feck sake pal the woman just came out and said she was not bothered and has been friends with Franken and his wife for decades so who the feck are you to tell her otherwise. She is not a victim yet you are saying she is based on your crazy assumptions.This is tiresome. It simply amounts to you saying the woman is lying, despite all your feminist humbug which enjoins automatic support for female victims of assault in cases other than the perpetrator being a favoured Democratic senator. Even photographic evidence is denied. Anyone who remembers the liberal reaction to Clinton's accusers in the 90s will recognize the syndrome.
Arianna Huffington's reaction is predictable. She's a powerful woman who doesn't want to be cast in the role of victim or the embarrassing distraction of a public controversy which could do her no good. People who were present at the shoot with no fish to fry might be better reporters.
I didn't say anything about a third accuser. When I first posted there were only two. It was you who said Franken had only been accused by one woman.
Why would someone make an accusation once they got to the top? What do they have to gain? And just because you've slept your way to the top, it doesn't mean you have never been a victim of abuse.
I think after Trumps endorsement of Moore yesterday it's time for the women who accused the don of sexual assault to step forward once more. If this country really wants to change it needs to start at the top. Conservatives are a strange bunch. They will believe any old shit that comes through their FB feed yet when 10,000 scientists tell them man made climate change is real they won't believe it but when one pseudoscientist tells them it's not true they believe it unconditionally. Bottom line is if one woman or man comes forward with allegations then it tends to be one story against another but when multiple people come forward with allegations, especially similar stories then you know the accused is guilty. And before Absolutely Will jumps in, that also includes Bill Clinton and Anthony Weiner.
It’s reassuring that your anecdotal experiences account for a global problem that has existed for decades.
The only people who generally think this is a witch hunt are the ones who don’t believe the accusers are telling the truth. Also probably includes a large amount of people who weren’t aware of just how common sexual violence is, therefore this is difficult to comprehend.
That doesn’t make the claims of a witch hunt legitimate.
As I’ve said many times in this thread, we can’t talk about the volume of claims being made now without discussing the fact that rape culture made it almost impossible for victims to get justice in court previously.
You can’t talk about one without the other.
I understand by that you mean retroactive false accusations, not just the 'sleeping to the top' part. Not a rethorical question, but are you positively sure no assault has happened in these instances? Someone can cross the line to violence/rape even during what has started out as consensual sex, after all.
And concerning Hollywood, do you believe this makes up a considerably high percentage of the cases discussed here? I can imagine potential personal motives, but it would be a high-risk move in any case. The accusers would face a shameful end to their careers, high reparations and possibly jail time if it goes wrong. They would also deliberately put the public spotlight on something that tarnishes their own careers, and I imagine most people owing their success (at least in part) to something like this would rather be glad if it never comes under investigation.
All in all, I consider women (and children) actually being molested by exploitative assholes a much more plausible reason for the current outpouring of allegations than a sudden mass phenomenon of false testimony - carefully spoken. Especially after what has already come out about Hollywood culture in this regard.
Why get butt hurt over my response when you decided to to respond to my original post. I gave my observation which you seem to be throwing out altogether as if only your opinion counts.
This may have been happening for decades, but people have been willing to do favors to get ahead since forever. If you have not seen that yourself, then you may have lived a very sheltered life so far. It happens everywhere in every profession.
Mine or your opinion is not going to change anything now or the future.
If you agree to perform sexual favors to get ahead, why should that be considered abuse? Would a prostitute be considered an abuse victim if they willingly sell their body to earn a living?
There are men, women and children who are victims of sexual abuse, who have no say in what is happening to them. They are not looking to get ahead in life, but just survive.
feck sake pal the woman just came out and said she was not bothered and has been friends with Franken and his wife for decades so who the feck are you to tell her otherwise. She is not a victim yet you are saying she is based on your crazy assumptions.
Have you even read the fecking article before making such an ill informed post? It's the person who's been accused of this has said that he's taking a leave due to unwanted hugs, the accusations against him are much more serious
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/...-absence-after-harassment-allegations-w512411
I really don't want to take a moral highground but some of the posts have been pathetic in the last pages or so. From talking about "McCarthyism" to this.
What other people? Again with the assumptions. If Al Frankin's accuser accepts his apology and a long time family friend said she was not offended and was doing a comedy skit for a show then why should people like you be offended. Al Frankin is guilty of nothing more than being juvenile. He didn't prey on teenage girls at the mall or high school football games. He didn't send dick pics to teenage girls laying next to a baby. He didn't publicly masterbate in front of a woman while in a position of power. These are actual crimes. It's getting rediculous now as I'm just finished reading about an actress that no one fecking knows going public about a "humiliation" she received from Oliver Stone. Long story short she auditions for The Doors and was told ahead of time that the audition would be intense sexually as that was the nature of the story. She claimed she ran out crying because she was asked to do exactly what I watched in the movie. Her reason for this humiliation was because of a comment she made to Stone about the power of TV after he dissed it. fecking rediculous.Other people say she was upset. And it's hard to believe that a respectable, middle-aged woman would be happy to be publicly mauled by a man with whom she's not in a relationship, and who has one hand on her tit and the other on her ass.
It must also be remembered that Arianna is embedded like a tick in the liberal community and doesn't want to be tweezered out. She has good business reasons, if nothing else, for wanting to smooth this over with minimal controversy.
At the very least the photo shows that Al Franken has a history of putting his hands intimately on women without licence, whether in jest or not, and lends credibility to other accusations.
What other people? Again with the assumptions. If Al Frankin's accuser accepts his apology and a long time family friend said she was not offended and was doing a comedy skit for a show then why should people like you be offended. Al Frankin is guilty of nothing more than being juvenile. He didn't prey on teenage girls at the mall or high school football games. He didn't send dick pics to teenage girls laying next to a baby. He didn't publicly masterbate in front of a woman while in a position of power. These are actual crimes. It's getting rediculous now as I'm just finished reading about an actress that no one fecking knows going public about a "humiliation" she received from Oliver Stone. Long story short she auditions for The Doors and was told ahead of time that the audition would be intense sexually as that was the nature of the story. She claimed she ran out crying because she was asked to do exactly what I watched in the movie. Her reason for this humiliation was because of a comment she made to Stone about the power of TV after he dissed it. fecking rediculous.
Let me indulge in the rights favorite past time of whataboutism and ask you about Trump. Does he have history and should he be treated the exact same as Frankin?
Because even if it all has started out as planned, unwanted sex practises can be enforced at a later point. I guess this is quite common when it comes to sexual assault. So having consensual sex at first is no automatic guarantee a later accusation must be wrong, which is how I understood your argument. Except - that's what my question was about - you can be positively sure this was not the case there.If it is consensual sexual favor, where you know what you are doing and why, how can it be an assault? I personally find it disgusting to ask for sexual favors and have never engaged in it, but I have seen it happen. As for violence during sexual contact without the other person's consent, then yes, I would absolutely consider that an assault.
I'm simply saying that whatever people do in order to 'get ahead' in life has nothing to do with sexual violence, therefore it's pointless to discuss women sleeping around.
Having sex is not akin to sexual violence.
Furthermore, the stigma around 'sleeping around' for power, only exists when it's women who do it.
There's no such stigma around Elitist Members-Only Clubs (which are usually male only) who use their exclusive networks & communities in order to hire each other into positions of power, or get into the very best universities and industries - something which happens more frequently also.
Unless of course you can prove that women sleep around for more power, more often?
Also, nobody is butt hurt - my tone is simply dry and direct in writing format.
What are you talking about? That has nothing to do with anything in this thread.
Because even if it all has started out as planned, unwanted sex practises can be enforced at a later point. I guess this is quite common when it comes to sexual assault. So having consensual sex at first is no automatic guarantee a later accusation must be wrong, which is how I understood your argument. Except - that's what my question was about - you can be positively sure this was not the case there.
But the main argument of my post (going beyond singular instances) was the second and third paragraph anyway.
It has everything to do with this thread. People are making allegations which may be true and may not be, but it may never be proved. People who are being accused will have their reputations ruined forever without ever being proven guilty.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/vice-sex-harassment-shane-smith_us_5a1063b9e4b045cf4371cbe4
Some title gore here, but NYT is working on a major story about Vice.
Apart from the accusations against Trump being moot I agree with everything you said.I didn't follow Trump's issues closely at the time, but, from what I know, his behaviour seems worse than Franken's. On the other hand it's now largely moot, since all the accusations were in the public domain and the American people still made the decision to elect him president.
As far as Franken goes, if nothing more serious emerges, I don't think he's obliged to quit, and probably won't. His electorate will have their say when he comes up for re-election.
For me the really serious cases involve abuse of power, and that's the saving grace for Franken - none of the women were his subordinates and didn't have to put up with any crap. Plus he seems to have behaved appropriately with the women who worked for and with him.
Even though it hasn't gotten as much publicity, the accusations against Disney's John Lasseter are a good example of serious wrongdoing. The story of the woman in a meeting sitting beside him twisted into a defensive posture with her arm across her thigh to prevent his hand 'traveling upwards' from her knee, is shocking. No one should have to put up with shit like that at work.
That was always on the cards, wasn't it?
The low profile hasn't kept other women from coming forward. The public psychology of scandal is peculiar, but a constant drip drip of accusations could take him down.
Another one bites the dust....
That's a weird one. Unless you count infidelity, he didn't actually do anything wrong. It was adults having a consensual relationship, she seems to have been the one willing to use private images as revenge porn.
That's a weird one. Unless you count infidelity, he didn't actually do anything wrong. It was adults having a consensual relationship, she seems to have been the one willing to use private images as revenge porn.
Party of “family values” and what not.Unless you count infidelity, he didn't actually do anything wrong.
Yeah but if he threatened her then could be in trouble as well
Party of “family values” and what not.
Quite true. I just like seeing the faux moral high ground they always try to claim keep getting chipped away.Yeah, politically he's fecked, it's just unusual to see a Republican actually be the kind fo innocent party for a change.
Quite true. I just like seeing the faux moral high ground they always try to claim keep getting chipped away.
