so disappointed in Germaine Greer

[patrickharviesorganicmuesli]

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/germaine-greer-me-too-harvey-weinstein-women-spread-legs-movie-roles-actress-a8173161.html

Who has said that women 'spread their legs' for Weinstein movie roles and 'it's too late now to start whingeing' re MeToo.

What a complete let down.

Yes but in 80/90s if I pursued a career in Hollywood I would know that where power/ money and fame lie there would also be corruption, sex, lies and violence. TBH I wouldn't have even attempted to go into that industry as I said before a cesspit!

BTW in case there is any confusion I am on the women's side!!

I do wonder why this is being treated differently from the football coaches who are being charged with sex offenses. Those were young men at peak fitness, easily could have left and never come back. Even younger ones in a hyper macho environment why did they submit to being used like that.
I absolutely don’t believe that btw they have every right to say t was wrong.

No idea why you were rude. I'd concentrate on mastering punctuation before worrying about your lexicon.

Oh look, facetious AND without an argument.

I would interpret”spread her legs” differently to “had sex with”.
To me “had sex with” implies both people are participating whereas “spread her legs” implies a woman permitted a man to fuck her- not enthusiastically and barely willingly but that she capitulated to his demands.

"Yes but in 80/90s if I pursued a career in Hollywood I would know that where power/ money and fame lie there would also be corruption, sex, lies and violence."

Not just 80/90s, and not just in Hollywood. What strangely limited sliver of context.

Which are the industries where women don't have to defend themselves from men's corruption, sex, lies and violence. Please be very specific about which industries were an understandable problem for women 30 years ago but are not any kind of problem for women now.

One thing I found very interesting around this was when Kevin Spacey was exposed. My ex loved to tell people his "Spacey Story". Spacey came onto him and tried to "touch him up" 20 odd years ago, when he was on the periphery of superfame. It was a total badge of honour for ex, because he thought it reinforced his idea of himself as irresistible.

Once it transpired that Spacey is not a charismatic superstar who was magnetised by my ex's (long faded) pretty youth, but a predatory, foul bastard who preyed on half of fucking London, ex really played the whole thing down. Embarrassment for the narcissist.

I'm trying to articulate something here and not quite able to. That reaction says something about male power to me. I'm sure the much cleverer women on here can put it into words.

Fuck me there's a lot of victim blaming on this thread.

I'm having trouble unpacking this, yes I get that Hollywood producers who offer a stark choice between advancement for sexual favours and career atrophy are corrupt and at fault. However what about women who are willing to throw themselves at these men and would do so without coercion?

I think all Greer is doing is identifying women as equal moral agents to men. Making this entire thing 100% the fault of men is essentially taking the position that women cannot really occupy the same space as moral agents responsible for their own choices like men can. This is reductive and infantilises women as a class.

After all as much as I feel sorry for all the countless actresses that have been preyed on the lion's share of my sympathies isn't with the Judds, Paltrows or even the McGowans it's with the women whose names I will never know. Whose talent, dedication and hard work should have taken them to the very top, but instead as all this unfolds they will doubtless be wondering "could I have made it?"

If my boss asked me to suck his dick for a promotion I would likely break his jaw.

You're a man. If the average woman attempted to punch Weinstein in the face she'd be more likely to break her hand than his jaw.

So tired of men doing this "well what I would do is..." thing. It's not the same, and if you have any sense at all you know that, so stop it.

Maybe I am giving her too much benefit of the doubt because I admire her so but it seems to me she is differentiating between women who prostituted themselves and those who were prostituted as well those who were assaulted and raped.
I want the effing predators out! All of them.
I wonder if context would bring better understanding.

it seems to me she is differentiating between women who prostituted themselves and those who were prostituted as well those who were assaulted and raped.

Prostituted themselves? You mean giving in to the demands of someone who had the power to ruin their careers. None of those women wanted to go along with this. They only 'prostituted themselves' because they felt they had no alternative. They weren't do it willingly.

And FWIW, I think Germaine Greer is a professional attention seeker, so take very little notice of any of her 'opinions'.

"Prostituted themselves" sounds to me a little like "got themselves pregnant"

There isn't equal moral agency in a context where power relations are so unbalanced that even slightly annoying a powerful man might mean your career is down the pan forever

I think all Greer is doing is identifying women as equal moral agents to men. Making this entire thing 100% the fault of men is essentially taking the position that women cannot really occupy the same space as moral agents responsible for their own choices like men can. This is reductive and infantilises women as a class.

I agree that that is what she is trying to do. She has always been against infantising women, and she is right on that. It reminds me more of the fundamentals of rad fem and it being a movement that looks as women as an oppressed class and trying to break down power structures rather than at individual experiences which is much more lib fem ( and very now!)

I imagine for Greer, the metoo campaign is very lib fem - what is it achieving to break down the power structures? It can definitely appear to be 'whingeing' at an individual level - what is it campaigning to break down in terms of power structures? When you look at it, probably not very much. Saying we have had enough and times up is great, but what exactly is it demanding to change in terms of policy and power structures? Lots of us on here have expressed some concern that women are revealing awful experiences and not much is going to change.

There is a point somewhere in there from Greer, and it is a bit uncomfortable for me because it does verge on the massive crime of victim blaming, yet the concept of victim blaming is really problematic because it doesn't give the victim any agency.

Honestly, I have felt a bit uncomfortable with the metoo campaign. I haven't been sure as to what it is achieving - everyone knew all this was going on already. And so do we know anything new?

'However what about women who are willing to throw themselves at these men and would do so without coercion?'

This makes no sense. Think about it for just one small second. If an actress had the option of competing fairly for great roles that she could get or lose on her own merit or ending up in a situation where she could get a mediocre role that pays less than all the men but in order to get it she'll have to allow a repulsive man to wank into her body, which do you think she'd choose? Do you think there is any free choice in a situation where someone more powerful than you has what you want and is willing to exploit your desire to get it?

Greer has always courted controversy. She loves the limelight. She says outrageous things and courts the media for effect and publicity. Often she disagrees for the sake of disagreeing. Sometimes I agree with her and sometimes I don't. But mostly I take her with a large pinch of salt.

In her youth, she was very much a 'liberal fun feminist' equivalent. She boasted she never wore knickers, she boasted about her sexual conquests and she posed naked in Suck magazine.

No judgement for the above, but it does show to me both a level of incoherence in her thought and writing and a desire to self-promote.

Oddly, I like her writing on art more than her writing on feminism.

i agree moon, Greer has always been down on the idea that women need protection and can't stand their own ground so it IS consistent with her earlier writings - women have been socialised to be coerce-able so she's saying, own your choices, effectively.

I realise that it's not always possible to do that but it's as valid an opinion as any other in this debate.

Acknowledging that someone is a victim of a system isn't infantilising them or denying them agency, it's acknowledging the power of those that run the system - the whole issue is that the victim doesn't have control. If you start acting like they do have control and they are 'choosing' to do it (as if there is a choice) then you're just telling the perpetrators of the oppression and inequality that they have every right to exploit others.

Yes I agree.

I think there is an infantilising of women though. I think we have more power than is often assumed and it's not just by telling men to fuck off.

I was interested in a Jordan Peterson video where he talked about women not exploring their dark sides (essentially it is 'unfeminine' to have a dark side) but perhaps if we allowed some of our darkest thoughts to be conscious we would be more prepared for the battle. Men are trained to be combatative and women need to train themselves too.

I don't think it is realistic to expect men to stop being so competitive and fighty. I really do not think we will eradicate male violent / power tendencies, so women do need their own strategies of this war. And I don't think 'whingeing' cuts it - the men in power literally laugh at this and think "is that all you've got?".

I was interested in a Jordan Peterson video where he talked about women not exploring their dark sides (essentially it is 'unfeminine' to have a dark side) but perhaps if we allowed some of our darkest thoughts to be conscious we would be more prepared for the battle. Men are trained to be combatative and women need to train themselves too

That's what the words 'ball-breaker', 'Shrew', 'cunt', and suchlike were invented for.

I just find that unleashing one's dark side incurs further violence.

Besides, I don't want to live in a Hobbesian dystopia.

I get what you're saying mooncup.

But I don't see how saying women need to change gives them agency - essentially what you're saying is 'men are who they are and won't change so now you have to be different and do things you don't want to do in order to fight them' - how is that agency? Surely that's just accepting the oppression, allowing men to continue with utterly shitty behaviour and expecting women to cope with it? Business as usual surely?

I think women are socialised into being agreeable ( and as a survival technique!)

We vilify women who do not centre kindness and nurturing.

What I am saying is why? I have bad thoughts about people and situations, yet I suppress them and rarely act upon them. Men are much less likely to do that. I am not talking about causing actual violence to others, I totally disagree with that, but what I am talking about is that women enter these situations often with a naive expectation that others (men) put kindness first too and are left with no tactics to deal with the harmful situations in front of them.

If women did explore dark sides they would understand the capability of humans, they may have thought through tactics that they will deploy when they find themselves in harmful manipulated situations. They will be prepared and have a tactic themselves to get the fuck out, or even better take them on.

I definitely agree that women are socialised to be and expected to be polite, kind, nurturing.

But as you say yourself, that's a survival tactic. The stark truth is that on average men are bigger and stronger than women and they are willing to use that against them, often to horrific effect. Everyone seems to like to pretend that isn't the case but the millions of women raped and murdered by men every year tell a different story.

While I can see a value in women becoming less polite, as this will help them at least to get out of situations where men are depending on women's politeness to get what they want, it absolutely won't help in situations where a man is going to get what he wants no matter what - a lack of 'politeness' may just result in the woman being more badly injured/killed.

We have to acknowledge and face up to the massive power difference and the way in which that ties women's hands. Men who are not violent themselves need to recognise it and stop pretending it doesn't exist. They have to start calling other men to account. Women simply cannot change the situation entirely on their own (though they have made some incredibly good progress).