his job after Taylor Swift accused him of grabbing her butt when he and his girlfriend were posing for a backstage photo with Swift. The experience was so traumatic for poor Taylor that she was included on the cover of Time with other brave victims of “sexual assault.” It was arguably much more traumatic for the man however. His chances of landing another DJ job are next to nil and his girlfriend dumped him. He denied he did it.

Of course, it’s a “he said, she said” thing, but his case is bolstered by the fact that Swift said absolutely nothing to him at the time. Instead, she later told her bodyguard, who booted the DJ and his girlfriend from the concert. Then the Swift flunkies notified his employer and hesto presto, there went his job.

Why didn’t Swift turn to him and say immediately “Get your hand off my ass, mister?” Or even a polite “Excuse me?” Women didn’t say anything to Harvey W. because he was powerful and could make or break their careers. What power did a DJ in, I think, Denver, have over Swift? None whatsoever. It’s Swift who had all the power in this situation – and she used it to break a man and then she cried “I’m a victim.”

Give me a f’ing break. And the idea that an ass grab is some sort of emotionally scarring experience – jeez. In my younger days, my ass was grabbed occasionally and sometimes it was grabbed by men I didn’t like (although not by any bosses). I said, “Stop that, you pig. Get your paw off me.” That, combined with a glare, seemed to work just fine. (I fondly remember a British woman on the Tube in London who loudly told the man behind her, “If you don’t get your hand off my bum, I will hit you over the head with my brolly!” Everyone laughed and the man was suitably shamed. That’s how a strong woman handles such things.) As BayAreaGuy said, I didn’t stew about it for decades. I forgot about those incidents until this current stupidity reminded me. As much as I didn’t like those oafs, I would not have wanted them to lose their jobs because of a 3 second ass grab. Equating an ass grab or a lewd joke with the sort of real exploitation and rape Weinstein is credibly accused of is absurd. I have a good friend who was brutally raped - and the experience gave her nightmares for years. To equate what I went through with what she went though is ridiculous - and demeaning to women.

I can’t blame men if they start deciding that hiring any woman under the age of 50 is too risky and not worth the trouble.

Darrell said...

I want to know about those who cavorted with Harvey and got the part.
There must be a long list.


People described Weinstein as a "man who doesn't do nothing for nothing." Look at the credits on his movies if you want to see who played ball. Perhaps he adjusted his expectations down for some, but they still gave him something he wanted.

Darrell said...

Why didn’t Swift turn to him and say immediately “Get your hand off my ass, mister?” Or even a polite “Excuse me?”

Photographs were being taken. It's called not making a scene. The bodyguard that witnessed it and made a quick step toward the offender was waived off by Swift people. They handled it immediately with a talk with his boss. This is a good example of the right way to handle it, not the opposite.

Bay Area Guy said...

@Mock,

Great story, and observations. I'm with you, Sister!

But, also, No, grown men like Al Franken should not be grabbing the ass of women. That's something that should end in junior high, jeez. But, also, he should not get the political death penalty.

John Nowak said...

>This is a good example of the right way to handle it, not the opposite.

Agreed. And if I owned a radio station and one of my employees grabbed a singer's ass at a public event, I'd fire him too.

Darrell said...

One would think that Blogger's wonderful new anti-Spam algorithm would take in account the hostess' labeling of my comments as "NOT SPAM" a hundred times to bring them back. This is quickly becoming actionable--in my fictional little world.

traditionalguy said...

MLK was raised by a Southern Baptist preacher and became one himself. He mastered putting sinners on guilt trips. The great one he constructed in 1963 and finally hyped by his martyrdom in 1968 has just barely worn off.

Al Franken's wore off in 3 weeks.

Gk1 said...

Hollywood phonies having their hypocrisy rubbed in their faces. Merry Christmas!

Sebastian said...

"What will equality improve." Equality in the sense meant--i.e., the eradication of difference across the board--will improve prog power and self-regard. At the outset it will improve how women feel about themselves. That's enough fuel for a proper witch hunt.

William said...

I'm sympathetic to most of the women. When the first one comes forward, usually a number of others with similar stories come forward. See Dustin Hoffman and CJ Lewis. I've not yet heard of of the reverse happening, where a number of men come forward and claim that this woman has made fraudulent claims against them......I think rich, powerful men take advantage of their position, but in Hollywood this kind of behavior is off the charts.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Why not? And while you're at it, why not pick a more bizarre example that will never actually come up?

Never say never.

Don't go to this site if you are squeamish.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/dec/04/germany.lukeharding

The example was chosen because we are trying to establish if there is any conduct that is impermissible, regardless of whether consent was given and no fraud or force was involved. If so, then what is that conduct? What are the parameters of acceptable behavior. And as can be seen from the example at the link, the extremes of human behavior cannot be exaggerated.

mockturtle said...

Exiled reports: said, “Stop that, you pig. Get your paw off me.

At a party once I rather loudly exclaimed to an unwanted, under the table move, "Get your fucking hand off my leg!".

This not only embarrassed the guy but drew everyone's attention, as they didn't expect such an outburst from ladylike moi. After the initial shock, everyone laughed heartily, including me and the guy [whom I later married and to whom I was married for forty years].

Michael said...

mockturtle

Great story. Thanks

Fernandinande said...

Gahrie said...
"Please name two daft premises."
Everyone is capable of, and willing, to act like an adult.
People are basically good.


I've never heard anyone claim they believed either of those things - which is why libertarianism doesn't preclude police, courts, political borders and a military.

I'm mostly curious about the sort of cartoonish ideas people have about libertarianism. If I were interested in serious critiques I'd be asking "What daft premises did Milton Friedman and the guys who wrote the U.S. Constitution operate under?"

buwaya said...

Re German Cannibals -

Classic episode of the British sitcom "The IT Crowd"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOE-q20RcDM

"IT Crowd", 2006-2010, could not be made today. Even as its various pet themes are very pertinent - a sex-harassing boss, professional women, etc.

buwaya said...

"IKR? There are surely those who took the deal and have no complaints. I would applaud their courage if they would stand up and say so. What are they afraid of?"

They would be afraid of the same thing that kept the others quiet. Herd behavior.
The direction changes, but the herd remains.

mockturtle said...


"IT Crowd", 2006-2010, could not be made today. Even as its various pet themes are very pertinent - a sex-harassing boss, professional women, etc.


Nor could Benny Hill, whom I never found funny but some men did. Apparently.

Fernandinande said...

Ron Winkleheimer said...
"Why not? And while you're at it, why not pick a more bizarre example that will never actually come up?

Never say never.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/dec/04/germany.lukeharding


I guess I missed the part of that story where someone "needs to raise money to buy food for their children."

HoodlumDoodlum said...

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. --Blaise Pascal

Bay Area Guy said...

@Exile,

I said Mock up above, but I meant you. Exile and Mock, Mock and Exile, Exile and Mock, Mock and Exile. You both are great. And, now I will shut up:)

narciso said...

Much like who submitted to bill Clinton's entreaties, hint she got the female highlander part, bur much of this is to change objective standards for subjective ones

Ron Winkleheimer said...

I guess I missed the part of that story where someone "needs to raise money to buy food for their children."

Deflection. Is there any human behavior beyond the pale, even if consent is given and no fraud or force is used? Yes or no?

which is why libertarianism doesn't preclude police, courts, political borders and a military.

I'm mostly curious about the sort of cartoonish ideas people have about libertarianism. If I were interested in serious critiques I'd be asking "What daft premises did Milton Friedman and the guys who wrote the U.S. Constitution operate under?"


Strawmen and misrepresentation of historical facts.

rhhardin said...

As a comment on therapy or mass action, there's Tyrrell's essay on Betty Friedan in _Public Nuisances_. I take it the absence of other possibilities being considered is the point mocked.

"The movement was born amid the sounds of the morning wash being automatically battered and dried in the laundry rooms of suburbia. The last crumbs of breakfast had been lugged away, the coffee was poured, and a scowling Miss Betty Friedan sat with the most awesome circle of women ever gathered under the roof of a modern ranch-type house. Together they deliberated, as rage feathered the linings of their bowels. The whole day yawned before them. Soon it would be back and forth, back and forth to the powder room. Coffee and house work can have that effect. These brave women were trapped with a vast expanse of desolate hours stretching out to that remote time when the kids returned from school and the idiot traipsed in with his evening paper. It was insanity, and still the infernal washing machine kept vibrating in the background. Soon the maid would be emptying it and feeding it, emptying it and feeding it. There would be telephones and shopping and God knows what all. Rosa Luxemburg had been right ; so had -- their genitalia notwithstanding -- C. Wright Mills and Norman O. Brown. It was time to hoist the black flag. Penis envy, ha!

The women began to read, and in time they began to shout. Millions of witches had been burned in the Middle Ages, yet here we were in the early 1960s and still no inquest had been held. Not even many books on the atrocity could be found. There was much work to be done..."

``Betty Friedan and the Women of the Fevered Brow'' _Public Nuisances_ R.Emmett Tyrrell

buwaya said...

"Nor could Benny Hill, whom I never found funny but some men did. Apparently."

I loved "Benny Hill".
"Monty Python" loved "Benny Hill". They did "Benny Hill" stuff quite often.
It was the Oxbridge boys doing the Music-Hall - Blackpool burlesque stuff.

"Benny Hill" is not the same thing as "It Crowd", but its got that British humor Americans can't do.

And they couldn't make "Monty Python" today either.

walter said...

Blogger Gordon Scott said...
At this point, it's all battlefield preparation. People will push for the industry to implement "watchers" on all sets
--
Most sets are supposed to begin the day with a "safety meeting".
Maybe it will be updated to reflect the reckoning.
For illustration purposes, maybe choreograph certain elements like flight attendants do.

JAORE said...

I'll respect Streep a bit on this subject if she, pre-Golden Globes, issues a public statement of how horrified she is at her own actions at the Polanski love fest*. Then names and challenges other, prominent standing O's to do the same.


* Has ANYONE declared themselves recently woke enough to have done so?

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

"IT Crowd", 2006-2010, could not be made today. Even as its various pet themes are very pertinent - a sex-harassing boss, professional women, etc.

Nor could Benny Hill, whom I never found funny but some men did. Apparently.

12/20/17, 1:47 PM

Benny Hill is the British equivalent of the Three Stooges. Many men find one or both hilarious. Many women, including me, can't stand either Hill or the Stooges.

Last night, I caught part of a 1969 British comedy on Sundance, "The Best House in London." Although it was set in (a fantasy) Victorian London, it was really about the '60's and my reaction to it was very much from the POV of 2017. The plot concerns a fictional scheme by the British government to set up a high class whorehouse in Belgravia to get the numerous London streetwalkers off the street where they can service rich and respectable Englishmen without causing scandal.

The Victorian whores in the movie are all gorgeous and delighted to be whores, which shows you how realistic the movie is. The character gleefully planning to open and profit from the whorehouse is, in Victorian terms, a unscrupulous cad and bounder, but he is also portrayed as uninhibited and fun - far more fun than the earnest, clumsy preacher who tries to reform the girls. While making fun of prudish Christians is still very much in vogue, joking references to furnishing 15 year old virgins for the pleasure of lecherous old men startled me. That was indeed a Victorian whorehouse specialty but in the movie, it's an amusing lark. There is also a scene where the cad drugs his goody two shoes cousin in order to rape her. Of course, since this is a 1969 movie, a character on drugs is funny. Ah, the early days of the Sexual Revolution: all sex is fun and good, so the "wicked" bounder – a ‘60’s anti-hero - and the French madam aren't really all that wicked. They're far less repressed than the dull preacher and far less hypocritical than their high class clients. Of course, it’s a comedy. Many people would not find it at all funny today.

Professional lady said...

JAORE I think Streep is so totally unaware of her own self that she is unable to do anything like what you suggest. I've always admired her as an actress, but I really doubt she sees any contradiction or inconsistency between the values she professes to hold and her behavior. She's in a neat little insulated world of self regard. It strains credulity that she did not know about Weinstein - unless she didn't want to know and ignored what was all around her.

Otto said...

All noise. Listen to Britt McHenry tell like it is. Nothing more, nothing less.
http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2017/12/20/former-espn-reporter-britt-mchenry-ive-seen-female-sportscasters-use-their-looks-get-ahead/

stevew said...

You expect too much from this crowd that spend their entire professional careers pretending to be someone else. Seems to me that these folks have no real self of which to be aware. They are forever posing - especially those that have been successful as actors & entertainers.

-sw

Jael (Gone Windwalking) said...

"... unsex me ..."

- the prayer of Lady Macbeth in her version of "The [Unsexed] Silence"

for what that might mean in Elizabethan ...

Jael (Gone Windwalking) said...

Unsexed more, her politics, her therapy:

Though, oh for a man, cried unsexed Lady Macbeth, for her fit accomplice, where “the blanket of the dark” as “The Silence” ... and good luck breaking this ...

The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry “Hold, hold!”

Jael (Gone Windwalking) said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Owen said...

Mockturtle: great story about the party and the hidden hand. Thanks.
Exiled: intriguing question there. Is comedy a better (more sensitive) indicator than tragedy of the moral tone of an era? It seems more dependent for its effect on foibles and fads, in-jokes and ephemeral amusements. Discuss.

mockturtle said...

And they couldn't make "Monty Python" today either.

Loved Monty Python. Also Two Ronnies.

mockturtle said...

Oh, and I love the Three Stooges, too, oddly enough. Especially Moe Howard, always trying to smack some sense into the other two. Sometimes when my husband and I had a bad argument we'd watch a Three Stooges episode. A few good laughs and all was well again. And maybe we'd both be imagining we were Moe ;-).

Big Mike said...

Silence is Golden, but my eyes still see.

Big Mike said...

I do have to wonder whether Streep had the imagination to picture Mamie or Grace or Louisa being drugged and sodomized by Polanski during their preadolescence. Or perhaps she's the sort of mother who wouldn't care, as long as she could have the female lead in his next production.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

"We are assuming Streep did not provide sexual favors but why is that (I’m counting watching him masturbate as a sexual favor)?"

Because even at her prettiest, her look was best described using euphemisms, including one reserved specifically for her -- "patrician". Granted, a man could still enjoy sex with a woman who's not very attractive, but in a business, and a town, that is a magnet for beautiful women, drawing them from every spot on the globe, poor Meryl had to get by on talent.

I just wonder why we assume Streep, or anyone, knew about Weinstein's, or anyone else's, dirty deeds. They may have known about such things IN GENERAL, and they may have heard RUMORS, but that's not the same as SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE.

What could she have done, called the cops to say, "Send a squad car, men in high positions in Hollywood are abusing women. No, I don't know which men, or which women,or exactly where they are, but it happens all the time, generally, and I'm not sure if it's happening at this very moment. Send police, quick!"

walter said...

mock,
Maybe you've revealed a new tool for couple's therapy.

tcrosse said...

I was disappointed to see that Soupy Sales never said any of the risqué things that were attributed to him. Sad.

wildswan said...

If you live in China you have to agree that your little daughter is worthless and rightfully aborted in the quest for a son.
If you live in Saudi Arabia you have to agree that your testimony in court is valueless compared to that of a man.
If you live in Hollywood you have to agree to brutalizing sexual assaults in order to have career.
But no woman anywhere really accepts all this as right any more. The culture has to catch up. And this little local Reckoning is part of that change. Men have right to challenge their accusers. That's established in the Constitution. But women have a right to challenge their abusers. That must be established just as firmly.

CStanley said...

The Personal Is Political by Carol Hanisch February, 1969

I was in the movement at the time and know very well of which she spoke. However, her statement, Maybe there is something wrong with the action or something wrong with why we are doing the action or maybe the analysis of why the action is necessary is not clear enough in our minds." is very telling. We wrongly supposed a collective consciousness that wasn't really there. And even supposing a collective female consciousness negates individualism and even the humanity of women.


Very well said, mockturtle. I am a decade or so younger than Althouse and never considered myself part of the feminist movement- in fact have felt in opposition to it. I had never read the essay quoted here but intuitively knew that the problem was exactly as she described it. So my question is, why didn't anyone pay attention to her?

wildswan said...

And PS, Trump in not a Harvey Weinstein type guy. So don't get your hopes up, you poor pathetic lefties who are still trying to overthrow the election of 2016. You'll just be disappointed again, and cry again, and throw yourselves and the floor and turn blue again. Trump is staying. Wiener, Hillary, Weinstein, Comey and others not yet named, are not.

George M. Spencer said...

And she's playing mega whistleblower Katharine Graham in a new movie....such poetic justice.

Jupiter said...

"That is basically what you have been saying, that individual women should take responsibility to make better individual transactions in the marketplace (and not use larger strategies)."

Well, and that individual women undoubtedly *have* been doing that. Which is how Harvey came to expect it.

I mean, look, how's this; we'll make it *illegal* to have sex with a movie producer. OK? Anyone does it, we'll lock her up for twenty years. Not enough? Hell, we'll cut her head off in the public square. That should put a stop to this stuff all these women are so browned off about.

gadfly said...

Tucker Carlson talks to DJ who supposedly grabbed Taylor Swifts ass. He says it never happened.

CStanley said...

And PS, Trump in not a Harvey Weinstein type guy.

I dislike Trump and think he is of low moral character, but I always read his womanizing as mostly an act. I seem to remember reading a bio piece about him that suggested that...this was back in the day, before Melania, and the journalist painted a picture of a guy who was more interested in cultivating a man-about-town image than he was in actually sleeping with lots of different women. IIRC the article quoted several models he had recently dated who said it was all about being seen in public with him.

Darrell said...

"We are assuming Streep did not provide sexual favors but why is that (I’m counting watching him masturbate as a sexual favor)?"

Because even at her prettiest, her look was best described using euphemisms, including one reserved specifically for her -- "patrician".


Looks don't particularly matter for a guy like Harvey. That Italian actress/producer figured out pretty quick that he was feeding on her horror and fear, and she turned her feedback to fake pleasure and he began to lose interest. If you think Streep is prim and proper and "classy," then she's the perfect target for a guy like Harvey to humiliate. She has the emotional range as an actress to really chew the scenery on that, as they say. Or maybe just a quick bukkake scene or facial. We'll never know.

Big Mike said...

@Char Char Binks, I have read that the point of a sexual assault is only partly sexual gratification, but mostly it’s about domination and humiliation. Streep doesn’t have to be pretty to be humiliated.

Big Mike said...

@Darrell, are you my good twin?

Darrell said...

@Darrell, are you my good twin?

Dunno, Mike. Show me on this Chuckie doll where the dingo touched you.

Jupiter said...

gadfly said...
"Tucker Carlson talks to DJ who supposedly grabbed Taylor Swifts ass. He says it never happened."

And I'm inclined to believe him.

Tim said...

Sabo! You magnificent bastard!

Darrell said...

And I'm inclined to believe him.

Then you are a fool. Multiple people saw him, especially since he lifted her dress in back. Plus, they found a notepad in his office where he was writing gags for his radio show--boasting that he had grabbed Taylor's ass, before it happened. It was premeditated. He was a shock-jock, if you didn't know. This was going to give him major bad-boy cred.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
n.n said...

An eerie silence pervades the twilight fringe.

mockturtle said...

Well said, Leonard.

Anonymous said...

"Maybe it's a starving child and a father who, having lost one arm, needs to buy another from a stranger. Lifeboat awaiting rescue or something.

And this demonstrates that a Libertarian society is as untenable as Communism. Both views human beings as purely economic creatures and all interactions as transactional. "


The problem is that this is a terrible example.

Libertarians apparently can suppose that starving children could make a deal where they sell their own body parts to survive. Everyone else recognizes that children have a right to be taken care of by adults and/or by society. (Libertarianism might work great if everyone were born able-bodied, educated, and capable of self-sufficiency).

In actuality, it is hard to think of a way even an adult could sell an arm (or a pound of flesh) that isn't fairly easy to class as exploitation and/or under duress (talking morally here not legally) using existing arguments.

The same cannot be said for trading sex for a movie part.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Owen I never thought about it before but you make an excellent point.

Achilles said...

There are surely those who took the deal and have no complaints. I would applaud their courage if they would stand up and say so. What are they afraid of?

Admitting they got their parts for something other than talent/acting skills.

Similar to the affirmative action issue.

Nicholas said...

Bay Area Guy and exiledonmainstreet have it exactly right. There is a good article published recently to that effect by Claire Berlinski, although it is spoiled by an outbreak of TDS and Moore Derangement Syndrome towards the end.

FIDO said...

But women have a right to challenge their abusers. That must be established just as firmly.

They have had it for decades. Heck, VICTORIAN women could scuttle a man for scandal if her voice could be heard.

The complaint isn't that the women are complaining. It is that the women are bringing this up DECADES LATER. We do not, did not, and never did live in The Handmaid' Tale. I can show you cases of mobs being riled up because a woman said she was assaulted even back to Colonial times (granted, not whores and actresses, because, well...that was what they were being paid to DO and everyone bitches about their jobs AHEM)

So complain away! In a TIMELY fashion. Otherwise, a lot of this looks like has-been actresses bitching about something they never bitched about before because they are now too old to cast.