Category: sexism

Slate’s sexism on the SAG awards

December 23, 2017 • 11:30 am

There’s no doubt that the call-out of sexual harassment in Hollywood and elsewhere has been salubrious, and a warning to men to lay off the assault, gender-based persecution, and predation. Sadly, in a new piece on the upcoming Screen Actors Guild Awards, Slate hasn’t learned where the line should be drawn. Herewith is the text of Rachel Withers‘s new article “The 2018 SAG Awards will be presented by an all-female lineup, because women are awesome.” Emphasis is mine.

The Hollywood Reporter revealed on Wednesday that the 2018 Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony will be presented by women, women, and more women, as a mark of what womenfolk have been through this year and since the dawn of time.

Like many award ceremonies, the SAG Awards usually pairs a man and a women to announce each winner—but this year, only women will have that honor. The lineup is yet to be announced, but the ceremony, which has never before had an emcee, will be hosted by Kristen Bell. The nominations were also announced by women, with Olivia Munn and Niecy Nash revealing the nominees Wednesday morning alongside SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris, awards committee chair JoBeth Williams, and awards committee member Elizabeth McLaughlin.

Kathy Connell, the SAG Awards executive producer, told the Hollywood Reporterthat the decision was in recognition of the idea that 2017 belonged to women. “Beginning with the Women’s March in January, it’s been the year of the woman,” she said. “This is a unifying salute to women who have been very brave and speaking up.”

Men will still be allowed on the stage sometimes, like when they win an award, but with female-heavy ensemble casts nominated for Lady Bird, The Handmaid’s Tale, GLOW, and Orange Is the New Black, hopefully we won’t have to see more than a dozen suits on stage for the evening.

Connell insisted this was not about punishing men for their behavior (even though they definitely deserve it). “We don’t want to slight the men who have given great performances this year,” Connell added. “Knowing our membership, I’m sure our men will embrace the opportunity to honor women.”

Since when did Slate become Salon? As for the bits in bold, I can conclude only that all men, and not just those accused of assault, are being demonized.  (“Hopefully we won’t have to see more than a dozen suits on stage”, etc.) If that’s not sexism, what is it?

Democratic Senators call on Al Franken to resign (and a poll)

December 6, 2017 • 1:45 pm

According to many sources, including the New York Times, a sixth woman has come forward to accuse Al Franken of sexual harassment.  Deciding that they’ve had enough, several Democrats in the Senate, including ten women and seven men, have issued statements calling for Franken to resign his seat (the women are Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Patty Murray of Washington, Kamala Harris of California, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire; the men are Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, also called for Franken to resign.

The details of the accusation, from Politico, are these:

A former Democratic congressional aide said Al Franken tried to forcibly kiss her after a taping of his radio show in 2006, three years before he became a U.S. senator.

The aide, whose name POLITICO is withholding to protect her identity, said Franken (D-Minn.) pursued her after her boss had left the studio. She said she was gathering her belongings to follow her boss out of the room. When she turned around, Franken was in her face.

The former staffer ducked to avoid Franken’s lips. As she hastily left the room, she said, Franken told her: “It’s my right as an entertainer.”

“He was between me and the door and he was coming at me to kiss me. It was very quick and I think my brain had to work really hard to be like ‘Wait, what is happening?’ But I knew whatever was happening was not right and I ducked,” the aide said in an interview. “I was really startled by it and I just sort of booked it towards the door and he said, ‘It’s my right as an entertainer.’”

Franken categorically denies that this happened:

“This allegation is categorically not true and the idea that I would claim this as my right as an entertainer is preposterous. I look forward to fully cooperating with the ongoing ethics committee investigation,” Franken said in a statement to POLITICO.

There appears to be some corroboration, though it’s not clearly “independent”:

Two former colleagues of the woman independently corroborated her version of events, including Franken telling her he had the right to try to kiss her because he was “an entertainer.” The first former colleague interviewed by POLITICO said she was told of the incident in 2006, shortly after it happened. The second former co-worker said she was made aware of the encounter sometime in 2009 or 2010.

Although these aren’t truly independent witnesses, they were informed of the accusation years ago, increasing the probability that it really happened. This last accusation, though the accuser is anonymous, was enough to finally get the Democrats to call for Franken’s resignation. I’m guessing he won’t be around much longer.

I’m taking a poll here, so please answer, and add any comments below:

 

 

Candidate tells voters to cast their ballot for people without a penis

November 30, 2017 • 9:15 am

It was inevitable. What with powerful men from Harvey Weinstein to Al Franken to Matt Lauer being accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault, someone was going to advocate discrimination against men in general. As a solution to the harassment problem, I jokingly told a friend yesterday, “They should just fire all men.”

Well, this trope has become serious. Here’s an ad by Dana Nessel, a Democrat running for Attorney General of Michigan. As you’ll see, she says that people should vote for her because she has the right kind of genitalia.  “Who can you trust most not to show you their penis in a professional setting?” While she alludes to her other achievements, her main argument here is that, as a woman, she’s not going to harass her staff or tolerate sexual harassment. Her final argument: “Yes, I’m a woman; that’s not a liability. That’s an asset!”. In other words, being a male is a liability. You shouldn’t vote for male candidates because they have a strike against them at the outset.

This ad irritates me, perhaps because it touts sex as the main reason one should vote for a woman. What about her accomplishments or qualifications. She’s riding on the coattails of the many sexual harassment/assault accusations pervading the media, but it seems manipulative. After all, I suspect that most male politicians aren’t guilty of that. Of course we need more women in elected office, but not simply because they are women, but because many are more highly qualified than their opponents but face discrimination that works against them. We don’t need them in office because we can be guaranteed that they won’t show us their penises.

I’d still vote for her, though, as she’s the Democratic candidate.

Jake Tapper versus Emily Lindin: Should we worry about men falsely accused of sexual misconduct?

November 25, 2017 • 1:15 pm

AJC News, an Atlanta, Georgia news site, reports on a kerfuffle that occurred when Emily Lindin, an author and columnist for Teen Vogue, emitted a series of tweets this week asserting that she couldn’t be bothered about men damaged by false accusations about sexual harassment and assault since the benefit of making allegations public clearly overrides any damage from false allegations.

Of course there’s a benefit to making these allegations public, as it’s a good way to end sexual predation on women and, in the present situation, has prompted a lot of women to come forth saying they were damaged by men who practiced sexual harassment or assault. In the case of Harvey Weinstein, for example, I have little doubt that he’s guilty of gross sexual misconduct and perhaps rape (I don’t want to say he’s definitely guilty of a crime as that’s for the courts to determine). The issue is whether all allegations are to be believed, that those accused are certainly guilty, and if some innocent men are collateral damage, well, the ends justify the means.

This is in opposition to the generally approved view that it’s better to let several guilty people walk free than convict someone who’s innocent. (That’s one reason why the presumption in court is innocence.)

Now this situation isn’t quite the same as that, for many men accused of sexual misconduct aren’t “walking free” since their reputations are ruined, they’ve been fired, will be apostates forever, and their legal guilt will be determined by the courts. What Lindin is talking about isn’t really legal guilt, but guilt in the court of public opinion. And even here, I maintain, one has to have sufficient evidence beyond mere allegations before agitating to get someone fired or declaring that they’re guilty. (Multiple coincident accusations, as in the case of Weinstein, are of course a form of evidence.)

Jake Tapper, chief Washington correspondent for CNN, responded with an apposite tweet mentioning a fictional tale we know well, about a man falsely accused of rape (in that case, of course, it was a legal issue and the man was convicted in court):

Tapper responded again, saying Lindin’s tweet was “immoral”. A woman named Emma Erbach then accused Jake of not standing up for women:

. . .  and Tapper argues for his credibility:

I’m not sure which article Tapper’s referring to, but it may be this one from the Washington City Paper in which he says he went out on a date with Lewinsky, things didn’t work out, but then he stands up for her as a victim of the media, Clinton, and public opinion. You may argue that the fact that he dated Lewinsky may detract from his objectivity, but then again their short relationship never went anywhere.

Overall, I tend to take Tapper’s side on the morality issue. Nobody should defend the real sexual predators and harassers, but we need to remember that we need evidence, that an accusation is not tantamount to a conviction, and that we have to be careful about throwing out such accusations. I tend to believe nearly all the women who have made these accusations, but again, sometimes the evidence is thin, as in the case of Neil deGrasse Tyson (yes, he too was accused of rape). And there are well known accusations of rape that nearly everyone believed, like those against the Duke Lacrosse team and the fraternity at the University of Virginia—cases that fell apart under inspection.

The lesson is that whatever our ideological leanings, we shouldn’t participate in ruining the lives of others unless and until we have credible evidence. Tapper is bucking a Left-wing trend, and I have to admire him for that.

(Note: AJC.com reports that Lindin locked down her Twitter account, but it looks open to me now, and she may have reinstated it. The tweets above are taken directly from her site.)

Day 3: HuffPo ignores story of its own sexual harassment

November 17, 2017 • 12:00 pm

Once again, HuffPo, while calling out all kinds of sexual harassment and assault on its sexual harassment page, ignores Tuesday’s Gizmodo story that Arianna Huffington ignored such harassment at her own venue, transferring a harasser to India. If you want to hold their feet to the fire, just ask them about the Gizmodo story on some of their posts on sexual harassment, and then wait to see if your comment is removed.

I made one yesterday, but haven’t checked if they removed it.  They’re instantiating the cry of the Regressive Leftist: “It’s okay when we behave this way!”

HuffPo still won’t report on its own organization’s covering up of sexual harassment

November 16, 2017 • 1:00 pm

Senator Al Franken is the latest person to be accused of groping (there’s even a photo), but HuffPo, which reported on that, still won’t report that its own organization, under Arianna, covered up sexual harassment by transferring the harasser to a new post in India. (They even have a sexual harassment page.)

As I predicted, they’ll call out anybody but themselves.  Let’s see what they do if I ask them in a comment on the Franken post. Ten to one they’ll delete it.  Here it is; check back at the Franken link  (click on the “dialogue bubble” icon to the left) to see if they deleted it:

Irony of the year: sexual misconduct ignored at HuffPo, harasser simply transferred to India by Arianna

November 15, 2017 • 10:00 am

This report is all over the place, including, of course, right-wing sites, but I think it was first broken by Gizmodo in the following piece (click on screenshot to see the piece). One place it hasn’t been reported (as of this morning) is of course HuffPo itself, which lately is devoting half its space to accusations of sexual harassment and assault in other places. I’m wondering whether they’ll check out the beam in their own eye.

I can’t say that this causes me Schadenfreude, as it’s not pleasurable to hear about sexual misconduct and those who ignore it, but it does seem ironic, and if HuffPo doesn’t report it, they’ll be big-time hypocrites.

Remember that HuffPo was sold to AOL in 2011, but Arianna remained as editor-in-chief of the HuffPo media group until last year. The conduct reported took place when she was still in charge.


After briefly recounting Arianna’s crusade against sexism at Uber, reporter Ehrenkranz reports that one of her “lieutenants”, Jimmy Soni (the managing editor of HuffPo) was suddenly assigned to New Delhi to launch HuffPost India. A Gawker investigation revealed that the Human Resources office of HuffPo got reports that Soni was sexually harassing women employees who were his subordinates.  Instead of being punished (and believe me, HuffPo today would be issuing loud calls for his resignation were he somewhere else), he was simply transferred—much as the Catholic Church transferred sexual-predator priests among parishes to cover up their misdeeds.  Did Arianna know? Gizmodo says, “yes”:

In May of 2014, Huffington sent a laudatory memo to her then staff at the Huffington Post about the promotion of one of her most trusted lieutenants Jimmy Soni, the then-managing editor at the Huffington Post and widely seen as her favorite among the editorial leadership team. Huffington announced to her employees that Soni would be leaving to launch HuffPost India in New Delhi, a surprising move since he had been promoted to managing editor in January 2012 with no direct background in editorial and after serving as Huffington’s chief of staff for just nine months.

. . . Given Huffington’s new role as Uber’s toxic culture clean-up consultant, Gizmodo spoke with nine Huffington Post employees, current and former, who spoke under the condition of anonymity because they continue to work in media and fear retaliation from Huffington. A former employee with direct knowledge of the investigation not only independently confirmed that the investigation was indeed the reason for Soni’s transfer, but that Huffington “100 percent knew” about Soni’s actions before they were reported to HR. Another employee in a senior leadership role at that time also confirmed Huffington’s direct knowledge of Soni’s harassing behavior before she sent out the memo, in which Huffington called it a “dream of Jimmy’s, as both his parents were born and raised there.” Huffington also noted in the memo that it was great for the company that Soni would be the one spearheading such a significant launch.

There are several examples given of the harassment, which is equal in severity and nature (unequal power dynamics) to other cases reported by HuffPo. Here’s one:

Gizmodo has also independently confirmed just what Huffington would likely have known regarding Soni’s reputation in the newsroom and the ensuing allegations against him. Soni selected the individuals for HuffPost’s Editorial Fellows program, and reportedly saw this program as a way to find a romantic partner. According to Gawker, when an editor reportedly pointed out to Soni that the group of fellows was predominantly white, blonde women, Soni reportedly responded in a semi-joking manner, “Yeah, I’m using it to find myself a wife.”

One former staffer said that on one or two occasions while Soni was managing editor, he tried to kiss or make-out with her. She also added that when Soni took over as managing editor, “shit hit the fan,” and that he created a toxic work environment, enforcing unrealistic goals and working everyone tirelessly. “Allies became enemies, enemies became allies. It was a mess.” She described Huffington as someone who may value portraying herself as a feminist, but ultimately prioritizes a ruthless work ethic over issues of sexual harassment, or what she believed Huffington viewed as “the softer side of things.” She added that Huffington “thinks those things can be swept under the rug, but earnings can’t be,” noting that “everything for her is about the optics.” In response to Huffington’s recent Uber tour, she called Huffington “a major hypocrite.”

There are other examples of harassment as well. When Soni’s behavior was reported to Human Resources, their response was to “protect Arianna and the company”. Their way of doing this was simply to transfer Soni, which is no way to guarantee that his behavior would stop, nor give redress to the victims. Imagine what HuffPo would have said had Uber simply sent its own harassers to another city! At any rate, Ehrenkranz’s article ends with this simple note:

Huffington declined to comment on the record and Soni could not be reached for comment.

I will, of course, be watching HuffPo to see if they write about this. Given their history of reporting, they’d better, or they’ll be major hypocrites. But Arianna already is one—for acting like the Vatican towards an accused sexual harasser.

h/t: Orli