Another path to greatness - part III

[chopc]

Here is the new thread

If you see a straightforward dividing line between harmful and not-harmful I'm not surprised you don't take this very seriously, goodbye.

It's a very artificial line, in my opinion: the reality's more of a continuum. And who gets to draw the line, anyway?

If a man asked me to go in his car when I was a teenager, but didn't try to force me when I said no, is that harmful or not? I wasn't harmed, but presumably might have been. Maybe another girl was.

My friend and I got flashed at on a train as teenagers. We laughed at him. We weren't harmed. So was it harmless? It's apparently a gateway crime for some sexual offenders. The man recently convicted of assaulting and murdering a student in Hull had committed a string of offences like that. Sometimes he just peered through people's windows to watch women, and admitted to cases where the woman wasn't even aware of it at the time: how do you measure the harm then?

Or what about when a man who makes off-colour jokes to or about women is put in a position of power, maybe as a judge or even the head of a college/university: is he likely to take cases of assault and harassment seriously?

How do you measure harm? If women MPs receive online abuse and rape threats, as they seem to more than ever, is that just harmful to the women concerned, or to our whole political system if fewer women are prepared to put themselves in the firing line?

And what about the greater prevalence of online porn? Is that harmful or not? Use of violent porn in particular is regularly cited as a factor in abuse and murder cases, but does it demean women generally?

If your clients/colleagues in the City didn't upset you, goodbye, but contributed to an ethos where women weren't treated with as much professional respect as men, how harmful is that?

Oh, for a world of simple dividing lines

@goodbyestranger

Nor do I see it on a purely individual level loon but bend narrowed it by going over the top about my needing to hound City colleagues from the eighties, which is absurd.

By linking the eighties type of behaviour to this rather silly video which people were getting ridiculously steamed up about (if only because the girl shows no indication of doing anything other than collaborating happily), I was merely saying: our generation didn't cover itself in glory on the entitlement front/ this generation is decidedly better.

@goodbyestranger that is of course your choice not to take any further historic events but please do not judge those who do. Why shouldn’t they be brought to account even years later? I can’t stand injustice.

I’ve seen the video now, I don’t think we can necessarily assume she was ‘collaborating happily’. To me she looked awkward and embarrassed. She may have not even known that her chest area was in shot. And even if she did and consented to her being filmed like that, it doesn’t make it ok. It just goes to show that this treatment of women and girls is so ingrained, women have become conditioned to accept it. It’s wrong and has got to stop.

Of course it's not a simple dividing line Loon. But in the interests of brevity, that was the shorthand.

It's not appropriate to slap down every piece of male behaviour which might conceivably be classed as inappropriate by hard liners. That way lies madness. bend was seriously (well, I assume seriously) suggesting a historic prosecution against relatively harmless sexist behaviour in the eighties. At some point behaviour does quite clearly fall one side of the line or the other. Not all behaviour is in the grey area and one test has to be: did the woman in question mind, enough to be upset? Some behaviours clearly fall one side or the other, but for the grey stuff, the woman should have some self-determination I feel, or what's it all about?

@LoonvanBoon

If you see a straightforward dividing line between harmful and not-harmful I'm not surprised you don't take this very seriously, goodbye.

It's a very artificial line, in my opinion: the reality's more of a continuum. And who gets to draw the line, anyway?

If a man asked me to go in his car when I was a teenager, but didn't try to force me when I said no, is that harmful or not? I wasn't harmed, but presumably might have been. Maybe another girl was.

My friend and I got flashed at on a train as teenagers. We laughed at him. We weren't harmed. So was it harmless? It's apparently a gateway crime for some sexual offenders. The man recently convicted of assaulting and murdering a student in Hull had committed a string of offences like that. Sometimes he just peered through people's windows to watch women, and admitted to cases where the woman wasn't even aware of it at the time: how do you measure the harm then?

Or what about when a man who makes off-colour jokes to or about women is put in a position of power, maybe as a judge or even the head of a college/university: is he likely to take cases of assault and harassment seriously?

How do you measure harm? If women MPs receive online abuse and rape threats, as they seem to more than ever, is that just harmful to the women concerned, or to our whole political system if fewer women are prepared to put themselves in the firing line?

And what about the greater prevalence of online porn? Is that harmful or not? Use of violent porn in particular is regularly cited as a factor in abuse and murder cases, but does it demean women generally?

If your clients/colleagues in the City didn't upset you, goodbye, but contributed to an ethos where women weren't treated with as much professional respect as men, how harmful is that?

Oh, for a world of simple dividing lines

Excellent post @LoonvanBoon I completely agree.

I very much hope @goodbyestranger’S casual attitude is a minority view.

I haven't judged anyone at all bend. I'm free to decide what I think appropriate for myself however.

Well, I think you're imputing what you want to this girl, to be honest. Neither of us can be sure, so let's do the agree to disagree thing,

@goodbyestranger

Of course it's not a simple dividing line Loon. But in the interests of brevity, that was the shorthand.

It's not appropriate to slap down every piece of male behaviour which might conceivably be classed as inappropriate by hard liners. That way lies madness. bend was seriously (well, I assume seriously) suggesting a historic prosecution against relatively harmless sexist behaviour in the eighties. At some point behaviour does quite clearly fall one side of the line or the other. Not all behaviour is in the grey area and one test has to be: did the woman in question mind, enough to be upset? Some behaviours clearly fall one side or the other, but for the grey stuff, the woman should have some self-determination I feel, or what's it all about?

@goodbyestranger ‘did the woman mind?’ is also not a black and white issue. She might well have brushed it off at the time as this behaviour was so common it was almost to be expected. It might not be till years later that she realises how wrong it was.

I'd call it a discriminating view bend, rather than casual. It doesn't help serious cases to sound klaxons every time there's the slightest offence. That approach is really unhelpful, when a comment will do.

@goodbyestranger you used the word ‘absurd’ and refer to ‘wasting police time’. That implies to me that you think reporting historic crimes as wrong. It certainly comes across as quite judgemental to those who do.

@LoonvanBoon

If you see a straightforward dividing line between harmful and not-harmful I'm not surprised you don't take this very seriously, goodbye.

It's a very artificial line, in my opinion: the reality's more of a continuum. And who gets to draw the line, anyway?

If a man asked me to go in his car when I was a teenager, but didn't try to force me when I said no, is that harmful or not? I wasn't harmed, but presumably might have been. Maybe another girl was.

My friend and I got flashed at on a train as teenagers. We laughed at him. We weren't harmed. So was it harmless? It's apparently a gateway crime for some sexual offenders. The man recently convicted of assaulting and murdering a student in Hull had committed a string of offences like that. Sometimes he just peered through people's windows to watch women, and admitted to cases where the woman wasn't even aware of it at the time: how do you measure the harm then?

Or what about when a man who makes off-colour jokes to or about women is put in a position of power, maybe as a judge or even the head of a college/university: is he likely to take cases of assault and harassment seriously?

How do you measure harm? If women MPs receive online abuse and rape threats, as they seem to more than ever, is that just harmful to the women concerned, or to our whole political system if fewer women are prepared to put themselves in the firing line?

And what about the greater prevalence of online porn? Is that harmful or not? Use of violent porn in particular is regularly cited as a factor in abuse and murder cases, but does it demean women generally?

If your clients/colleagues in the City didn't upset you, goodbye, but contributed to an ethos where women weren't treated with as much professional respect as men, how harmful is that?

Oh, for a world of simple dividing lines

LoonvanBloom thank you for this post.

I was speaking for myself bend. Did I mind? Not really, either at the time or subsequently. Totally black and white for me and we were talking about me, because you talked about me so I replied about me. I'm sure that other women would have minded more, and it's just about possible (but not probable, I grant you), that some women would have minded even less.

I'm not clear that Loon's post is a brilliant exposition of harm, since I've already said some behaviours are clearly supremely harmful. Loon's post suggests that all behaviours which are a bit wide of the mark have a direct causal link to extreme behaviours, which they clearly don't. As far as I know, not a single colleagueof mine in the City has ever been prosecuted for a serious sexual offence. Whatever happened to perspective and moderation?

"Did the woman mind?" Puts all the responsibility on women and girls. Just like the old days version of making out was (essentially) based on "Boy tries for more, girl gatekeeps'. Maybe some was her realisation that the real (pregnancy) and intangible (reputation) consequences for her were more severe. But it left boys free not to think it through, to just behave with impunity. The workplace/schoolplace culture was (is?) sometimes the same. The males behave as they choose and wait until (enough?) females actually complain before restraining themselves.
Yes, the video was goofy and cringeworthy.
To me, the girls often seem uncomfortable yet hesitant to call out behaviour/ask them to stop. I DON'T think the girl whose chest was filmed was in on the joke/consented. She seemed puzzled why they asked the same question twice, not realising they changed the depth/zoom.
The whole thing has a whiff of male (moneyed?) entitlement. Not a high crime. Believe me, I've been on a train with teen boys watching porn unabashedly, and one late teen guy on a mobile basically describing in very graphic detail raping a teen girl he knows (she said stop and I didn't).
We're not naive. We know bad things happen. But it can be a slippery slope, from ignoring girls' comfort/dignity, to spying, flashing (which they did in this video, by the way), touching, stalking, assaulting.
One thing: many women my age (50s) and above tend to casually dismiss fairly poor behaviour that happened to them in the past. Perhaps it's self-preservation? We all edit our own histories all the time in our minds. I was somewhat assaulted and very uncomfortable during a gyn exam by an older male doctor. I didn't complain to anyone, just didn't go back. I wouldn't have known who to complain to. Many of us just changed OUR behaviour to avoid a perv/creep/assaulter. I think today's girls are at least aware of their rights in a new way, thanks to conversations, 'Me Too' etc. And aware of their responsibility to report in order to stop him and protect other females. My daughter is in a fury at the moment about aggressions (macro and micro) that girls and women endure.

I don't think my post suggested there's always a direct causal link, goodbye . It pointed out rather that it's not easy to know when there is, or how widely or narrowly to define the notion of harm.

You were the one who claimed there's a black and white distinction between harmful and not-harmful, and the one who's repeatedly claimed on this thread to be able to draw it with confidence.

You do it again in that post by arguing that, if your colleagues haven't been prosecuted for serious sexual offences, there's no evidence of a continuum. Leaving aside the obvious point that most sexual assaults don't result in prosecutions, what do you know about how they've treated other colleagues, their wives, other women?

I asked if it was harmful if your City colleagues contributed to a working environment in which women weren't respected as equals, in any case; I didn't imply anywhere that they've gone on to be sexual offenders!

Ironically you were the one who suggested an example of the harm men like that might do, when you first speculated that they might be responsible for the mindset of young men who find women's breasts and the juxtaposition of the words 'feminism' and 'pornography' (yes, I've watched the sodding video) deeply hilarious.

The point is that your definition of harm is way too narrow if you can't see any damage done to women (or men) short of serious sexual assault.

Also, refusing to tolerate casual sexism seems to me to be an intrinsically good thing, creating an environment where both sexes feel comfortable, whether or not it can be shown to 'trickle down' into fewer serious offences.

I was called an apologist for child rape the other day on here simply because I was asking what India Knight's partner had done. We live in McCarthyist times.

Where lines are drawn is never easy. The then current law seems to be the best simple divide although even that is not always simple.

The other difficult issue for women is if sometimesis minor will the impact of reporting it be totally out of proportion to the lack of harm suffered and secondly is it fair to destroy the life of a boy or man in the way our current social media lynch mob does for something that is not too bad? Never easy. I expect in the 1500s people deciding whether to say a local woman is a witch had the same issues too.

I think we could all do with feeling happy, joined and connected not divided, not cross, content, at one with everyone else. I doubt the pandemic has helped achieve that. It will all pass and all will be well. However in the meantime careless talk costs careers and lives so if in doubt say now't remains sensible.

@LoonvanBoon

I don't think my post suggested there's always a direct causal link, goodbye . It pointed out rather that it's not easy to know when there is, or how widely or narrowly to define the notion of harm.

You were the one who claimed there's a black and white distinction between harmful and not-harmful, and the one who's repeatedly claimed on this thread to be able to draw it with confidence.

You do it again in that post by arguing that, if your colleagues haven't been prosecuted for serious sexual offences, there's no evidence of a continuum. Leaving aside the obvious point that most sexual assaults don't result in prosecutions, what do you know about how they've treated other colleagues, their wives, other women?

I asked if it was harmful if your City colleagues contributed to a working environment in which women weren't respected as equals, in any case; I didn't imply anywhere that they've gone on to be sexual offenders!

Ironically you were the one who suggested an example of the harm men like that might do, when you first speculated that they might be responsible for the mindset of young men who find women's breasts and the juxtaposition of the words 'feminism' and 'pornography' (yes, I've watched the sodding video) deeply hilarious.

The point is that your definition of harm is way too narrow if you can't see any damage done to women (or men) short of serious sexual assault.

Also, refusing to tolerate casual sexism seems to me to be an intrinsically good thing, creating an environment where both sexes feel comfortable, whether or not it can be shown to 'trickle down' into fewer serious offences.

Great post @LoonvanBoon you have put it better then me.

Thanks bend. I've completely run down my phone battery with this frenzied posting

@xenia - if in doubt say nowt

Sounds like one of my lovely Yorkshire grandad's pearls of wisdom

I couldn't believe what I read in goodbye's comments either. I am actually shocked

I am sorry for what happened to you @bendmeoverbackwards

A welcome breath of fresh air from Xenia.

Loon you really are being astonishingly patronising. I think it's possible that I see more complexity in this than you do, despite your various long expositions (explanations?) of greyness and continuums. But thank you for them.

I would say that women have a responsibility for not causing more harm to individual men than they feel they've suffered themselves, with errant behaviour. I'm completely with Xenia on that. Also a responsibility, if we are indeed equal, to bring up children able to communicate properly with the opposite sex without all women taking massive offence at the slightest thing.

Goodbye if you couldn't see that the girl whose breasts were being videod was uncomfortable..... then I suppose I shouldn't find the rest of your posts about the topic shocking after all

Why is bend's piano teacher grope worse than a serious assault on a twelve year old in Paris? Does location make a difference?

I thought the video looked very pre-rehearsed, scripted and stilted chopc. I think people are seeing what suits them. At the very least, it's not at all clear that the girl was surprised or failed to consent. And she hasn't asked for the video to be taken down at any stage in the past nine years, despite clearly being a friend of the video makers and a peer of theirs in a small community such as John's.

Also agree with you bend and fingernailnibbler about the video. I thought it was very uncomfortable viewing, and the constant glimpses of men in various states of undress just added to the pathetic awfulness of it. I also definitely got the sense of a specifically 'moneyed' male privilege. Grim.

Every single girl on that video is remarkably similar if you ask me: giggly and rather vacuous. Try distinguishing between the girl in the black dress with boobs and the one brandishing a croquet mallet. Same ambience if you ask me.

The video is terrible, and gets more terrible on repeat checks.