Next Up In The Sexual Assault Allegations List

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Lyv

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I learned from following news about Hillary Clinton that no story is credible until reputable news sources pick it up, particularly if it is about someone the Right wants to smear.

If anyone needs a reminder about that, I tweeted to #ThankYouHillary thanking her for a letter from her I received after I'd been discharged from the hospital home to hospice (it's on hold right now, apparently I die as slowly as I write). From the tweet and letter, you get that I am terminal, that the letter inspires me and makes me happy. I got something like 1500 responses of some kind (likes, retweets, etc), and some of those are people trying to convince me that someone I admire, who gives me comfort as I backstroke toward the drain is really a terrible person who ran a pedophile ring and, well, you know. Some are bots, but others, they seem really desperate and personally invested in convincing me. So, yes, I reserve judgment and look for credible sources on pretty much everything.

Mr. Tyson has long been in the sights of the anti-intellectual Right for promoting science, curiosity, education, and fact-based understanding of climate change.

Which is not to say that this story is untrue. Plenty of men in the science and skepticism field have been predatory dicks.

But I will wait and see if anyone trustworthy backs up this story.

This is where I am. It would hurt if the allegations are true, but under the right circumstances, I would believe. When Johnny Depp was accused of domestic violence, I reserved judgment, but really hoped it wasn't true. Then at a certain point, believed. I went to high school with Johnny (though I remember him only as my friend's brother sitting on the couch or passing through the house), was good friends with his sister and only lost touch a few years after high school, when Johnny was becoming a star. I kept hearing from friends what a great guy he was, how charitable, how generous he was to his family. But I kept an open mind from the second I heard the allegations.
 

nighttimer

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I can't find any legit news on this, either. The link in the first post is from a questionable source that seems to push a religious agenda. According to Wikipedia, Bristol Palin is one of their "prominent contributors", which does not reassure me about their standards.

He's famous enough I would expect mainstream outlets to comment on it. If it's only a site promoting a particular religious viewpoint, I'm not assuming anything until further evidence.

I cannot find a credible news source to support the claim of Neil deGrasse Tyson committing a sexual assault when he was a college student. Therefore, I reserve the right to question the validity of the accusation until such time as it becomes credible.

But it gives me pause.

A few years ago, I reached out to reconnect with an old friend from high school. She was one of my best friends and our relationship was purely platonic. We exchanged warm hugs and a kiss on the cheek, but nothing more than that. When she came out and her father and other relatives abandoned her, I accepted it without question or reservation. When she moved to Philadelphia, I gave her the money for the deposit for her first apartment. A few times, I drove there to visit and I would stay there and sleep in the second bedroom or crash on the couch. I met her girlfriends and lovers. She had two jobs in South Philly. Working at Giovanni's Room bookstore in the day and bartending at a gay bar called The Bike Stop.

She enjoyed showing me the sights of Philly's gay culture and teasing me as an old friend from Ohio. You know, the hick from the sticks. When I married, I brought my wife with me on one visit. At 6'1" my wife is taller than me and my friend looked at her like a mountain she would have liked to climb. It was kinda funny in a way, but it was nothing serious. When she left Philly to relocate to Arizona, she packed up her gear in a pick-up truck and stopped at my house on the way. We invited her in as our guest and she slept in my daughter's bedroom.

The next day, she departed to Arizona and we hugged each other tight in a long embrace. That was the last time I saw my friend of over 40 years.

We had a stupid argument over emails and stopped speaking for three or four years. Deciding enough time had passed by, I reached out through Facebook and found her online. We swapped a few PM's and I apologized for my part in our falling out.

Then everything went to hell.

She said she didn't feel safe around me. Back in high school, she said I had physically assaulted her in her bedroom when I wanted to be "more than friends" and wrestled her to the floor. She felt I was a danger to her for attempting to sexually assault her when we were both 18 years old.

Stunned, I blustered and sputtered how I had no recollection of any such event. I told her that wasn't who I was and if I had laid hands upon her in such a manner, I would have remembered it. She replied, it was a memory she had repressed and our communication had brought it back. I protested my innocence. She insisted my guilt.

That put the finishing stroke to our 40-year friendship. It also put a lingering, maddening question in the back of my head that even now won't fully go away, but remains like a dull ache. Did I do it? Had I assaulted her? Did I try to force myself on her? Why didn't I remember this? Was I lying to myself because I couldn't face the truth about myself?

I think nearly any heterosexual male at one time in their life, take a moment to take inventory and go through their encounters and relationships with women and ask themselves one question: Did I say or do something to make a woman feel she was unsafe around me?

You don't have to be Harvey Weinstein to ask the question and think long and hard about what the answer is.
 
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blacbird

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Agree with the posts above about the questionable credibility of this allegation. The really reputable news sources (in the really real reality of the real planet) haven't hesitated to report on sexual misconduct allegations against perceived "liberal" public figures (Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, Anthony Weiner, Elliot Spitzer) as well as obvious "conservative" ones (Ailes, O'Reilly). Contrast this with how Fox and One America News report this stuff.

And then, contrast the public reaction to these various allegations with how, SOMEHOW, analogous and equally credible allegations against Donald Trump have just disappeared.

caw
 

Lyv

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I can only speak for myself, nighttimer, but that you and other men are stopping and thinking about it, that you are sharing your willingness to look at yourselves and asking others to is incredibly healing to me and is giving me hope. I know you didn't post for thanks or a pat on the back, but you've got mine.
 

Alpha Echo

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I can only speak for myself, nighttimer, but that you and other men are stopping and thinking about it, that you are sharing your willingness to look at yourselves and asking others to is incredibly healing to me and is giving me hope. I know you didn't post for thanks or a pat on the back, but you've got mine.


Exactly what I was thinking as well.
 

Celia Cyanide

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I can only speak for myself, nighttimer, but that you and other men are stopping and thinking about it, that you are sharing your willingness to look at yourselves and asking others to is incredibly healing to me and is giving me hope. I know you didn't post for thanks or a pat on the back, but you've got mine.

#MeToo :D
 

CWatts

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I can only speak for myself, nighttimer, but that you and other men are stopping and thinking about it, that you are sharing your willingness to look at yourselves and asking others to is incredibly healing to me and is giving me hope. I know you didn't post for thanks or a pat on the back, but you've got mine.

I feel the same. In much the same way, as a white person I need to think about how I have participated in racism. No one in our broken world is innocent.

Here is an great article where a feminist comes to terms with internalized misogyny: https://www.theguardian.com/comment...xual-harassment-internalized-sexism?CMP=fb_us
I am deeply ashamed of ways I have participated in rape culture in my clumsy attempts to be a "cool girl."
 

Rachel77

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I feel the same. In much the same way, as a white person I need to think about how I have participated in racism. No one in our broken world is innocent.

Here is an great article where a feminist comes to terms with internalized misogyny: https://www.theguardian.com/comment...xual-harassment-internalized-sexism?CMP=fb_us
I am deeply ashamed of ways I have participated in rape culture in my clumsy attempts to be a "cool girl."

I've been thinking lately of some of the fictional characters my generation was presented with as romantic heroes. Han Solo: total romantic hero. Except for, you know...the sexist comments in A New Hope, the negging and boundary-pushing and "don't worry your pretty little head about this" type of dismissiveness in Empire Strikes Back, how god forbid Leia have a private conversation with Luke in Return of the Jedi...And even then, despite having seen the Original Trilogy multiple times over the years, it wasn't until I read spoilers about his estrangement from Leia in The Force Awakens that I rewatched those older movies and saw these things. They were always there; I just never noticed them, because Han was a "romantic hero".

Lloyd Dobbler (Say Anything) was THE romantic hero for high schoolers when I was in high school. It took reading a blog post by a millennial woman for me to realize why so many millennial women hate him: he's a self-entitled stalker. The whole movie has entitlement issues: he "deserves" to be dating this girl because he's a "nice guy". Her feelings on the subject? Totally irrelevant. And yet the movie presents this as romantic. This wasn't questioned when I was in high school -- and he's still the ultimate romantic hero for many women of my generation.

I was raised in a feminist family, have always thought of myself as a feminist. But it's hard to take an objective look at the culture you grow up in. It's appalling to me how much of our rape culture I've internalized.
 
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CWatts

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I was raised in a feminist family, have always thought of myself as a feminist. But it's hard to take an objective look at the culture you grow up in. It's appalling to me how much of our rape culture I've internalized.

I wonder how much of this is a vicious cycle where you have predators like Weinstein having so much power over the entertainment industry and their misogyny influencing how stories are told and sold. The Persistent Nice Guy serves an agenda, much like the White Saviour. There is a f***ton of Privileged Wish Fulfillment that is unavoidably insidious in our culture.
 

Myrealana

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I've been thinking lately of some of the fictional characters my generation was presented with as romantic heroes. Han Solo: total romantic hero. Except for, you know...the sexist comments in A New Hope, the negging and boundary-pushing and "don't worry your pretty little head about this" type of dismissiveness in Empire Strikes Back, how god forbid Leia have a private conversation with Luke in Return of the Jedi...And even then, despite having seen the Original Trilogy multiple times over the years, it wasn't until I read spoilers about his estrangement from Leia in The Force Awakens that I rewatched those older movies and saw these things. They were always there; I just never noticed them, because Han was a "romantic hero".

Lloyd Dobbler (Say Anything) was THE romantic hero for high schoolers when I was in high school. It took reading a blog post by a millennial woman for me to realize why so many millennial women hate him: he's a self-entitled stalker. The whole movie has entitlement issues: he "deserves" to be dating this girl because he's a "nice guy". Her feelings on the subject? Totally irrelevant. And yet the movie presents this as romantic. This wasn't questioned when I was in high school -- and he's still the ultimate romantic hero for many women of my generation.

I was raised in a feminist family, have always thought of myself as a feminist. But it's hard to take an objective look at the culture you grow up in. It's appalling to me how much of our rape culture I've internalized.
My husband and I had a similar experience showing Blade Runner to our 14-year-old son.

Afterwards, my husband brought up how uncomfortable the scenes between Deckard and Rachel have become with new perspective. In his words "I don't remember that movie being so rapey."

Our son, on the other hand, seeing it for the first time, called it out immediately.
 

ElaineA

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My husband and I had a similar experience showing Blade Runner to our 14-year-old son.

Afterwards, my husband brought up how uncomfortable the scenes between Deckard and Rachel have become with new perspective. In his words "I don't remember that movie being so rapey."

Our son, on the other hand, seeing it for the first time, called it out immediately.

I strongly suspect we're in a(n) historic age of enlightenment, which is weird, considering Americans (at least) are living in a country that seems to want to drag backward. I suppose there's often a backlash before attitudes and intellect are launched forward (thinking of the Renaissance period). I consider it positive we can see the bad-old with a new perspective. We have handy examples and tons of educational opportunities. It will take a long time to dig the underlying cultural biases out of our heads (some of us might not have enough time to complete the job), but the fact that it's being talked about so prominently, and the fact that the millennial generation is so much more aware of rape culture--and misogyny and homophobia and xenophobia--than my generation is all to the good. Those old attitudes will become less and less acceptable in short order if things go as they have in past periods of enlightenment and progressivism.

I grew up a feminist, too, but I have more than plenty to feel guilty and ashamed about. I try to remember that first I have to recognize, and then acknowledge, those awful truths before I can do better. I can't undo what was done in my past, or in movies/TV/books, but I can be cognizant of why those behaviors are unacceptable, and hold myself to the higher standard now, in both my life and my writing.

Honestly, I'm just grateful to have a place to hang out with so many already-enlightened people. It makes me better, opens my eyes, and gives me lots of hope. :Clap:
 

shakeysix

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In the high school where I work, our English teacher taught Rebecca when she had an all girl class. It is a small school and very often there were all one gender classes.I am a Spanish teacher but I like to talk books with my students. Over the years I watched the girls' attitude change towards Maxim. He went from being a tormented but oh, so handsome, and heart wrenchingly noble, lover, to being a whining creeper. The girls could not stand him and could not stomach the "I" character. Listening to them, I realized that they were much stronger than I was at that age.

I fell hard for Maxim when I was thirteen. Now I see no appeal in the character. The same with many other paper and film guys of the golden past. Women have matured past thirteen. well, most of us. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is still in Jr. High--s6
 
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JJ Litke

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This is the same kind of non-apology he issued after getting called out for rape jokes, and for the pedophilia jokes he made on SNL. He never says he's sorry, he doesn't even really say he's trying to change--though if he did I wouldn't believe him since he never does.

And the way he keeps referencing how people find him admirable is barf-inducing.
 

rugcat

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I thought the whole statement was Trump-level self-aggrandizement, and nary an "I'm sorry" to be offered to the victims. +1 on the barfing.
I don't read it that way at all. The usual non apology is when someone says "I'm sorry if showing my dick to anyone offended them."

There was no waffling – he said they were five women who told stories about what it happened, and "these stories are true. Period.

I agree he should have specifically said "I'm sorry, I apologize" to the women, but he did say "I have been remorseful for my actions."

He admitted what he did; he did not try to put it in anyway on the women, and recognized what a terrible situation he had put them in. It seemed quite sincere to me. YMMD.
 

BenPanced

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I don't read it that way at all. The usual non apology is when someone says "I'm sorry if showing my dick to anyone offended them."

There was no waffling – he said they were five women who told stories about what it happened, and "these stories are true. Period.

I agree he should have specifically said "I'm sorry, I apologize" to the women, but he did say "I have been remorseful for my actions."

He admitted what he did; he did not try to put it in anyway on the women, and recognized what a terrible situation he had put them in. It seemed quite sincere to me. YMMD.

That was my take, as well. He accepted responsibility for his actions and admitted he'd hurt people. Kevin Spacey turned his non-apology back onto himself and hoped everybody would think he was so brave for coming out. And certainly a damned sight better than Andy Dick, who was...well...a dick and complained that people are being too sensitive because he grabbed their butts.
 

JJ Litke

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Like I said, this is not new behavior for Louis CK. It's a pattern, right down to the same non-apology ending with how he is "listening" (so he claims, and yet he never actually gets the message and changes his behavior). These exact same allegations came out last year, in fact, and that time he didn't even respond. So it might look good if you don't know his whole history, but I'm not buying his fake remorse.

Article about everything wrong with his current statement:
https://qz.com/1126593/we-edited-louis-cks-statement-on-sexual-misconduct-to-make-it-a-real-apology/

Also I predict that within a year, he'll have another "incident" for which he issues another non-apology that looks just like this one.
 

cornflake

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Well no, he didn't, did he? He just said it was true, which yeah, no shit. Everyone has known this for YEARS.

He issued a bizarre statement in which he doesn't apologize, doesn't mention the REPEATED times he's flat denied these stories, which have been public for years, and says shit like he asked people if he could show them his dick, by which he means he basically said 'here,' while forcing people to watch him masturbate in business meetings. He did not, of course, realize this was wrong until just now!

He doesn't say he's remorseful now, he doesn't say he's sorry; he also doesn't apologize or even mention having threatened and fucked with the people who reported on this shit for years.

He's just learned this was wrong and hurtful! He's going to sit back and listen, by which he means he's going to go away for a couple of months then come back and restart his career, having 'learned.'

It was a shockingly tone-deaf, gross statement. I was discussing it with a couple people yesterday trying to rank it in terms of asshole level with Spacey and Weinstein. I maintain 'We had no idea back in the '70s that women didn't enjoy being raped -- science has just learned this!' is worst, then this shit. A friend of mine put Spacey on top. No one I've spoken to thinks this was an actual apology or even sounded like anything but 'yeah, didn't realize, by which I mean care, that people didn't really enjoy me making them stand there and watch me jerk off in business meetings. How could I have known? Women. I'll put my career on hold until this whole thing dies down, ok?'
 
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cornflake

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That was my take, as well. He accepted responsibility for his actions and admitted he'd hurt people. Kevin Spacey turned his non-apology back onto himself and hoped everybody would think he was so brave for coming out. And certainly a damned sight better than Andy Dick, who was...well...a dick and complained that people are being too sensitive because he grabbed their butts.

Andy Dick has never been anything but Andy Dick.

He's acted like an assaulty, sexually-inappropriate fool his entire career/adult life. He's been arrested for assault, sex crimes, etc.

Andy Dick is a lot of gross things, but he's also honest about who and what he is, by and large. He's not hiding this crap, pretending to be a great family man who would NEVER.

It's like when -- and I'm not equating him to anyone in the thread god knows -- David Letterman outed himself after being blackmailed for having an affair with a staffer. There were people upset he'd had a dalliance with a staffer, etc., but the people who were upset that it was some moral failing and that he'd cheated on his wife? He (and Jay Leno pointed out the difference between Letterman and if Leno had been accused of the same) had never pretended to be some bastion of moral righteousness. To be shocked he cheated was to not know who he was, at all. Had Leno done it, it'd have been shocking. Letterman? Not so much.

That Andy Dick acts like an assaulting asshole is not a surprise to anyone, least of all Andy Dick, and not in the 'everyone knew it about Louis CK/Ratner/Spacey but were threatened/hushed up/etc.' way, in the 'yeah, that's Andy Dick,' way. I'm not saying it's ok, just that it wasn't hidden, and that I think he's the one guy in this entire mess who does have some sort of genuine cause to say, 'huh, people are getting upset by this now?' because he's been OPENLY doing this forever and still getting hired.
 

Roxxsmom

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That Andy Dick acts like an assaulting asshole is not a surprise to anyone, least of all Andy Dick, and not in the 'everyone knew it about Louis CK/Ratner/Spacey but were threatened/hushed up/etc.' way, in the 'yeah, that's Andy Dick,' way. I'm not saying it's ok, just that it wasn't hidden, and that I think he's the one guy in this entire mess who does have some sort of genuine cause to say, 'huh, people are getting upset by this now?' because he's been OPENLY doing this forever and still getting hired.

I agree that hypocrisy makes things worse, and there's a special indignation (and a certain smug satisfaction too, if we're honest with ourselves) when a sanctimonious, self-righteous type like Roy Moore, is outed as a sexual abuser.

But self-admitted serial "dicks" are upsetting in a different way to me,. This basically says that if a guy wants to get away with being a predatory dick, he shouldjust be open about it and everyone will laugh along with him as he slaps butts and grabs pudenda.

Sadly, that's pretty much how the world operated up until a short time ago. Men grabbing women by their various body parts, forcing sloppy tongue kisses, even raping, was often seen as funny, and their victims had only themselves to blame for putting themselves in the paths of such men. I think it still is how the world operates, actually, since nearly half of voting Americans put a self-confessed sexual molester in the White House.

And the revelations about how widespread sexual abuse is and has been doesn't stop folks from complaining about how "sensitive" everyone is about "this stuff" these days. That refrain is one of the battle cries of those who oppose (and sneer at) social justice. Being a social justice warrior is a bad thing, as is "political correctness," remember.

The right is really good at taking what some of us on the left consider to be virtues and turning them into something to be mocked and derided. I've been amazed by this ever since I learned that being called a "humanist" was supposed to be an insult, as were words like "feminist" and "liberal."

It is hard to know how credible each and every victim we don't know personally is. With any crime, there will be a few false allegations. People do have reasons for running smear campaigns against famous people, especially those who are know activists for causes not all approve of. Most evidence suggests the number of false claims re sexual assault and harassment are rare, and that the process is very hard on victims who come forward overall. For this reason, I think each and every claim needs to be taken seriously. But it is harder to prove isolated allegations from many years ago than it is a series of allegations spanning many years. This doesn't mean isolated allegations from years ago are all (or mostly) untrue, though. But some might be.

I can't help but imagine how I'd feel if someone I knew years ago came forward and said I'd done something really awful I knew I hadn't done, or maybe had a very different interpretation of something that did happen from what I had. I also know how shitty it would feel to finally have the guts to tell a story about something that happened to me years ago and to have everyone assume I was lying or sadly deluded.
 

cornflake

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To be clear, I'm not in any way defending Andy Dick's behaviour or suggesting it was ok because he was open about it or got away with it. It was vile, abusive behaviour.

Just saying I think he does actually make sense as being confused about people getting upset, as he has operated like this forever, openly, with very few consequences, even though he was actually arrested for stuff along the way.

People who were hiding it, trying to quash stories about it, who are saying they just now learned it was wrong... not so much.
 
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