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 - I think people keep trying to dig her out of her hermitage to get her to speak on and front issues - and she just wants them to fuck off and leave her to it - she is in a position of being able to pick and choose her gigs, and activism isn't her bag anyway. She is an academic.

Just catching up on the thread so not sure if anyone has posted this, but Germaine Greer was the author of 'The Beautiful Boy', 'a study of the youthful male face and form, from antiquity to the present day', which consists of pictures of teenage boys to 'advance women's reclamation of their capacity for and right to visual pleasure'.

'Greer has described the book as "full of pictures of 'ravishing' pre-adult boys with hairless chests, wide-apart legs and slim waists".'

In other words, photos of pretty kids for women to leer at.
Yes, Germaine's idea of women's' liberation is equality in leering at teenagers.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beautiful_Boy

I expect there's a wide mix of scenarios ranging from:

1. woman offers to sleep with man to gain favour
2. man suggests sleeping with him will curry favour
3. man clearly states that sleeping with him will land a definite role
4. man threatens that not sleeping with him will ensure woman doesn't get role
5. man threatens that not sleeping with him will ensure she never gets a role in the future
6. man actively assaults or rapes woman

There's probably a few I've missed, but you get the gist.
I think Greer is technically right for 1, 2 and 3 where a woman is effectively agreeing to the deal (sex for favours). However, she's forgetting that it's not usually between 2 equal status people with an equitable deal. One is usually much more influential and the other statistically unlikely to succeed without getting a role in the first place.

As for 4,5 and 6, those are blackmail and assault cases which are even worse.

I am sure some women set out to open their legs to land a role. But I am even more sure the majority who did spread their legs will have felt obligated or pressured into doing so, and quite possibly at fairly young age. It's an abuse of power most of the time I would say.

Your Blame Scale is gross and creepy.

Nobody who uses the words "spread their legs" to describe women who may have been victims of rape, and who almost certainly were victims of coercion, deserves to be taken seriously.

I am sure some women set out to open their legs to land a role.

They wouldn't even have to consider 'opening their legs' as an option if women were given the same opportunities men are given.

I dont 100% agree with her, but i do think she has a point and has the right to say it. Greer has never toed the line and she is not afraid to say controversial things even if it pisses off some of her normal cheerleaders that cant handle dissent. I like that about her.

They wouldn't even have to consider 'opening their legs'hmm as an option if women were given the same opportunities men are given.

This is absolutely the crux of the matter. I remember an article on whether it was a good thing to ban page 3, in (of all places) the Times, by a male journalist. He said the thing that had changed his mind (from "pro page 3, just a bit of fun", to "actually, hang on a minute, is this really right?") was interviewing Sam Fox. The clincher came right at the end of the interview in what started in his mind as just a throwaway question to fill in the last few minutes, but, as he realised, turned out to be the key question of the whole thing.

He asked "If you could have got where you are today (TV presenter, celebrity, charity fundraiser etc.) without doing glamour modelling, would you have?"

Her answer (and he says he still remembers the look of "what, are you completely stupid or something?" on her face) was simply "Of course."

That's really interesting HairyBallTheoram. And often with boys in poverty what has historically been available to them is something like football or boxing to lift themselves out of poverty (obviously boxing comes with a lot of health risks) but with women it's always body/looks which and what they are valued for and that needs to change at the deepest level I think.

'I am sure some women set out to open their legs to land a role. But I am even more sure the majority who did spread their legs will have felt obligated or pressured into doing so, and quite possibly at fairly young age. It's an abuse of power most of the time I would say.'

'Most of the time'?? When is it not an abuse of power to manipulate someone less powerful than you into doing something they wouldn't otherwise do? The only reason women 'set out' to 'open their legs' (god what a fucking awful, distasteful and disrespectful way to put it) is because they know that they have no other way of achieving their dream. They are motivated, ambitious women who should be able to succeed on their talent and effort but who instead have to humiliate themselves for men who enjoy violating other people. It's a totally sick state of affairs.

The time when it is not an abuse of power is when the offer is initiated by the female in the hope of gaining favour. If a relatively talentless woman seeks to get into a movie by seducing a decision maker, I don't see that as an abuse of power so much as a weakness. Those instances (I would guess) will be a minority which is why I placed them at one extreme of the range of circumstances.

This scenario however, is distinctly different from one where a woman feels it's the only avenue available to her, which may well not be the fault of that particular male, but of the industry as a whole.
If the man accepts her offer in exchange for a role, then he becomes complicit and at that point abuses his position. If he is unaware that the sex is a ruse to gain favour (seduction scenario) then it's the woman doing the abusing, but this is clearly a minuscule percentage imo.
You asked me to provide a scenario where it wasn't abuse of power, and that's it. That's why I could never say 100% of cases are abuse of power, just the vast majority.

And yes, it's an awful term that already suggests a certain intent on the female's part, but I would imagine that was Greer's intention. She has illustrated what I consider would be a tiny percentage (but almost certainly do exist).

Even within her minority example there is a difference between those that did so out of an industry that makes a woman feel it's her only option, and the tiny few who sought a quick leg up the ladder through sex. The latter has to be fractions, which is why I think Greer was right to acknowledge they might exist, but wrong to detract from the issue that the overwhelming majority are the victims.

It was not a blame scale. It was illustration the range if scenarios that exist, not only in Hollywood but in many environments. Greer highlighted one such scenario which pretty much detracted from the majority of scenarios where clearly men have abused privilege. She wasn't wrong, but I don't think it's helpful to pinpoint the exceptions when the majority are speaking out and trying to effect change about the industry's attitudes.

Again, it's why I can never say every situation is abuse, just the vast majority. I still maintain there is a difference between a man who accepts the offer of sex for favours, and one who physically forces himself on a woman. Neither is acceptable, but they not the same thing.

Great post Brilliant mistake.

What would we do if we didn't have Brilliant to mansplain our experiences to us.

" I don't think it's helpful to pinpoint the exceptions "

And yet look at how much time you've spending on this thread doing exactly what you say isn't helpful. Look at what you made #1 on your blame scale, a scale that goes from 1 to 1000 in reality. Look at you assigning women 1/6 of the blame for own sexual exploitation as if some 16.6 percent of women are manipulative harlots deviously dragging decent, honorable, reluctant men into transactional sex.

You must think you're being helpful, but you are very wrong about that.

I really do despair sometimes. It is possible to have empathy and compassion for vulnerable women who were exploited, empathy and compassion for women who did not let themselves be exploited but suffered professionally for that choice.

It is also possible to hold women responsible who deliberately set out to trade sexual favours in return for fame and success as ultimately such women not only normalise the whole scenario for the abusers and feed into the corrupt system, but have also cheated more talented women who deserved the opportunity.

If I was an actress sat on the scrap heap because I refused the advances of a powerful producer I'd be fucking furious at him, but I'd also feel immensely resentful at whomever got the role over me. Furthermore this complete failure to hold any woman responsible in any way for this corrupt system would make me feel ultimately weak and not strong enough to weather the abuse to get where I desired to be.

The men involved I seriously think criminal action and jail time is warranted. The women most certainly not, but the silence was mostly deafening right up until the point Weinstein was fired from his own company. Nobody 'heroically' spoke out until is was basically safe to do so.

On the subject of mansplaining it was a fucking good thing imo that Woody Allen's son saw fit to pen the article and mansplain this whole sorry state of affairs in the first place, cos no-one was doing fucking anything about it until then.

/sorry for all the swearing.

We've seen the line about innocent victimized women vs. not-so-innocent hussy women enough times to know how extraordinarily few women get accepted into the first category.

You don't understand what mansplaining is. It is not the son of a serial child rapist talking about his father.

Now, let's hear no more about the legions of untalented mega-whores (why not talented and whores?) ruining the world for good, talented actresses.

I continue to take exception to the claim that the women in the film industry were silent. They were not.
The media closed ranks around the men. Even when the rape of a child by Roman Polanski was reported it was treated as a he said/ she said.
The women were not silent, they were silenced. That is a very different thing. Ask Mia Farrow's children.

CritEqual, you seem to be missing the point - if men didn't trade movie roles for sex, there wouldn't be any way for any woman to use sex to get a role over somebody else. I think it's idiotic to claim that there are some women who 'willingly' used sex to get roles - I can guarantee you that if they had another way to get those roles they would take it. But if they know that they either give the producer sex or they lose the gig then that's not much of a choice is it? If some women go ahead and allow a man to use them as a wank sock so that they can get the role they have waited their whole life to get, I have nothing but sympathy for them - what an utterly fucking shit situation to be in, where you can have what you want but only if you allow this man to humiliate you first. Not only that, but they see men being judged fairly for roles and earning more than they do.

It interests me that there seems to be this fantasy story that there are some women out there who are very happy to allow any old penis into their vagina to get what they want and that this has no personal effect on them whatsoever, they're perfectly happy to just be used. It's a story often told around prostitution - this idea that while I and all my female friends and every woman I have ever known is very careful around men, has been hurt in some way by men, is quite particular about who they sleep with, there are these women, existing somewhere (but never actually identified) who don't give a fig about their bodily autonomy and safety and will just 'open their legs' (shudder) with a big smile and no worries. It's bizarre.

Now you mention it LeCroissant, I've never met that women either. Many many women who've been assaulted or exploited but no one who has cheerfully exploited themselves.

I've heard about her a lot, but I've never spoken to her.

She's like bigfoot, but with even less scientific evidence to support her existence.

There’s a huge difference between consent and coercion.

I don't know any personally either, but then again I don't move in particularly high powered Hollywood circles either. I think a simple correlation would be between women who go on to marry wealthy men many times older than themselves. Not that there is anything inherently wrong in that mind, but in the case of sex for movie roles there is likely many women losing out professionally.

If you don't have a problem with one half of the corruption equation (note it's not a balanced equation, those with power have a greater moral responsibility) then fine, but then it would not be unethical to bribe a police officer or judge to be let off a crime, or bribe a public official for a juicy government contract, or an examiner for exam questions in advance it would only be an ethical violation for those accepting the bribe. I personally would struggle to see it that way.

I think a feminism that robs women of moral responsibility robs them of agency, as the two concepts are intertwined. I'm all for 99% of the coverage being focused on the male perpetrators and is right and proper, but one article from Germaine Greer pointing out what she did is about right.