Me Too

@engineer,

engineer wrote:

We have two extremes currently, the courts which are heavily tilted towards the aggressor and requires a standard of proof that is likely unobtainable and social media which is heavily tilted towards the chaos and requires no proof. What is a system with a better balance?

civil lawsuits are the new way in Toronto at least

in criminal cases, the victims tend not to have lawyers - do not have a voice

in civil cases, the victims have lawyers /voices

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

Quote:

Aziz Ansari has been socialized.

She makes it sound as if it was a bad thing. It's not. People are animals, as born. Society is a good thing. It's not the enemy. Manners are a good thing. They proverbially maketh man (and woman). And in my mind, gender roles are not necessarily a problem either as long as their distribution amongst genders is fair and functional and they are not enforced strictly, when treated more like gender "voluntary guidelines", but I digress.

One important point is that it takes two to have bad sex.

Another is that highly 'policed' and 'proper' sex is actually not the best kind. It's a bit like canned fruits compared to fresh fruits harvested from the tree. Nothing tastes like nature, and our nature is animal. It is not 'socialised'. There precisely lies a problem: sanitised, highly choregraphed sex is not the sex we want.

I suspect it's not really the sex you want either.

2 Replies

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Quote:
Aziz Ansari has been socialized.

She makes it sound as if it was a bad thing. It's not.

let's look at the balance of that quote

Quote:

Men are socialized to **** hard and often, and women are socialized to get fucked, look happy, and keep quiet about it.

Aziz Ansari has been socialized.
And if we don't like the way socialized men do sex, then we need to take a hard look at our society, friend.

I think that socialization is a bad thing. A very bad thing.

And now I guess I'd have to say I'm taking a hard look at you and not liking what I see.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

One important point is that it takes two to have bad sex.

nope
no it doesn't

all it takes is one person with more power / control. It could be emotional/physical/social

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

Quote:

That Deneuve and Atwood are too old to understand the changes in today's world.

Presumptuouness and extreme passions are the priviledge of youth. It is PRECISELY the priviledge of age to have seen the world change upto this present point... old people understand something about change that kids don't. For instance that there are pendulum effects, that change itself can change.

An astute observer and active player of her times, come the age of Atwood or Deneuve, knows infinitely more about life and its meaning and consequences that a twenty-something. ESPECIALLY when it comes to sex.

0 Replies

@ehBeth,

Not sure how civil cases would work in the US. Typically in a civil case, money is involved and you need to show harm. Ask for a lot of money and you become a gold digger and it's hard to show harm from getting groped by the President while taking a picture. It also drags the victim through the court system. The Swift case is a perfect example. She was asked if she felt any responsibility for what happened, if she felt bad about the man losing his job, why didn't she do more when groped, what could she have done differently, etc. She was brilliant, but she also had the advice of a crack legal team. I think there is a good chance of victimizing the person again in the US legal system.

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

Regardless. It takes two people, one more powerful than the other (or not), to have bad sex. This is pure logic, if bad sex means consensual bad sex then two (or more) people agreed to do it and then the same two people did it.

1 Reply

@engineer,

engineer wrote:

It also drags the victim through the court system.

they go through court in a similar way to a criminal case but they get a lawyer to help them

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

if bad sex means consensual bad sex

the reality is that many of us thought about non-consensual bad sex as just bad sex because it was less awful to think about

acknowledging it to have been non-consensual is painful

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

True, but unfortunately many people will decide that the optimum result for them would be to not take any action and avoid the ordeal. That is the historical norm and how we ended where we are.

1 Reply

@engineer,

It's changing thank goodness.

A couple of young friends who were raped and whose criminal cases went nowhere have now followed the route of the women in the Schultz case and hired lawyers to pursue things in civil court. They'll be asking for $1 plus costs. Given what they were put through in the criminal courts they believe it's worth it.

0 Replies

@ehBeth,

Quote:

non-consensual bad sex

Wait. In my admitedly limited understanding of North-American parlance, non-consensual sex is simply rape, which is different from bad sex. So what are you talking about exactly?

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

that what we thought was bad sex
what we talked about as bad sex

was rape

that's a fair bit of what the discussion is about

2 Replies

@engineer,

engineer wrote:

But what if you are a senior engineer who's mentees are know to move quickly up the company ladder and who is known to have the ear of upper management? (We have a manager here who has a lot of stroke with all the top management and is known for soliciting women in the workplace. It has caused a lot of concern among women here over the years. Sure, he's not your boss, but everyone knows he can put his finger on the scale.)

We are talking about grown women who can make their own choices and are responsible for their own decisions, right?

I think the line is simple.

If a woman is working at my company, and particularly if she reports to me, then I should stay away because of the power I have over her in the workplace.

Grownups (whether they are men or women) make their own choices with relationships. Sometimes this doesn't work too well, but we live live that. I have no obligation to help her career. If she finds me sexually attractive, she has every right to pursue a sexual relationship with me. And, vice versa. Sure... sometimes the boundaries are complicated for both men and women. That is part of being an adult human being.

Treating women like children who are not responsible for communicating for themselves, or leaving a situation that isn't good for them is maddening. I am not talking about cases where there is physical force, or extortion.

But if I go to a woman's apartment and then after she starts kissing me I decide I want her to stop, no one assumes that she has the responsibility to sense this unless I make it clear to her.

These are adult women we are talking about, they don't need to be protected from their decisions in life any more than you do.

Quote:

I see the point, but what is the answer? No prosecutor is going to bring a case of he said/she said, so what is a solution? What would be components of the solution? What is the standard of proof required? We have two extremes currently, the courts which are heavily tilted towards the aggressor and requires a standard of proof that is likely unobtainable and social media which is heavily tilted towards the chaos and requires no proof. What is a system with a better balance?

Are you asking for a Utopian society where the guilty are always punished and the innocent are always vindicated? Sorry, there is no perfect system.

Sexual crimes are treated no differently than murder, child abuse or extortion. As a society we have decided that the presumption of innocence is a basic human right. Sorry... I think this it the correct thing to do even though it does mean that we can't punish people without a high standard of evidence.

Sure... we have the social media to "balance" it. I don't think it really balances it. I think the backlash against this current social media campaign has already started.

1 Reply

When did wanting sex become a bad thing? When did seeking sex become a bad thing. There is a certain prudishness here that I don't understand.

I like sex a lot. I don't see a problem with that. Sometime I go out looking for someone to have sex with. Sometimes I find women who want to have sex with me. It is great when that happens. (I am in a relationship now... but I am making a point.) For whatever reason (whether biological or cultural) it is the man who takes the initiative first most of the time. I can tell you from experience that women also usually enjoy sex when it happens.

There seems to be a pattern (in my experience). After dinner or some other activity... either I will invite a woman back to my apartment (or sometimes she invites me). Almost always, after that happens, we start kissing and petting. If either of us want to stop there, we just say "I need to go" and we leave. If we don't.... the assumption is that we both want to proceed. I don't see any problem with this, and practically if you are single that is the way that sex happens most of the time.

If I don't want some sort of sexual activity, I would never accept an invitation to a woman's apartment. I would hope that she would do the same. Of course, this doesn't always mean intercourse... and everyone understands that either partner can say "stop" at any time. If you are a grownup and you are having sex because you feel some social pressure, that's your problem. Healthy adults have sex because we want to.

Are we returning to some Puritanical ideal where desiring sex, or seeking sex is sinful?

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@ehBeth,

Quote:

I think that socialization is a bad thing. A very bad thing.

And now I guess I'd have to say I'm taking a hard look at you and not liking what I see.

LOL. You ain't seeing nothing, babe. Literally, you can't see me. So unless you work the Canadian version of the NSA, you can't read my body language or my eyes, and nor can I for you. Moreover, your understanding of my culture is approximative at best, as yours is for me. And then, there's this thing about women and men disagreeing about pretty much everything including of course sex and gender roles since the dawn of womankind. Last but not least, we're both posting on a2k... Smile

Therefore we are bound to misunderstand each other more often than not. To get cross at each other at times is part of the game.

I don't like you one bit either right now... Agree with brainless young furies all you like, but pass me Atwood's email will ya? She's my kind of woman, and my kind of feminist.

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@ehBeth,

Quote:

that's a fair bit of what the discussion is about

Well then it's high time we define what we're talking about.

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@ehBeth,

Quote:

what we talked about as bad sex... was rape

I would sure like to here an explanation of the difference between bad sex and rape. It use to be a clear line; rape was defined as the use of physical force or threats.

0 Replies

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

engineer wrote:

But what if you are a senior engineer who's mentees are know to move quickly up the company ladder and who is known to have the ear of upper management? (We have a manager here who has a lot of stroke with all the top management and is known for soliciting women in the workplace. It has caused a lot of concern among women here over the years. Sure, he's not your boss, but everyone knows he can put his finger on the scale.)

We are talking about grown women who can make their own choices and are responsible for their own decisions, right?

Yes, just like the women who told Weinstein no then found they were getting passed over for acting jobs. Some women probably told him yes to advance their careers, but some probably felt pressure not to say no because of fear of negative consequences. As we know now, that was a legitimate fear. No, the actresses did not work directly for Weinstein, but he was able to influence others to a large degree.

So back to making things better...

maxdancona wrote:

Quote:
I see the point, but what is the answer? No prosecutor is going to bring a case of he said/she said, so what is a solution? What would be components of the solution? What is the standard of proof required? We have two extremes currently, the courts which are heavily tilted towards the aggressor and requires a standard of proof that is likely unobtainable and social media which is heavily tilted towards the chaos and requires no proof. What is a system with a better balance?

Are you asking for a Utopian society where the guilty are always punished and the innocent are always vindicated? Sorry, there is no perfect system.

Sexual crimes are treated no differently than murder, child abuse or extortion. As a society we have decided that the presumption of innocence is a basic human right. Sorry... I think this it the correct thing to do even though it does mean that we can't punish people without a high standard of evidence.

I'm asking for a better society where the guilty are usually punished and the victims are usually given justice. You say the existing system is all that we can have and the existing system clearly doesn't work well for major sex crimes like rape and doesn't work at all for instances of sexual assault like the groping incidents I alluded to. Something is going to fill that vacuum.

maxdancona wrote:

Sure... we have the social media to "balance" it. I don't think it really balances it.

Then propose something better. What would that look like? If we assume that every allegation against Franken is truthful, what recourse do those women have other than social media? No court would touch any of those cases, so what can they do? Suck it up? No harm, no foul? What does a system that holds Franken accountable look like?

1 Reply

@engineer,

If a woman who has a more senior position than I have (in the same industry but a different company) wants to have sex with me, her position is irrelevant. If I agree to have sex with her, even though I wouldn't ordinarily find her attractive, because she can help my career, that is my decision and I have to live with it.

I suppose that if this woman then threatened to actively hurt my career when I decide not to have sex with her, that would be an injustice.

I hope you notice that when I change the genders, it changes the way these examples sound. You are socialized to make these judgments according to gender norms.

1 Reply

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