I'm getting sick of hearing about #metoo

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I don’t know about Ireland but here in the U.S the entire criminal justice system needs to change. As does the mental health system. The big problem is that all people do is complain about it. But nothing actually ever ends up changing. Things are really bad down in New Mexico. Same with a lot of the other parts of the U.S. Even up here things are really bad. But the MeToo campaign isn’t addressing that at all.

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The police really aren’t educated about these things so going to the police a lot of times is really useless.

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See here’s another example:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/14/opinions/2018-will-be-the-year-of-women-schnall/index.html

So this movement isn’t helping people like my sister. Or that poor girl who was slaughtered. It’s a smokescreen that makes it look like “something” is changing. Meanwhile, legislation is underway to undermine it all…

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by ..

[Old Account]

When I was a senior in college, I worked part time in a microbiology lab as a glassware washer.  One of the grad students who I worked for asked me to help her proofread her dissertation.  She brought it over to my apartment, and after we worked on it together for a while she came on to me sexually in a very strong manner.  So I did what a guy is expected to do, even though I didn’t want to.  I was 22 and could perform sexually on command even if not interested.  I was kind of grossed out but not horribly traumatized.  Later, I found out she claimed to “seduce” very guy in the lab, at least once.

 

Years later, I was a grad student myself, working in a computer lab, and my boss, in her 50s would regularly read my programming work, over my shoulder, and press her breasts against my back or back of my neck, while doing that.  I felt sorry for her.  I liked her and didn’t think much of it but it was really noticable.  I didn’t like that however.  It was awkward.  I really needed the money and revommendation, so I pretended to be oblivious.

Years after that, one on the nurses in a clinic where I worked would “accidentally” press her breasts against me in a similar manner.  It would be in narrow hallways and she was morbidly obese, so I thought maybe space was the issue.  However, it did not happen with anyother wonen, and it concerned me, and later she was fired for stalking other employees.  She kind of freaked me out, but I got over it.

It was a pretty dog-eat-dog workplace with a lot of backstabbing.  I tried to keep quiet, avoid getting into politics, and meet performance measures by working very hard.  There were a few times in my career when other employees, male or female, did things worthy of Survivor reality TV.  The incident that affected me the most was when 3 senior women in management positions went to the regional supervisor and said I was looking depressed and behaving strangely, and they were concerned I would go postal. That means they are saying they are concerned I will commit mass murder.  Postal was the expression they used.  At the time, my mother had terminal Alzheimers, my dad had terminal cancer, and I was being given more work volume and difficulty than any of my colleagues, but all of my performance measures were in top 25% and in a place that involved working with the public, the surveys gave me uniformly good reviews with no complaints.  Fortunately, all of the work there – performance and volume – was computer documented.  They were playing off a male stereotype of potential violence, while discriminating against me and conspiring to character assassination.  I demanded reassignment and official apology, and got it.  Their careers stagnated after that but they were not fired.

 

This is over a career spanning 40 years.  Mostly I was successful, rewarded, and did very well.  But, I don’t buy that all women are always helpless victims of male sexual aggression, or that women dont sometimes – maybe rare but not zero – do it sometimes, or that there aren’t men AND women in the workplace who are backstabbing, aggressive and use whatever tools they find to get ahead.  Im sure that men are far far worse about sexual behavior than women, but women can be just as psychosocially aggressive and violent.  I don’t approve of any form of sexual predation whatsoever, but I also think that other predatory behaviors are just as bad if not worse.  After that female grad student literally jumped me and I had to “perform”, I took a long shower with lots of soap.  The boob-pressing incidents grossed me out a little, but I mostly felt sorry for them.  The character assassination episode left me shaken for years, and changed my career permanently.

With #metoo, it’s almost  all women being victims of men.  I’ve seen only one report of a man being sexually harassed by women.  I wonder about the biases and if there is some underreporting when it’s the other way around.  Again, I think sexusl harassment and predation are vile and agree modt of it is men preying on women, or being jerks.

 

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That’s part of my point @danielw. I’ll admit something right here right now that I’ve never ever said out loud. I’ve been victim plenty but I’ve also been the aggressor. It’s gone both ways. Because my own mentality has been so skewed and screwed up over the years…I haven’t really figured out how to read signals properly, and I have had the mentality for a long time that all men just want sex, and a lot of times I misunderstand what is really happening. I can remember a time in high school I was going out with a guy who actually was very nice. I came on to him and he said no…Same thing happened at one point in college….And when they said no it was really confusing for me because I thought it’s what THEY wanted and expected. I had been groomed by a lot of men in the past when I was really young to think that ALL men just want sex and want you to suck their dicks and that it’s my duty to do so…

Even to this day it’s confusing. But what you’re saying is true. The #MeToo movement is vile and sickening to me because it’s giving these women a platform to play the victim card. I’m not perfect and I have my faults too but that stopped being anyone else’s fault but mine the day I turned 18. What happened to me when I was underage was wrong, I was a kid. But when I turned 18 and went off the college I did a lot of things looking back – drinking, getting drunk in bars at 19, ending up in strangers cars…I did those things and I got fucked because I put myself in those situations and I was an alcoholic in my own addiction. If i hadn’t been out looking for it, it wouldn’t have come to me. I drew in all the wrong people because it’s what I was attracted to. And so I couldn’t honestly say I was blameless. I really wasn’t. It’s not like all of these men tied me down and made me spread my legs. I was asking for it. And you know what? My mom and my grandma are the same way. There’s something wrong with people like us. We’ve all been like prostitutes. And we all knew how to use our sexuality to get what we wanted. No one talks about women like us. We’re just as much at fault. When I look back at all the times I was raped, I brought it on myself honestly. Oh but we’re not allowed to admit that as women because the society and the culture tells us we’re victims and always 100% blameless and it’s always the men that’s at fault. When honestly it’s a lot of times us giving the mixed signals and playing games. I can think of a lot of times that I ended up being raped, when I think back to all the event prior – I was totally asking for it. But that’s become counter cultural to say as a woman, to put the blame back on myself. Even if it’s the truth. And I could use the excuse that it’s how my abusers groomed me to think. But that AGAIN is playing the victim card and not taking responsibility for everything I did after I turned 18….Once you’re an adult you’re an adult. Doesn’t matter if I had the mentality of a 13 year old. Doesn’t matter what happened to me when I was 5 or 8 or 10…etc…Doesn’t matter. People, men and women both, need to stop making excuses. These women just want their mugshot in the newspaper and be recognized. “Oh poor me poor me…” Yeah and I’m betting every single time these women were harassed they went along with it just to keep their career in tact at the time. But now they speak out when it’s years later? Yeah because now they’ve made their money. Now they got what they wanted and now they lose nothing by speaking out. If it was so fucking horrific why didn’t they go to the police? Because they probably know deep down inside they played a part in it.

[jakelafort]

Belle,  i hear your take.  And it has validity up to a point. But many women are in fact victimized and give no indication of being receptive to sexual advances or in any way complicit.   When a person in authority abuses that authority it is contemptible.   Whether it is a priest, a boss,  a teacher or what have you who is exploiting a person who has trust in the individual or for the trappings of the authority figure  we need to give license to the victim to speak out.  Failure to do so only perpetuates the exploitation.

As for the idea of rape victims playing a part in their victimization i cant go along with that.  It does not matter how she dressed, flirted,  her body language,  her seductive tone or anything at all.  Once a woman says stop a man has to stop-does not matter how horny he is or how turned on.

 

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@jakelafort

As for the idea of rape victims playing a part in their victimization i cant go along with that. It does not matter how she dressed, flirted, her body language, her seductive tone or anything at all. Once a woman says stop a man has to stop-does not matter how horny he is or how turned on.

Yeah that’s what they teach you in school but that’s not reality. Neither in the real world or within the criminal justice system.

The truth is that women play a large part in their own victimization. And that’s what’s not openly talked about honestly.

[jakelafort]

Bellen,  sometimes they do play a part in their victimization.   Sometimes they do not.  In either event it is a construct worth following…no means no…no consent means if you continue you have raped me…

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Bellen, sometimes they do play a part in their victimization. Sometimes they do not.

But the women who really need the help still aren’t getting it. The ones like me who are asking for it are getting all the attention and the ones who are literally sex slaves living in a closet are far out of sight out of mind…

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@jakelafort

sometimes they do play a part in their victimization. Sometimes they do not. In either event it is a construct worth following…no means no…no consent means if you continue you have raped me…

That’s not the way the criminal justice system sees it. Most of the time when you  know or are dating the person, or even if you just went out together once…they don’t even begin to start talking about the remote possibility of pressing charges unless there is real physical injuries present. EVEN THEN, maybe maybe not. Even if the person has a criminal record, maybe maybe not. It’s all the decision of the District Attorney to DECIDE whether the case IS or is NOT worthy of the possibility of a trial. They basically determine the outcome right there. And one of the BIGGEST reasons a lot of cases are never even charged IS for circumstances where the women are out drinking with the man, and they know each other, snowball’s chance in hell you’re going to be charged, tried and imprisoned. It honestly never happens. Not when there aren’t injuries. So just because the word “no” escapes your lips, doesn’t mean the courts or the police give a fuck. They certainly don’t consider it rape. So why do we keep LYING to women telling them that it is???? Making them think they are victims when honestly when push comes to shove they played a part in their own victimization. So tell them to shut the fuck up. That’s what the courts do. Give them their reality straight to their face so they don’t spend all their time thinking “oh poor me, I was raped,” the fuck you were or else his ass would be in jail where it belongs. Right?? That’s the reality that no one talks about. The humiliation after the fact of being told all kinds of fucking LIES. Telling you you have an advocate that will go with you to court only to hear that, “Sorry, it’s your lack of boundaries that got you into this mess. He was just going along with it….” No one will tell you that reality. They’ll say, “Oh you said no so you’ve been raped…” No. Honestly that’s a crock of shit. The truth is if I was there to begin with I let it happen. That IS the truth. It IS my fault.

[jakelafort]

Bellen, i mostly agree.  Cops often fail  to do investigations which ought to have been done.  Prosecutors fail to prosecute meritorious cases.  They also act out of self-interest in prosecuting cases that will be favorable for reelection.   Rape cases and cases of sexual misconduct are swept under the rug and out the door.

THE ISSUE:  Will those in a position of authority and power exploit their position?

Of course they will.  Power corrupts.  It corrupts on the big stage and in the microcosm.  Humans fucking suck.  There are exceptions but on balance it is axiomatic to assert the aforementioned.  So for instance in the frontier in the americas native women were routinely raped and the european law looked the other way.   In nations in which islam is ascendant (tremendous power imbalance between men and women)  old guys take children for wives.   The litany of disgusting instances of power imbalance exploitation goes on and on.

Metoo breaks the conspiracy of silence.  (yeah i know that there is a tendency to lump misconduct into one category where reality is there are significant demarcations of wrongdoing)  Silence is the ally of the tyrant, of the abuser, of the rapist.  Disclosure its enemy.  Metoo is a start.  It is a symptom of a nascent equality.  Imagine how viciously its equivalent would be put down in some countries? Think about the suffragettes.  Beaten, ridiculed, tortured, murdered! But why?  Same shit…power imbalance and those in power endeavor to maintain their power.

Stop blaming yourself and other women who have been victimized.  You too can support metoo.

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@jakelafort

Stop blaming yourself and other women who have been victimized. You too can support metoo.

I don’t understand what there is to support. What is the end goal? What is honestly changing because of it? I don’t know what I would say except what I’ve already said. I’m tired of the discrepancy between what domestic violence agencies tell victims and what the criminal justice system says. It’s all misguided.

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And I think a lot of these women are just looking for their 15 minutes of victimhood

[jakelafort]

What is there to support?

It is a step towards equality between males and females.  Precursors to historical change may have seemed empty at that time when  viewed in a vacuum.  If power is  achieved and equality attained wages for women will equal men.  Males who commit sexual misconduct will be punished with greater frequency.  KNOWING that sexual misconduct is made public may act as a deterrent.

Sure some women want the notoriety.  Others may make allegations that are false to pursue a legal claim for money damages.  Be that as it may metoo is a positive step towards amelioration of the old fuck boys network.

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The problem is @jakelafort that metoo is totally ignoring the root cause of the problem…that’s why it makes me mad. It’s a lot of talk but at the end of the days it’s empty promises and just a lot of nothing.

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