Heard too much on sexual harassment? No, not yet enough

As I now add my story of an abuse of power, the truth is that the ‘bandwagon’ has much further to go



Has it already, to learn from some of the country’s senior thinkers, “gone too far”? Is it too late to join the witch hunt, jump on the bandwagon, succumb to the mass hysteria, swell the mob, sign up for the moral panic, add fervour to an atmosphere repeatedly described as “febrile” and thereby lose – in the still more popular phrase when prominent men pronounce on complaints about sexual misdemeanours that fell short of actual rape – all sense of proportion?

As tiresome as it must be, for men who feel, about Westminster, much as Martin Amis does on Harvey Weinstein, that current levels of “public wrath” exceed those they would normally recommend for mishaps that scarcely compare with lifelong concubinage in a seraglio; the strong suspicion of many, admittedly inexpert, women, is: it hardly begins to reflect private disquiet.

Given, that is, the extent to which this male misuse of power extends far beyond politics, notwithstanding recent insider comment on the very specific climatic conditions that apparently increase the risk of being jumped on by a charismatic risk-taker who’s missing his partner and kiddies, the poor chap, you ought to see the way some of those attractive women carry on.

It’s possible, of course, that guided by the kind of men who see the funny side of Weinstein jokes, women will shortly become aware of how foolish and obsessed they appear, when they go on (and on) about sexual assaults that fell way short of them being trafficked into modern slavery in a German industrial park by brutal pimps who took away their passports. Nag, nag, nag. We heard you the first time, love.

Certainly the speed with which “witch hunt” – an ignorant mob’s pursuit of innocent women charged with imaginary offences – has become a favoured term for the reporting, by women, of incidents of harassment by real men, is unlikely to dispel the reticence that deters many from describing their experiences. It’s a tricky thing, its targets have learned, to get right. Don’t report an incident to the non-existent authorities in an unsympathetic era and Peter Hitchens will one day accuse you of being a failed feminist. Do report it later, in the hope of changing things, and his colleagues will shake their heads over bandwagons or revenge served too cold, or maybe wonder, if they are women left unscathed,why others are so much less resourceful than their younger selves.

Just how many examples of unreported molestation, and of what gravity and vintage, it would be helpful to know for the future, would be most likely to persuade doubters that something is badly wrong? As opposed to confirming, to men who say they have women’s interests at heart, that the current tide of complaints is a product of female hysteria, probably triggered by an unholy collision of raging oestrogen and excess political correctness.

The massive response to the hashtag #MeToo, which has prompted women, around the world, painfully to speak about incidents they may have suppressed for years, was instantly converted by self-styled guardians of the sensible perspective, uniting behind the gaslighting banner, as the very reason to dismiss it. In fact, the popular criticism – “has it all gone too far?” – has exposed, almost comically, the degree to which many men genuinely believe a level of unwelcome sexualised engagement – “sugar tits”, knee touching, office sex toys – should be as tolerable to a younger woman as it is natural to its male initiators: a social norm.

Challenge that, and it’s men, such as “honourable”, “competent” – dirty talking and groping – Michael Fallon, who are suddenly the victims; their uncooperative targets, not the sexual opportunists, are the ones who present “a danger”, even to national stability. The proposal that these men should just stop? Plainly hysterical and the death knell to all romance.

So even if it is too late, too witchy and too bandwaggony, Fallon’s self-serving bollocks about what is “clearly not acceptable now” finally prompts me to pipe up that I’m yet another woman who can attest to what a certain kind of man in authority will do to juniors, even outside Westminster, in a society that tells him he has the right. I know, for certain, that when I was a student of 19, being assaulted by a tutor who had devised some pretext to get into my college room, was not, all those millions of years ago, something that I, or the very few people I told, felt was acceptable, even in the crazy era of Abba’s Dancing Queen. Why, to quote our sense-of-proportion minded commentators, “dredge”, “exhume” or “dig it up” now – with all the risks to harmless flirtation posed by these noisome grudges? Because, for those persuaded by Fallon’s line in exculpation, the experience was as shocking and distasteful to me then as it would be to anyone today.

As, I now realise, following Anne Robinson’s robust comments on sexual politics, a pathetically fragile young person, I failed to overcome the absence of any system for exposing such behaviour, along with the fear of not being believed and the repugnance of talking about it (even to my own family), asked to change my degree course, and left the scholarly perpetrator behind.

And that’s probably enough about my own leading perv, who will now be old enough and, I hope, frail enough, to be past creating opportunities to force his tongue into undergraduate mouths. Among the deterrents to reporting molestation, some powerfully detailed in Ronan Farrow’s latest New Yorker piece, is that it can feel like giving the abuser a prominent role in his (sorry, or her!) victim’s biography. You don’t have to have big ideas about your own obsequies to understand why, for instance, Rose McGowan, who alleges rape by Weinstein, had earlier signed a settlement and stayed silent. “I didn’t want his name next to mine in my obituary.”

A shared unwillingness to assign lasting influence to sexual aggressors possibly unites, despite overtly contrasting responses,women who make light of sexual harassment and women who bury it. Some of us, when studying or working in places dominated by hostile, proudly unreconstructed men, will have tried both. To report molestation, in anything other than a jocular way, would have meant being humourless and difficult; to become practised in indifference fostered the belief that younger women should do the same. As with Fay Weldon on rape, so with the Daily Mail’s crack team of snowflake assassins: resilience is one strategy for denying male control – except, we’ve learned, it just perpetuates it.

Ideally, action on unwanted male attention would not have required a single British #MeToo report, its prevalence being as obvious as Savile’s iniquity. Among those recently perving in plain sight were Alan Clark, the Nazi-sympathising predator; Lord Rennard, the Lib Dems’ pet groper; John Prescott, Tony Blair’s ithyphallic deputy; Richard Branson, grinning juggler of random female bodies – all protected by the culture that now demands of people wanting progress: has it gone too far? It’s only just begun.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/05/heard-too-much-about-sexual-harassment

Well said Catherine Bennett

It would appear Didge is sexually harassing Rags on the Palestine thread. Do hope it is noted and appropriate steps taken.

sassy wrote:It would appear Didge is sexually harassing Rags on the Palestine thread.  Do hope it is noted and appropriate steps taken.

Reported for lying and tring to get a poster in trouble

Just read the article

Another case of Ostrich parasitic syndrome

Clearly only men are bad people, never women apparantly.....??? WTF

The man hate is alive and well on this thread, but its no bother, they have a friend with the mods that allows such hate.

Didge wrote:

sassy wrote:It would appear Didge is sexually harassing Rags on the Palestine thread.  Do hope it is noted and appropriate steps taken.

Reported for lying and tring to get a poster in trouble

She's not lying though, is she?

Raggamuffin wrote:

Didge wrote:


Reported for lying and tring to get a poster in trouble

She's not lying though, is she?

Well why is it I have not been pulled up by the mods then for this?

Take your time

Does this add to the case, that in fact i am right, that you are very insecure and a shit stirrer. That you get your kicks out of the suffering of others?

Look, its not my fault nobody is attracted to you. I cannot change that Rags

You have to first love yourself

Didge, just quit being so personal about people's sex lives. It doesn't bother me much when it's spoken about in general, but it clearly bothers others.

Stick to the topic and leave people's personal lives out of it. I am pretty lenient in what I allow people to say but you simply cannot go around being so personal about others' sex lives. It's not on.

eddie wrote:Didge, just quit being so personal about people's sex lives. It doesn't bother me much when it's spoken about in general, but it clearly bothers others.

Stick to the topic and leave people's personal lives out of it. I am pretty lenient in what I allow people to say but you simply cannot go around being so personal about others' sex lives. It's not on.

Thank you eddie.

eddie wrote:Didge, just quit being so personal about people's sex lives. It doesn't bother me much when it's spoken about in general, but it clearly bothers others.

Stick to the topic and leave people's personal lives out of it. I am pretty lenient in what I allow people to say but you simply cannot go around being so personal about others' sex lives. It's not on.

PMSL

So let me get this straight

Posters can be as personal as they like to me and you say nothing?

I will be happy to stick to the topic when you do that

Rags and sassy are doing something that is against the rules

Or have you not figured that out yet?

I have not seen them talking about your sex life - or insulting you about it.

I am getting to the point where my patience is running out and quite frankly, you're lucky I'm the mod dealing with this because I have far more patience than any of the others.

Get back on topic please. I'm not going to keep asking.

eddie wrote:I have not seen them talking about your sex life - or insulting you about it.

I am getting to the point where my patience is running out and quite frankly, you're lucky I'm the mod dealing with this because I have far more patience than any of the others.

Get back on topic please. I'm not going to keep asking.

Really?

I even reported this and you claim this is not personal?

Raggamuffin wrote:

Do you pester women in real life too Didge? Do you harass them even when they ask you to leave them alone? You're really no better than these men who have been accused. You need to learn when to step away and give up hassling someone.

Please get off the whiskey love

All you had to do was stop pestering me Didge. Was that so difficult?

"Please get off the whiskey love"? Really?
You keep going didge because eventually, you're going to give yourself enough rope to lead you to the basement.

eddie wrote:"Please get off the whiskey love"?  Really?  
You keep going didge because eventually, you're going to give yourself enough rope to lead you to the basement.

Yeah well, that will make you feel good over the fact you have ignored shit said to me

Raggamuffin wrote:All you had to do was stop pestering me Didge. Was that so difficult?

Do you know what Rags

You are nothing but a shit stirrer

You have fooled Eddie and cause problems here and I bet you are laughing

I hope you are happy over this

Didge wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:All you had to do was stop pestering me Didge. Was that so difficult?

Do you know what Rags

You are nothing but a shit stirrer

You have fooled Eddie and cause problems here and I bet you are laughing

I hope you are happy over this

You're the one who started on about sex, not me. You were harassing me so it's your own fault.

Didge wrote:

eddie wrote:"Please get off the whiskey love"?  Really?  
You keep going didge because eventually, you're going to give yourself enough rope to lead you to the basement.

Yeah well, that will make you feel good over the fact you have ignored shit said to me

No didge, I don't much care about your comment apart from the fact it was cheap - like all of your shots today. You're getting desperate.

eddie wrote:

Didge wrote:

Yeah well, that will make you feel good over the fact you have ignored shit said to me

No didge, I don't much care about your comment apart from the fact it was cheap - like all of your shots today. You're getting desperate.

Then maybe you should place yourself in the basement for being so personal, but apparantly, you can do this and every female poster

You can all say what you like to me, but if I reply in kind, I am horrible

What a crock of shit

You are an idiot eddie and fail to see you are being used by Rags and she is laughing

She wants me to react and be banned

Didge wrote:

eddie wrote:

No didge, I don't much care about your comment apart from the fact it was cheap - like all of your shots today. You're getting desperate.

Then maybe you should place yourself in the basement for being so personal, but apparantly, you can do this and every female poster

You can all say what you like to me, but if I reply in kind, I am horrible

What a crock of shit

You are an idiot eddie and fail to see you are being used by Rags and she is laughing

She wants me to react and be banned

I don't want you to react, I asked you to leave me alone and you refused on the grounds that you're not here to make me happy. Why shouldn't I be able to enjoy this forum?

Raggamuffin wrote:

Didge wrote:

Then maybe you should place yourself in the basement for being so personal, but apparantly, you can do this and every female poster

You can all say what you like to me, but if I reply in kind, I am horrible

What a crock of shit

You are an idiot eddie and fail to see you are being used by Rags and she is laughing

She wants me to react and be banned

I don't want you to react, I asked you to leave me alone and you refused on the grounds that you're not here to make me happy. Why shouldn't I be able to enjoy this forum?

I you want me to leave you alone why reply to me?

I want you to enjoy the forum, I just have no idea whay you could form such hate against me

That says to me, you have issues

That is me being honest

The reality is, I could actually help you overcome such fears

Didge wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

I don't want you to react, I asked you to leave me alone and you refused on the grounds that you're not here to make me happy. Why shouldn't I be able to enjoy this forum?

I you want me to leave you alone why reply to me?

I want you to enjoy the forum, I just have no idea whay you could form such hate against me

That says to me, you have issues

That is me being honest

The reality is, I could actually help you overcome such fears

Why reply? Because I know you won't leave me alone anyway. If you agreed when I asked, I wouldn't have replied. You have issues if you can't help harassing someone who wants you to leave them alone. You couldn't help anyone if you tried, and I don't need help - I just want you to sod off and stop banging on about my alleged "poor" views".

Raggamuffin wrote:

Didge wrote:

I you want me to leave you alone why reply to me?

I want you to enjoy the forum, I just have no idea whay you could form such hate against me

That says to me, you have issues

That is me being honest

The reality is, I could actually help you overcome such fears

Why reply? Because I know you won't leave me alone anyway. If you agreed when I asked, I wouldn't have replied. You have issues if you can't help harassing someone who wants you to leave them alone. You couldn't help anyone if you tried, and I don't need help - I just want you to sod off and stop banging on about my alleged "poor" views".

So when is the moderation team going to take this shit stirrer to task?

Didge wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

Why reply? Because I know you won't leave me alone anyway. If you agreed when I asked, I wouldn't have replied. You have issues if you can't help harassing someone who wants you to leave them alone. You couldn't help anyone if you tried, and I don't need help - I just want you to sod off and stop banging on about my alleged "poor" views".

So when is the moderation team going to take this shit stirrer to task?

There you go again. Leave me alone and I won't need to reply to your lies and vulgarities.

Raggamuffin wrote:

Didge wrote:

So when is the moderation team going to take this shit stirrer to task?

There you go again. Leave me alone and I won't need to reply to your lies and vulgarities.

So when is the moderation team going to take this shit stirrer to task?

Who does this remind you of?

https://healthpsychologyconsultancy.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/the-argumentative-personality/

Angry Andy wrote:Who does this remind you of?

https://healthpsychologyconsultancy.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/the-argumentative-personality/

Are you going to be honest and say me Andy? You see you can get away with this crap.

Yes i am argumentive

I love debate

Does that make me a bad person?

I seriously do not know why I care about any of you

Angry Andy wrote:Who does this remind you of?

https://healthpsychologyconsultancy.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/the-argumentative-personality/

Do you feel like some people you know enjoy arguing just for the sake of arguing? You could be right. While some people like to debate ideas and opinions, others argue out of habit: – they can’t help themselves, and will make a fuss about the most trivial things, just to cause conflict. This can drive those around them up the wall because they are almost always on the defensive, even about what might seem like the most insignificant things. Meet the argumentative personality – the friend, colleague, or relative who will find fault with you or a situation just to engage you in seemingly pointless verbal sparring matches. Other identifying characteristics include:


Their daily mantra seems to be, “I object.”
Other people are always the source of an argument, not them.
“It’s your fault” and “You are to blame” are some of their favourite phrases.
It’s almost impossible to get them to consider your views – in their mind they are always right.
They can come up with heaps of reasons why you, and not they, are the ones causing all the trouble.


Negatives

Here’s what’s not so great about the Argumentative Personality:


Habitual ‘argument stokers’ can drive you crazy, especially when you live or work with them; it’s hard to have a conflict-free conversation with them, even about trivial matters.
Many, if not most, of them have strong narcissistic tendencies; in other words, they are very self-absorbed.
They have little, or hardly any, insight into how their behaviours impact others.
When they come across people whose views differ from their own, they feel threatened, and go on the defensive.
They are chronic blamers: others, or the world, are always at fault.



Positives

There are minimal good points about the Argumentative Personality:


Being consistently at the mercy of an Argumentative Personality can help build motivation to stand up for yourself.
We can learn debate techniques from those who passionately defend their views.


How do I deal with the Argumentative Personality?

It takes lots of energy to defend yourself and maintain self-esteem when you have to deal with a person that sees you as the source of wrongdoing. Here are some suggestions on how to maintain your sanity when working or living with an argumentative person:


Chronic argument seekers use an outmoded style of relating that might have worked for them in the past; realising they use an immature defence mechanism to protect themselves can make you more understanding and tolerant when in their company.
Try not to ask their opinion on anything – “I need this done in two hours” or “I need you to fetch the kids from school today” are better than “Do you think you can do this in two hours?” or “Do you think you can pick up the kids today?”
Avoid using phrases like: “Let’s talk about this peacefully” or “I don’t want to argue with you, but …”
Ø People who constantly argue seek control and power over others. You cannot reason with them, so it’s best to withdraw from an argument than try to prove them wrong
Remind yourself that chronic arguing is an ingrained defence mechanism that, with time and patience, can be unlearned.


I think that's nail head time Andy. It's really rather sad.

And sassy proves my point

She makes it a personal thread

I know when Lord Fould is online, he will see this

Astounding that sassy continulally gets away with this kind of shit

sassy wrote:As I now add my story of an abuse of power, the truth is that the ‘bandwagon’ has much further to go



Has it already, to learn from some of the country’s senior thinkers, “gone too far”? Is it too late to join the witch hunt, jump on the bandwagon, succumb to the mass hysteria, swell the mob, sign up for the moral panic, add fervour to an atmosphere repeatedly described as “febrile” and thereby lose – in the still more popular phrase when prominent men pronounce on complaints about sexual misdemeanours that fell short of actual rape – all sense of proportion?

As tiresome as it must be, for men who feel, about Westminster, much as Martin Amis does on Harvey Weinstein, that current levels of “public wrath” exceed those they would normally recommend for mishaps that scarcely compare with lifelong concubinage in a seraglio; the strong suspicion of many, admittedly inexpert, women, is: it hardly begins to reflect private disquiet.

Given, that is, the extent to which this male misuse of power extends far beyond politics, notwithstanding recent insider comment on the very specific climatic conditions that apparently increase the risk of being jumped on by a charismatic risk-taker who’s missing his partner and kiddies, the poor chap, you ought to see the way some of those attractive women carry on.

It’s possible, of course, that guided by the kind of men who see the funny side of Weinstein jokes, women will shortly become aware of how foolish and obsessed they appear, when they go on (and on) about sexual assaults that fell way short of them being trafficked into modern slavery in a German industrial park by brutal pimps who took away their passports. Nag, nag, nag. We heard you the first time, love.

Certainly the speed with which “witch hunt” – an ignorant mob’s pursuit of innocent women charged with imaginary offences – has become a favoured term for the reporting, by women, of incidents of harassment by real men, is unlikely to dispel the reticence that deters many from describing their experiences. It’s a tricky thing, its targets have learned, to get right. Don’t report an incident to the non-existent authorities in an unsympathetic era and Peter Hitchens will one day accuse you of being a failed feminist. Do report it later, in the hope of changing things, and his colleagues will shake their heads over bandwagons or revenge served too cold, or maybe wonder, if they are women left unscathed,why others are so much less resourceful than their younger selves.

Just how many examples of unreported molestation, and of what gravity and vintage, it would be helpful to know for the future, would be most likely to persuade doubters that something is badly wrong? As opposed to confirming, to men who say they have women’s interests at heart, that the current tide of complaints is a product of female hysteria, probably triggered by an unholy collision of raging oestrogen and excess political correctness.

The massive response to the hashtag #MeToo, which has prompted women, around the world, painfully to speak about incidents they may have suppressed for years, was instantly converted by self-styled guardians of the sensible perspective, uniting behind the gaslighting banner, as the very reason to dismiss it. In fact, the popular criticism – “has it all gone too far?” – has exposed, almost comically, the degree to which many men genuinely believe a level of unwelcome sexualised engagement – “sugar tits”, knee touching, office sex toys – should be as tolerable to a younger woman as it is natural to its male initiators: a social norm.

Challenge that, and it’s men, such as “honourable”, “competent” – dirty talking and groping – Michael Fallon, who are suddenly the victims; their uncooperative targets, not the sexual opportunists, are the ones who present “a danger”, even to national stability. The proposal that these men should just stop? Plainly hysterical and the death knell to all romance.

So even if it is too late, too witchy and too bandwaggony, Fallon’s self-serving bollocks about what is “clearly not acceptable now” finally prompts me to pipe up that I’m yet another woman who can attest to what a certain kind of man in authority will do to juniors, even outside Westminster, in a society that tells him he has the right. I know, for certain, that when I was a student of 19, being assaulted by a tutor who had devised some pretext to get into my college room, was not, all those millions of years ago, something that I, or the very few people I told, felt was acceptable, even in the crazy era of Abba’s Dancing Queen. Why, to quote our sense-of-proportion minded commentators, “dredge”, “exhume” or “dig it up” now – with all the risks to harmless flirtation posed by these noisome grudges? Because, for those persuaded by Fallon’s line in exculpation, the experience was as shocking and distasteful to me then as it would be to anyone today.

As, I now realise, following Anne Robinson’s robust comments on sexual politics, a pathetically fragile young person, I failed to overcome the absence of any system for exposing such behaviour, along with the fear of not being believed and the repugnance of talking about it (even to my own family), asked to change my degree course, and left the scholarly perpetrator behind.

And that’s probably enough about my own leading perv, who will now be old enough and, I hope, frail enough, to be past creating opportunities to force his tongue into undergraduate mouths. Among the deterrents to reporting molestation, some powerfully detailed in Ronan Farrow’s latest New Yorker piece, is that it can feel like giving the abuser a prominent role in his (sorry, or her!) victim’s biography. You don’t have to have big ideas about your own obsequies to understand why, for instance, Rose McGowan, who alleges rape by Weinstein, had earlier signed a settlement and stayed silent. “I didn’t want his name next to mine in my obituary.”

A shared unwillingness to assign lasting influence to sexual aggressors possibly unites, despite overtly contrasting responses,women who make light of sexual harassment and women who bury it. Some of us, when studying or working in places dominated by hostile, proudly unreconstructed men, will have tried both. To report molestation, in anything other than a jocular way, would have meant being humourless and difficult; to become practised in indifference fostered the belief that younger women should do the same. As with Fay Weldon on rape, so with the Daily Mail’s crack team of snowflake assassins: resilience is one strategy for denying male control – except, we’ve learned, it just perpetuates it.

Ideally, action on unwanted male attention would not have required a single British #MeToo report, its prevalence being as obvious as Savile’s iniquity. Among those recently perving in plain sight were Alan Clark, the Nazi-sympathising predator; Lord Rennard, the Lib Dems’ pet groper; John Prescott, Tony Blair’s ithyphallic deputy; Richard Branson, grinning juggler of random female bodies – all protected by the culture that now demands of people wanting progress: has it gone too far? It’s only just begun.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/05/heard-too-much-about-sexual-harassment

Well said Catherine Bennett

Look, people moan that too many women kept quiet for too long about the harassment they suffered. But both here and in the US, there were also many women who complained IMMEDIATELY - to anyone who would listen!

Some went straight to the police after the rapes or violent assaults  - only for the cases to be mysteriously dropped. Today it emerged that one woman went to the police immediately after a senior tory violently raped her (and she also told the other senior tories about it.) No one helped her.

Proves beyond all doubt the adage that the primary purpose of the police is to look after those in power.
Anyone who thinks for one minute that the police's job is to look after ordinary people, .......
...... needs their bumps felt! 

They certainly looked after plenty ordinary Muslim Pakistani men who were allowed to sexually abuse, rape and groom thousands of young white girls for decades....and it still goes on.

They also did sweet sod all for the people who were abused by Saville and his cohorts for decades.

Its hardly surprising that senior political figures have not so far not been troubled by the police, unless you count the likes of Smith and Heath.....who were known by many to be perverts and paedophiles.....but shielded till long after they had died.