bats

She does say "Eight other buxom blondes" including herself in the description. There's a huge difference between noticing/admiring a woman's breasts and ogling them. In saying " she's not shy" and so on you are saying that by showing her body she has no justification in objecting to men leering at her? So was she asking to be leered at? Is that what you're saying?

BristolUK

Yes there is. But that was her interpretation of the way he looked. Someone else might have noted the way the writer looked at the other guests hair and cleavages and may have decided she ogled them too.
Surrounded by 8 women with cleavages I dare say I'd find it difficult not to look too and that would probably be interpreted as ogling. Probably fairly.
Not at all. You could say that she's made a career of trading on her looks and it would be somewhat hypocritical to complain of someone looking. But I think her kiss and tell book says more about her.

But my main complaint until now and mentioned in earlier posts is how the guardian is publishing any old rubbish and putting it all at the same level as the Weinstein stuff. And this particular example has exceeded that.

I happened to copy the deleted comment after the article into an email before they deleted it.
A couple of other comments sum it up well enough.
On a slightly different note but more of "the same" did you see MP Kerry McCarthy's complaints about unwanted attention from another MP?

He wrote her a note saying she was attractive. Years later he wrote her another note saying she was still attractive and they should "catch up". Because there had been many years between contact.

Twelve years between notes constitutes unwanted attention? Why did she keep the notes? He was never in a position to offer her anything. She was the one holding shadow minister office!!

bats

Er why did he mention her looks in a supposedly professional letter?

All these examples are examples of men ogling and treating women as sexual prey. They are valid examples of how male dominated culture works.

Again, trading on your looks does not mean that you have to put up with leering stares. To paraphrase, She was not asking for this. Does a woman wearing a low cut dress mean that you can stare,leer, and comment? No it does not.

Once again I'm going to drop out of this male dominated thread.

BristolUK

Well there's the thing you see. You are assuming it was a professionally written letter. It wasn't.

It was a short note written about catching up after 12 years.

She was not asking for what? She went to the dinner in her capacity as a model at the suggestion of her agent. This doesn't mean she has to put up with something that didn't happen. That's the point.

Did you see the photograph she posed for with him. What happened to her at the dinner? It's only now, having been accused of something else at another time(s) that she's thinking back to the dinner.

This is not victim blaming. She's not been a victim. Yet it's put across as "Oh look, yet another one"

As Julia Hartley-Brewer said a few days ago,

bats

No a leer isn't the same as rape. But the actions are all about power and lack of respect for women.

Siouxie

I've been known to oggle the odd male nicely packaged bum or bod before.. does that mean I have no respect for men?.

Jingsamichty

For those of us who didn't meet our partners on the internet, surely many of us got together due to one of us making an advance?

I first kissed my now-wife in a calculated gesture that was going to end up only in one of two ways - either reciprocation or a slap around the chops. We must be very careful about defining every uninvited advance as harrasment.

dbd33

Even if you do meet on the internet someone still has to make a move to go beyond two people with some common interests having a beer together. It's no different than meeting someone in the pub or in socially balanced non-hierarchical, equal opportunity, work related facility such as a gym or smoking room. (Assuming "internet" to mean sites less focused than, say, Tinder or fetlife).

Jingsamichty

Yes, I did mean dedicated internet dating sites where it's clear that one's intentions are to meet and couple with someone. But it's true what you suggest, that internet sites where such intentions aren't implicit - say BE for example - someone has to be the predator and some poor Irish lady the predatee...

BristolUK

The MPs were 50 and 30 when they first met and 70/50 later after maybe half a dozen meetings/notes. A handful of examples of contact over 20 years. Two notes 12 years apart. This doesn't sound like stalking. Could she not just nip it in the bud, say "sorry old boy, not interested" rather than keep the notes?

So he's around 70 when he has the nice dream. Rumpy pumpy or picnic on the cliffs at Dover?

Remember too that she was the one with the position and power.


Is anyone disagreeing with that?

Look, I said this several days ago. No matter what the offence is - be it rape, coercion, lies, flirting, unwanted attention....all words used by the female accusers...the media has put it all up together, in equal prominence.

To the point that last week there were a dozen people listed in a single report as if all guilty of comparable stuff but with very little details. One of them is now dead, quite possibly because he has been shamed on a very high level, a far higher level than he apparently did. But there was a lack of distinction between his behaviour and the rapists.

If you want men to take this seriously, repeating the same thing over and over about power and lack of respect (when even the inappropriate word choice or whatever isn't intended to wield power or show lack of respect) won't do it.

bats

So what will convince men to take realise that lascivious behaviour is wrong? Looking, admiring, commenting to your friend isn't wrong, yelling across the room is, leering and staring is wrong. Sending creepy letters to someone you work with on the office notepaper is wrong.

BristolUK

Why are you so hung up about the notepaper? Have you never stayed in a hotel and used their notepaper to write something to someone completely unrelated to the hotel? Never used hospital notepaper to scribble something on?

How about not describing “My only reason for asking you out to lunch is because you are attractive, intelligent and charming” and “Much time has passed but I do remember earlier times … and you remain a very attractive woman.” as creepy. It looks stupid. It's just the harmless scribbling of an older guy who enjoyed female company. There's nothing sinister, nothing threatening, nothing asked, nothing offered. It's all just silly and been blown up as if he was stalking her.

dave_j

Well the thread has well and truly left Weinstein hasn't it and entered the quagmire that constitutes normal human interaction.

Like it or not it's sex that makes the world go around and how we get it together in the normal spectrum of behaviour begins with a mutual attraction and it's difficult to see how this can happen without a visual appreciation of any potential partner. Now this doesn't mean that anyone has a licence to grope, pressure or attack but an interest and attraction must surely be acceptable and in most cases should be considered flattering.

I accept that this can sometimes be taken to an extreme that flips from being inviting to being insulting but surely this is all part of human behaviour.. and it's not always the men that threaten. I remember as a young engineer being warned off visiting a certain factory staffed predominantly by female welders who ate male visitors for breakfast. I also remember a fellow male sandwich student who was habitually late for work because his landlady had a voracious appetite, although he didn't leave his digs so probably wasn't that insulted by the attention he received.

Some cultures find it more difficult to deal with sexual attraction than others and the burka is an extreme manifestation of this and reeks of phobia whereas some native cultures allow a more relaxed approach to makedness. The western approach encompasses and accepts a fuil spectrum of behaviour and inevitably those at one end abhor the activities at the other and of course those in the middle despair of both.

I think we should lighten up and if we attract attention then accept it for the compliment that it is and it it's over the top and insulting then let them know.

Men will always be attracted by women and vice versa, we can't fight millions of years of evolution and if you have a problem with this then take it up with Darwin... or god if that's your thing.

Shard

Yes, quite right, sex is an integral part of human nature, and too many these days are trying to neutralise any kind of sexual frisson. I don't think Brazilians or Spanish are nearly as hung up on this as we are. It's becoming a new prudishness. If women choose to dress in a revealing or enticing way, it's natural that males (and indeed other women) will have a reaction. Obviously, such reactions should not lead to predation or assault, but it's a bit weird if someone dresses for a certain effect, and everyone has to pretend that they don't notice.

BristolUK

No.

Much of what has been discussed is part of the same issue, just on different levels and often not even intended in that way, but still treated as just as bad.