Another giant falls!
[snippage]Eric Schneiderman, New York's attorney general, has long been a liberal Democratic champion of women's rights, and recently he has become an outspoken figure in the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment. As New York State's highest-ranking law-enforcement officer, Schneiderman, who is sixty-three, has used his authority to take legal action against the disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein, and to demand greater compensation for the victims of Weinstein's alleged sexual crimes.
Now Schneiderman is facing a reckoning of his own. As his prominence as a voice against sexual misconduct has risen, so, too, has the distress of four women with whom he has had romantic relationships or encounters. They accuse Schneiderman of having subjected them to nonconsensual physical violence. All have been reluctant to speak out, fearing reprisal. But two of the women, Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, have talked to The New Yorker on the record, because they feel that doing so could protect other women.
There you go, another top-level Dem with a taste for S&M and beating women, and he's been pretending to be a big fan of #MeToo this whole time. Massive moral and political corruption in that most socialist of cities, NYC. Wow, didn't see that coming, right?
Leaving aside anything else out there, either legal or moral, this incident illustrates the danger of mainstreaming S&M as an acceptable practice between "consenting adults." People can continue to pretend it's all just sex, and role-playing is good clear fun, and all the rest of that happy horse shit we've been told these last 10 or 15 years. But it's horse shit.
No, beating and whipping random women at sex clubs is not okay. No, tying up your squeeze-du-jour and making the bitch cry uncle is not okay. It is double-plus not okay if she begs for more. Those people are suffering from major mental illness, the kind that is a short step from suicide. Wanting to beat them is another serious mental illness.
Everyone instinctively knows this, but it has become increasingly "edgy" to promote this type of abuse in books and movies.
It's not edgy, you twerps. It's fucked up. Stop doing it. Stop talking about it.
The Phantom
Update: This is what I'm talking about. Metropolitan Art Gallery gala. Lots of creepy "art" involving bondage. Ew.
Update: This is what I'm talking about. Metropolitan Art Gallery gala. Lots of creepy "art" involving bondage. Ew.
In general I'm of the opinion that what consenting adults do behind closed doors is none of my business, but there is something creepy about the phrase "non-consensual violence," as though when we see a woman covered in bruises, our first thought should be that she probably asked for it, or at least that we shouldn't assume she didn't.
ReplyDeleteIt's none of my business what people do... until I'm called upon to clean up the wreckage, and pay for it as well. At that point it is no longer a private affair between consenting adults.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing, it appears that there are ever-increasing numbers of men, but women too, who are getting used to doling out "consensual violence." The case of one Gian Ghomeshi springs to mind in this regard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jian_Ghomeshi
Long story short, Mr. Ghomeshi was found innocent of sexual assault and "choking." Choking is a thing in Canadian law apparently. Who knew?
Anyway, he -did- assault the women who accused him, and did do the choking thing, but was found innocent because... they asked for it. Repeatedly. Like, several times each. But then later, they were like "hey wait a second, I could make some money here" and the concept of consent flew away.
It's hard to say who I have less sympathy for, Ghomeshi or the women. I think a nice asteroid strike that took them all out would be a good solution, but they don't come on demand.
Question arises, how much damage of a mental nature do these violent encounters create in both the agressor and the willing agress-ee? I would hazard a guess that it might be a lot, ad we all have to share the country with the walking wounded from it.
Just sayin'.
Anyway, he -did- assault the women who accused him, and did do the choking thing, but was found innocent because... they asked for it. Repeatedly. Like, several times each. But then later, they were like "hey wait a second, I could make some money here" and the concept of consent flew away.
ReplyDeleteDid you remember from the testimony about how some of those bimbos were sending nude selfies to Ghomeshi weeks after they were allegedly "done" with him?
At least it destroyed the reputations of everyone involved, and damaged the cred of the CBC, so it wasn't a total loss.
I didn't know about the nude selfies, but I did know they kept emailing him and going out on dates with him. He'd do them rough, then they'd be back again a couple days later and he'd do them rough again, at their written request. Not one woman either, three or four of them.
ReplyDeleteI've always found it both curious and deeply disturbing that many women get beat up and then KEEP GOING BACK FOR MORE to these abusive little assholes (he's short), and only years later claim they were abused, raped, beaten, whatever. When I was single, like these women, I dumped relationships over an awful lot less, I have to say.
Seriously, ladies, what the hell?