![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaFinally--someone (Larry Sanderson, video whiz of Worldcon) has posted a downloadable/playable video of the Big Awful Sexist Sin that Harlan supposedly committed on Connie Willis. You can finally look at the video, if you're interested, and decide for yourself. I had not seen what happened, and so I didn't really know what to think when I heard all the intense reactions. I imagined something MUCH worse, frankly.
I watched this, and I really didn't see anything grope-y. I mean . . . what I see is a 72-year-old man doing the Jerry Lewis clowning around stuff, and it doesn't go over real big, but it doesn't look like sexual harassment or rape or what-have-you. It just looks like . . . well, I don't know what it looks like. Just childishness that was playing to the crowd, really. A Jim Carrey moment from "In Living Color."
Frankly, I can’t believe I’m seeing the same thing as everyone who is so upset. This is what caused such an uproar and all the furor?
(If you can't get video to play, here's a summary from Steve, who linke to the video: "A minute of badinage. Harlan tries to take the hammer Connie has brought (part of her stage act with Harlan), but she takes it and moves it out of his reach. Then he puts the microphone into his mouth, and she cleans it off, and he offers up his arm for her to dry off her hands, and then he pivots slightly into Connie and his hand rests on her breast (chest) for about three seconds, and she ducks down to hear him say something, and his hand on her breast (or is it gone yet?) goes below the view of the camera. She was obviously frustrated that he was acting up, but she knew that he would, judging from her banter. They put arms around each others' shoulders and she says, "Ladies and gentlemen, Harlan Ellison." No grope or pat or paternalistic squeeze. That we could see.")
Man. I dunno. Irritating, but legally actionable and grounds for lawsuits and so forth? All I can say is that I'll have to agree to disagree with a lot of people whom I respect.
The bottom line is that even if you see my entire argument as excusing things via "boys will be boys," I believe we have to be sensible--you can't take a 72-year-old and transform his/her entire worldview. He or she is a product of his or her upbringing, the dominant culture during that time, and all the events since. For example, my mother is about as modern as you'd expect, but she really still doesn't approve of premarital or extramarital sex. She still feels that a woman's house and the cleanliness/decoration thereof reflects that woman's character. These are ingrained beliefs that one cannot "take out" of a 76-year-old. Similarly, I know that some of my friends dislike Jerry Lewis because he has made remarks in the past that they heard as "sexist" or "dismissive of this or that group," but he's 80 . . . let's get realistic here and acknowledge that sometimes a person just isn't likely to change his or her entire worldview. We have to take *what they do and say* with some amount of perspective. Or we have to avoid him or her. This might be the best solution for most people--just continue to avoid whoever it is. If it's your own grandpa, though, I suspect you'll be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt more often. . . .
Younger people can change the world with their behavior, of course. If we make it clear that from now on, we won't tolerate behaviors A and B, then I think we can train the youngsters growing up to such an extent that they will never see a world in which behavior A is possible. For example, women who are student-aged really don't remember a world in which there was ever any doubt that a woman should have equal pay for equal work (the old argument was "a man has a family to support, and you don't!") . . . work outside the home as whatever she wants to be, not just a teacher or a nurse (those used to be the two "approved" professions aside from secretary and clerical stuff) . . . have sex whenever she chooses and control her own body (this was a no-no until the sexual revolution) . . . and so forth. (I'm talking about the twenty and under crowd, and possibly the thirty and under crowd.) People who are forty and over, though, may remember the previous world and the struggle it underwent as dominant views changed.
(I remember my mother and aunts wearing hats and gloves to church, and I wore little white gloves to church and to weddings until I was six! I still have the pair I wore to my uncle's wedding where I was a flower girl, as opposed to the flower child that I still am today. My dad would have been "shamed" if my mother "had to work," because it would have implied he couldn't support his family; my husband, on the other hand, insisted that he wanted me to work or else we couldn't get married at all, as he wasn't interested in supporting the household single-handedly. (GRIN) Fortunately, as the years passed and his income went up--and as my unfitness for working a Regular Job became ever more obvious--he relented and said he'd like me to stay home and write books, as long as I also took care of everything else, including him. It's worked out fine because it works for us.)
As time passes, the new generation sees things differently. The younger generation grows up without whatever "flaw" was in the worldview of the older. However, we can't always rely on being able to change the beliefs of the older ones to "fit" into the modern view. If we want to talk to and visit with the older generation, we can't be ready to pounce on everything, but must make allowances; this doesn't mean tolerating just any old behavior or thinking that they are setting an example, but we have to remember that their "world" used to be different, and they may have trouble understanding why we don't want them to do behaviors that they always thought were funny, okay, or whatever. If a younger person had been acting exactly the way Ellison was acting--say, David Spade, or perhaps Brad Pitt--would the world have reacted differently? Should it? Hmm.
(For the record, if any of a number of good-looking guys I have long admired decided to grope ME, he and the audience might get an X-rated surprise . . . but he'd better be sure he was reading my signals correctly. On the other hand, if someone I *didn't* wanna tango with grabbed me, I would just deflect it with "I'm perfectly adjusted, so don't fool around with the knobs," in order to upstage him and get the bigger laugh while slapping away the offending hands, roll my eyes at the audience the way Cher used to do whenever Sonny opened his mouth to say ANYthing, and leave. Only if they did NOT take the hint and kept trying stuff would I bop 'em upside the head. Typically, guys can read your signals, if you'll only SEND the signals. I have learned that this course of action gets the desired results more often than raising a big stink, actually. Let the response fit the stimulus. And I *DO* think of myself as a feminist! So, Val Kilmer, if you feel like learning to tango, do feel free to call anytime. *grin*)
Now, there ARE instances of people treating women like objects, way too many of them. Every day there are instances of someone making a racist remark, a homophobic remark, a xenophobic remark (like that idiot who used the word for "monkey" to mean some group or another--good grief), and so forth. These instances usually cause a lot of bad press* for that person for a while. People do try to watch themselves for that reason, *in public*. But are there still attitudes out there that people may hide, but still harbor? Yes. It's tougher to change their *hearts* with social pressure. Even mayor Ray Nagin said that he'd like New Orleans to remain "chocolate." That was kind of a racist remark, I think--and he got into trouble--but although he backed away when he was called on it, the attitude is still there, underlying what he does on the surface. I think that *this* is the kind of stuff we really need to be worried about, more than just the clownish kind of stupidity that most people *already* know is socially unacceptable. And there's really no way to change the *heart* by applying disapproval, even if you can make people pretend to be "politically correct." That kind of change comes from within.
Another example of stuff that we'd like to eradicate: people forwarding all those obscene, vulgar, racist, etc., "jokes" to everyone that they have in the e-mail address book. People forwarding every "read this and then make a wish and send back to me and to ten more people" e-mail to everyone in the address book. And they leave the previous forwarding mess on it, so that the headers reveal about sixty or more people who were the previous victims of these photos or shaggy-dog stories or chain letters. I get this kind of junk from my cousins whenever I send them a chatty little e-mail message. They don't ever write anything personal. But when I send a "how are you" or a question, they'll respond by forwarding every piece of junk mail at hand. Weird. But we can't make them stop, because if we say "please don't forward that stuff to me," they get angry. "I thought you wanted me to write back!"
Although some of the cute animal photos I've gotten HAVE been amusing (Awww), most of that forwarded stuff is either a chain letter or some vulgar "joke." (Ewww.)
Digital cameras . . . cell phones . . . GPS handhelds . . . wow. We didn't get the aircars and the robot maids that the Jetsons promised me, but we did get some cool toys.
I watched this, and I really didn't see anything grope-y. I mean . . . what I see is a 72-year-old man doing the Jerry Lewis clowning around stuff, and it doesn't go over real big, but it doesn't look like sexual harassment or rape or what-have-you. It just looks like . . . well, I don't know what it looks like. Just childishness that was playing to the crowd, really. A Jim Carrey moment from "In Living Color."
Frankly, I can’t believe I’m seeing the same thing as everyone who is so upset. This is what caused such an uproar and all the furor?
(If you can't get video to play, here's a summary from Steve, who linke to the video: "A minute of badinage. Harlan tries to take the hammer Connie has brought (part of her stage act with Harlan), but she takes it and moves it out of his reach. Then he puts the microphone into his mouth, and she cleans it off, and he offers up his arm for her to dry off her hands, and then he pivots slightly into Connie and his hand rests on her breast (chest) for about three seconds, and she ducks down to hear him say something, and his hand on her breast (or is it gone yet?) goes below the view of the camera. She was obviously frustrated that he was acting up, but she knew that he would, judging from her banter. They put arms around each others' shoulders and she says, "Ladies and gentlemen, Harlan Ellison." No grope or pat or paternalistic squeeze. That we could see.")
Man. I dunno. Irritating, but legally actionable and grounds for lawsuits and so forth? All I can say is that I'll have to agree to disagree with a lot of people whom I respect.
The bottom line is that even if you see my entire argument as excusing things via "boys will be boys," I believe we have to be sensible--you can't take a 72-year-old and transform his/her entire worldview. He or she is a product of his or her upbringing, the dominant culture during that time, and all the events since. For example, my mother is about as modern as you'd expect, but she really still doesn't approve of premarital or extramarital sex. She still feels that a woman's house and the cleanliness/decoration thereof reflects that woman's character. These are ingrained beliefs that one cannot "take out" of a 76-year-old. Similarly, I know that some of my friends dislike Jerry Lewis because he has made remarks in the past that they heard as "sexist" or "dismissive of this or that group," but he's 80 . . . let's get realistic here and acknowledge that sometimes a person just isn't likely to change his or her entire worldview. We have to take *what they do and say* with some amount of perspective. Or we have to avoid him or her. This might be the best solution for most people--just continue to avoid whoever it is. If it's your own grandpa, though, I suspect you'll be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt more often. . . .
Younger people can change the world with their behavior, of course. If we make it clear that from now on, we won't tolerate behaviors A and B, then I think we can train the youngsters growing up to such an extent that they will never see a world in which behavior A is possible. For example, women who are student-aged really don't remember a world in which there was ever any doubt that a woman should have equal pay for equal work (the old argument was "a man has a family to support, and you don't!") . . . work outside the home as whatever she wants to be, not just a teacher or a nurse (those used to be the two "approved" professions aside from secretary and clerical stuff) . . . have sex whenever she chooses and control her own body (this was a no-no until the sexual revolution) . . . and so forth. (I'm talking about the twenty and under crowd, and possibly the thirty and under crowd.) People who are forty and over, though, may remember the previous world and the struggle it underwent as dominant views changed.
(I remember my mother and aunts wearing hats and gloves to church, and I wore little white gloves to church and to weddings until I was six! I still have the pair I wore to my uncle's wedding where I was a flower girl, as opposed to the flower child that I still am today. My dad would have been "shamed" if my mother "had to work," because it would have implied he couldn't support his family; my husband, on the other hand, insisted that he wanted me to work or else we couldn't get married at all, as he wasn't interested in supporting the household single-handedly. (GRIN) Fortunately, as the years passed and his income went up--and as my unfitness for working a Regular Job became ever more obvious--he relented and said he'd like me to stay home and write books, as long as I also took care of everything else, including him. It's worked out fine because it works for us.)
As time passes, the new generation sees things differently. The younger generation grows up without whatever "flaw" was in the worldview of the older. However, we can't always rely on being able to change the beliefs of the older ones to "fit" into the modern view. If we want to talk to and visit with the older generation, we can't be ready to pounce on everything, but must make allowances; this doesn't mean tolerating just any old behavior or thinking that they are setting an example, but we have to remember that their "world" used to be different, and they may have trouble understanding why we don't want them to do behaviors that they always thought were funny, okay, or whatever. If a younger person had been acting exactly the way Ellison was acting--say, David Spade, or perhaps Brad Pitt--would the world have reacted differently? Should it? Hmm.
(For the record, if any of a number of good-looking guys I have long admired decided to grope ME, he and the audience might get an X-rated surprise . . . but he'd better be sure he was reading my signals correctly. On the other hand, if someone I *didn't* wanna tango with grabbed me, I would just deflect it with "I'm perfectly adjusted, so don't fool around with the knobs," in order to upstage him and get the bigger laugh while slapping away the offending hands, roll my eyes at the audience the way Cher used to do whenever Sonny opened his mouth to say ANYthing, and leave. Only if they did NOT take the hint and kept trying stuff would I bop 'em upside the head. Typically, guys can read your signals, if you'll only SEND the signals. I have learned that this course of action gets the desired results more often than raising a big stink, actually. Let the response fit the stimulus. And I *DO* think of myself as a feminist! So, Val Kilmer, if you feel like learning to tango, do feel free to call anytime. *grin*)
Now, there ARE instances of people treating women like objects, way too many of them. Every day there are instances of someone making a racist remark, a homophobic remark, a xenophobic remark (like that idiot who used the word for "monkey" to mean some group or another--good grief), and so forth. These instances usually cause a lot of bad press* for that person for a while. People do try to watch themselves for that reason, *in public*. But are there still attitudes out there that people may hide, but still harbor? Yes. It's tougher to change their *hearts* with social pressure. Even mayor Ray Nagin said that he'd like New Orleans to remain "chocolate." That was kind of a racist remark, I think--and he got into trouble--but although he backed away when he was called on it, the attitude is still there, underlying what he does on the surface. I think that *this* is the kind of stuff we really need to be worried about, more than just the clownish kind of stupidity that most people *already* know is socially unacceptable. And there's really no way to change the *heart* by applying disapproval, even if you can make people pretend to be "politically correct." That kind of change comes from within.
Another example of stuff that we'd like to eradicate: people forwarding all those obscene, vulgar, racist, etc., "jokes" to everyone that they have in the e-mail address book. People forwarding every "read this and then make a wish and send back to me and to ten more people" e-mail to everyone in the address book. And they leave the previous forwarding mess on it, so that the headers reveal about sixty or more people who were the previous victims of these photos or shaggy-dog stories or chain letters. I get this kind of junk from my cousins whenever I send them a chatty little e-mail message. They don't ever write anything personal. But when I send a "how are you" or a question, they'll respond by forwarding every piece of junk mail at hand. Weird. But we can't make them stop, because if we say "please don't forward that stuff to me," they get angry. "I thought you wanted me to write back!"
Although some of the cute animal photos I've gotten HAVE been amusing (Awww), most of that forwarded stuff is either a chain letter or some vulgar "joke." (Ewww.)
Digital cameras . . . cell phones . . . GPS handhelds . . . wow. We didn't get the aircars and the robot maids that the Jetsons promised me, but we did get some cool toys.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-09-02 03:32 pm (UTC)P.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-02 04:13 pm (UTC)We can change the people who want to change, but change has to come from the inside. We can't change the heart just by applying social pressure--that just results in the apology for the sake of apology (which see . . . his apology is online everywhere) and the surface actions that avoid the appearance of sexism/racism, but the inside of the person is still the same. Until there's some inner realization, there isn't any inner change . . . at least in my experience. Does that make sense. . . .
It's cool that your mom is cool like you. My mother isn't going to change her way of thinking, although now that she lives in our messy house, she has to suffer all the time thinking how AWFUL it is that she raised a daughter with NO PRIDE in her house. (grin) She is a feminist and still a passionate liberal and Democrat, so it's kind of a stumper why she still has the "house is a reflection" thing ingrained, but she does.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-03 12:48 am (UTC)People are saying a lot of things because they are outraged, but the most productive lines of discussion I've seen aren't the one-liners about how nasty Harlan Ellison is or what should be done to him; they're about fostering a better atmosphere and making it clear to any nascent or less aggressive Ellisons that this is not acceptable behavior.
I really couldn't let the implication that he's hopeless because he's 72 go by, though. He's a writer and a critic and an iconoclast, and if he were really interested in intellectual change, he could have considered not-so-very-radical feminism rather than stalling out in whatever stage he was in that made him boycott the Arizona Worldcon hotel because Arizona didn't pass the ERA, but still grope people in public. He didn't stop reading and thinking in the nineteen-seventies, did he, or if he did, I don't see why he should get a pass for doing so.
P.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-02 05:19 pm (UTC)The best commentary on that is over a century old:
And the idiot who praises with enthusiastic tones
every century but this and every country but his own.
-- W. S. Gilbert (The Mikado)
As far as Ellison is concerned, he is enjoying being a unconventional clown. It is part of his public persona, and he is doing it deliberately. Perhaps because it is easy, but it is still deliberate.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-02 07:01 pm (UTC)Video phones replacing voice-only phones looks like actually happening in the forseeable future. I suspect most people won't actually use the video part; but sooner or later, voice phones will be no cheaper than video phones and will be harder to find.
Other things predicted: The paperless office is relatively recent. A simple Federal tax code has been around for some time.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-03 08:11 pm (UTC)Shouldn't he be old enough to know better? Would you excuse the same behaviour in a thirty-year-old with 'he hasn't learnt it yet'? I had a fantastic aunt who at age 85 complained about women wearing trousers. Age 89, she bought her first pair. People *do* learn.
That he hasn't learnt the rules of basic decency at his age is not an excuse. He misbehaved. Even if he *had been* clowning around, even if Connie Willis *was* seeing it as a joke (and wasn't just stunned that he would try to upstage her in this manner), he apologised for what he himself described as a serious offense.
And then turned it into a cozy little story in which he is the offended party. He is an accomplished writer, not some hick from the sticks. He knows - or should know - *exactly* what his words convey, and as such, he has _no excuse whatsoever_ for writing what he did.
People sometimes offend other people unintentionally. Fair do. If this incident was falling into the category rather than into the 'power games' where I see it belonging, there is *still* only one route open for a gentleman. Next to the 'this action is inexcusable' he needs to acknowledge two things: his actions have made a lot of people very uncomfortable and have stolen the limelight from those who rightly deserve it, the Hugo winners (with a dose of rightful fame for the Guests of Honour - eg Connie Willis). Having given offense - unless you really *are* blameless, and however goodnatures, this was an invasion of private space at a public event, and on camera - means that his reaction should have been 'I am sorry. I did not mean to offend you, but I clearly _have_ done something that is constructed as offensive. I should have realised that and desisted, for that I am at fault.'
no subject
Date: 2006-09-08 02:13 pm (UTC)As for the junk . . . sigh. I have people who insist on forwarding all that crap to me, too, and I find it highly irritating. I, too, would prefer a "real" communication to all that nonsense. When the junk consists of urban legends, I debunk them and TRY to educate these folks to go to websites like snopes.com to check them out before sending them on. I have managed to educate a couple of my cousins, but the others who continue to forward that crap are just hopeless. Not a happy situation.