Next Up In The Sexual Assault Allegations List

Add Gail Gadot to the "Protecting Rapists" list unfortunately.

RedRajah said:

Add Gail Gadot to the "Protecting Rapists" list unfortunately.

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I didn't really believe that piece at all. It sounded more like it was written by someone who hates her for being Isreali. I don't blame her for not responding.

Alessandra Kelley said:

Wow, even the article (which is on a website I have never heard of and have no idea about who is behind it or its reliability) admits it is based on unverified and long-scrubbed info. Also using labels like "Zionist" as an attack on Gadot is reeeeeeallllllllly sketchy.

I had forgotten about the Israeli aspect. Weren't there entire countries that boycotted the Wonder Woman movie merely because Gadot is Israeli?

So yeah, I'm going to have to see way more reliable reporting before taking any of that seriously.

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Seconded. Gal Gadot is not perfect but I'm taking this with the Red Sea's worth of salt. It reminds me of random people online accusing her of "killing Palestinian babies" when she was an instructor and AFAIK never in combat.

Also, let's not conflate someone problematically defending an accused friend (like Dunham did) as being somehow as bad as the rape itself. It's a hard thing to realise someone nice to you can be a monster to someone else. (Harder still if you're as arrogant as Lena Dunham everyone in Hollywood.)

I think it's understandable that a woman wouldn't want to believe that a man she cares about, one who has never behaved inappropriately when she was aware, wouldn't do such a thing.

I've tried to imagine how I'd feel and who I'd believe if a man very close to me was accused of sexual misconduct of any kind, let alone rape.

The closest I can come is that there was one case within my circle of friends where one friend was creeping on another and violating her sense of safety and personal space (and committing assault). He was a cop, and he was dropping by a friend's house when he was on duty to "visit" her when she was depressed and her husband was at work. She thought it was sweet until she started getting some creepy vibes and he started grabbing body parts. He was married to a woman who was a close friend of his victim at the time, and she (the wife) lashed out against the victim when she stood up for herself.

For all that I liked the guy, I had no trouble believing he'd done what this female friend of mine said he had. He was one of those guys who wasn't always very clued in about appropriate behavior in a variety of contexts and was known for his off-color jokes. I remember getting a call once from a prospective employer of his for a character reference and having to honestly tell them about some of his "odd" behavior. For instance, he cheated sometimes in board games (we all pretended not to notice while gently correcting him for his "mistakes" during games).

At the time, I didn't want to believe what he'd done might have been truly malevolent, rather than simple idiocy, or a joke gone very bad, however. And even though my friend and her husband asked "Bob" to never come over by himself anymore, no one thought of reporting him.

I think differently now, as a pattern of habitual dishonesty and abusive behavior in other contexts surfaced over the years after he and his wife left our social group (we still heard about him, because the wife of another good friend is the sister of the abuser's now ex wife).

How would I react if someone made an accusation against my own husband, though, or against a good friend about whom I never had any doubts re his appropriateness or integrity? And what if the person making the allegation wasn't anyone I knew? I'd have similar difficulty believing allegations of embezzlement or theft or child or animal abuse.

I like to believe I'm a good judge of character, but people can be blind, even other women. The sheer volume of cases coming out in recent years has been eye opening, though, and I think victims should always be treated with respect. The go-to response shouldn't be that she's one of the small percentage making false allegations.

The thing to remember is that this scenario isn't just limited to celebrities but is playing out in workplaces and homes of everyday people. The celebrity cases are the tiniest tip of a vast iceberg. People can be fierce in defending celebrities because one feels like one knows them, based on whatever persona the celebrity shows to the world. It's awful to be reminded that we don't really "know" George Takei or Niel Degrasse Tyson, or Al Frankin or Bill Clinton or whichever other important man we thought was a force for good in the world. But it's possible to be blind to the crimes of people to whom we are genuinely close as well.

This is all so fucked up. I've found myself yelling more and more lately, "What's wrong with people?" And not just with respect to sexual abuse, but with regards to all the shit and abusive behavior that have been coming out more and more.

Maybe abuse of all kinds, against all people types, and by all people types, has been going on since the beginning to time, it's just now, we're publicly (sort of) talking about it?

kdnxdr said:

Maybe abuse of all kinds, against all people types, and by all people types, has been going on since the beginning to time, it's just now, we're publicly (sort of) talking about it?

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I have little doubt that this is true. There was no "good old days" when women were "protected" and cultural, racial and religious minorities were respected and allowed to participate fully in societies (though I believe colonialism made institutionalized racism much worse and made many people second-class citizens of their own countries).

There may be some things going on today that make some kinds of abuse worse. The war on drugs is sometimes cited as a possible explanation for an uptick in "extreme policing" for instance, and the sexual revolution is sometimes blamed for making men feel more "entitled" to sex than in the past (or for putting women in harm's way).

Some things are clearly more common today, though, like mass shootings. It's harder to say whether or not the level of sexual assault (and police brutality) have been the same throughout history. These crimes most often occur where people don't see them, and victims are afraid to come forward. We have cameras everywhere now, and the internet, which means that victims sometimes have documentation. Sometimes the criminals themselves gleefully film their sexual assaults and post them on social media.

Even so, the conviction rates for these crimes (both police brutality and sexual assault) remain frustratingly low, and the victims usually seem to end up paying the steepest price.

The real problem, imo, is that some people in our society are seen as more important and valuable than others, and certain groups have much more power, money, and political representation than others.

Roxxsmom, we need more people like you to run for office.

CWatts said:

Seconded. Gal Gadot is not perfect but I'm taking this with the Red Sea's worth of salt. It reminds me of random people online accusing her of "killing Palestinian babies" when she was an instructor and AFAIK never in combat.

Also, let's not conflate someone problematically defending an accused friend (like Dunham did) as being somehow as bad as the rape itself. It's a hard thing to realise someone nice to you can be a monster to someone else. (Harder still if you're as arrogant as Lena Dunham everyone in Hollywood.)

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Roxxsmom said:

I think it's understandable that a woman wouldn't want to believe that a man she cares about, one who has never behaved inappropriately when she was aware, wouldn't do such a thing.

I've tried to imagine how I'd feel and who I'd believe if a man very close to me was accused of sexual misconduct of any kind, let alone rape.

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The problem is in Lena Dunham's case here you have someone who tweeted in August, "Things do women lie about: what they ate for lunch. Things women don't lie about: rape." Dunham said that. She didn't follow up with a second tweet to qualify the first declaring, "Until they say they were raped by a man I know. Then they're lying their ass off."

It's understandable a woman wouldn't want to believe a man she cares about and has never behaved inappropriately when she was aware of his behavior would do such a thing, but when the accusation comes hot on the heels of a public pronouncement women should be believed when they say they were raped, it makes that woman come off like the world's biggest hypocrite. Add to the fact the woman accusing Murray Miller is biracial and it becomes even worse. Worse for Dunham that is.

Aurora Perrineau was 17 when she says Miller assaulted her. She's 23 now and took a polygraph test when she went to the authorities.

Aurora, the 23-year-old daughter of Lost star Harold Perrineau, stated in a polygraph (that she passed) obtained by The Wrap that she met the writer when she was out with friends drinking and informed him she was underage. Miller then became drunk, and asked her friends for a ride home. Once they arrived to his house, everyone got out and went inside, but she only followed because she “felt like I had to go along with everyone else.”

“He was flirting with me. I told him repeatedly that I was 17 years old,” she said in the statement.


“At some point I woke up in Murray’s bed naked. He was on top of me having sexual intercourse with me. At no time did I consent to any sexual contact with Murray,” she said.

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Didn't matter to Dunham. Not until she got dragged for essentially calling Perrineau a liar, which is why Black women in particular ain't buying Dunham's reversal.

Writer Zinzi Clemmons, author of What We Lose, has announced that she will no longer be writing for Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner’s online feminist weekly newsletter Lenny Letter because, she says, of Dunham and her friends’ racism which was “well-known” prior to their fame. “She cannot have our words if she cannot respect us,” she writes.

Because let’s take a step back, says Clemmons. She’s currently in Nigeria at a literary festival hearing stories from women who are “putting themselves in danger every day to help women in some of the worst conditions on earth.” She reminds us to consider the 26 Nigerian girls who drowned last week while being sex trafficked off the coast of Italy.


With that in mind, here’s what she has to say about Dunham:

Jemima Kirke was in my year at RISD while I was at Brown [Ed note: the campus is next door]. We had many mutual acquaintances and still do. Most of these acquaintances were like Lena–wealthy, with parents who are influential in the art world. They had a lot of power and seemed to get off on simultaneously wielding it and denying it.


Back in college, I avoided these people like the plague because of their well-known racism. I’d call their strain “hipster racism”, which typically uses sarcasm as a cover, and in the end, it looks a lot like gaslighting– “It’s just a joke. Why are you overreacting?” is a common response to a lot of these statements. In Lena’s circle, there was a girl who was known to use the N word in conversation in order to be provocative, and if she was ever called on it, she would say “it’s just a joke.”

​

Clemmons adds that she was “horrified” to hear Aurora Perrineau’s accusation of sexual assault by Girls writer Murray Miller–which Dunham baselessly rejected–because it mirrored an assault a friend of hers experienced at the hands of another member of Lena’s circle. “I grew up middle class, with no family connections in the writing or art worlds, and my friend was from a similar background. We were powerless against them.”

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Hipster racism is still racism and Girls reeked of it which is one reason I never got into it. However, I recognized Lena Dunham was considered a shero to many. Maybe she still is, or maybe she's just another pampered, overpaid Hollywood prima donna awash in privilege and cluelessness.

It's worth considering. The enabler is rarely as bad as the actual perpetrator, but their protection only emboldens the perpetrator. It doesn't protect other women and it doesn't correct the perpetrator.

I am remembering the terrible sense of disillusion and betrayal I felt when I met my first racist, homophobic, anti semitic feminists.

They were not the last ones I'd meet, but the sense of betrayal is no less sharp.

We've got to do better.

Alessandra Kelley said:

Wow, even the article (which is on a website I have never heard of and have no idea about who is behind it or its reliability) admits it is based on unverified and long-scrubbed info. Also using labels like "Zionist" as an attack on Gadot is reeeeeeallllllllly sketchy.

I had forgotten about the Israeli aspect. Weren't there entire countries that boycotted the Wonder Woman movie merely because Gadot is Israeli?

So yeah, I'm going to have to see way more reliable reporting before taking any of that seriously.

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I read the original piece, and the speaker accuses of Gadot hating Palistinians. It seemed like that was the real purpose of the whole story.

The editorial above says, "[FONT=&quot]If these events did not happen then it is very easy for Gadot or a member of her team to come forward and discredit them by providing history for her whereabouts or an account of what actually took place during that time. Instead there is radio silence, as if these allegations do not matter."

[/FONT]Since when are public figures, or anyone, obligated to respond to every single piece of crap posted about them on the internet? It's Gadot's right not to respond, if she doesn't want to.

nighttimer said:

The problem is in Lena Dunham's case here you have someone who tweeted in August, "Things do women lie about: what they ate for lunch. Things women don't lie about: rape." Dunham said that. She didn't follow up with a second tweet to qualify the first declaring, "Until they say they were raped by a man I know. Then they're lying their ass off."

It's understandable a woman wouldn't want to believe a man she cares about and has never behaved inappropriately when she was aware of his behavior would do such a thing, but when the accusation comes hot on the heels of a public pronouncement women should be believed when they say they were raped, it makes that woman come off like the world's biggest hypocrite.

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Agreed, and it's the hypocrisy that is the most galling for me.

AW Admin said:

I am remembering the terrible sense of disillusion and betrayal I felt when I met my first racist, homophobic, anti semitic feminists.

They were not the last ones I'd meet, but the sense of betrayal is no less sharp.

We've got to do better.

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I think I know what you mean. I recently learned that a person I know as a casual friend, for instance, is using feminism as a justification for supporting #45s proposed Muslim ban (because she thinks all Muslim men disrespect and abuse women).

And now many of us are discovering (again) that some people we've admired as activists and as progressive thinkers are really flawed in other ways and have done great harm to other people.

It's a horrible feeling.

I can't help worrying, though, that this whole thing will devolve into a discussion of the poor men and how they can't do anything right or have any way of defending themselves against these allegations if the default shifts to believing the victims. At some level I get how it can happen and why some men are anxious, even if they've never done anything remotely inappropriate. I've wondered what I'd do if, say, a student came forward and insisted I'd treated them in an inappropriate way when I know I haven't.

This fear shouldn't allow us to stop caring about the victims, though, or to assume that all allegations about assault and harassment are false unless proven otherwise. And it shouldn't stop us from trying to change society so that these power imbalances (and the norms that drive abusive behavior) don't exist.

nighttimer said:

Are we thinking Tweeden is the only woman Franken has stuck his tongue in her mouth and the only woman whose breasts he's grabbed while she was asleep? Maybe so and maybe no. This is Day One of the Franken Story. Hit me up next week on Day Seven and see if it still is a story or more accusers come forward.

Then it won't be a story. Then it will be a scandal.

We're just going to have to accept there are a lot of fucked-up people in Washington and they do and have done a lot of fucked-up shit. Now Al Franken is one of the good guys, at least politically he is, and that hurts, but while I don't think he's the SNL alumni version of Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, I have doubts this is the one and only bone rattling in Franken's closet. We'll just have to wait and see.

If it turns out there's a whole cemetery of skeletons in Franken's closet, he's done and should be. You can bet somebody's rattling the knob to see if they find any.

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Another bone falls out of Franken's closet.

Is Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) a serial groper?


That's the question inevitably raised now that a second woman is saying Franken grabbed her inappropriately, this time when he was taking a photo with her in 2010 at the Minnesota State Fair.


He “pulled me in really close, like awkward close, and as my husband took the picture, he put his hand full-fledged on my rear,” Lindsay Menz told CNN's MJ Lee, who broke the story Monday. “It was wrapped tightly around my butt cheek.”


Menz is the second woman in less than a week to go on the record that Franken touched her inappropriately. On Thursday, Los Angeles radio host Leann Tweeden accused Franken of forcibly kissing her while overseas in 2006, then grabbing her breasts while she slept on the flight home. She offered photographic proof of the latter accusation.

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If you're keeping score at home, that's the second woman to come forward to say Al Franken touched her inappropriately. The water in the pot ain't boiling, but it's starting to bubble.

And now....Charlie Rose? Seriously?

On the heels of Tambor's Who knew women don't like you to hump their legs at work?...Rose's I thought it was all mutual attraction thingy! highlights the weirdly fantastical underpinnings of a good number of these oversteps.

None of these excuses are new, and it would be nice to see them go by the wayside once and for all.

I told my husband and son today, as I have many times over the past year, how much I appreciate them being decent human beings.

There is probably some sort of correlation between being a well-connected, influential male and being at risk of becoming an abuser. "Power corrupts" and all that. Also, those are the kinds of men that tend to get reported on in the media, so it might seem like there is some sort of spreading plague of sexual abuse going on... when all that is really happening is that well-connected, influential males are finally being held publically accountable for their private actions.

Victor Douglas said:

There is probably some sort of correlation between being a well-connected, influential male and being at risk of becoming an abuser. "Power corrupts" and all that. Also, those are the kinds of men that tend to get reported on in the media, so it might seem like there is some sort of spreading plague of sexual abuse going on... when all that is really happening is that well-connected, influential males are finally being held publically accountable for their private actions.

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There is now scientific evidence about how power corrupts. It encourages risk-taking and discourages empathy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/power-causes-brain-damage/528711/

CWatts said:

Umm, have these guys looked in a mirror in the last 20 years or so? Of course it's not really about attraction and I'm sorry for the ageism but...eww.

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Then why say it?

Asking as a fellow writer who, despite apparently grossing people out with her middle age and unremarkable looks, manages to exist.

Asking as a woman who was groped in front of a dozen people, then told nobody would believe her anyway because she wasn't conventionally attractive.

Ageism and lookism hurt people who have little power; they don't seem worth perpetuating, even to insult people who abuse power.

Anna Iguana said:

Ageism and lookism hurt people who have little power; they don't seem worth perpetuating, even to insult people who abuse power.

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It also deflects from the point. Attraction is an amorphous thing; people are attracted to all kinds of things, and as a human I'm glad of that.

But unwanted advances aren't about attraction. They're about power differentials and yes, lack of empathy. If we perpetuate the notion they're about attraction, we risk getting sucked into the BS "boys can't help it" argument instead of addressing the cultural structures that allow this kind of behavior to thrive in shadows.

Anna Iguana said:

Then why say it?

Asking as a fellow writer who, despite apparently grossing people out with her middle age and unremarkable looks, manages to exist.

Asking as a woman who was groped in front of a dozen people, then told nobody would believe her anyway because she wasn't conventionally attractive.

Ageism and lookism hurt people who have little power; they don't seem worth perpetuating, even to insult people who abuse power.

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It was stupid and hurtful. I have deleted so as not to hurt anyone else. I was trying too hard to mock these abusers and should have STFU and listened.

I really appreciate your reply, CWatts.

Anna Iguana said:

I really appreciate your reply, CWatts.

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You're welcome. Not everybody doubles down.

Once, way back, I racked a guy at a Christmas Party. My husband had insisted I dance with the guy because he was a good buddy. I had misgivings about him, although I liked his wife, so I had a plan. He didn't catch me completely by surprise. I camouflaged the move well, but then I can't dance for shit. He managed to get off the floor without making much of a fuss. I'm sure his wife never knew. My husband was aghast. He had never suspected this guy as capable of this kind of behavior. Of course they stopped being friends. I was furious with my husband for not spotting the signs. It seemed to me that any moron, male or female would have spotted that fool. Bill O'Reilly, Al Franken fall into the red flag category. I despise one, thought the other was sharp and witty, neither surprised me--but CHARLIE ROSE? He would have fooled me. And that mutual attraction thing? Yuck. Hope he gets racked and hard--s6

shakeysix said:

Once, way back, I racked a guy at a Christmas Party. My husband had insisted I dance with the guy because he was a good buddy. I had misgivings about him, although I liked his wife, so I had a plan. He didn't catch me completely by surprise. I camouflaged the move well, but then I can't dance for shit. He managed to get off the floor without making much of a fuss. I'm sure his wife never knew. My husband was aghast. He had never suspected this guy as capable of this kind of behavior. Of course they stopped being friends. I was furious with my husband for not spotting the signs. It seemed to me that any moron, male or female would have spotted that fool. Bill O'Reilly, Al Franken fall into the red flag category. I despise one, thought the other was sharp and witty, neither surprised me--but CHARLIE ROSE? He would have fooled me. And that mutual attraction thing? Yuck. Hope he gets racked and hard--s6

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I'm not familiar with the term "racked" in this context, and google isn't helping. Is it a knee to the groin? It's a knee to the groin, isn't it?

Oh yes it is. Delivered during "Bad Moon on the Rise"--I was trying to stay away from him and he was trying to belly rub. Who belly rubs to Fogarty? --s6