On Chivalry and Sexual Violence

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Tiassa, Jan 9, 2020.

  1. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    What is she referring to then as ''men can’t really be men, and women can’t really be women?'' (when in the context of defending an alleged rapist)

    What does defending Harvey Weinstein who is on trial for alleged rape, have to do with ''men can't really be men, and women can't really be women?''

    The replies in this thread, have to do with that end of it. She can hold any opinion she likes, but again, she works for her client, and it's her job to defend him. Is she insinuating that he was ''just being a man'' when he was allegedly sexually harassing, abusing, and perhaps even raping women?
     
    Last edited: Jan 10, 2020
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  3. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    The re-framing of a conflict - of interest, of agenda, of assumptions, of convictions, of value-systems ---- of epic proportions.
    The conflict is not between men and women. It's between the 6,000 year old patriarchal pyramid structure of society and a recently conceived horizontal, egalitarian new world order. It includes gender roles, yes, and also forms and styles of governance, militarism, class, race and international relations.
    This little snapshot is one in a huge fractal depiction of that confrontation. Whoever manages to place each little snapshot in the more popular frame wins a minuscule skirmish in a very big war.
     
    Last edited: Jan 10, 2020
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  5. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

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    Specifically, hard to say. Though I'd hazard that she's postulating that Weinstein's behavior, which his attorney would likely characterize as, perhaps, "forward" and "direct" (I'm speculating, of course) is being construed as rape and sexual assault. Again, I'm speculating, but it would seem that she is reframing the events rather than flat-out denying they ever happened. Or, more likely, some of both.
     
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  7. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Okay. And, that’s what some of us are replying to.

    (I edited my above post to indicate what she actually stated.)
     
  8. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

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    It's important to note here the 6,000 years, give or take a millennium. Prior to governance and rigidly enforced social stratification, evidence for patriarchal societies and cultures is scant.
     
  9. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Exactly. That may have been one of the types of organization among several, but it's not until established city-states and standing armies that we see such concentration of power and stratification of classes (by which I don't just mean hereditary economic elites; I mean classification in a more comprehensive sense: slaves, servants, women, aliens, peasants, labourers, soldiers, priests, etc.) which in turn leads to strict social rules, privileges, living conditions, legal standing, opportunities, limitations.

    There are plenty of people - not all old white men - who want their exclusive clubs and their slaves back.
    The above lame little bit of apologetics is just another attempt at "It's all your fault for wearing the tank-top."
     
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    She may be trying to frame it as a binary choice. Either society (and by extension Weinstein) lets "men be men and women be women," which excuses those minor cases of assault like the occasional kiss or breast-grab, or society collapses due to forcing people into unnatural and damaging roles of equality. If so that's a pretty bold approach to take, but with Weinstein, they don't have much to lose by trying it.

    Alternatively she may be just portraying Weinstein as a tragic figure, caught up in the morals of his youth, where breast-grabbing and accidentally masturbating in front of a woman were more acceptable - and now he's just too old to "learn new tricks" so to speak. Having him hobble about on a walker would certainly help with that.

    Edited to add - during jury selection the defense was objecting to everything, including voir dire, the process of questioning jurors in front of the judge and both sets of lawyers. The defense wanted it done in private, which there is simply no precedent for. When that was denied they tried to disqualify most of the jurors. One reason they cited was "a number of jurors have been victims of or had exposure to sexual assault or domestic violence." Which is undoubtedly true; given that about 25% of women have been raped during their lives, it's almost a certainty that jurors, whether men or women, have had a close friend or family member sexually assaulted - or been assaulted themelves. It's another very bold approach - "your honor, so many women have been raped by people like my client, jurors will be biased against rapists!"
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2020
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  11. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    In truth, the trial needs to happen to prove his guilt (we don’t know all the details yet), but I have a feeling, his lawyer will use the argument that rape really isn’t rape. No, doesn’t really mean no kind of thing.

    I’ve always been a bit mystified by women who defend abusive men, and while money is largely the motivator for her, it shows that Weinstein is manipulating her, just like he did with his accusers. I’m not sure which is worse, if she has actually been duped by this psychopath (anything is possible) or if she is in it for the money, and knows he’s guilty.
     
  12. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    One thing I'm pretty sure of: she's no dupe; nobody's manipulating this -- um -- woman.
    Maybe she's a just a lawyer making the best possible case for the client. That her client-base runs to sexual predators indicates something about her character - but we don't know which of several possibilities.
    My guess is: stone cold cynic - do the job, get paid, make a reputation, get paid even more; repeat.
    This a potentially bottomless barrel. So many old farts with too much money and no zipper-control will continue to need a high-profile, aggressive female mouthpiece to hide behind in so many courts....!
    (Another thing I'm guessing: she's not exactly popular with judges. With any luck, it this tendency to impugn everyone else's character, accuse them of prejudice and trash the proceedings that will cost her a lot of cases. This one would make a good start to a losing-streak. Maybe someday she'll attack Judge Kavanaugh....
    ...better still, defend him....)
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2020
  13. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Agree ^^

    The challenge for anyone in his shoes, is that he has been tried and convicted in and by the media. I think it will be difficult to find a completely unaware, unbiased jury but as long as jurors can be objective, just view the facts (not his lawyers’ spin) that’s what our legal system is about.

    I have my biased opinions about Weinstein but I don’t know all of the facts. Unfortunately, this may turn into a he said/she said fiasco, so if he is guilty, I’d just hope justice would be served.
     
  14. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    You mean in cases where women defend men who are abusing them, or defend a man who abused someone else?
    I have a friend who is a public defender, who defends people who are most likely guilty but can't pay for an attorney. She honestly believes that the justice system doesn't wont unless both sides get legal help, even when they are probably guilty. (And _she_ certainly isn't in it for the money, given what she could be making at a private firm.)
     
  15. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    I meant “defend” in a broad sense. I dated an abusive man once and when we were through, I never defended his actions. To myself or to anyone. To me, it’s simply indefensible except to say, abusers aren’t born that way. They are broken like the rest of us, just in different ways.
     
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  16. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    I've done jury duty and I'm inclined to trust that they will be fair. Everyone brings their prejudices - remember the male jurors who may sincerely believe that women are picking on them, or that a woman who gets help with her career from a male boss knows the price, and jurors who believe in fake news, etc. - but the hundred or so citizens I met in that jury pool took their responsibility seriously.

    That was one of the options I considered regarding Rotunno. But I don't think it applies.
     
  17. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

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    I suppose that there is the rare individual who led a charmed life and somehow became an abusive asshole, but that's seldom the case. Most are, as you note, damaged. Still, with someone like Weinstein, say, no matter what he suffered at some point in his life, most of his life was pretty damn "charmed."
     
  18. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    the conciliatory expectation to deliver a state of assumed authority to the individual as a process of entitlement to effect others.
    it is a secondary contact level culture enforcement

    "why can't things just change back to when they were simple and i felt better"

    does the freed slave ever say that ?
    why not ?

    games within games within games ...
    part of the issue is knowing which game you wish to learn about so you can make some sense of the over all madness
     
  19. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Ah. I don't understand why women would do that in the sense that I couldn't see myself doing something like that. But unfortunately throughout my life I've known a lot of women who were abused and assaulted - and I have sometimes seen them defend their abusers. There are a lot of reasons for them doing that - reasons I don't agree with, but at least I know what the reasons they presented were.
     
  20. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Yea, it's a bit of Stockholm Syndrome, mixed with fear, perhaps? Maybe love, too. A twisted idea of love, anyway. Hard to say, everyone is different. But, once you break free from an abuser, you can see more clearly, after the relationship fog clears, that abusers often times don't change. I'm not sure they can change. I don't think Weinstein is capable of change, he's not even willing to see his culpability in all of these allegations. All of these women are lying? Riiight, Harvey.

    The problem with the route this lawyer is taking is that she is insinuating women are being hysterical; the whole #metoo movement is just a display of overly sensitive women who will regret their accusations, someday. Not because they're lying, but because they will miss the attention men paid them. Because men will no longer want to help women or ask them out, because women stood up for themselves and refused to be harassed and raped.

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    Because men just wanna be men, and dang it, why can't women just accept that men can't control themselves at the workplace or any place, and women should just shut up about it?

    Not only does this insult women, but it insults men. I suppose she doesn't care if she ''wins.''
     
  21. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    It's a question of perspective. We cannot imagine ourselves doing things that would be irrelevant in our own life experience - which includes unacknowledged (often unrecognized) privilege. The people who do these inexplicable things are doing them in the context of life-experiences and expectations very different from our own.
    I know something about battered women, and how they were generally treated by society, the legal system and even their communities, in different phases of the 20th century. Part of why people make the decisions they make is date-dependent. Part of it is psychological. Part of it is economic. Sadly, part of it is very often the very real fear of retaliation.
     
  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Absolutely. I used to not understand it at all. I've come to understand it a little better over the years from talking to people who have gone through it - but I'm never going to really know what they went through and how that affects their decision-making.
     
  23. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Fear is a powerful thing when it comes to remaining in abusive relationships. Fear of the unknown, usually. Sometimes, it would go through my mind...it's better to stay in this relationship that I know, than to leave him and face the unknown. I'm not that person anymore, thankfully. But, that is just it. Many women don't know how to truly love and respect themselves enough, so they tolerate abuse. I can't speak for all women, but that was my experience. You believe that you deserve the abuse, and it often stems from a dysfunctional family of origin.

    I've shared too much now. lol Back to the original topic.

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