A Bernie-turned-Hillary-supporting friend on Facebook, over “Women accuse Morgan Freeman of inappropriate behavior, harassment” (CNN):
Sigh. The good news is that these people are being outed for their abhorrent behavior. Harvey Weinstein has been arrested and charged with rape. The bad news is that we will now be waking up to years of ‘you know that guy who you used to respect, even admire? Turns out he’s another harassing asshole’ 🙁 The unbearably horrific news is that they’ve already harassed so many women out of jobs, careers, sometimes even life itself. Let’s make sure we use this moment to teach our sons to behave.
Part of my campaign to be defriended by everyone:
Me: you’re expecting your sons, once they are old enough to receive Medicare benefits, to have the same access to attractive young women that Harvey Weinstein and Morgan Freeman had?”
Him: harassment can be inflicted by anyone on anyone, be they old, young, ugly, pretty, rich, poor, powerful or powerless. So no, I was not expressing expectations of access, but rather aspirations for behavior
Me: most people don’t have the opportunity to behave the way that Roman Emperors, billionaires, and movie stars are reported to have behaved.
Him: True, but harm is done even at much lower levels of misbehavior than that…
Me: why not use an example from an ordinary person? If you are trying to teach basic manners do you cite infamous mass murderers as examples of people who fail to follow Emily Post?
Him: the famous person made himself into an example, I did not choose him … It’s exactly this behavior of publicly narrowing the scope of a woman’s value to her sexual attractiveness that is the problem in his case, and ALL heterosexual men are capable of such behavior. What needs to be taught to our sons is that it is not acceptable to carry on this way, no matter what your station in life. A famous person being taken down for behaving this way is a perfect teaching moment, because it gets people’s attention.
Me: why wouldn’t people instead learn from the Morgan Freeman example that women do not object to the behavior you decry when it is coming from someone who is middle aged, rich, and famous? But the same behavior becomes unwelcome from a man in his 15th year of Medicare? … See “20 women slept with me to get promotion” (The Sun) for example. The 31-year-old supermarket manager engages in behavior that presumably wouldn’t have worked for a differently situated man (e.g., older or no longer a manager).
Readers: Let’s assume that Morgan Freeman hasn’t changed his behavior all that much over the last 20-30 years. Suddenly, however, the behavior is publicly condemned. Is that most likely due to a change in our society’s standards of behavior or a difference between the 50-year-old Morgan Freeman’s and the 80-year-old Morgan Freeman’s ability to advance the career of women who interviewed and/or worked with him?
Related:
- The Nurture Assumption, regarding the likely success of a parent molding a son’s personality
- Considering a bold denunciation of Harvey Weinstein (taking the personal risk of attacking a celebrity whose star has faded: “Despite the risk to my career as a helicopter instructor, only slightly reduced by the fact that Mr. Weinstein likely exceeds the 300 lb. per-seat limitation of a Robinson R44, I am now thinking about going on record to express my disapproval of this unemployed guy.”)
Phil,
I’ve read that Mr. Freeman is a prickly personality off-stage (not at all easy-going) and that he’s made his fair share of enemies in Hollywood. I think what we are seeing today is an old, rich man who’s ran outta coins for his Hubris machine.
Secondly, your Emily Post view is 100% spot on.
At age 80, a man no longer has the physical ability to force himself on a younger woman. So Freeman is a harmless old fool. MeToo is just a fad.
“Let’s make sure we use this moment to teach our sons to behave.” Teaching children to behave is generally a good idea. But as for what’s important right now, we should teach daughters to have compassion and mercy towards boys and men. That seems to me the basic point of this post:
https://www.purplemotes.net/2018/05/27/hildebert-mary-of-egypt/
I was under the impression Ms Cristina Garcia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristina_Garcia_(politician)) falsifies the position that only sons need to be taught how to behave. My bet is also, unless your friend’ sons are dumb as bricks, they will naturally see the hypocrisy of complaining about some behaviours and not others, and, like most kids, do exactly the opposite of what is desired.
Note 1: in all the above I assume that the posterior probability people that people will always identify with their genital gender is asymptotic to 1
Note 2: assuming that sons need to be taught not to cause trouble to some third party but daughters need not, is equivalent to the internalisation of misogynistic stereotypes that describe women as ‘harmless’.
Federico: The official news actually does say that women in general are superior to men. See https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/06/obama-women-superior-men-washing-up-driving-patriarchy for example. (The article cites a Nobel laureate as one authority.)
Wikipedia says “On May 17, 2018, the California Assembly Rules Committee cleared Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia of allegations that she had groped a male member of another legislator’s staff in 2014. A spokesperson for Garcia said she planned to return to work the following Monday, ending a self-imposed unpaid leave of absence. In a letter to attorney Dan Gilleon, investigators for an outside law firm hired by the rules committee found that Garcia “commonly and pervasively” used vulgar language around staff, had used staff to perform personal services, and had disparaged other elected officials”
So women don’t want men at work, and they will not want men in the kitchen, or even taking care of the kids,
Look I’m fine with this brave new world, we can’t all be Simon Pegg, as long as the women are willing to pay the dole, I’m happy being Nick Frost.
They want it all, they can have it.
Phil, is the California Assembly Rules Committee some sort of real tribunal or just a bunch of folks going to bat for their friends?
Federico: Let’s hope that this honorable assembly does not disregard personal loyalty!
Apropos of auto da fe, societies periodically engage in ritual cleansing in order to try to purify themselves & that is what is happening here. In retrospect these cleansings seem barbaric and bizarre — so the Spanish inquisition, Salem Witch trials, the Nazi, Polish and Ukrainian attempted extermination of the Jews, the phony child molestation cases from several decades ago, little rascals day care and so on, with the testimony of the brave little victims aided by quack mental health experts recovering repressed memories of events that could not possibly have happened. This idea is brilliantly explained by Yuri Slezkine in the House of Government, in particular the second chapter. His thesis is that Boshevism was in large part a religious movement. Jordan Peterson argues that these periodic episodes of cruelty in human history are not aberrations but part of what it means to be human.
David E.:
The tale of Saint Mary of Egypt is a wild one. The translations (ca. 2004 AD) of the Spanish chronicles (ca. 1350 AD) of her life are clearly written. The language of Purple Motes’ blogger, adopting the tortured jargon of the contemporary academy (ca. 2018 AD), is obtuse.