I liked this response, and I'd like his version to be true because no one wants more celebrity sex criminals, my far out-of-date experience was also that he had a somewhat sleazier pick-up vibe than the rest of his bandmates, not that that has much to do with any of this.
Is this guy a real celebrity or just a famous-for-Canada celebrity? I never heard of him, but I'm out of touch.
Anyway, just on the face of it, the I'm-a-victim-of-my-bitter-ex defense seems suspect when there are multiple accusers who aren't that ex.
He's mostly famous for Canada, with a little bit of crossover. I know of him mostly because he's Iranian, and we all have to check in with each other.
The piece linked in 1 is excellent--if you credit the accusations all, it doesn't matter what they were doing: the fact that people complain after the fact is evidence that the "consensual" bit wasn't worked out.
Just by way of background, the Star (first article) chose not to run that article and changed their mind after he was fired.
I don't remember being aware of who this guy is until yesterday I encountered on FB or Twitter or somewhere someone who was upset that this guy was being persecuted for his sexual kinks and someone else who was upset that this guy held on to his job for so long despite his widely-known propensity to abuse women. Dueling outrages!
4: Yeah, that. A conspiracy isn't impossible, but it's not facially terribly plausible.
A friend at the other place just posted a Jezebel story pointing out that Amanda Palmer has come out in support of the guy. (Tweeted that "of course" he'd still be taking part in her upcoming show.) Stay classy, AP.
9: Apropos, who wrote, re: Neil Gaiman, that it was all very nice for a fiftyish man to rediscover his sexuality but unnecessary to inflict the experience upon the rest of us?
Was there any public outrage in Canada about accusations against Ghomeshi before the CBC started its investigation? It seems like the heard about the accusations and could have very easily swept them under the rug or ignored them, but decided to investigate on their own, because they think domestic abuse is an important issue.
I thought the guy had a very longstanding reputation as a creep and the CBC took action after they were presented with the findings of the Star's investigation.
Thorn's link in 1 is very good. But better is just dropping in that "well back when I knew him . . ." thing like we wouldn't notice. [In other venues, I would type a smiley face here.]
I didn't KNOW him. I just ran across the band in a hallway outside the college radio studio where I was taking a summer class at age 18. And I got a little of the uh-oh feeling, but that happened whenever guys seemed to be hitting on me to any degree and didn't keep me from sitting around talking with them and some high school nerd campers about why they had OUI Quebec separatist bumper stickers on their guitar cases. And then he dedicated a song to me at the show but couldn't remember my name and it wasn't even a song I liked much.
I don't remember being aware of who this guy is until yesterday I encountered on FB or Twitter or somewhere someone who was upset that this guy was being persecuted for his sexual kinks and someone else who was upset that this guy held on to his job for so long despite his widely-known propensity to abuse women. Dueling outrages!
Ditto.
I'm particularly wigged out by the account from the person who went home with him and started getting beaten as soon as she was in the door. I'm imagining her going in thinking "Yes, I'm going to have sex with a hot celebrity!" and then suddenly just getting hit and choked and wondering if you are going to end up in a shallow grave some place. (shiver)
Oud is probably right in 12. I didn't know which came first, the Star investigation or the CBC one.
A conspiracy isn't impossible, but it's not facially terribly plausible.
I tend to agree with Moby and LB. (And Ogged.)
That consent doesn't seem to be working out so well. The "I thought he meant some hair-pulling and ass-slapping, not punching me in the face" sounds the most plausible to me.
This guy's PR strategy is pretty brilliant -- there is exactly one person out there talking about what a dirty pervert he is (himself!), but now he has a bunch of high-minded defenders who think that people shouldn't be fired for being adventurous in the bedroom.
1 is indeed sensible, but I did get a dark chuckle at the (to uncharitably paraphrase): "after years of investigation, experienced BDSMers have concluded that there's no safe way to choke someone until they are almost unconscious".
Not a good sign if he actually feels some connection to Fifty Shades as opposed to using it as an anchor so people don't have as bad a reaction to hearing about kink. I've been reading this tumblr which goes into the book page by page, Fred Clark-style, and shows compellingly how it's saturated with rape culture and to the extent it introduces BDSM it's practically as an extension of that.
20: Applying pressure to the carotid arteries is fairly safe. Applying it to the windpipe, not so much.
There probably is a really bad interaction between BDSM and being sexually pressuring/approaching rape. A woman who went home with a minor celebrity and felt pressured into doing more sexually than she'd wanted to would, depending on the circumstances, very likely write it off as just a bad experience and not do anything about it, assuming that everything was fairly conventional. The celebrity would still be doing something very wrong, but would very plausibly get away with it and not think of his behavior as wrongful. Once the unwanted sexual behavior is 'getting punched in the face', though, it's probably much more likely to actually lead to trouble for the guy doing it.
Which means, possibly, that there's a sense in which this guy is right that he's getting in trouble for being kinky -- not that he's not doing anything wrong, but the wrong things he's doing are things that it would be easier for a more sexually conventional rapist to get away with. It's just a lot easier in our society to say "I didn't consent to being punched in the face" and be believed than "I didn't consent to sex."
22: There's probably a time limit past which it isn't safe.
It's just a lot easier in our society to say "I didn't consent to being punched in the face" and be believed than "I didn't consent to sex."
Our society is occasionally Bayesian.
Certainly I knew of Moxy Fruvous. I had some friends who were very into them in high school. I didn't know the names of any people in the band, but still to me he counts as moderately famous rather than just famous in Canada.
This guy was in Moxy Fruvous?? All the stuff that's suddenly appearing about him just says he's the host of some radio interview show.
I thought the guy had a very longstanding reputation as a creep
Apparently it's been an open secret in Toronto that the guy in this story was Ghomeshi.
Last year I read a piece (Salon?) written by a woman in the BDSM community saying that consent was a huge problem in the community -- and a willfully ignored and/or downplayed one for reasons more or less like those in the link in 1.
I remember this guy from the band (which was in heavy rotation where I lived in college thanks to the Canadians in the house), and they played a few shows at MIT, and I only noticed a couple of months ago that he had a radio show. I had not particularly heard that he was creepy, but I wouldn't be in a position to know.
The link in 1 seems entirely sensible; his version of the story just doesn't seem to line up with social reality.
29 is somewhat surprising to me since most of the BDSM-y people I know seem to think that they do a much better job with consent than others (and also, re 21, don't think much of Fifty Shades of Grey), but that could easily be rose-colored glasses/based on personal experience/just wrong/whatever.
(Basically this bit from 1, actually: "these acts are widely understood to be things you must do only with the most carefully negotiated consent, with a goodly amount of education and practice, and with the knowledge that they are highly risky.")
It would make sense to me that BDSM people generally would be way, way more conscious and conscientious about consent than people in generally, because it's so much more necessary to be conscious about it when you're getting consent for, e.g., getting punched in the face, but that 'way, way more conscious and conscientious' might still be not nearly universally conscientious enough. IYSWIM.
This discussion tangentially reminds me of something I read when reading about Operation Spanner a few months ago, which is a British judicial willingness to accept consent as a valid defense against assault charges in the case of heterosexual rough sex but not (as in R. v. Brown) when participants are gay men -- including prosecuting the bottoms for aiding and abetting their own assault.
That's absurd. You can't send a man's bottom to jail without the rest of him having to go also.
He's famous in Canada. Not for Moxy Fruvous (popular with a certain sort that may be overrepresented here/at MIT) but for his interview show, Q. That is if you say 'famous' mean that his name would be recognized by people my parents' age, my age and younger. All of the hosts of CBC (radio? radio and tv?) have a popularity that doesn't seem to transfer to NPR hosts in the US. Like Peter Gzowski had Q's time slot for over a decade and he's basically a saint. Rex Murphy, Sheilagh Rogers, George Stromolopous (all spellings approximate) - they're all equally as well known to Canadians as Gomeshi.
I got my back up when I first read the link in 28 because she called him C-list and first of all, Canada doesn't really have enough famous people to have tiers (just Canadian-famous and famous outside Canada). But also who is the A-list of famous Canadians? Avril Lavigne? Chad Krueger? Gord Downy? Celine Dion? Don Cherry? I also don't even know what A-list would mean - recognizable by normal people while they walk around? That they required security? That they lived in compounds so they wouldn't have to meet real people? That they're A-list in the States? Then I realized that wasn't the point of the article and I should just enjoy it for what it was.
The irony of leaving Alanis off that list isn't lost on anyone, Canuck.
Basically I agree with this guy http://www.vulture.com/2014/10/why-canada-is-so-upset-over-the-cbc-sex-scandal.html
You forgot Red Green.
For some reason he doesn't seem Canadian to me? I know, I should be kicked out of the country (once I get back in).
Every single time someone refers to the putatively famous Canadian Don Cherry I think they're talking about the trumpeter.
This has probably been the biggest Twitter discussion about someone I've never heard of before. Beating out the obituaries about that California public TV nature guy last year.
But also who is the A-list of famous Canadians?
Don't you mean the eh-list?
The firing by the CBC came before the story came out in any other news source (timeline: Friday, CBC announces that Jian Gomeshi is taking time off "for personal issues", and his hosting of a literary gala is in question. Sunday, CBC announces that he has been fired. Later that day, Gomeshi posts a long FB post about how he is being targeted by "a vindictive ex and a freelance writer". Reports in the Star emerge the next day.) What is not clear is whether reporters from the Star spoke to the CBC while researching this story, and whether that triggered the firing. In terms of publicly available info, though, the firing by the CBC definitely came first.
The post in 1 is indeed a good analysis (by a friend of mine!), and if you look at other posts on her blog you'll see how she talks about both the issues Lizardbreath and nosflow mention - that BDSM requires a lot of careful thought around consent, and that practitioners (even in more organized events) don't always give consent the time and thought it needs.
Also possibly of interest is this article from the G&M, in which it is pointed out that from a legal perspective, it is impossible (in Canada) to consent to being beaten up.
I read from someone on Twitter that the Star shared its report with the CBC pre-publication "as a courtesy." Dunno.
Canada is widely considered a courteous country.
The link in 45 is very interesting. I do wonder if we'll have more of the story about the CBC worker who spoke to her union rep. That sounds like a less-than-ideal response to her complaint, but could potentially have gotten the ball rolling at CBC too.
I suppose that when you are actually in Canada, nobody assumes that a "Canadian girlfriend" is fictional.
46 - I wouldn't be surprised. The report was clearly basically ready to be published when news of the firing broke.
Surely "assault" (or "bodily harm") in "The Supreme Court has said that a person cannot consent to an assault that causes bodily harm" must be a term of art? I assume people can consent to many things (like piercings, for instance) that prima facie involve bodily harm, even in enlightened doughnut-eating Canada?
I also don't even know what A-list would mean
No problem getting in to Studio 54.
(Let me rephrase: I assume that "assault" is a term of art in Canadian law because it's a term of art in USian law; I just don't really know what the term actually involves in either.)
51: The case snarkout posted about drew on previous findings about when boxing constituted assault regardless of consent.
This is probably the consent/BDSM I read: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/29/real_abuse_in_bdsm/
I am vaguely annoyed at the number of people in various places who have said 'oh, everyone knew that'. No, not true actually. Maybe if I lived in Toronto I would have known? But the women in 28 didn't know.
I know that it's not great to publicly say someone is a creeper. But it seems like it's a cop out to say everyone knew some specific piece of gossip. Like a way to dismiss the victims.
I see the same thing with creeper profs - 'everyone knows' that women shouldn't be alone with so and so. So when a new women has a bad experience with him, well, what do you expect?
I think "everyone knows" shouldn't be used to blame the victims, but it does add a layer of believability to the accusations. I had certainly read rumours that he was creepy on dates, and I don't live in Toronto; then again, if one were asked out by even a minor celebrity, what are the chances that one would put faith in a vague internet rumour? Depends on the person, of course, but still.
Ghomeshi's been something of a known creep in Canadian arts circles for a long time. The full extent of the creepiness was not widely known, though; leastways I never heard any allegation that he outright assaulted women under the guise of BDSM until this story broke.
I can't really tell if the claim is that he assaulted women under the guise of BDSM at the time or if he's now adopting the guise to cover assaults that were not so disguised. Not that that makes much of a difference.
58: this.
A friend asked last night, "Does the CBC even *have* 55 million dollars?"
It is hard to explain the emotional connection to the CBC. The old Tonight Show, in the article above, was a good comparison.
59: It seemed pretty clear that there was some fantasy/hypothetical discussion with most of the women in that story prior to the assault incidents they describe, so I assume that's part of his larger narrative for whatever reason.
"Fellow creeps, I've devised a way to get off on non-consensual BDSM. The key is to get her to consent to one thing, and then do something else. What can go wrong?"
Now this is good bringing it all together. (Via oud.)
I too was completely unaware of any of this or these people before it blew up on my FB/Twitter. Parodie's link in 45 was the thing that caught my eye in this whole fracas, b/c it was posted by someone saying "oh this guy has badly miscalculated, he's forgotten the law is different in Canada , and has just confessed to a crime, regardless of what any investigations find out about the original allegations" but it occurs to me that he is perhaps media saavy enough (i.e. crazy like a fox) to have actually truly calculated well: if by Canadian law, what he has confessed to is in fact illegal, that will outrage enough other perfectly-nice-BDSMers to rise to his defense as a proxy of their own defense and obfuscate the discussion of whether or not he's actually guilty of the totally different set of actions he's ben accused of.
I don't know anything about Canadian police and their record on rape politics. I did note that the recent hero of the Ottawa shooting seemed to have a career calculated to make all Americans feel terribly inferior about our police vs. their police. (I.e. he's a noble advocate minority rights and known for his ability to respectfully negotiate peace between First Nations and Newfie fishermen) But I'm guessing they aren't actually so much more wonderful than American police that it's worth wondering why 4 separate women went to the press and not the police/workplace harrassment folks.
64: great link.
I remember the "Woody Allen would never molest his daughter in an attic, he's famously claustrophobic!" defense -- basically an unwitting admission that whatever he did, even his own friends think he's creepy as shit.
I did note that the recent hero of the Ottawa shooting seemed to have a career calculated to make all Americans feel terribly inferior about our police vs. their police. (I.e. he's a noble advocate minority rights and known for his ability to respectfully negotiate peace between First Nations and Newfie fishermen)
Holy shit, he practically single handedly prevented WWIII.
He actually sounds like a great cop but get a grip.
There's a fellow in the local arts scene, minor celebrity, broke but famous, who is publicly known for exclusively dating women 40 years younger than him, who also apparently knocks said women around a bit. The last part is less well known, such that a lot of really adamant feminists are big fans. Always not sure how to respond when his name comes up, since I only know about the alleged violence third-hand, but from very credible sources. Gender is so awesome!
I know that it's not great to publicly say someone is a creeper.
There's an ongoing lawsuit in Canada alleging defamation against two people who named someone as a person women often get warned about at professional conferences. The plaintiff is not Canadian but one of the defendants is, and it looks a lot like venue-shopping, since Canadian libel law is apparently more favorable to plaintiffs than American law.
Not a celebrity and I happen to know one of the defendants, hence the circumspection. But search for "te / am har / py" if you're interested.
Holy shit. (Look at the date on those tweets.) Also, if you haven't been following, there's a new Toronto Star article that explains the teddy bear.
The first link in 71 doesn't seem to work.
It does. Holy shit is right. Also to the story. That bear stuff is capital C creepy.
I just pasted it in a difference browser (in case it was taken down and I'm seeing a cached copy) and it still works for me. Are you on a mobile browser? Twitter mobile (browser not app) has been giving me a lot of "sorry, something went wrong" errors lately.
The difference browser was the browser Charles Babbage designed but never implemented.
Yeah it was a mobile thing. I searched for the username and found it. Holy crap.
I wish Halford were around so I could make fun of him.
The article in 71 seems to describe the actions of a depraved madman. Any one of those 8 stories sounds like something that should go well beyond what a rational police department would view as a "he-said she-said story" into obvious coercion, obvious statements of lack of interest met with physical brutality. This guy must be really powerful in his particular milieu if nobody even bothered to try to get him arrested for any of this over the past 15 years. And now he thinks that saying "Because I'm into BDSM, a jilted lovers or 3 or 4 unfortunately can portray me as a real weirdo" is going to inoculate him against his entire history once it comes out? Good lord! After that The Star piece he should be on suicide watch.
After that The Star piece he should be on suicide watch.
Eh, maybe this isn't a guy we should be in too much of a hurry to intervene on that kind of thing.
Apparently (source: twitter) the PR firm he originally hired is now directing media inquiries to a different company, which suggests they've stopped representing him.
Please let the new firm be Tony Blair's outfit.
Continuing my catching up on my Canadian friends' and acquaintances' twitter feeds, Do you know about Jian?:
But how could you say that, in a way that would ever be believed? How would you describe that for the world, in a way that the world would ever believe?
So instead, you start to turn to the women around you, and you say: "do you know about Jian?"
And you watch them nod, and pass it on.
Whoa, yeah, I'm not trying to minimize inexcusable face-punching, but the big ears bear stuff takes it to a level of creepiness I can't handle. (I wanted to say it was unbearable but not have it be a pun, but holy shit I truly can tolerate reading about a lot and the bear put me over the edge.)
Sorry - I should have added a warning to that Star link. The details are creepy and shocking beyond anything previously reported.
Still, the follow-up question, then, the one I keep seeing asked: if so many people knew, why didn't anyone stick their neck out to stop it?
My question is: would you?
Would I, by myself? Why would that be necessary? What about a consortium of hundreds or thousands of people all being signatories to a collective manifesto or something, if this was common knowledge for so long among insiders, and many victims knew their experience had been shared by other victims? Really, really weird story.
It's so cinematically creepy. That, and him pouting about being made to feel like "a weirdo" when one of the women objected to being abused, makes me want someone to interview Jian's mommy.
No, fa, you were fine and I'm glad you shared it. Not your fault someone wants to be the real-life star of a bad horror movie.
But it isn't a weird story, it's a really common story, and in every case I know the heartbreaking thing is when someone who you thought of as a good guy looks uncomfortable and suggests you don't make waves. One doesn't keep talking long, after that.
But it isn't a weird story, it's a really common story
We must be running in very different circles.
makes me want someone to interview Jian's mommy.
"No more stuffed animals! Ever!"
The bear and the actual punching, weird. Cornering women with less power, threatening them while suggesting sex, and getting away with it? Common.
85: But you saw that the author knew about creepiness, generally, but hadn't in all she'd heard from various other women learned anything about the violence? The whole point of the story is that it's difficult to come forward when not just you, but everyone you've talked to, only knows about (or is willing to publicly talk about) the general creepiness and not the kind of details that are coming out now from women who actually dealt with him personally.
And obviously this is me working out some of my own current issues and not just thinking about this and also not yet sleeping, but what do we want from him? Going back in time and changing what he did isn't an option. So taking responsibility, of course, and at least personally looking into what early trauma or something got a teddy bear involved and why, but then what? Is there a way to deal with it that does some good for someone?
I heard an interview with a young woman who used her school's sexual assault response mechanism to get a response to her rape, which ended with her rapist expelled, but then she heard he'd just gone to another school. And so that's when she decided there needed to be a criminal case and I'm extra sympathetic because that's what made me as a teen think I needed to actually talk to police, because I didn't want to feel complicit if it happened to someone else and yet it's really not being complicit exactly to not want to talk about having been raped like I didn't for months after and it's not really my responsibility to change some rapist's behavior, but what do we want? In my life it's always been that I don't want whatever happened to happen again, but today I'm sad and angry instead of just sad and it's so clear the extent to which that's sort of not enough.
Yeah, I don't think it's a "weird story" at all. Was Jimmy Savile a "weird story"?
What I've seen in private life is that people try to be fair, and in so doing, often water down the worst accounts. So you've got concentric rings of knowledge going from rapist to molester to creepy to harasser to sexist to "not-PC" or whatever milder euphemism people might use. So while everybody knows what's going on here, nobody knows what's going on here.
Cf. the previously-referenced-here touching memoir of a Catholic boyhood, Everyone Knows Don't Be Alone With Father Tim
The collective signatory thing is kind of what's going on now: you have victims coming forward who know that other victims are out there and coming forward. I wonder how many of them knew definitely about other victims before now as opposed to having a vague sense that there were other victims who also had not come forward.
I mean, you want "weird story" -- the Marion Zimmer Bradley shit is a weird story, but mostly for how open it all was. (Trigger warning: That story is some hardcore repugnant shit. Don't read it.)
Come on, people. The teddy bear thing is weird, and so, to a lesser extent, is the "walk in the door, get punched" MO, and that's what people are referring to when they say it's a weird story.
We already know from the other thread that the male commenters here wouldn't dare say anything in most instances of street harassment if they ever happened to notice it happening! They'd feel too threatened! So, stick out their necks - not so much.
Teddy bear = v creepy.
but then what? Is there a way to deal with it that does some good for someone?
A reason to publicly go after this guy and put him in prison and/or put his life to the torch is to push the perception that there's a solid chance of consequences when you do this sort of thing. A common mistake in law enforcement is too much of a focus on the severity of the punishment. Of course the punishment has to be severe enough but the real deterrent is the offender thinking there's a decent chance of getting caught and facing that consequence.
98: Hell yes it is. I've spent a few years now in the mix of other people's depravity and I sure as shit have never taken a report like that.
And related to Natilo's 96, the multi decade pedophile clusterfuck that was Bradley's husband Walter Breen pretty well illustrates what I'm getting at. The whole "Breendoggle" can be read about here. It's a mess. People knew for years what this kidfucker was up to and you know what option never seems to rear its head among all these useless Berkeley 60's types? Calling the godamn cops.
I read 85 as saying the link in 82* (which I think came out before the latest news) is a weird story. Obviously the teddy bear, etc. stuff is out of the ordinary. But personally and privately delivered warnings about "known" creepers (not necessarily with a lot of details about specific incidents) is not that uncommon.
*Sorry, people who don't like comment numbers referencing other comment numbers!
I was going to post the "Do you know about Jian" link in 82, because to me that's one the aspect that blows my mind - and yet even though I'm not in the Canadian music scene... I'd heard rumours.
One of the real questions for me is what do we do when "everyone knows", except wait for someone to have something happen to them that is so blatant that they come forward? And yet how awful.
This is incredibly selfish bullshit on my part, but I was just reading about the MZB stuff, and it's creeped me the fuck out. I knew people who knew her. Did they know? I feel dirty even knowing them, which makes no goddamn sense, but ugh.
I read about the MZB/Breen stuff for the first time earlier in the year -- I think some more allegations about MZB specifically came out then, although I've forgotten specifically what (molesting her own children, rather than just tolerating/assisting Breen, maybe?)
That story sounded to me like something I think Emerson has talked about with respect to the 'sexual revolution'; that there was a period when people got so wrapped up in tearing down bad, oppressive rules around sex (premarital sex is bad; being gay is bad) that they got sort of confused in good faith about all rules around sex, like rules against rape and molesting children, because rules were generally a bad thing. So you have these sincere, apparently sane people, talking earnestly about whether they're just being closed-minded in objecting to this nightmare in their social circle openly molesting pre-teens.
that they got sort of confused in good faith about all rules around sex, like rules against rape and molesting children
I'm more than a little wary of anyone's "good faith" confusion that just so happens to look like the old "protect the perv" that has gone on since time immemorial. Especially when we're talking kids with single digit ages. The dad with the revolver didn't seem confused at all.
But it didn't look like ordinary coverup perv protection -- the "Breendoggle" document linked above was a pretty full account of what Breen was doing that was circulated, if I have the story straight, pretty broadly in the relevant social circle. It's exactly not a coverup, it just hits this insane note of "This seems like kind of a problem to me, but possibly I'm just being uptight."
I don't think exactly that sort of thing would have happened either before or since -- coverups, yes, but not second guessing about how maybe the whole situation wasn't a problem.
I think gswift simply simply has no grasp of how completely fucked up the early stages of the "sexual revolution" were. I knew a women who allowed herself to be raped by a spaced out psycho because she thought it would be uncool to summon help by waking her boyfriend in the next room. I wish I could say that that was a one-off; it was an unusually extreme incident, but it reflected a kind of attitude that was widespread in the circles in which it existed at all.
Ever seen a copy of Show Me? Saw one in Powell's years ago. Yikes!
I say "The Ice Storm", so I think I understand everything.
My parents were of another generation, place and belief system, but a close friend of mine says her parents once went to a "key party" like the one in The Ice Storm
It isn't that these things haven't always gone on to some extent, at least in cities in modern times. It's that during the period a great many people who'd ordinarily have nothing to do with a whole range of practices were drawn to dip their toes, so to speak.
That story sounded to me like something I think Emerson has talked about with respect to the 'sexual revolution'; that there was a period when people got so wrapped up in tearing down bad, oppressive rules around sex (premarital sex is bad; being gay is bad) that they got sort of confused in good faith about all rules around sex, like rules against rape and molesting children, because rules were generally a bad thing. So you have these sincere, apparently sane people, talking earnestly about whether they're just being closed-minded in objecting to this nightmare in their social circle openly molesting pre-teens.
That whole Breendoggle thing is fascinating reading. You're in a society that treats homosexuality and child molestation with pretty much equal degrees of hatred and legal oppression. And you've created this little milieu where you've realized that homosexuality is actually not a bad thing at all, while in the wider world it's practically the worst crime you can be accused of. So, how bad are all these other things really, that are traditionally considered similar to homosexuality?
Exactly. Not just homosexuality, things like 'promiscuity' for women and so on.
'promiscuity' for women
That sounds like a fragrance.
111. In these more enlightened times, though we just get this kind of shit. I've just been to vote for a new Police Commissioner*, because the old one was in charge while his force ignored reports of widespread organised child molestation gangs for several years, and then resisted pressure to resign when it became public. The UKIP candidate will likely win because the outgoing bastard was Labour.
*Call me anti-democratic, but I don't approve of electing Police Commissioners; policing shouldn't be party political.
So, to respond to 102, the cops would have also arrested many other members of that circle of people in addition to Breen, because consensual "sodomy" was illegal in California until 1975, and there were active members there of the Daughters of Bilitis and whatever other homosexual rights organizations existed at the time (and were perennially being investigated and spied upon). So they had to work it out for themselves.
118: That is totally not why they didn't go to the police. It's '63 in Berkeley, there's been an openly gay candidate for the city board of supervisors and the SFPD already had a designated liaison officer for the gay community or "homophile" as they called it at the time.
Oh, I don't know. There's a difference between "The Berkeley PD in 63 was safe to go to with gay issues" and "Any reasonable person in Berkeley in 63 would have known the PD was safe to go to with gay issues." A certain amount of fear of the police, even if it wasn't specifically justified, seems as if it might have been generally excusable.
From clew's link: "We conducted an internet-based survey of field scientists (N = 666)"
No! Get another participant!
121: But we're not talking about going to them about a gay issue, it would have been straight families going to the police about a regular old child molestation with maybe a witness that happened to be gay. I can see them still being leery of going to the cops with a specific gay issue but I'm not buying that in SF in the mid 60's that gays weren't reporting any crimes because they believed reporting something like a stolen car would somehow result in the cops finding out they were a homo and arresting them.
Oh, yeah, I'd agree that the major factor was probably the weirdo sexual-revolution confusion about whether it was a problem. But the idea that what they would be turning the guy in for would partially be for being gay (in that he was molesting male children) had to also confuse the issue for people who really didn't have it disaggregated in their own heads.
There's apparently a revolution underway in Burkina Faso, but all my fb feed can talk about is Jian. So, to my surprise, an interesting article from the National Post, which asks the pointed question: if "everyone knew" about Jian, how is it possible that none of his bosses knew? And did nothing?
My friend feed is all about Burkina Faso.
Berkeley PD in that era very much not the same as SFPD.
125: perhaps "everyone [who was considered a potential victim] knew" about Jian. His bosses didn't fall into that category and had the potential to make life unpleasant for the reporter; why take the risk of telling them when you accomplish nearly as much by warning potential victims?
125 Direct knowledge of bosses are one thing, at least in the early going, but how come the secretaries/receptionists/caterers whoever else they have didn't know? They have to have. So why didn't it leak upwards? It has to have. Powerful people were protecting the talent.
Okay, if we're just talking about the teddy bear, then yeah, obviously that is super weird and creepy. The punchy stuff is extreme, but not exactly man-bites-dog.
I TOLD you people not to read the Breen/Bradley stuff. It's horrifying.
IME secretaries and whatever will warn the interns and whatever, but you think they'll criticize a rainmaker to someone who can fire them? That would be moral but also I'd expect them to lose their jobs. Even if the trouble also got fired, someone's going to go after the person who `wasn't a team player'.
Further to the confusion of the early sexual revolution, trufans were (are) especially prone to deciding to work all social interactions out from first principles* until utter dramatic collapse of the system (the shit hits the Slan). Same tendency that makes techies libertarians, I'd say.
* first principles being whatever book made a really, really strong impression.
Even the "everyone knew" writer says that the physical abuse was news to her.
Is trufan a general type here, or a specific term of reference for counterculture experimenters? I've tried Wikopedia but couldn't find the latter meaning.
But wiktionary. For trufen FIAWOL. For the rest of us FIAGH.
136: I'd seen that, but still don't get the reference. Was a teenager in the 60s, knew lots of hippies, should be able to connect to something here, unless we're actually talking about something else.
Talking about fen, not hippies. I don't remember any of the 60s but in the 70s they seemed to be not completely overlapping countercultures.
anyway, if FIAWOL you pretty soon know very few people who don't also believe FIAWOL, and down the rabbit-hole you all go.
136 might actually be the least comprehensible comment in the history of Unfogged.
Is it the Breen circle, with their debilitating mixed feelings about what, if anything to do, who are being described as fen, pursuing FIAWOL, or somebody else?
"Fluffy Is Absent WithOut Leave"
"Forget It And Go Home"
"Foreign Islands Are Where Otters Live"
"Fuck It, Ain't Gonna Help"
"Farber Is Abroad, Watching Over London"
"Farber Inhabits Ancient Ghost Houses"
I guess I know what a fen is, at least. That's the swampy place where they build baseball stadiums.
I understand Bob; actually, I rather like Bob.
Marion Zimmer Bradley started publishing SFF in the 1940s, wrote for several early fanzines, edited others, had several fanzines devoted to her work (eventually this became a collaboration/plagiarism/lawsuit scandal), named the SCA, ran a professional fantasy magazine and a huge number of anthologies, supported what's sometimes called a commune of SFF writers in her house. Yes, she was a trufan, as much as Asimov or Ellison, who... yeah.
Checking some of that, and relevant to why I brought it up:
Let us take a small but important detour to review the geek social fallacies:
- Ostracizers are evil
- Friends accept me as I am
- Friendship before all
- Friendship is transitive
- Friends do everything together
149: I think he wasn't commenting during the period when what you're justifiably upset about happened and maybe you came down just a bit strong.
And yet none of 150 explains what "FIAWOL" or "FIAGH" mean.
Nothing that googling couldn't clear up but one might have been more mindful of one's audience, I guess.
Ha one of the top hits when I searched for FIAGH + fandom (since FIAWOL yielded to being searched for by itself) was by clew.
Maybe? Bob has been an asshole as long as I've been here. A crazy asshole, sure. But also really shitty in specific ways that make me wonder why people are so into being all "mcmanus gets it right!"
155 to 155. Cranky Sifu hereby ordered to bed.
Double ha, one of the others is about Farber.
Seems to me that you're one of the people who complains when other people ask you to explain something that could be googled for, nosflow. What with having many obscure enthusiasms of your own.
I searched for FIAGH by itself and got socks, which was pleasantly unexpected.
It's a perfect joke anyway, fake accent.
I looked it up and was pleasantly surprised.
Since "FIAWOL" seemed pretty easy I am just amusing myself by filling in the GH without checking my work. Grotesque Hellscape... Guarded Henhouse... Giant Hassle... Ghoul Haven... Golden Horde... I guess I'm going with d) on the strength of ignoring Natilo's sage advice. (Dude, I think the trigger warning has to say something like "you will not learn anything new or insightful about the human condition; you will just feel sick for a day.")
Huh, I would have expected more people here to have gotten 136. I guess I really did read too much Niven when I was younger.
FIAGH is more commonly spelled FIJAGH, if it's any help. If you google FIAGH, you get a 16th century Irish chieftain, who is more interesting to those who believe FIAGH.
I apparently have read just enough Niven, because I never heard of either acronym.
I like the "fans are slans" slogan because it's self-refuting. Anyone who thinks that an appreciation of A. E. Van Vogt's Slan makes them a superior form of life is pretty much by definition not a superior form of life. It would like if fans of Speed Racer proclaimed themselves a superior form of life. (And I even liked Slan.)
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