Canadian Politics Today

Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., Roy Moore, Steven Seagal, Brett Ratner, Kevin Spacey  (link to article), the beat goes on. Before that there was Bill Cosby and Rolf Harris. My take on these allegations is a little different. Everyone knew that these people in Hollywood or for that matter on Capitol Hill were no saints. Back in 1974 we thrilled to Wilbur Mills and Fanne Fox | The Big Picture | Arkansas news.

Any adult with an ounce of sense knows never to be alone with strangers. Meetings should be in public places and/or with other people present. Suddenly we're hearing all kinds of allegations of "abuse," some dating back to the year of Reagan's inauguration. One wonders whether people suddenly feel a sense of grievance about ancient events. Or perhaps some of it is greed; or to get their "five minutes of fame."

I do not condone pedophilia. All that I am asking is how real this abuse really was. Did people at the time relish their moment in the sun with very wealthy and famous people and come to regret it? I don't think these kinds of events are new (updated Latest firings and sexual accusations update board

That said, multiple people with similar stories (incident details, power dynamic of the relationship) indicate that this is a pervasive problem with our famous and beloved creator class.  These aren't isolated incidents.  As TimG pointed out, a shift in norms (and I would argue technology) has changed the situation.

I would certainly NOT argue that the victims are lying in four of the examples cited - no way.  That's step 1 of the system that shuts victims up.  You will look like a complicit fool if you make such a comment in public. 

Pedophilia barely enters into it, in the examples I have read.

"Any adult with an ounce of sense knows never to be alone with strangers. "  This is horseshit.  I am alone with strangers all the time, in business and in other social encounters in life.

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Moderator - we have a similar thread can you please merge them ?

I think we need to get beyond the 'victims are lying' and the 'claims are true' false dichotomy.

Well one way to do just that is to not submit it as a narrative when the claim is filed, as the OP did.

It is worth noting that social media has helped victims come forward but it also can undermine the evidence because victims sharing their stories will cause their stories to change in ways to be more consistent with each other. These means independent reports are no longer independent. I believe this problem was part of Ghomesi's defense.

Sort of.  The victims emailed each other.  Social media, otherwise known as spreading rumours, is different.  It's not effective if you want legal action but if you want to destroy someone's reputation it works just fine.  This is especially so if you can pass the bar for internet bullshit by having multiple victims with similar stories.

There are two issues to consider:

1) When there was a power imbalance such as the case with Weinstein it is understandable that victims kept quiet. Especially if they felt they would be accused of being a willing prostitute for their career. The only thing that made it possible for the stories to be told is a shift in social norms.

Not to mention some of them WERE willing prostitutes for their career.

Looks like George Takei and Richard Dreyfuss are the latest.

http://nationalpost.com/entertainment/celebrity/george-takei-and-richard-dreyfuss-are-the-latest-celebrities-to-be-accused-of-sexual-assault-harassment

Unfortunately there has been and always been sexual exploitation in Hollywood.

Look I am  like most of you brought up on entertainment. I would hate to think the actor I enjoyed was sexually exploited, emotionally abused by the production in that industry but it seems everyone is. Hollywood Confidential was a book I read a long time ago and it sure as hell showed this latest news cycle is nothing. The history of sexual depravity in Hollywood has always been there. Fatty Arbuckle.  Roman Polanksi,

Think about this. Back in the late 60's sexual liberation exploded. The behaviour from about 1967 to the early 1980's when AIDS became a serious epidemic was an era of open sexuality and open sexual behaviour by both genders and a coming out for gay people to express their sexuality. That behaviour consisted of open and rampant promiscuous sex. Signals were crossed. People were getting **** only in the haze of parties, drugs, alcohol, sex and rock n roll, people said nothing. Ironically at the beginning of the feminist movement women became sexually assertive as a response to sexual subordination and it too sent signals, some which were exploited the wrong way. The pendelum swung so to speak to sexual freedom and now it sure as hell has swung the opposite way and we now seem to be in a wide spread pendelum swing the other way almost like the McCarthy era went after communists but now in regards to sexuality.

Any sexual behaviour is under the gun. I am not apologizing for inappropriate expoloitative sexual behaviour, that is to say abusive behaviour forced on non consenting individuals, but I think what is also getting swept up in the frenzy to expose sexual abuse are people who were not abused but have other issues, specifically repressed anger for having consented to sex and now regretting that consent.

I have worked in the area of domestic violence for 30 years. Still do group therapy facilitation once a wek with violent offenders. Believe me the line between consent and non consent can and does get very thin. Most people think its am obvious line. It can be, but it can also be very grey and mirky where people have had too much to drink or smoke, are confused, are sending out mixed signals. Its not always black and white.

Me personally, after 30 years I have zero and I mean zero tolerance towards anyone who has a sexual relationship if they are an adult with children, teens  people they know are vulnerable and have major power imbalances. I have developed a sort of radar sense for people who abuse and by nature they are people that exploit power. Sex is a conduit, a channel, to express their power and that power by nature is abusive because it hurts, injures, negates, tears down the soul of the targeted person.

That for me is not the same as two consenting adults who after the fact create negative stories about one another as a way to express anger.

Oh you bet its a fine line sometimes investigating it but I have to tell you, you develop a sixth sense. You can smell it in some people as they walk in the room, and I mean smell it. Sexual victims and abusers have distinct smells. They can give off familiar non verbal language cues and they engage in a type of paralanguage, or a way of saying things with a tone or a method of word choice that is as crucial for what they don't say as how they say it.

All that said, its still not easy to be right on. When we investigare children who have been abused, its oh so crucial not to cue their answers with our questions and so some of us spend hours upon hours in a form of play therapy using art, music, animals, sports, playing with toys, to get kids to volunteer what they say without cuing it. I have seen miracles working with horses, dogs, cats hell even tarantulas. Any creature a child or young adult trusts can help.

I have seen women so traumatized they don't speak again but their burn marks or broken bones speak for them.

It can suck your soul out but you have to keep going on. This stuff you are reading it goes on everywhere. The media now does have news cycles that will carry it as a story, but I can assure you within a few weeks the news cycle will have moved on to some other item.

Its there, and always been there.

All I can say is healthy sexual relationships are about equality and consent and should be openly expressed. There is nothing evil about sex and the fact some people use it as a tool of violence or exploitation should not have you mistake sexuality as evil.

I hate to sound pessimistic but I don't think a damn thing is going to change in Hollywood just like every summer in downtown Toronto at the bus station on Dundas near Bay, you see the sexually abused run away kids come out of the bus depot and the pimps are waiting for them.

However as sad as it is people are working on it trying to deal with it. Teachers, social workers, sex crimes units of very well trained but overworked police, nurses, doctors, psychologists, clergy. lawyers, children's aid workers, volunteers. especially volunteers. They are there. They are working no matter how bad it is and they are helping. To all those kind of peope and the victims of sex crime that make it out of their cycles of abuse and there are many, those are the people I have and focus on certain days when it seems pointless.

Pedophilia barely enters into it, in the examples I have read.

"Any adult with an ounce of sense knows never to be alone with strangers. "  This is horseshit.  I am alone with strangers all the time, in business and in other social encounters in life.

MH I have worked as a legal counsel, mediator and counsellor in this area for 30 years. I did write a response to JBG who knows me. He's a good guy. I agree  his comment about not being alone with strangers is phrased poorly but if you knew him he probably  meant to say adults should not leave their children alone with strangers.  That said the way he wrote it is absurd for the very reasons you said, of course. I leave that to JBG to clarify.

Just for your info you probably  haven' read about pedophilia that much anywhere because unfortunately 95% of it remains hidden. That said we often confuse pedophilia with hebephilia.  Pedophilia is the sexual behaviour of being aroused by pre-pubic children, i.e., children with NO sexual features. You hear a lot of people call **** homosexuals. In fact a **** will molest a child of either sex if given access and opportunity. The thing that attracts them is the powerlessness and asexuality of the child. If they do choose the same sex it does not make them homosexual anymore than it makes them heterosexual if they molest a child of the opposite sex. Heterosexual and homosexual are definitions only used for consensual sex between adults. Some **** may seem to be choosing only boys or girls but its because of access issues. **** and hebephiles are not curable. The ones that say they don't do it, they control it, are liars. They can't. Its a compulsive drive and it can be so overwhelming even castrating **** has not stopped some from continuing their behaviour.

If any child is being exploited in Hollywood there more likely to be teens being molested by hebephiles. Hebephiles unlike **** can have strong preferences to one not both genders. That said in any sexual disorder there are different features and dimensions. We use the a Diagnostic Psychiatric Manual now in its 5th edition to help diagnose the philias (disorders) but a proper psychiatric diagnosis can take months even years since bevahiour of different disorders can be similar or overlap.

What many call sociopaths or psychopaths means the same thing and also misused. Generally speaking it refers to a series or cluster or collection of behaviours where the prominent feature is the individual has no inner sense of right and wrong-no feelings so to speak-they mimic other peoples' feelings since they have none of their own. We call them sometimes emotionally flat. Some of them are also sexual predators, and can be sadistic **** or hebephiles.

Sadistic sexual predators get off on imposing pain. Some sexual predators see themselves as gentle and caring and lovers of children or teens and frame what they do and who they are as harmless and helping the child and they see we adults who don't understand adult child sex as the perverts.

I had huge arguments years ago with people over how Michael Jackson manifested the classic features of a hebephile. Had he not had his celebrity status and money, he would not have had access to the children he was left alone with. If you and I said we were as he was 50 at the time and inviting children to have pajama parties with us, of course people would think we were dangerous. Adults left their children with him enamoured by his celebrity status and money and I think that's more the example JBG was getting at.

Now many people get fooled. **** and hebephiles groom parents and get their trust slowly so they can then get access to their children alone. ****  and hebephiles place themselves in trust and authority positions like teaching, leading youth activities. so they can have access and opportunity. So when we teach preventative measures we teach adults keep your children in situations where strangers and even people they know that are adults are NOT alone with them. Most acts of sexual molestation are NOT done by strangers but relatives.

All that said, I am sure we all agree this is a very painful topic. Parents who did make mistakes that led to their children being exposed should be forgiven unless they were deliberately negligent then of course society steps in and takes the children away.

I am sure you know already everything I said. Just adding to the discussion and trying to answer one thing you mentioned.

...and we now seem to be in a wide spread pendelum swing the other way almost like the McCarthy era went after communists but now in regards to sexuality.

Sort of the opposite, though, since the McCarthy era was for perceived crimes of disloyalty, which were not crimes at all, being punished by the powers that be.  And this is a reaction of suppression of truth by the powers that be.

I think what is also getting swept up in the frenzy to expose sexual abuse are people who were not abused but have other issues, specifically repressed anger for having consented to sex and now regretting that consent.

Well, do you have an example in the 'pervnado' accusations ?  It seems that there would have to be a few of them to excuse someone who has multiple accusers.

[\quote] but it can also be very grey and mirky where people have had too much to drink or smoke, are confused, are sending out mixed signals. Its not always black and white.[/quote]

So, socially what is changing is that people are saying that you can't be "drunk" to consent.  Hard to understand from a certain perspective, but that's what it comes down to.  If you are taking an intoxicated person to bed, you can be accused.

Oh you bet its a fine line sometimes investigating it but I have to tell you, you develop a sixth sense. You can smell it in some people as they walk in the room, and I mean smell it. Sexual victims and abusers have distinct smells. They can give off familiar non verbal language cues and they engage in a type of paralanguage, or a way of saying things with a tone or a method of word choice that is as crucial for what they don't say as how they say it.

This is the kind of language we hear from cops who excuse assault complaints as 'not credible' based on their 'experience'.  That's not acceptable any more.  But your point of view is valid as far as it is yours.

I appreciate your perspective on this.