The 'me too' movement

[HAL]

I like the English language.

[stui magpie]

[Pi]

^

that's true, but the level of outrage in comparison is almost non existent... and we all know why.

[stui magpie]

There's multiple reasons why, none of them good.

[Mugwump]

The facts are significantly in dispute re Telford, but it�s clearly dire.

In truth, this stuff is simply the wages of a society which has ceased to believe that sex is more than a commodity of pleasure. It used to be a dangerous and serious act, controlled through marriage and religious belief. Technologies of contraception and antibiotics changed that. No doubt some good came of that change, but once you commoditise sex it will inevitably be trivialized, demanded, traded and stolen, especially from the vulnerable, and - human nature being what it is - especially from women.

I do not like the idea of going back to the sexual repressiveness of the 1950s, but I think we might have the humility to acknowledge that our brave new world is not obviously superior to the wisdom and seriousness of our grandparents, and that the middle class god of freedom always carries terrible costs for those without middle class resources. Since we tore apart marriage and ceased to believe in a higher authority than the pleasure-seeking self, we have created wastelands of social injustice and exploitation. We will never chase it away with police.

[stui magpie]

The thing was, way back before the 50's people still had sex out of wedlock. It's just that no access to contraceptives and the morality of the time meant some shitty consequences,

My paternal granparents got jiggy with it resulting in a shotgun marriage and a first born child handed off to relatives for several years until the dust settled. She was mortified when she found her parents marriage certificate after her mum died and did the maths.

My maternal grandfather was born to a single mother, something none of his siblings (or he for that matter) seemed to know. His mother married when he was 2 and he got along so well with his stepfather that at age 10, he had a fight with him then got on his horse and rode away, never to come back.

We can't romanticise the past, but we also shouldn't look at past behaviours through a present lens and judge them. The past is the past. A different planet and a different time.

[Mugwump]

Oh I agree. We cannot have the past back, even if we were foolish enough to want it. It too had many miseries, and more sex than we think. Contraception and antibiotics are both wonderful things, of course. But we make our world and choose our beliefs, and we can choose a better future based on the lessons of the past. I think we are too cocksure and historically amnesiac (exemplified in that word of consummate smugness, �progressive�) to even think about this clearly. One of the paradoxes of life is that what feels good often has the bitterest consequences, and especially for the poor and vulnerable.

Meanwhile, we might do well to ponder the great poem about sex by Philip Larkin, below (NB nicks filter deletes the f word from the second line. Larkin uses it) :

High Windows
BY PHILIP LARKIN

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he�s $�$%^%%$ her and she�s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives�
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That�ll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

[ronrat]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-24/adelaide-pub-hotel-longtime-backlash-over-name/9582278

This a sideshow to this issue. But is part of the Faux outrage that has nothing to do with reality. I have been in a few of these gogo bars and saw one ping pong show once (the girlfriend was with me), By far the majority of the punters were Koreans, Japanese and Chinese. If the author of the article doesn't need to fly from London to Adelaide to eat there. But unwittingly she has given them that most valuable of commodities for a small business. Free advertising. It is also a bit rich coming from a music producer. Eating a bowl of Pho is not going to have thousands of Adelaide people race of to Vietnam to bang hookers. I mean the movie is 30 years old and the story is about 50 years old.

[K]

'I felt belittled': Eryn Jean Norvill speaks in Rush defamation case

https://www.theage.com.au/national/i-felt-belittled-eryn-jean-norvill-speaks-in-rush-defamation-case-20181030-p50ctp.html

[David]

While he started the defamation case in a pretty strong position (and if I recall correctly the truth may not even be a sufficient defence for the Telegraph here; they have to prove that their reportage was reasonable given the facts that they then had access to), I have a feeling Rush isn�t going to win this one. The court reports so far make it seem like a pretty open-and-shut case, to be honest, and having this all out in the open will take away the plausible deniability of a he-said / she-said affair. Ultimately, what he is alleged to have done is not a hanging offence, and there�s no justification to chase him out of the public square (and I hate that reflex), but I do think it�s well past time that guys recognise that women shouldn�t have to put up with this shit.

[K]

[David]

It seems that the Telegraph�s �truth� defence (that they would not be guilty of defamation if the story was �substantially true�) was, in fact, dismissed by the court back in March, but the alleged victim�s decision to testify seems to have been a big turning point in the case:

https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/rush-v-the-daily-telegraph,-update/10117296

[MJ23]

Have to say, in reading the testimony Rush looks to be in a bit of trouble.

He had a huge amount of power and she was stuck in a scene and situation where all her control was taken from her as she saw or understood it.

Not good and really feel for her

[watt price tully]

[K]