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| re: Buzzfeed on sexual harassment in the theater | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 06:08 pm EDT 03/31/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Buzzfeed on sexual harassment in the theater - TheOtherOne 05:50 pm EDT 03/31/18 | |
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| I presumed you meant Swirsky, but I didn't want to put words in your mouth. For what it's worth, I read her statementsin the article as expressing knowledge that she made poor decisions with this individual. That being said, you didn't answer the second part of the question, though. Are you saying that, as you see it, she wasn't raped by this director? |
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| re: Buzzfeed on sexual harassment in the theater | |
| Posted by: whereismikeyfl 11:33 pm EDT 03/31/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Buzzfeed on sexual harassment in the theater - Singapore/Fling 06:08 pm EDT 03/31/18 | |
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| I thought it was odd that Swirsky claims that women are better at maintaining boundries when that is so clearly not the case with her | |
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| re: Buzzfeed on sexual harassment in the theater | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 01:15 pm EDT 04/01/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Buzzfeed on sexual harassment in the theater - whereismikeyfl 11:33 pm EDT 03/31/18 | |
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| My reading of her comments is that she hasn't felt pressured by other women in the industry to make herself available sexually in order to advance in her career. I don't think that we need a situation in which Swirsky only makes "good" choices to acknowledge that she was coerced into unwanted sex by a more powerful colleague who used his position in the industry to fulfill his own sexual desires. There has been a lot of discussion around how far the #MeToo movement can go before it loses touch with its origin point, but this situation seems to fall squarely within the bounds of the original conversation. |
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| re: Buzzfeed on sexual harassment in the theater | |
| Posted by: whereismikeyfl 03:15 pm EDT 04/01/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Buzzfeed on sexual harassment in the theater - Singapore/Fling 01:15 pm EDT 04/01/18 | |
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| I would not define inviting a man to touch her vagina as a "bad" choice. This woman's story sounds like something made up to discredit the reality of sexual harassment and coercion. |
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| re: Buzzfeed on sexual harassment in the theater | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 04:49 pm EDT 04/01/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Buzzfeed on sexual harassment in the theater - whereismikeyfl 03:15 pm EDT 04/01/18 | |
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| That particular detail throws me as well, and I might feel differently if that had happened on their first encounter, before the director put his penis in her without her consent, an act that we somehow isn't being discussed even while her actions are. Still, people do strange things when they feel cornered, and the article seems to be saying that she allowed him to touch her there as a deterrent (I presume that the article is missing the crucial word "not", as in she was showing him he wasn't aroused). Again, I agree with you that it's bizarre behavior, but I also see that in both situations, she is communicating that she does not want sex, and that in both situations, he puts his penis into her. If we're going to have these difficult discussions about consent and assault, situations like this are quite helpful, because they show how murky human behavior is. It's fair to look at her behavior and be critical, but let's not ignore the man's behavior in this. How do you feel about his actions? |
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| re: Buzzfeed on sexual harassment in the theater | |
| Posted by: TheOtherOne 05:41 pm EDT 04/01/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Buzzfeed on sexual harassment in the theater - Singapore/Fling 04:49 pm EDT 04/01/18 | |
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| Even in the first instance, what did she take her clothes off in his apartment for after telling him she didn’t want to have sex? They used each other, didn’t they? Her regrets about it afterward don’t turn it into rape. I don’t even think this case would make it to court if she chose to use that word and take action. No lawyer in his or her right mind would touch it. Hard to fathom how this segment made it into the article. It reads as though it had been written for The Onion. |
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| re: Buzzfeed on sexual harassment in the theater | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 06:41 pm EDT 04/01/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Buzzfeed on sexual harassment in the theater - TheOtherOne 05:41 pm EDT 04/01/18 | |
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| "Even in the first instance, what did she take her clothes off in his apartment for after telling him she didn’t want to have sex?" A good question, and one that points to the necessity of these dialogues. Perhaps the most important message of the consent movement is that a person must give consent before the other person performs an action. A person removing their clothes is not an invitation to have sex, it's an invitation to be naked together. If a person says, "I will get naked, but I will not have sex," do you feel that sex is still on the table? As for why Swirsky got naked, my interpretation is that she felt trapped. If she rebuffed this more powerful person in her industry, she risked career repercussions. She may have also had other personal reasons to feel responsible to please a man who was expecting sex. And yet, she did not want to have sex. She appears to have felt that she could somehow please him by getting naked, while expecting that he would honor her stated desire to not have sex. As a gay man, I have stronge aawareness of how it feels when a man is pressuring you for sex, and the calculations that go into trying to get out of the situation while preserving a path to friendship. Now that I'm older, I know that those friendships never would have worked, but as a 20-something, I didn't have the same level of reasoning skills. That's not to say that I have been in Swirsky's position, just that I can relate to it and understand what she read going through. Anytime that people get into a sexual situation, there is a potential for one or both parties to have their judgment impacted by their hormones, their psychology around sex and intimacy, and the physical demands or pressures of the stronger party. The crux of both the consent movement and #MeToo is to prevent these situations from reaching the point where a person may feel pressured to have sex in order to keep another person happy, particularly when that person has higher status in one's career field. Again, we don't have to view Swirsky as an innocent to regard the director as penetrating her against her wishes. She clearly made some bad choices, and the director appears to have his own psychological issues around sex. Still, at the end of it all, he burned heart with his own ego insecurity, and he penetrated her against her wishes. You write that she used him, but I don't see what she got out of these encounters. She agrees with you that she only came to regard this as rape after the fact, and the fact that no names are named strikes me as an admission that these are difficult situations to adjudicate. It's all very murky once we get into the bedroom, and that's one reason why it is so important to teach people that no means no and that one musthey consent before sticking their penis into someone else's body. |
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