Acclaimed violinist says she was sexually assaulted by her renowned teacher at the Curtis Institute

[A432]

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that the world is an elaborate multiple choice test. No matter what it is you're looking for, it's there in the world for you to find. And since you get to create your own definitions (in your case, of what "sexual harassment" is, and entails), the opportunities you have to find it, (and the examples of it you can cite), are virtually limitless.

Comparing your experience with mine, it seems, from reading what you wrote, that you've developed quite a case of tunnel vision where that's concerned, or what seems (on this end) to be an abnormal sensitivity to it (bordering on an obsession). But that's just my subjective assessment of your subjective assessment, which gets us nowhere. To get past that, we need some objective standard to evaluate our convictions.

Fortunately, there is one, and "convictions" provide it.

Way back when, slaves had no recourse to the legal system via the slight-of-hand concept, "civil death."  I.e., slaves (and, importantly, children) had no standing to sue because they had no legal standing at all. They were not legally persons ; they were chattel property, with no more intrinsic right to complain about or influence the way they were treated than a tool had over what it was used to do, or a horse had over whether it pulled a carriage or a plough. (Another significant note : the first convictions for child abuse were obtained via stretching the statutes governing "cruelty to animals").

The rubber meets the road in the prison system. Where, because they have lost their autonomy, convicted felons are, in legal fiction, incapable of consent. In consequence, any sexual contact between prison staff and inmates falls under the heading, "Institutional Sexual Assault." (That all such contact, or even much of it would ever be regarded as "assault" by a jury in its right mind is neatly sidestepped by the terminology imposed by the conviction system). (Similarly, consentual sex between a 21-year-old and one seventeen years, 364 days old can be, and probably has been, prosecuted as "statutory rape"). (The first order of business is always establishing control of the language. Repeat the word RAPE often enough in a trial, and you can send Santa Claus up the river with a life sentence).

Still with me ?  As it turns out, legal prosecution of Institutional Sexual Assault has been mandatory for some time now -- no more face-saving wiggle room for quiet resignations (The prison system hates bad publicity. That's, similarly, why inmates almost never die in prison. It's always in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, or at the hospital itself).

Fortunately, the U. S. Bureau of Justice compiles statistics on nearly every imaginable crime, nation-wide, and breaks these down by categories (age, sex, race, etc.), allowing anyone with the patience to wade through the stats a well-focused, fine-grained look at what's going on (as determined by the legal system).

When you look at Institutional Sexual Assault convictions, what picture do you think the numbers paint ?  A bunch of nasty men supervising female inmates and, by exploiting the inbalance of power intrinsic to that dyad, having their brutish ways with them. Right ?  Because men are the problem (my takeaway from your posting). That's the picture that television and the tabloids always paint, so it must be true. Right ?

Even though female COs and other staff are a tiny minority of prison employees overall, a  nearly precise two-thirds of all convictions (65% the last time I checked, several years go) are of female staff convicted (and sentenced) for having sexual relations (not just holding hands) with male inmates.

Not a misprint.

Kind of looks like it really is a power dynamic (poor choice of words) affair, doesn't it ? Force prisons housing men to hire female staff (against -- off camera -- their better judgement), and you create a situation where, due to sexual starvation, you turn a woman no one would look twice at into a goddess. AND give her the upper hand to gratify her baser desires.

From considering this I conclude that sexual aggression isn't, at root, the men-being-men problem it looks like to you : put women in positions of power over men, and the mask slips off.

Walt Kelly was right.

Same syndrome you see with rock stars, sports stars, business magnates &c. People with clout tend to gratify their desires because they can.

 

 

[vathek]

On 8/7/2019 at 9:55 AM, AtlVcl said:

Thanks for helping me make my point. Unlike a lot of other countries, we subscribe to "innocent until proven guilty." If you live by your own rules, you're welcome to it, as long as you cop to it.

If you are referring to the USA innocent until proven guilty has gone out the window, especially when applied to the immigrant crisis here. And guilty when you are guilty means nothing happens re: powerful white men.

[Blank face]

On 8/8/2019 at 10:57 PM, A432 said:

create a situation where, due to sexual starvation, you turn a woman no one would look twice at into a goddess

The last time you told us that "tarted up wifes bring more fun", to set this into the right perspective. It's embarassing.

Thank you George for bringing this up, though such discussions are going the usual way. We shouldn't mind.

[martin swan]

On 8/8/2019 at 4:14 AM, A432 said:

 

One metatrend over the last hundred years has been that Western culture in general (and American culture specifically) is increasingly (seemingly,  incorrigibly) utopian. And like any other form of make-believe, this collective recreation depends on the willing suspension of disbelief. Men are going to stop being, you know, so male. And their female counterparties are going to stop being in several places at once (one of which, and from early childhood, greatly enjoys and seeks to provoke attention and appreciative responses from men while feigning innocence of any such intent). But higher status alpha males are not  going to stop being sexually attractive to the female sex (at all ages), and women, sexually magnetic themselves, are not going to stop scheming ways to affiliate with them. Therein lies the rub.

 

I also find this pretty cringe-worthy ...

There is a world of difference between feeling an impulse to do something hurtful or damaging to others and actually doing it. The space between the two is called civilisation.

Also, how would you distinguish between a) what you describe as young girls mincing around provocatively and pretending they are innocent of their allure and b) young girls being objects of desire but being innocent of the fact? It seems to me the two would manifest identically.

It is a peculiarly male myth that women are "sexually" attracted to alpha males ... maybe alpha males are more successful at getting laid because they are more coercive, or maybe the woman sometimes puts up with arrogance and deep inner and outer ugliness for pragmatic reasons.

[Blank face]

27 minutes ago, martin swan said:

It is a peculiarly male myth that women are "sexually" attracted to alpha males ...

There was this bloke expressing this more directly "If you're famous you can ***  'em". Don't recall what happened to him...

[A432]

The last time you told us that "tarted up wifes bring more fun", to set this into the right perspective. It's embarassing.

I said nothing of the sort, Blank. What's embarrassing is your ongoing inability to comprehend what you read whenever your bile rises.

[A432]

It is a peculiarly male myth that women are "sexually" attracted to alpha males ..

It's nothing of the sort, Martin.

There is no need to reduce an existential fact to an abstract question and play Philosophy with it when one can simply, in this case, observe the high proportion of stunningly beautiful women in the visiting room queue at any prison or jail ("gaol" if you like).

Or hovering around sports stars, popular music stars, movie stars and the rich & powerful in general. Or, for that matter, their wives and fiancees.

[Blank face]

8 hours ago, A432 said:

 

 

I said nothing of the sort, Blank. What's embarrassing is your ongoing inability to comprehend what you read whenever your bile rises.

Your ongoing speech is to reduce women to objects of male obsessions and judgements, about "beauty" and " attractiveness/unattractiveness" ("no man would look twice at", what's an unbelieveable sexistic point of view) and directly leading to excusing crimes by "nature", followed by victim blaming, slut shaming, body shaming - just the usual strategy we are watching each time when it's about these themes.

[A432]

Quote

Also, how would you distinguish between a) what you describe as young girls mincing around provocatively and pretending they are innocent of their allure and b) young girls being objects of desire but being innocent of the fact? It seems to me the two would manifest identically.

They could, Mr. Swann. And if they didn't take such obsessive care with what they look like before appearing in public your case would be stronger.

(I'm not saying they're all tarts ; I am saying they live in the realm of others' attention -- a realm which includes sexual allure as one component).

One way I learn, FWIW, is from people positioned to understand what I don't. In this case, an illustrative anecdote.

While on a freelance engagement as the fiddler in the pit in a dinner theatre production of "Fiddler on the Roof" one summer, I was out on the sidewalk having a smoke with the kitchen supervisor, a hard-looking but friendly woman of about 60 or so. A bevy of adolescent girls walked past us, dressed (it was a very hot day) in as little as possible.

Realizing that she'd noticed me following them with my eyes just a little too long, I remarked, "I like summer !"

Her reply : "Don't fool yourself. They do too."

It really is a two-handed game, Martin. Always has been. Pretending otherwise doesn't help you understand anything about it. Ignore what the fanatical ideologues say, and just watch what people do. It's self-explanatory.

[martin swan]

1 hour ago, A432 said:

 

 

Or hovering around sports stars, popular music stars, movie stars and the rich & powerful in general. Or, for that matter, their wives and fiancees.

You don't think males hover around these people too? Is that also sexual attraction?

[martin swan]

7 minutes ago, A432 said:

They could, Mr. Swann. And if they didn't take such obsessive care with what they look like before appearing in public your case would be stronger.

(I'm not saying they're all tarts ; I am saying they live in the realm of others' attention -- a realm which includes sexual allure as one component).

One way I learn, FWIW, is from people positioned to understand what I don't. In this case, an illustrative anecdote.

While on a freelance engagement as the fiddler in the pit in a dinner theatre production of "Fiddler on the Roof" one summer, I was out on the sidewalk having a smoke with the kitchen supervisor, a hard-looking but friendly woman of about 60 or so. A bevy of adolescent girls walked past us, dressed (it was a very hot day) in as little as possible.

Realizing that she'd noticed me following them with my eyes just a little too long, I remarked, "I like summer !"

Her reply : "Don't fool yourself. They do too."

It really is a two-handed game, Martin. Always has been. Pretending otherwise doesn't help you understand anything about it. Ignore what the fanatical ideologues say, and just watch what people do. It's self-explanatory.

I hear the sound of knuckles scraping along the pavement ...

[Rue]

As an aside, I've taken classes on animal behaviour: 

Studies show men respond more strongly to visuals - they are more likely to settle on a (or a series of) trophy wife.

Women are less likely to respond only to visuals. They will respond more to power/money.

Overall though, we tend to select mates within our own "innate"sense of attraction. Extremely attractive people pair up, average looking people (80% of us) pair up and less attractive people pair up.

[A432]

The sexual ballet is as old as mankind, Martin. And imagining that people today are somehow different from ancestral forms (Darwin's brutish "Cave Man," incidentally, has long been shown to be a complete fiction invented to make modern man seem like an improvement over previous versions) is without foundation in fact.

What IS different about today is the pervasive influence of the pathology of thought Orwell delineated as "Doublethink."  Becoming thoroughly familiar with it would eliminate most of the dysfunctional bullshit we're wrestling with at one stroke by exposing it for the idiocy it is.

Orwell: "To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink."

 

[AtlVcl]

2 hours ago, Rue said:

Studies show men respond more strongly to visuals - they are more likely to settle on a (or a series of) trophy wife.

Women are less likely to respond only to visuals. They will respond more to power/money.

 

Stop the presses...

[Violadamore]

Guys, this really isn't a good place for this deep a discussion of gender politics....... 

[Rue]

1 hour ago, AtlVcl said:

Stop the presses...

You have a better intro?

[Rue]

1 hour ago, Violadamore said:

Guys, this really isn't a good place for this deep a discussion of gender politics....... 

Very true...but sometimes it's like reaching for that big piece of pie...you know you shouldn't,  but the temptation is just too strong.

[Eloffe]

10 hours ago, martin swan said:

The space between the two is called civilisation.

brilliant ............thank you

[Ganymede Piggot]

8 hours ago, martin swan said:

You don't think males hover around these people too? Is that also sexual attraction?

I would have until I realized Courtney Love probably smells like a rotting skunk.  You aren't virtue signaling are you?  You can't pick up girls on here.

[Blank face]

It's an easy approach to do virtue signaling at Maestronet when the actual discussion, like so many others, is lightyears away from general accepted social standards and insights.

[martin swan]

1 hour ago, Bill Merkel said:

I would have until I realized Courtney Love probably smells like a rotting skunk.  You aren't virtue signaling are you?  You can't pick up girls on here.

Just to remind the cavemen here that you are trying to persuade us that "boys will be boys" in the context of an alleged rape of a minor ...

 

[martin swan]

11 hours ago, A432 said:

 

There is no need to reduce an existential fact to an abstract question and play Philosophy with it when one can simply, in this case, observe the high proportion of stunningly beautiful women in the visiting room queue at any prison or jail ("gaol" if you like).

 

Maybe you are just indiscriminate 

Your "proof" requires me to go and sit in a prison visiting room queue and agree that there's a high proportion of stunningly beautiful women.

I prefer to think about the issues in the abstract - what you call "playing Philosophy".

[Blank face]

51 minutes ago, martin swan said:

Your "proof" requires me to go and sit in a prison visiting room queue and agree that there's a high proportion of stunningly beautiful women

Just replace "beautiful" with "tarted up to certain men's delight" and you'll get the philosophy.

Another thought experiment might be to imagine the feelings of persons (and there aren't women or girls only) being abused by "important" men and reading this now. There's a statistically high probability that in every family are more than one. But this would require a degree of empathy which obviously can't be provided here.

[GeorgeH]

“When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time.”
― Maya Angelou

[A432]

Quote

 

If you can't hear me, you certainly won't hear Chuang Tse. But it's worth a try anyhow :

Quote

"Be careful," replied Lao Tan, "not to interfere with the natural goodness of the heart of man. Man's heart may be forced down or stirred up. In each case the issue is fatal. By gentleness, the hardest heart may be softened. But try to cut and polish it, and it will glow like fire or freeze like ice. In the twinkling of an eye it will pass beyond the limits of the Four Seas. In repose, it is profoundly still; in motion, it flies up to the sky. Like an unruly horse, it cannot be held in check. Such is the human heart."

Of old, the Yellow Emperor first interfered with the natural goodness of the heart of man, by means of charity and duty. In consequence, Yao and Shun wore the hair off their legs and the flesh off their arms in endeavoring to feed their people's bodies. They tortured the people's internal economy in order to conform to charity and duty. They exhausted the people's energies to live in accordance with the laws and statutes. Even then they didn't succeed. Thereupon, Yao (had to) confine Huantou on Mount Ts'ung, exile the chiefs of the Three Miaos and their people into the Three Weis, and banish the Minister of Works to Yutu, which shows he had not succeeded. When it came to the times of the Three Kings, the empire was in a state of foment. Among the bad men were Chieh and Cheh; among the good were Tseng and Shih. By and by, the Confucianists and the Motseanists arose; and then came confusion between joy and anger, fraud between the simple and the cunning, recrimination between the virtuous and the evil-minded, slander between the honest and the liars, and the world order collapsed.

When the great virtue lost its unity, men's lives were frustrated. When there was a general rush for knowledge, the people's desires ever went beyond their possessions. The next thing was then to invent axes and saws, to kill by laws and statutes, to disfigure by chisels and awls. The empire seethed with discontent, the blame for which rests on those who would interfere with the natural goodness of the heart of man.

In consequence, virtuous men sought refuge in mountain caves, while rulers of great states sat trembling in their ancestral halls. Then, when dead men lay about pillowed on each other's corpses, when cangued prisoners jostled each other in crowds and condemned criminals were seen everywhere, then the Confucianists and the Motseanists bustled about and rolled up their sleeves in the midst of gyves and fetters! Alas, they know not shame, nor what it is to blush!