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fool of sound posted:Not really. Politicians and famous people often get away with it because of their wealth and influence, but in cases affecting poor people, abusers tend to get away with it because nobody with any authority actually gives a poo poo about the accusations and even if they do, they can expect to encounter the same sort legal and cultural barriers that people accusing famous individuals do on a smaller scale. It's a widespread issue and focusing exclusively on politicians or the rich does it a disservice. Okay but the thread is naturally going to focus on them because a) they have power over millions of people and huge media coverage and b) you're probably not as part of your day to day life going to run into supporters of anyone who's assaulted me. None of them are running for president. (inshallah)
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Jun 16, 2021 02:06
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some plague rats posted:This is an argument that's never made sense to me, personally. For starters there's the basic fact that there's no piece of art so vital to me that I'd be willing to overlook the crimes of the person who made it, but beyond that, how do you do it? If there's a film or an album or the like that's so grand and influential that keeping it around is worth that price of admission, HOW can you separate it from the person who made it? Their fingerprints are all over it, and their influence looms so large that it changed the culture forever, and we're supposed to just not look over there? The classic example would be Polanski, and I guess woody allen but I'm ignoring him because I hate all of his poo poo. Chinatown is a great movie and all, but how the gently caress are you going to watch it without constantly being aware the director thought that John Huston's character was actually the good guy? How are you going to watch Rosemary's Baby and silence that voice in your head telling you that in real life the director is one of the neighbours? How do you compartmentalise like that? What's with the weird drive to be like oh I know he was a bad guy, but he was such a genius, instead of just watching a different film by someone who isn't a monster, especially among people who at least pretend to be better than that? It depends how far you get into it. Bowie? Chuck Close? Michael Jackson? Steven Tyler? People start getting really squishy when their favorite artists get called out for grooming, harassments, etc For the record, I can't compartmentalize it. I'm a painter who used to really admire chuck close but when a close friend of mine, another artist, personally told me that he had harassed her when they met it really just made me unable to look at any of his paintings the same way. (this was right as the news was breaking wider about his harassment)
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Jun 16, 2021 02:09
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some plague rats posted:Okay but the thread is naturally going to focus on them because a) they have power over millions of people and huge media coverage and b) you're probably not as part of your day to day life going to run into supporters of anyone who's assaulted me. None of them are running for president. (inshallah) Yeah naturally people are going to talk about cases they've heard about. It's still important to keep in mind that it doesn't spring from the aether.
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Jun 16, 2021 02:09
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fool of sound posted:Not really. Politicians and famous people often get away with it because of their wealth and influence, but in cases affecting poor people, abusers tend to get away with it because nobody with any authority actually gives a poo poo about the accusations and even if they do, they can expect to encounter the same sort legal and cultural barriers that people accusing famous individuals do on a smaller scale. It's a widespread issue and focusing exclusively on politicians or the rich does it a disservice. It's really hard to prove sexual assault in general in many cases because of "victim said, suspect said" is naturally going to side with innocent until proven guilty. Which to a point is how it should be in terms of innocence should be assumed, but it kind of sucks when victims frequently don't report within enough time to effectively corroborate their story or what have you. Speaking from experience, not reporting for months made it very difficult to go forward in trial because there just wasn't any evidence to operate on. That's part of why believing victims is so important, because the system can't necessarily, but then you get the (very, very occasional) false report that abuses that trust and it's just difficult to know how to navigate through the situation.
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Jun 16, 2021 03:29
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some plague rats posted:This is an argument that's never made sense to me, personally. For starters there's the basic fact that there's no piece of art so vital to me that I'd be willing to overlook the crimes of the person who made it, but beyond that, how do you do it? If there's a film or an album or the like that's so grand and influential that keeping it around is worth that price of admission, HOW can you separate it from the person who made it? Their fingerprints are all over it, and their influence looms so large that it changed the culture forever, and we're supposed to just not look over there? The classic example would be Polanski, and I guess woody allen but I'm ignoring him because I hate all of his poo poo. Chinatown is a great movie and all, but how the gently caress are you going to watch it without constantly being aware the director thought that John Huston's character was actually the good guy? How are you going to watch Rosemary's Baby and silence that voice in your head telling you that in real life the director is one of the neighbours? How do you compartmentalise like that? What's with the weird drive to be like oh I know he was a bad guy, but he was such a genius, instead of just watching a different film by someone who isn't a monster, especially among people who at least pretend to be better than that? At least the art is theoretically irreplaceable, like Dali was a Francoist piece of poo poo, and I liked his stuff when I was a teen but knowing now who he really was I wouldn't want any of his art (or let's be honest, prints of his art because I'm not a billionaire) around. But there's only one Persistence of Memory and if someone really likes it I could at least see where they're coming from if they tell me they've separated it from the creator and they don't feel any fashy vibes or whatever from it. But politicians are replaceable and disposable, they have to be or your movement dies when they do. There's thousands of people who could do the job just as well, just get someone else. I remember I had to take a break from social media when the Franken scandal broke because I just couldn't stand all these rationalist Democratic reply guys everywhere saying how we can't turn on our own and give up Franken's senate seat and let Republicans win when Republicans don't have to resign for sexual assault and: why? Why not? Even if all we care about is political advantage, another Democrat was immediately appointed to that seat, then she won the special election and reelection and she votes the same as he did, it didn't matter at all that he left, and even if he weren't a sexmonster he's gonna die someday so he'd better be replaceable.
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Jun 16, 2021 03:43
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some plague rats posted:This is an argument that's never made sense to me, personally. For starters there's the basic fact that there's no piece of art so vital to me that I'd be willing to overlook the crimes of the person who made it, but beyond that, how do you do it? If there's a film or an album or the like that's so grand and influential that keeping it around is worth that price of admission, HOW can you separate it from the person who made it? Their fingerprints are all over it, and their influence looms so large that it changed the culture forever, and we're supposed to just not look over there? The classic example would be Polanski, and I guess woody allen but I'm ignoring him because I hate all of his poo poo. Chinatown is a great movie and all, but how the gently caress are you going to watch it without constantly being aware the director thought that John Huston's character was actually the good guy? How are you going to watch Rosemary's Baby and silence that voice in your head telling you that in real life the director is one of the neighbours? How do you compartmentalise like that? What's with the weird drive to be like oh I know he was a bad guy, but he was such a genius, instead of just watching a different film by someone who isn't a monster, especially among people who at least pretend to be better than that? I disagree with the premise of this post because you cite Polanski as the "classic example" when he's one of the least ambiguous cases imaginable in terms of his actions. Yeah, he had a hosed up life up to that point, but... everything after that didn't leave a great deal of room for sympathy. I think a more interesting case, for me, is David Bowie. He was a great musician, and he did a lot of good things. He also did very, very, very bad things -- not allegations either; confirmed by the victim, but... will I still listen to his music? Yeah, to be honest I'll never stop enjoying his music and the memories I associate with it throughout my life, which existed well before I learned of the bad poo poo he did, even if I recognize he did some spectacularly unacceptable things. I can't make myself not appreciate his work even knowing the sorts of things he did. Is that bad? Is that excusing his bad actions? Yeah, maybe in a sense it is. But he's dead now and none of it matters anyway, so I'm going to listen to music that I enjoy listening to. EDIT: Dali is another good example. Complete weirdo piece of poo poo, but I love his artwork. And since he's six feet under, I'm not going to not enjoy it out of moral purity. I think a significant issue with art specifically, compared with businessmen and politicians, is that as was pointed out: you can't substitute art the same way you can a politician or executive. So, I think our standard should be different, where you can say: I'm not going to support this artist, who is poo poo, but I am going to enjoy their art. It's a lot easier when once they die, and hopefully Polanski and Allen will enter that category shortly, for all those who enjoy their works. PT6A fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Jun 16, 2021 |
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Jun 16, 2021 04:21
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PT6A posted:I disagree with the premise of this post because you cite Polanski as the "classic example" when he's one of the least ambiguous cases imaginable in terms of his actions. Yeah, he had a hosed up life up to that point, but... everything after that didn't leave a great deal of room for sympathy. And yet despite that he's been regularly defended and lauded, given awards, praised by a lot of Hollywood types. Maybe instead of "classic" I should have said "most glaring"? I'll respond to the rest of your post because you make some interesting points but I wanted to clarify that first
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Jun 16, 2021 04:55
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some plague rats posted:And yet despite that he's been regularly defended and lauded, given awards, praised by a lot of Hollywood types. Maybe instead of "classic" I should have said "most glaring"? I'll respond to the rest of your post because you make some interesting points but I wanted to clarify that first That's very true, I agree. He is used frequently as an example, and often defended even now, which seems sort of weird and gross to me because... wow there's very little ambiguity there.
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Jun 16, 2021 05:02
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You can also have cases where poo poo's basically an open secret but in circles that actually get exposure it's considered completely verboten. The Dan Schneider stuff comes to mind, where apparently even back in the 2000s you had UK and EU sites talking about it while it was apparently suppressed in the US. (for more info see the CineD sexual assault thread) It's also more going with about how the dialogue on rape and sexual predators changed so drastically so very recently, and it seems like a lot of people who consider themselves progressive will suddenly try to wrench the clock right back when one of their faves is implicated. Also it becomes pretty especially egregious when the candidates propped up by the party are implicated, and the answer basically is 'If you don't vote for this rapist, you're a Trump supporter' along with all the usual hostage-taking and demands that the left basically shut up and smile.
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Jun 16, 2021 05:59
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I do think this issue varies vastly in generational reaction, and as long as you have silents & boomers choosing & becoming our leaders, they're going to bring in their own (lovely, usually) life experiences to the table in their rationalizations & inability to keep up with the times. It's hard to describe how horrible it used to be in, say, the workplace until fairly recently, even after ostensibly things were changed by civil-rights laws. And even then, waaaay into the '90s, members of Congress themselves were not subject to the same laws they were passing for the rest of Americans. (And this is leaving aside their secret tribunals for discovery & settlements.) This 1990 affectionate look at ted kennedy that includes an anecdote of a "waitress sandwich" he had with chris dodd shows what powerful men got away with around the same time that Biden was assaulting Reade.
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Jun 16, 2021 06:13
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Yeah I rewatched Blossom of all things recently and a 90s show that declared itself feminist had Blossom and her 15 year old friend talk about how even after it came out he groomed and had sex with his children that they are still attracted to him because he is a "genius"
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Jun 16, 2021 08:43
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In regards to President Biden's rape: Is it true that there could be documents regarding Tara Reade's accusation in the National Archives? But they won't release anything? I don't know how that stuff works, but if someone could tell me why we have an archive that doesn't allow people to research it I'd appreciate it.
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Jun 16, 2021 14:10
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https://news.yahoo.com/as-biden-fends-off-sexassault-charge-national-archives-says-it-has-no-relevant-records-201631973.html posted:“There is only one place a complaint of this kind could be — the National Archives,” the statement said. “The National Archives is where the records are kept at what was then called the Office of Fair Employment Practices. I am requesting that the Secretary for the Senate ask the Archives to identify any record of the complaint she alleges she filed and make available to the press any such document. If there was ever any such complaint, the record will be there.” Seems like Calvinball. E: "the statement" being from team biden the article continues posted:Biden’s public papers are in the archives of the University of Delaware, under seal until two years after he leaves public life. In response to questions from “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski in an interview Friday morning, Biden said those documents would not include any personnel matters but do hold private correspondence with former President Barack Obama and other world leaders that he is unwilling to release in the middle of a presidential campaign. It is unfortunate no mechanism exists to release only a selection of documents, under some form of disclosure agreement. Unprecedented. Alas, no such document is contained there. Be assured. Corky Romanovsky fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Jun 16, 2021 |
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Jun 16, 2021 14:36
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spacetoaster posted:In regards to President Biden's rape: Is it true that there could be documents regarding Tara Reade's accusation in the National Archives? But they won't release anything? Are you thinking of his Senate papers, which the University of DE has but cannot or will not release? https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-joe-bidens-senate-papers-arent-public-11588356158 https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/30/politics/biden-senate-papers/index.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/01/biden-delaware-documents/ https://library.udel.edu/special/joseph-r-biden-jr-senatorial-papers/ efb
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Jun 16, 2021 14:44
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Willa Rogers posted:One of the things I've thought about is how Dem sexual abuse & harassment is usually only covered by rightwing media, which makes it easy for liberals to dismiss such news as "Another rightwing smear job by a discredited hack outlet. Willa, this is a fantastic post, and while I'd love to comment on it, I don't want to appear to be "cheerleading" or "white noise posting" so I'll simply say in response to this that I really wish this was the direction the stickied Media Analysis & Criticism thread took, but I've been (not surprisingly, really) disappointed in it largely being a "trust the established sources" cheerleading thread. With the Reade story specifically, it seems there was an effort (coordinated? instinctual? it's hard to say) to, in practice, force Ms. Reade to resort to going to Fox News etc because she, to use the media's term, "shopped" the story around to various "resistance" media a la the 24/7 networks who refused to run the story. It wasn't until a small, but vocal contingent of Bernie supporters raised enough of a stink for CNN/MSNBC/whathaveyou to come out and say "well she tried to sell us this story, but we didn't find it credible because she was already talking to FOX news about it, therefore she must have an agenda!" It all flowed together like some self-fulfilling rube goldberg prophecy of manufactured consent, and the amount of mental gymnastics done by even the most tepid of leftists that supported, say, Bernie going on FOX news and giving a town hall about medicare for all is...baffling at best. Moving on, I'm going to tell a story - a story about a correctional officer and the politician that hid their sex crimes. It's a story about a small town, in a small district (~65k people) that's largely informed by understanding the dynamic of an Italian-American family with lingering ties to one Raymond Loreda Salvatore Patriarca - to be blunt: my grandfather ran books for him. My grandfather had 3 kids - A WW2 vet running the books for the state's most influential crime family, he taught them early and he taught them well that A Good Person is loyal to two things: their family and their country - and the family always comes first. This story is going to focus largely around one of those siblings - to avoid any sort of gender-induced bias, I'll simply refer to them as Sam. Samuel? Samantha? Samir? Samus? It's not important. Largely protected from the "made" life by a father that wanted better for his kids, Sam went to college to become a teacher, transitioned into being a guidance councilor and eventually ran for school committee and entered into the arena politics. Being a former teacher, they did well in advancing policy goals that benefitted the students, and served a number of years on the committee until their aspirations drew them to an even bigger prize - 900 Smith Street, Providence, RI - the RI House of Representatives. Aided by my mother as Sam's campaign finance manager, and myself a young, fresh out of high school naive idealist knocking on doors, Sam handily won the seat in 2007 - a position she enjoys today, 14 years later. Sam has run unopposed from the left, and has had naught but a token opposition effort from their right - It's such a blue district that any Red party spending there would be a waste. Sam has a son, and, like many politicians, Sam's son is a textbook failson - the product of helicopter parenting, he flunked out of college, flunked out of I used to party with Rick. Rick married a stripper who could roll a mean blunt, and there were always girls and cocaine at the party house. What horned up, cokehad 25 year old wouldn't want to hang out with a bunch of strippers and drugs? Unfortunately, for my part in this, I was too worried about cocaine and tits to see a lot of the red flags that were being waved all around me - when you're doing coke in a house with a 4th grade kid, you're mostly looking to make sure they're not around, not to see if they're being groomed as a victim by their new step-dad. Eventually, things get toxic, he stats beating his wife (which we didn't find out until years later - Sam keeps a Metal Gear Solid 2 level of control over how, when, and what information gets out about Sam and their nuclear family), she leaves him for another woman, takes the kid with her, and is off living her best life. Marriage #1 goes down the drain, and while some accusations of abuse come to the surface, they predictably end with no justice to the victims because the abuser is connected - Sam proudly states at holiday dinners that they don't know the issues they vote on, they just vote how Speaker Mattiello tells them to - Sam's a loyal servant to the party apparatus and is rewarded with the full breadth and width of protections that can be offered by the state. Stick with me, here - I know this is a lot of preamble but I've never gotten this entire thing all down on paper together, and we're almost there, I promise. A few years go by, and Rick re-connects with his high school sweetheart - a public school teacher (just like mommy - yikes!) who, coincidentally, was my Spanish 1 teacher in junior high. Being a stellar student myself, I'd always had a good relationship with teachers, and my mother being the person that handed out paychecks at the school administration office when physical paychecks were still a thing for PMC-class jobs had my family at large with a pretty good relationship with all the teachers myself or my sisters ever had. I'll spare a lot of the details of how that marriage went down in flames, but will touch upon a couple of points quickly: they had a child, Rick wanted nothing to do with it (he obviously learned from his own dead beat father, who'd been out of the picture for years before I was even born), domestic violence, and the coerced termination of a second baby diagnosed in-womb with downs' syndrome (this last one is important to the overall discussion of womens' rights and bodily autonomy but probably doesn't have a space in this narrow discussion lane so I'll reader's digest it by saying that a certain politician featured already in this story was a strong proponent of the pregnancy termination, just after she'd voted down a bill that would have protected a Rhode Island woman's right to seek a safe and discrete termination). My Spanish teacher (let's go with "Jessica") eventually left Rick - given the pattern of behavior we'd become familiar with, no one was surprised. As a divorced dad, Rick was awful. When he had custody, he'd drop the kid off with his junkie friends and crawl over to some dive bar on Oakland Beach, and not answer his phone when the child's mother called looking for him and her kid. Like I said - textbook failson of a politician. That's when we started seeing the dirty laundry. Jessica reached out to another cousin of mine who was a social worker working within the CT juvenile system and started sharing. Rick took a 16 year old inmate into a private cell and raped her. Rick's sealed disciplinary file contains evaluation after evaluation with the words "exhibits predatory grooming behavior," a history of violent, explosive reactions to inmates in his care, and it was all very easy for the State Representative Allied With The Correctional Officers' union to make disappear - in the oddly purple political profile of Rhode Island, "you're going to believe a convicted criminal when they accuse a guard of raping them?" is a perfectly "normal," and expected take, and so it ws that the only unsealed evidence of any impropriety by Rick is in the paperwork relating to Divorce #2 - Jessica has asked us (those of us in the family that see through Rick and Sam's bullshit) to not open this wound again, to let her move on, and let this issue die. Eventually, something had to give, and one prisoner in his "care" made enough of a stink that a social worker got involved, deemed there was "unprofessional behavior," and Rick was reassigned to the boys' juvenile facility, with a note that he was barred from being posted at the women's juvenile correctional facility...unless it was for overtime. That's it. That's the punishment that was negotiated between the state, the RIFOCO, and Sam and Rick. Rick's punishment is getting paid time and a half to patrol the cell blocks where he raped and assaulted inmates, but only little a bit, as a treat. Justice Served?
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Jun 16, 2021 15:27
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So I have access to this article and read it (thanks for the link). The paper doesn't quite say what's implied here. Here are the takeaways from the results: 1) Party ID is the biggest predictor of subscribing to sexual assault myths, by far. Republicans are the worst, followed by Independents, followed by Democrats. This predictor is followed by gender identity, then defensiveness about their party ID. 2) There is a correlation between defensiveness and myth subscription, but there is a major caveat the press release doesn't address. Defensiveness plays a greater role in myth acceptance for Republicans than Democrats. 3) The finding about Independents is for the extremely mundane reason that Independents don't fit into either party. Keep in mind that the independents in this sample are the sort of respondents who would be called swing voters / moderates / centrists, not leftists. 4) Finally, it's worth noting here that they don't measure ideology, just party ID. So no left vs liberal distinction can be drawn from this data set. Other notes: - This study is not pre-registered and the data and materials used are not publicly available. Doing these things is best practices. Outcomes of statistical analyses are sensitive to how the data is treated and to assumptions built into the statistical models. More importantly for this thread, the exact questions used when measuring belief in sexual assault myths really matter here. - For that matter, the paper doesn't really explain the Reade situation, judging from the myths scale they adapted theirs from. The items just don't apply to the conversation as it took place in the broader landscape. They do work a lot better for Ford v Kavanaugh, which makes sense given when this study was conducted.
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Jun 16, 2021 16:37
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Epinephrine posted:So I have access to this article and read it (thanks for the link). The paper doesn't quite say what's implied here. Here are the takeaways from the results: From the summary quote in my prior post: "As predicted, these sexual assault myth attitudes were significantly higher among Republicans than Democrats and among men than women." But it's interesting that you frame it as "Republicans are the worst, followed by Independents, followed by Democrats" because the bolded part is a variation on the stock phrase used to minimize any sort of malfeasance from Democrats. (Not saying it's what you did here; it's just that the summary itself framed slightly differently.) And it's also interesting that you point out leftist ideology wasn't split out in the survey, only party ID, bc I don't think anyone has brought up ideology as a precursor to where one stands on sexual assault, nor defended those on the left of the Dem party who've been accused of being sexpests or rapists, in this thread. Just as it seems obvious that Republicans believe sexual-assault myths more than Democrats it would seem likely that centrists believe sexual-assault myths than leftists, but I don't think anyone's mentioned anything of the sort itt. I've seen/heard plenty of stories leftists being creeps, but I think it's more likely to correlate generationally, as I said above.
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Jun 16, 2021 17:18
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Holy crap, what a story. It's amazing how often stories like this get brushed under the rug, even though they're open secrets among the communities at large.
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Jun 16, 2021 17:30
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Willa Rogers posted:From the summary quote in my prior post:
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Jun 16, 2021 17:36
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Willa Rogers posted:Holy crap, what a story. Every single time I think about all of it, it makes me a little sick. I feel culpability at the perpetuation of the systems and people that defend disgusting, pedophile sex pests because I know all of these things that incontrovertibly happened, but I feel like I wouldn't be a good ally to victims if I simply disregarded their own wishes to be able to move on and leave their trauma in the past - especially given that this particular set of incidents has had a lot of work done to bury, hide, and discredit any evidence that might be out there, and I fully understand that it can be intensely re-traumatizing to go through a "dog and pony show" investigative process that's going to predictably dead-end.
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Jun 16, 2021 17:54
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Epinephrine posted:You chose to emphasize and put in bold font a different part of the press summary than what you did before. Your original choice of bolding implied a certain degree of both-sides-ism (for lack of a better phrase), which is not the complete truth. The attitudes are more prevalent among Republicans and the relationship between defensiveness and myth belief is stronger among Republicans. The choice of emphasis in your earlier post, in the context of your other posts, appears to make this all about the Democrats. Perhaps this wasn't your intention? Discussion of lib vs left was brought in for the same reason. The defensiveness relationship has much more to do with ingroup-outgroup dynamics than other things (the defensiveness scale they used was meant to be applicable to various forms of ID by design) and those dynamics generalize to more than party. I chose to include the bit about Republicans leading the pack in believing myths, which I could've omitted if I had the intent you initially claimed I did while ignoring that I included it. eta: What are the actual nos. by political affiliation, percentage-wise, since you have access to the study? Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jun 16, 2021 |
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Jun 16, 2021 17:59
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some plague rats posted:This is an argument that's never made sense to me, personally. For starters there's the basic fact that there's no piece of art so vital to me that I'd be willing to overlook the crimes of the person who made it, but beyond that, how do you do it? If there's a film or an album or the like that's so grand and influential that keeping it around is worth that price of admission, HOW can you separate it from the person who made it? Their fingerprints are all over it, and their influence looms so large that it changed the culture forever, and we're supposed to just not look over there? The classic example would be Polanski, and I guess woody allen but I'm ignoring him because I hate all of his poo poo. Chinatown is a great movie and all, but how the gently caress are you going to watch it without constantly being aware the director thought that John Huston's character was actually the good guy? How are you going to watch Rosemary's Baby and silence that voice in your head telling you that in real life the director is one of the neighbours? How do you compartmentalise like that? What's with the weird drive to be like oh I know he was a bad guy, but he was such a genius, instead of just watching a different film by someone who isn't a monster, especially among people who at least pretend to be better than that? Imagine a piece of art you enjoyed, aesthetically. You aren't trying to critique it, your aren't tying it into greater history, you just enjoy it as it is presented in a physical medium. You know nothing of the artist. You are now informed the artist was a bad dude. How can that possibly affect the aesthetic quality of the art? For me since I collect art (prints of course, I can't afford to get into the art game and I wouldn't want to) I do it purely for the aesthetics, I may know the artist so that I can track down more of his work, but otherwise the artist's personal life is meaningless to me. Same with most of my leisure activities. Video games, beer, whiskey, driving, etc. It's just not important that I try to become best friends with the creator of every piece of media or product that I consume. In fact it would be pretty exhausting and not fun at all to even try! For politics of course, each politician is easily replaceable. Someone being a rapist is very easy to not support as the loss of him doesn't really have any impact on the ability of a piece of legislation to be passed. 300 first term congressmen can just as easily pass legislation as 300 segregationist era boomers, in fact if you can divorce yourself from the politician it's actually beneficial to you because then you can focus on the substance of his efforts in the present, instead of his rhetoric and the distracting "history" of him being the most progressive, progressive that ever progressed.
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Jun 16, 2021 19:11
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Very happy to see this thread up and running again. I think the the the question of how to regard the art of artists who are abusers is a really interesting ones and I think it can provide a pretty unique insight on how celebrities/politicians are protected from facing consequences, but I'm still collecting my thoughts on it. I really just wanted to comment on: Because Jesus that is an astounding story. It really shows how anyone even distantly related in any way to the smallest scrap of power can basically do whatever they like with impunity as long as their victims have no access to that institutional power.
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Jun 16, 2021 21:05
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Separating art from artist, I think, is a personal decision we make that's based on a lot of factors that may or may not make sense to anyone else, or even be fully realized or justified even to ourselves. However, I think it has a lot to do primarily with our emotional attachment to something versus how much we know of how bad an artist is and how we feel about what we know they did. A self defense mechanism in order to continue justify attachment to an art may prevent us from becoming less ignorant about how bad someone is/was. For instance, it is less easy for me to drop someone like Bowie as someone I listen to (and, it's only like a few songs), but it was a lot easier for me to throw away all CD's/ delete any MP3's/remove it from any playlist I could of R. Kelly even though I loved some of his music. The difference was that I was more sickened by what I heard R. Kelly was able to get away with over and over, and that was even before I dug deeper into it. Sexual Assault Awareness has a longer way to go compared to how far it's come. In general terms that I'm probably way off about but I'll use to illustrate the point: In the 60's it was known but just as accepted as the way things are. By the 70's it was known but treated as a punchline about those crazy guys! The 80's it was less accepted. And by the 90's you had sexual harassment laws/guidelines coming into play. But that doesn't mean we've come far enough, yet, and it doesn't really mean all of us are fully aware of everything surrounding sexual assault. The point of that is to say that- coming back to R. Kelly, it astounds me (and I was one of them) how back when he and Aaliyah were working together, it was just so loving obvious that they were dating when she was a minor and everyone just sort of blocked it out of their mind or refused to accept the reality of the situation. For instance, it wasn't just a 'cutesy' thing that they were dressed exactly the same for interviews. Another side of that is how back during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal: so much of the focus was just on whether or not Clinton cheated. But the focus should have been on how he abused his position of authority. Hardly any coverage really drilled down to that back in the day. That was then, though. I think people are more aware now. With that being said, if you take my timeline above as gospel or not, I wanted to point out that awareness of it filters through. It's a personal awareness to the abused and to others around them that it is wrong and something should be done about it. People are slowly becoming less accepting of it. People are more aware of what they are seeing and what to look for.
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Jun 16, 2021 21:15
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So here's the thing, taking Bowie as a good example: I'm not talking in terms of moral purity here. He was clearly a pretty lovely guy in a lot of ways but his impact is so undeniable that trying to scrub him from history is pointless at best. What I'm wondering is on a purely personal level, how it remains possible to enjoy listening to his music with that little voice in the back of your head going hey, remember what this guy did? Is it a question of severity, like he was a poo poo but compared to someone like gary glitter he didn't do anything really bad enough to piss on your enjoyment? Or are you just able to put that out of mind and be like yes. Nice song.? I don't want this to sound like an attack cos it's not, I'm just curious how exactly people go about the specifics of separating art from artist. ate poo poo on live tv posted:Imagine a piece of art you enjoyed, aesthetically. You aren't trying to critique it, your aren't tying it into greater history, you just enjoy it as it is presented in a physical medium. You know nothing of the artist. You are now informed the artist was a bad dude. How can that possibly affect the aesthetic quality of the art? This... doesn't seem relevant to what I said? I was talking specifically about the admonition to separate art from artist, which means how do you manage your feelings about the work of someone you ALREADY KNOW definitively was a wrong un. My feelings about that first piece of art would be one thing, and after I found out about the guy I imagine if I were to see it again my feelings on it would be different? I'm not a robot doing an objective artistic appraisal, my perception of it will be coloured by what I know. ate poo poo on live tv posted:For me since I collect art (prints of course, I can't afford to get into the art game and I wouldn't want to) I do it purely for the aesthetics, I may know the artist so that I can track down more of his work, but otherwise the artist's personal life is meaningless to me. Same with most of my leisure activities. Video games, beer, whiskey, driving, etc. It's just not important that I try to become best friends with the creator of every piece of media or product that I consume. In fact it would be pretty exhausting and not fun at all to even try! It kinda seems like you're suggesting that someone's history of sex crimes only matters if you know them personally? Just want to check I'm not misreading your point here 
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Jun 17, 2021 00:09
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some plague rats posted:So here's the thing, taking Bowie as a good example: I'm not talking in terms of moral purity here. He was clearly a pretty lovely guy in a lot of ways but his impact is so undeniable that trying to scrub him from history is pointless at best. What I'm wondering is on a purely personal level, how it remains possible to enjoy listening to his music with that little voice in the back of your head going hey, remember what this guy did? Is it a question of severity, like he was a poo poo but compared to someone like gary glitter he didn't do anything really bad enough to piss on your enjoyment? Or are you just able to put that out of mind and be like yes. Nice song.? I don't want this to sound like an attack cos it's not, I'm just curious how exactly people go about the specifics of separating art from artist. Perhaps there are some parallels that can be drawn between this and other habits, like not consuming animal products. Some people are persuaded enough to change their personal behavior, some localities are persuaded to change local norms, ... and so on up to larger and larger circles of human organization. Individual choices are a start, but--while they can be deeply personal--it doesn't do much to change the higher orders (often takes generations). Consumer choice seams like the only thing we are made to believe we are empowered to do, like reusable shopping bags and bringing your own chopsticks/knife/fork/spoon instead of disposable; systemic changes are much more impactful. To an extent, they are connected and co-arise. Academically it is important to investigate specific aspects like this, but I fear focusing public discourse on it can aid the perpetuation since any ask for systemic change then falls out of the spotlight. *this thread isn't exclusively public discourse, certainly we see this academic/public issue elsewhere, like the insistence on prefacing statements with "Saddam/Assad/Maduro/Gaddafi is a bad guy, but..." which contributes to calls for war regardless of whatever comes after the 'but', saying things like "all lives matter", etc.
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Jun 17, 2021 03:27
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Ah, here it is.Bust Rodd posted:There’s also the rumor that he’s the father of Jamie Lynn Spears kid and they basically offered a kid from her high school a poo poo ton of money to pretend to be the dad, and it’s weird because in googling around just now you literally cannot find a US source talking about the paternity, but UK and EU fan sites from the 2000’s are all talking about how the timelines literally do not make sense unless this kid was flying out from Louisiana during the final season of the show, which he absolutely was not doing.
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Jun 17, 2021 10:08
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I've only run into the "fan of a piece of art that turns out to have been made by a sexpest" scenario a couple times and it absolutely ruins the art for me full-stop. Like my brain just goes "gently caress that used to be so good, but now it's poo poo" and I disengage entirely. Some people might be more indifferent(or, if they're terrible, more appreciative) but I think it does change your perception of the art in some way, without exception. In my opinion you can't really separate art from artist as art is a form of expression by the artist. If that artist turns out to be a terrible human being, it shifts your perception of the art. Previously overlooked flaws or strange things suddenly become very clear, and bad. That's just me though, I'm not even remotely what you would call an Art Appreciator so I could be entirely off-base.
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Jun 17, 2021 12:05
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I don't think it matters at all if you appreciate art made by a bad person. I think it matters a huge amount when a rapist/pedo/etc. is constantly let off the hook for crimes while they are still alive because of their status as an artist.
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Jun 17, 2021 12:16
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Yinlock posted:Some people might be more indifferent(or, if they're terrible, more appreciative) but I think it does change your perception of the art in some way, without exception. It seems evident that for the majority of people (or at least a significant enough chunk) indifference and/or no change in perspective is the default reaction. Otherwise wouldn't a lot more of these outed-as-monsters artists just crater in sales? The only other explanation would be that you have more or less equivalent numbers of "more appreciative" assholes to droppers, but that doesn't seem right to me. Or, idk, most people just find a way to file the information away and keep on trucking? I read a Zizek quote that was something to the effect of "I know this, but I don't want to know what I know, so I don't know.", meaning there's a (subconscious?) refusal to fully engage with the consequences of knowing in order to allow the person to continue acting (consuming, voting, etc...) in the way they did before they knew that X artist was a sexpest or Y politician on their team was a rapist. Again, not necessarily a conscious thing and it comes bundled with any number of justifiers ("I've already paid for the albums, might as well enjoy them", "the memories I have associated with them aren't changed by this", "If I don't vote for him, the other guy is worse", ect..) that people ARE discussing itt but that most people either think about only in passing or not that much at all.
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Jun 17, 2021 12:51
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The onus for establishing justice in the cases of abusive artists (of other abusive entrepreneurs) falls on institutional powers, not the consumption habits of individuals and certainly not individual aesthetic sense or art appreciation. The line is more blurred when it's a news or awards organization, who do have an obligation to not whitewash artists by ignoring abusive behavior.
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Jun 17, 2021 14:02
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fool of sound posted:The onus for establishing justice in the cases of abusive artists (of other abusive entrepreneurs) falls on institutional powers, not the consumption habits of individuals and certainly not individual aesthetic sense or art appreciation. The line is more blurred when it's a news or awards organization, who do have an obligation to not whitewash artists by ignoring abusive behavior. Ok? It's not a question of onus, if, as Yinlock said, I can't hear a Bowie or Marilyn Manson song that I used to like, for example, without immediately thinking of the terrible things they did. It's not that I think I'm not 'supposed to' enjoy these things anymore, it's that I know the voice I'm hearing is the voice of someone who did awful things to people. I don't understand how other people don't have the same revulsion and instead are like woo ground control to major tom for the 50,000th time, but it's not because I'm saying the "onus" is on you not to listen, I'm just baffled at how you don't seem to understand the revulsion. If I saw a painting and liked it and then found out it was an original George W Bush I would probably like the painting a lot less, immediately, because of the artist and the type of person they are and the things they've done and did.
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Jun 17, 2021 15:14
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Insanite posted:Are you thinking of his Senate papers, which the University of DE has but cannot or will not release? Yeah, I guess that's it. Why would the university keep records sealed until after a "retirement from public life"? Is that a usual standard? It seems that there should be an exception when investigating an actual crime.
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Jun 17, 2021 16:10
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This is pretty much where the liberal ideal of trusting in systems and processes to do the right thing runs into a loving brick wall, because said systems and processes favour protecting and denying the crimes of predators as long as they make money, which is a bit of a self-reinforcing process. If you aren't willing to kill your heroes, eventually all your heroes will be monsters.
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Jun 17, 2021 16:14
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sean10mm posted:I don't think it matters at all if you appreciate art made by a bad person. Yea. Just because I still like some sexpest artists art, doesn't mean I wouldn't want the artist charged for whatever crimes he committed using his status as a famous artist as a shield.
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Jun 17, 2021 16:17
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fool of sound posted:The onus for establishing justice in the cases of abusive artists (of other abusive entrepreneurs) falls on institutional powers, not the consumption habits of individuals and certainly not individual aesthetic sense or art appreciation. The line is more blurred when it's a news or awards organization, who do have an obligation to not whitewash artists by ignoring abusive behavior. I can only speak for myself, but the separating art from artist stuff is less about who should be establishing justice, but it's a way to work through our cognitive dissonance for lack of a better term.
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Jun 17, 2021 16:49
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Edit: I posted in the wrong thread! Sorry.
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Jun 17, 2021 17:07
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Putting aside paying for the art of a still-living known abuser, I think you can appreciate or even enjoy something created by an abuser but it requires personally coming to terms with, and being clear with yourself about, what the artist did vs what the piece means to you. I think this is an uncomfortable process that, if it doesn't actually ruin the work for you, absolutely impacts your enjoyment of it and (especially, at least for some people) your self-identity as eg. a Bowie fan or an appreciator of Woody Allen's films, or Kobe Bryant's NBA career, etc etc. I think there are two modes in which people who are unwilling to do this reckoning with themselves move past the idea that the thing they like was made by an abuser. The first is the "apolitical" mode where the person makes a conscious decision to not care about whatever happened or whatever the allegations are so as to not impact their personal enjoyment of the art. I think this is usually communicated as eg. "separating the art from the artist" and I think it's by far the most common relationship to art produced by abusers. I don't think this is good, but I think it is understandable, especially because I think most people who feel this way about something they really like still recognize that the individual who produced it did something bad. Unlike the second mode, which is, I think, predominantly taken by the people for whom the art (or whatever) is a part of their individual identity. I'm shooting from the hip here but I think it lines up pretty well with the study Wila posted earlier about how a strong partisan identity makes it more likely someone will outright dismiss allegations of rape or sexual abuse. We as modern, alienated, atomized capital subjects have very little in the way of community-social bonds and political animus and more and more carve our identities out of our consumer choices. We see ourselves, more and more, as a collection of product and brand preferences. This used to be more the purview of nerds, who were more alienated due to largely being social outcasts, but that's not really the case any more. I think for these people, who see themselves as fundamentally "good" like we all do, the revelation that a part of their identity is "bad" is unacceptable, because it makes them bad and that idea has to be dismissed out of self-preservation. I don't think I'm being hyperbolic here, either: these consumption-preferences make up a massive portion of what everyone talks about, all the time. For a lot of people (especially people who aren't academics amongst academics) talking about popular culture, which is largely just the current bucket of consumption options, is just what you do in social settings, especially because talking about eg. politics and religion is largely uncomfortable and socially inappropriate. I want to be clear that I'm not being derisive here about what like "the little people" talk about. I think everyone does this. I do this. I think 90% of what I've talked to my friends about in the past three days has been new Nintendo games that are coming out and funny YouTube videos. Besides the sort of household "what do you want for dinner tonight" stuff, I think most of what I talk to my wife about is about the media products we like. Anyway, I think if you don't have a strong "other thing" to orient your identity around (community involvement, cause activism, class identity, religious orientation, career, etc. -- all things that are rapidly attenuating in contemporary western society) you fall back on your collection of consumer choices. Bowie can't be bad because liking Bowie is part of what makes me who I am. Reckoning with this would either cause me to jettison a part of my identity or force me to undertake the legitimately monumental intellectual and emotional work of disassembling my self-identity and rebuilding it around something else. Therefore David Bowie can't be a rapist. He couldn't have preyed on young women. Either these people are lying, or what he did was okay (at the time, maybe), or his behavior later in life has absolved him of any potential wrongdoing that happened when he was younger. This is extremely pertinent to the American political landscape, because with the exception of tiny slivers on the left and right we don't have political identities -- we're almost totally alienated from the political system -- we have brand preferences masquerading as political identities. We go to the voting booth and can pick Red Skub or Blue Skub and everything that falls out of that personal, individual decision matters only insofar as it comprises a part of our identity, and the degree to which that part is our identity. Take a look at voting for Biden, for instance: In the first "apolitical" mode, people recognize that Biden is a rapist, or at least recognize that Biden was sexually improprietous, but they like the Democrat "product" -- relief from bad feelings about Trump, relief from the fear that the proud boys were going to 1/6 their neighborhood, the hope the Democrats might actually do what they promised to do during Biden's campaign, whatever. Biden's abuse is "out of their hands", so to speak. It doesn't matter because the stakes were so high and the other guy was so bad, etc etc. We've heard it a million times before, in this thread even. The second mode is people for whom being a Democrat is a significant part of their self-identity. They might even (and often do, I think) cast themselves as pragmatic Dem voters who are realistic about what the Democrats can accomplish and you know it's a long road etc etc., but fundamentally believe that the Democrats represent their values of justice, equality, civic-mindedness, etc. -- legitimately good things, don't get me wrong! -- but misappropriated to a political power bloc of a capital two-step. For these people Joe Biden can't be a rapist for the same reasons David Bowie can't be a rapist, although unlike Bowie (who just made good music), Biden, via the Democrats, exemplifies all of the (legitimately) good egalitarian and social-justice sentiments that they earnestly hold.
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Jun 17, 2021 17:19
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I have a hard time about what to do about sexpest artists whose work I do/did appreciate. I think, ultimately, for me it comes down to what I have left to give to the "economy of care" - just as I've had to come to grips with it being largely impossible to do anything "ethically" in a late-stage capitalist society I think we also have to look at whether or not it's possible to enjoy any product that comes out of an industry with a long, public history of abuse of not just fans by an artist, but of artists by their agents or whathaveyou - just look at Harvey Weinstein. I tend to fall on the line of "hurt people hurt people" because I know that when I hurt, there's a little voice inside me that I have to squelch that says "other people should hurt the way you do right now." There is, uncomfortably, a certain level of acceptance of the toxic state of any given entertainment industry - I can be fairly certain that, say, Kesha hasn't raped anyone, but Kesha's last album wasn't just Kesha's product - there was an entire unit of the recording company that was involved in, and stands to profit from sales/streams of the album. For all I know, every time I listen to Potato Song, a half a dozen rapists or sex pests that aren't Kesha are getting royalty payments. It's real, real easy to say "I won't watch anything with noted sexpest Kevin Spacey in it," because a name like Kevin Spacey is going to be up in lights. It's difficult, anxiety-inducing, and nigh impossible to say "I won't listen to anything where Studio Technician #4 helped with the mixing" and at some point I just have to take it that, yeah, there's probably a sexpest in that pipeline somewhere. To put it in a different context, I have two grocery stores within walking distance from me: Publix and Wal-Mart. Both of their heir families are big time supporters of the American Red Political Party's agenda - Publix's heiress funded the January 6th Hoveround Mobility Scooter and Assorted Catheter Brands Convention and DC-Police Guided Tour of the Capitol Building and I don't think I need to really provide a ton of detail as to what kind of absolute ghoulish poo poo the Walton family of Walmart gets up to. Due to a medical condition, I don't drive, and I'd rather not have my wife turn on the car and burn a bunch of fossil fuel driving all over South Florida looking for a place to ethically obtain the materials needed to create sustenance for us to eat and live - I wager that any fossil fuel burned in the pursuit of ethical consumerism is self-defeating to the purpose of ethical sourcing entirely. Lib and let die fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Jun 17, 2021 |
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Jun 17, 2021 17:20
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Doctor Butts posted:I can only speak for myself, but the separating art from artist stuff is less about who should be establishing justice, but it's a way to work through our cognitive dissonance for lack of a better term. This is what drives me nuts. The cognitive dissonance. People handwave atrocities if the paintings/music/are good enough in their eyes. I was thinking about Brock Turner this morning. To refresh folks memories he was the Stanford student that raped a passed out women and then the judge only gave him 6 months with 3 months probation and said that "because he has a promising swimming career, jail would ruin his life" - completely not considering how rape affects those of us it is done to for the rest of our lives. He only ended up serving 3 months. There was a big enough backlash that the California legislature made a mandatory minimum which... I've got generally negative feelings about. His face is literally in a couple textbooks for rapist. The hosed up thing is when I think about this - the only reason he got convicted at all is because 2 other people found him in the act. The hosed up thing is I think "wow Chanel Miller got kind of lucky that she didn't have to go it completely alone to make her case" I think the best overall outcome of this case was the voters actually recalled the judge but officially the California judicial found no wrong doing in his sentencings which is a problem. The people who sit on the boards of our judicial institutions just didn't see a problem with this. In their eyes, the the judge was right. Raping a passed out women was no big deal in the grand scheme of things for a future olympic swimmer. Some links for refreshers: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...tanford-campus/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...e-records-show/ https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Judge-Persky-losing-in-bid-to-avoid-recall-12970799.php
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Jun 17, 2021 17:20
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