Germaine Greer on 'Bad Faith' & 'career rapees'

An anthropological approach to rape in society

by Brian Bamford

YESTERDAY Germaine Greer argued on Radio Four's 'TODAY' program that we need to look at how the rape narrative is tackled and defined in society, and what this tells us about the treatment of women today.  She said, among other things, when asked to define her stance on #MeToo, Ms Greer declared: ‘I don’t actually think it’s gone too far, I don’t think its got anywhere at all.'

She then added:  ‘What we need is to sort out the law regarding rape and to sort out our concept of what it is.
‘It’s pointless now bringing up this stuff when [for] most of it no action can be taken.
‘Why wait 20 years?’

She of course neglected to concern herself here with the treatment of men or boys in society.

 Cambridge House & the abuse of boys

And yet, I live in Rochdale where it was at Cambridge House in November 2012, that the issue of the exploitation and abuse of boys by Cyril Smith in the 1960s was initially reported on this NV Blog and simultaneously on the Westminster Politics Home website.  A few hours later Simon Danczuk made his speech in the House of Commons (an earlier story about this in 1979 in Rochdale's Alternative Paper [RAP] had been squashed by a threat of legal action by Cyril Smith's solicitor).

Rape & Jean-Paul Sartre on  'Bad Faith'

Ms. Greer told listeners to Radio Four that #MeToo doesn’t work:  ‘I don’t actually think it’s gone too far, I don’t think its got anywhere at all.
‘What we need is to sort out the law regarding rape and to sort out our concept of what it is.’

To understand this better perhaps we should consider the nature of bad faith and exploitative behaviour in human relationships generally.  Ms. Greer talks about women who 'open their legs' to gain career advantages from Harvey Weinstein

In the North it was in the 1970s and 80s, and may still be, a common practice for women to hang around in  pubs using their charms in order to get men to buy them free drinks, and one (perhaps I should say second generation feminist) use to complain to me about these working-class women who boasted about it as she thought it was 'disgusting' and anti-feminist.  When I went working in London I worked with men in the sugar refinery in Hammersmith who used to chat-up women in clubs and when the women went to the toilet they would tell me how they would empty their handbags. 

Dealing with bad faith in a way which seems to relate to what Ms. Greer has said, the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. gave an example of a young girl on a first date:
'The young woman’s date compliments her on her physical appearance, but she ignores the obvious sexual connotations of his compliment and chooses instead to direct the compliment at herself as a conscious human being. He then takes her hand, but she neither takes it nor rejects it. Instead, she lets her hand rest indifferently in his so as to buy time and delay having to make a choice about accepting or rejecting his advances. Whereas she chooses to treat his compliment as being unrelated to her body, she chooses to treat her hand (which is a part of her body) as an object, thereby acknowledging her freedom to make choices.'

 The #MeToo Mob in Hollywood want to argue that they had no choices and had to succumb to Weinstein's wilds and that they had no power of agency. 

Another example of bad faith that Sartre gives is that of a young woman on a first date.  The young woman’s date compliments her on her physical appearance, but she ignores the obvious sexual connotations of his compliment and chooses instead to direct the compliment at herself as a conscious human being.  He then takes her hand, but she neither takes it nor rejects it.  Instead, she lets her hand rest indifferently in his so as to buy time and delay having to make a choice about accepting or rejecting his advances.  Whereas she chooses to treat his compliment as being unrelated to her body, she chooses to treat her hand (which is a part of her body) as an object, thereby acknowledging her freedom to make choices.

For Sartre, people may pretend to themselves that they do not have the freedom to make choices, but they cannot pretend to themselves that they are not themselves, that is, conscious human beings who actually have little or nothing to do with their pragmatic concerns, social roles, and value systems.

 Germaine Greer's anthropological analysis & the initiation of 'Donkey Dick'!

Germaine Greer's approach to what she calls 'career rapees' is it seems to me anthropological, while Sartre's is philosophical.

I mentioned Rochdale, and the historic case I knew about of the teenagers abused by Cyril Smith at Cambridge House, using spanking practices and 'false medicals'.  I could have dealt with the historic practices of the initiation ceremonies which took place in the factories in the North West of England in the 1950s and 60s, when I was an apprentice electrician.  Last month we had Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Tueday, and it was at that time common for young apprentices to get their balls blacked or greased, or both.  De-bagging's of lads were often indulged in on the shopfloor on the pretext that it was an ancient custom of an 'iniation ceremony', in the 1950s it was argued that this should be done when lads reached 18-years when the lads became 'improvers', perhaps owing to the advent of the Welfare State, lads were becoming too big at 21 on completion of their apprenticeship when they officially 'came out of their time'.  One lad at Tweedale & Smalley where I worked, gained the title 'Donkey Dick' and seemed to enjoy the title as well as the exploits and High Jinks.

However an outsider may view these escapades, and when I did try to protest I was made to feel like a wet blanket,

How do we consider these initiation practices?  Are they to be represented as the abuse and exploitation of young people and apprentices by tradesmen?  Or are we to see it as an ancient custom perhaps handed down to us from the times of the rural village? Perhaps even Harvey Weinstein and those who engaged with him thought they we involved in some ancient ritual or initiation ceremony.

 Jean-Paul Sartre on Bad Faith | Outre monde:

www.https://outre-monde.com/2011/03/29/jean-paul-sartre-on-bad-faith/ 
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Steve Spielberg slams French critics of #MeToo....

YESTERDAY Steven Spielberg said he disagreed with Catherine Deneuve's insistence that 'the Harvey Weinstein scandal has turned into a "witch hunt" against men'.  Mr Spielberg claimed that sexual abuse has it turned out was not just a Hollywood problem but it was a 'national problem and probably a global problem'.

On Wednesday Ms. Deneuve, a famous French cinema icon, was one of 100 French female writers, actors and academics who signed a letter published in the newspaper Le Monde.  

The letter claimed that campaigns like #MeToo and its French equivalent #Balancetonporc (Call out your pig) that have stemmed from the Weinstein scandal have gone too far and threaten hard-won sexual freedoms.

Spielberg, a Oscar-winning director, said: 'I don't see it as a witch-hunt at the moment - I don't. I'm sorry I don't see it as a witch-hunt - I see it as an imperative.'  He added that he thought the harassment scandal was a 'watershed moment', with more allegations to come in the future.

Spielberg went on: 'This is a watershed moment, and extolling the virtues of women coming forward through tremendous personal sacrifice, using tremendous amounts of courage to speak about what has happened to them yesterday or 40 years ago, it doesn't matter.'

The French cinema icon Deneuve, who starred in the 1967 French classic Belle de Jour, attacked the 'puritanism' triggered by the recent surge of sexual harassment allegations, arguing men should be 'free to hit on' women.

 

Interestingly, in the 1960s the young French actress Catherine Deneuve teamed-up with the Spanish 'anarchist' film director Luis Buñuel to create Belle De Jour, a dense, Freudian-tinged film that also worked in the director’s trademark surrealism and had better characters and a more potent story to boot.  It is about a young woman frustrated in her recent marriage who seeks to find out what makes men tick by becoming a prostitute.

One early critic wrote of the Buñuel film that 'there is always plenty to look at, often for the sake of humor.  Buñuel has always been a great comedian, with physical, dark humor showing up in the most unlikely places, but here he relegates it largely to background, which only makes it funnier.'

One may even wonder if Mr Spielberg is simply 'virtue signalling' given that this week Michael Douglas became the latest candidate accused of sexual impropriety.  Mr. Spielberg wouldn't want to be the next one to appear on the #MeToo blacklist.

Spielberg also has a new film The Post staring Meryl Streep coming out, which is set during the Nixon administration era in the 1970s, but he says it's actually very current and there are many themes which resonate today. Thus the current scandal allows him to give it a bit of a plug.

Half Baked Harriet

by Les May

FROM 1978 until 1982 Harriet Harman was the legal officer at the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), which later took the name Liberty. From 2001 to 2005 she was Solicitor General for England and Wales, the second highest-ranking member of the Supreme Court after the Attorney-General.  So you might think that she would have some respect for the due process of law.
But judging by Harriet’s recent comment, ‘I think that the absolute key to this, when I think about my own experience and think about the Harvey Weinstein thing, is we need a system of whistle-blowing, anonymous whistle-blowing’, one might begin to doubt it.
Once you introduce the term ‘whistle-blowing’ you imply some kind of immunity.  Coupled with anonymity it’s a recipe for ruining the lives of innocent men with no possibility of redress.  The kindest thing you can say about it is that it’s a half baked idea and would not have been out of place in the armoury of the East German Stasi.
If you think someone is breaking the law tell the police.  That protects both you and the person being accused. If the accusation has substance the police will investigate and prosecute.  If the accusation is malicious the police will prosecute you.  That is how it should be.
You can see the rest of Harriet’s comments at:
http://www.careappointments.co.uk/care-news/england/item/42707-whistle-blowing-hotlines-could-help-women-report-abuse-harriet-harman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi

Income and Wealth. It’s a Carve Up

by Les May

THERE are estimated to be about 50 million adults, i.e. persons aged 18 or over, in the UK.   Based upon a sample 13,000 people the Financial Conduct Authority has identified a half of all adults, 25 million people, as potentially vulnerable to a change in circumstances.  About 13 million adults are considered to be just ‘surviving’ and at high risk of falling into financial difficulties. A similar number have been overdrawn in the past year and about 3 million have used an unauthorised overdraft.  For about the same number of adults expensive ‘pay day loans’ are the only way to make ends meet.  Seven million homeowners say they would struggle to pay if their mortgage rose by £100 a month.  A half of people who rent say they would struggle if their rent rose by less than £100 a month.

This is the bleak picture which emerges when one looks at the balance between income and expenditure.  A report by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) has shown a similarly bleak picture with regard to the distribution of wealth in this country.

A quarter of adults have less than a £1000 in savings and one in eight adults have no cash savings whatsoever.  The wealthiest 10% of households own 45% of the country’s wealth and the least wealthy 50% own just 9%.  In cash equivalent terms that’s an average of £1,320,000 owned by each of the wealthiest 10% and an average of £3,200 by the bottom 50%. So much for the Tory vision of a ‘property owning democracy’ and of wealth ‘cascading down the generations’.

The picture all these numbers paint is that the UK is a country of vast inequality.  But if you are reeling at the onslaught of the numbers from these two reports don’t worry, you are unlikely to see much said about them in the press, even by those columnists and who like to style themselves a being ‘of the left’.  And of course some Labour politicians have far too much to worry about to bother their pretty little heads about something so mundane as inequality.

In the past ten days my paper has contained something about Harvey Weinstein on nine of them. Even the Radio Times got in on the act with a story about how an actress I had never heard of had been asked to audition in a bikini. Shock horror! There was me thinking that these women were all shrinking violets who shunned publicity.

Now I don’t doubt that there are men in the film business who think that ‘get your kit off’ is a chat up line. But if it offends you there is always the option of walking away.  And if think that will damage your career, then it’s decision time; career or virtue.  Yes it’s about power, but as Shakespeare didn’t quite put it, ‘Caesar would not be a wolf if the Romans were not sheep’.  As I said, it’s decision time ladies.

When I read stories like this the question I ask myself is ‘am I bovered’. The answer is ‘No!’.  Why should I concern myself with the goings on of a privileged few when I live in a country where 10% of the population each have 400 times the individual wealth of more than half of the rest of us?  Or when 3 million people have to take out ‘pay day loans’ at outrageous interest rates because they haven’t got a few hundred pounds in savings when a minor crisis arises.  What ‘power’ do these people have? What power has someone on a zero hours contract?

Yet the outrage is all about the dodgy goings on in Hollywood.  It’s certainly not about inequality. How many actresses have been propositioned in the US and UK I don’t know, but I can say with some certainty it won’t be in the millions.

Why is it that the Left is so unwilling to show its outrage at the inequity of British society?  Why is it that Harriet Harman, one time Deputy Leader of the Labour party, can seriously think that the biggest problem faced by society is that there aren’t any ‘whistle blowing hotlines’, so that women can complain about the Harvey Weinsteins of this world?  And just to remind you; Harman is the woman who urged Labour MPs not to oppose a Tory bill to cut benefits.

I’m still waiting for an answer to the question I posed in a recent NV article.

‘Why is it that people, and not just young people with their demands for ‘safe spaces’ and the like, cannot resist sniffing out and condemning anything they think smells of racism, sexism or homophobia, yet don’t show the same enthusiasm for combatting the rise in vast inequalities in both income and in wealth, the growth of zero hours contracts, the receding possibility that they will be able to live a dignified and not poverty filled old age, the demonisation of the poor as work shy scroungers, the lack of social housing and the increasing proportion of household income that is going to a new rentier class?’

I’m not looking to Harriet for an answer or to any of those columnists who style themselves as ‘of the Left’.

Don't Short Circuit Justice!

 Harvey Weinstein & Natural Justice

by Les May

ON Thursday morning as we sat sipping our coffee on Todmorden Inside Market my wife commented ‘It seems to be open season on Harvey Weinstein’.  As I had never heard of him I could only say ‘Who’s he’?

My ignorance was short lived.   Bang on the front page of my paper was a picture of a somewhat unprepossessing chap, with a younger woman on each arm, which raised in my mind the question of whether they had first been attracted to him for his good looks.

My wife was right.  After several actresses had accused him of making unwanted sexual advances to them it seemed the journalistic equivalent of the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, plus uncle Tom Cobley and all, immediately decided the women must be telling the truth and decided to ‘give him a good kicking’.   To add an element of farce Harvey decided to check into ‘rehab’ for treatment for sex addiction.

It wasn’t just the journalists. ‘Our Treeza’ decided to get in on the act too.   There was talk of him losing his British CBE and the Oscar board have convened an ‘emergency meeting’.   Phew!

But it’s not all bad news for Harvey.  He got lucky; the police in Britain and the USA have said they will investigate.    That means his accusers will have to make formal statements.  If they are telling porkies they’ll be found out.  He’ll know exactly what he is accused of.  He’ll be innocent until proven guilty. The women will have to interrupt their ‘busy schedules’ to turn up in court.  The legal process will take its course.   (Actually I don’t believe that last sentence; it will end up with a plea bargain.   Followed by a lot of articles about how ‘the system’ let down women yet again.)

Unfortunately it’s not just where ‘celebs’ are involved that there is an eagerness to short circuit the protection the law affords both to the accuser and the accused in interpersonal disputes where ultimately it boils down to nothing more than ‘his word against hers’.

It is becoming the norm that in universities, larger companies, trades unions and the like, these kinds of dispute are dealt with internally in what can most charitably be described as the most amateurish way, by people who have little grasp of the rules of evidence or much concern for natural justice.

Natural justice really boils down to common sense.  Here are some ground rules.
Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.  In other words no-one has to ‘prove’ their innocence.
The accused person should be informed of the specific charges against them and the name of their accuser.
The accused person should have the opportunity to cross-examine the accuser and vice versa.
The same goes for any witnesses, be they for the accuser or for theaccused. If an organisation uses a panel of people to investigate an incident, then a different panel of people should be involved in assessing that evidence and coming to a judgement, and the evidence collected should be available to both parties.

As I observed earlier natural justice is common sense.  It’s about being fair and being seen to be fair. Anything that fails the test of fairness, isn’t justice.