Sex is a blood sport — both sides can hurt get
Pioneering feminist GERMAINE GREER has kept silent on the Hollywood sex scandal — until now. Here she gives her incendiary verdict...
What does ‘Me too’ mean after all? apparently it means ‘I too have been propositioned’ or ‘advances have been made to me, too’.
the understanding is that the female speaker preserved her virtue in spite of all the odds and the male predator was sent away with his tail between his legs.
My father’s generation called the men in such cases ‘wolves’; others called them ‘mashers’. Played in the movies by Leslie Phillips or terry-thomas or Sid James, they were figures of fun, leering, slavering fools who never ever succeeded in their attempts to corrupt women who were younger, smarter and sexier than they.
the behaviour of such lecherous characters has always been pathetic and/or ludicrous, as much of harvey Weinstein’s seems to be. anybody who exposes his or her genitalia, the flasher on the escalator, say, may imagine that he or she is displaying sexual power, but the fact is the opposite. Weinstein is not a Don Juan but a sexual incompetent, and, but for his power in la-la land, profoundly resistible.
accusations of rape are a different matter, of course, but the difficulty is that the issue is one of consent. the case used to be that if a man sincerely believed sex to be consensual he could not be found guilty of rape, but with convictions difficult to come by, this criterion has been loosening.
In my view (not commonly held) the law of rape is medieval and profoundly misogynistic. It is due for a radical overhaul, but in the cacophony of prosecutions and lawsuits that is coming our way, it is unlikely to get it.
What we can expect now is that the people accused of sexual misconduct — so
I don’t remember anybody’s name. How do you think the ‘dahling’ thing got started? ZSA ZSA GABOR
far all of them men — will use every resource available to them to fight the accusations. The principal, and in many cases the only, testimony against them is the narratives of the victims.
All the accused will be expertly defended; while the complainants may believe that they are parties to the litigation they are actually — unless what has been brought is a civil suit — simply exhibits in the case. The duty of the defending team will be to discredit them. Eight women have already accepted payments from Weinstein for their silence; they may well find breaking that silence will have devalued their evidence.
It is worth bearing in mind that though almost 60 women came forward with allegations against Bill Cosby, allegations that included rape, drugfacilitated sexual assault, sexual battery and child sexual abuse, the one criminal case finally brought against him has resulted in a mistrial.
In the military, and other organisations founded on similar principles, there has always been a rule that fraternisation between the ranks is not on. A person, male or female, with power over subordinates cannot be permitted to make a pass at any of them because he or she could be using a position of power to secure sexual favours by threat or coercion.
Teachers may not seduce their students while they are students, though quite a few will marry a student after graduation. If a teaching assistant only a year or two ahead of you puts a hand on your knee during a tutorial, you’d be a fool to spend the weekend weeping. One word of complaint could lose him or her the job, in which case weeping would be appropriate, for him or her, not for you.
Sex has always been a bloodsport and players on both sides can get hurt. The aggressor takes a risk and the victim, especially if he or she is the only other person in the aggressor’s hotel room, runs a risk.
In the Thirties, during the Depression, one of the few ways young women could earn a living was by carrying out secretarial duties for travelling businessmen — in their hotel rooms. In 1932, when Joan Crawford played Flaemmchen in Grand Hotel, the ‘little stenographess’ herself was on the make, with a collection of glamour photos she could show to a likely contender.
She was also sharp, tough and aware that she couldn’t give away what had to serve as her mealticket. Not nice, not Doris Day certainly, but more dignified than all this weeping and wailing about unwelcome advances.
Meryl Streep, doyenne of women in film, accepting Best Actress at the National Board of Review awards gala, confused her audience by singing the praises of men: ‘I love men’, she carolled. ‘Oh my God! Yeah, I know it’s the year of the woman and everything, but oh my God! The men! All my mentors have been men.’
Which is not surprising seeing as nearly all the people in a position to mentor her were men.
‘I have experienced things, mostly when I was young and pretty. Nobody comes on to me [now],’ she told The New York Times. ‘But back in the day, when everybody was doing cocaine, there was a lot of behaviour that was inexcusable. But now that people are older, and more sober, there has to be forgiveness, and that’s the way I feel about it. I was really beaten up, but I don’t want to ruin somebody’s mature life. I just don’t.’
This extraordinary statement doesn’t bear thinking about. The cocaine was illegal, but the sex wasn’t. What ‘beaten up’ means in the context is unimaginable.
Perhaps Streep will be subpoenaed one day and made to explain herself, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. No one has accused Weinstein of doing cocaine and as Streep has said he was ‘a champion of really great work’.
The original Me Too movement was set up nearly ten years ago by black activist Tarana Burke to address the problem of sexual abuse among black female blue collar workers. As such, it was massively ignored by white feminist activists until, in October last year, actress Alyssa Milano sent out a tweet inviting women protesting against sexual harassment to post #metoo as a status update.
When Time Magazine put Me Too on the cover as person of the year, Tarana Burke was not included on that cover.
‘If a teaching assistant only a year or two ahead of you puts a hand on your knee, you’d be a fool to spend the weekend weeping’