So let me get this straight:
1) It's too hard to say "No, I don't want to go to your apartment."
2) It's too hard to say "No, I don't want to have sex with you."
3) It's too hard to say, "I have to go now, I had a lovely time (or I had a terrible time)."
“It’s harder than you think to leave when you’re uncomfortable or scared,” [Samantha] Bee replied.
4) So you have to say, "Oh, okay, fine, you can fuck me." Because you're scared or uncomfortable?
And then when you feel terrible about it in the morning, it's all the guy's fault? Have I got this right?
And this is the world Samantha Bee had "to wade through a sea of prehensile dicks to build [and]...now enjoy"?
I really am getting too old for this.
I am beginning to wonder if this issue is too complex for successful resolution.
ReplyDeleteI watched that segment of Samantha Bee's show and I had the same reaction to it. When she hits the target, no one is better, this one is not one of those though she gets closer than Deneuve did.
I've come to see it as a problem created by people being allowed to act like 12-year-olds when they're adults, the man-boys and the women-girls.
I've also come to think that a lot of the traditional means of preventing relationships between employees and chaperoning underage sweethearts and such things a dormitory parietals (though they should always have applied to both genders) and a high and enforced drinking age were there for good reasons and that what this is is the expansion of problems that were not as huge when people were more "uptight".
I'm amazed that someone as smart as Samantha Bee doesn't get that no matter how many "metoo"campaigns that are run gals and guys doing dumb stuff are going to run into the same kind of trouble and that the only choice for institutions, businesses in avoiding those is by strict, formal rules to prevent it. And those won't work nearly 100% of the time so people will have to protect themselves the extent to which that's possible.
My sentiments exactly. Most of this seems to arise from juvenile behavior and an absolute refusal to be responsible.
ReplyDeleteRmj, I'm trying hard to understand your words in the post as something other than one more instance of a male mansplaining to a woman how she ought to speak and act, but I'm having a difficult time of it.
ReplyDeleteBee's commentary lays all responsibility on Ansari. That's the only thing I object to. O don't defend his actions, OTOH, kid he weren't famous, we'd never have heard of this bad date. What's the lesson: men are always responsible for the outcome, women never are?
ReplyDeleteApologies for the typos; I'm on my phone and not proofreading very well.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Samantha Bee wasn't giving a lesson at all. Of course, men are not always responsible for bad dates, or whatever. Maybe some men will never understand what it was like, and what it's still like to be patronized and have liberties taken. Maybe it's hard to understand why women don't speak out when it's the boss. Or when a date goes too far, and you say no, and he doesn't stop, but you're one of the lucky ones with another couple in the car, and the other guy is a good guy who steps in. So you don't go out with him again, but you're left with the feeling that you must have done something to make the date think he could do such a thing. Fortunately, I was not one who experienced the worst, but I know women who have. It's a lifetime of indignities, large and small, and it's wearying. I regret I left the comment. I knew it would not go well.
ReplyDeleteIt's an emotional subject, and your comments are well made; both of them.
ReplyDeleteMy objection is to the concept of punishment as a way of setting things right, hence my later post quoting extensively from an article about a show on Amazon Prime. I'm old enough to remember "first wave feminism," and their impassioned argument that they wanted everyone treated equally, not to simply replace patriarchy with matriarchy.
And frankly, I've had my share of experiences with not being a "man's man," though it grew less and less after high school. And I've been a jerk to my wife and to women in general from time to time, but mostly because I'm human, not because I'm unrepentantly male. It's the Christian concept of forgiveness that figures in here, but not in the way you'll probably think when you read this. I'm trying to work on a post about that, because I think forgiveness has been cheapened into a kind of forgetfulness, which is not what means; and it's also something that has to be offered, not demanded, and given without acceptance (it is a gift, but a gift to the one offering forgiveness; if it is accepted, it arguably becomes a kind of commerce, an exchange, and not a gift, something offered without the possibility of exchange).
The problem for us all is, we are stuck between false ideas of forgiveness, and understandable injuries and harms that are unfairly imposed on us. None of the public commentary on this broad subject are coming close to recognizing that fundamental issue, my comments included.
Which is why I'm still working on that post about the concept of forgiveness.....
I'll be interested in your post about forgiveness. What I feel is more a weariness that as a society we haven't made more progress. Most of my problems at the time seemed like life and how things were, and I moved on. I'm still educating my husband after 57 years, but I'm no saint, and I don't expect him to be.
ReplyDeleteWith the boy in college, it was our first date. I don't know if that made it worse or better, but that sticks in my mind because, at the time, I partly blamed myself, thinking I must have done something to lead him on and think I wanted "pussy grabbing". Hell, I might as well say it, as it seems okay if Trump not only says it but does it.