Two links and a book review, or: a tale of (wrong) perceptions

[selenak]

Today is Elementary day, and here is a good meta post about Joan Watson, complete with lovely illustrations. :

In other news, during the last months I've taken part in a discussion about Mary Renault's The Charioteer - our discussion posts by chapters are here - which on that occasion I had read for the first time. (My previous Renaults were all

Comments

[selenak]

But you see, I really doubt that either in the 40s or now sexual exploitation wasn't present in the het variation as well. As for the level of sexual harrassment and what's deemed acceptable for young women versus young men, I remember reading late year a story where on a film set, one of the stars demanded a girl from the camera crew took of her sweater to show him her breasts, and held up production for an hour until she gave in. The only one protesting and defending the girl was another actor. Not the director or anyone from the team. And every waitress I've talked to mentioned that basically the patting, pinching etc. were something they had to get adjusted to instead of complaining. Or: apparantly Dominique Strauss Kahn thought it was self evident a maid should only be too happy to give him a blow job. And that's today, not decades ago. So I do think that Ralph's comment is internalized homophobia, because preying on the weaker in a sexual way isn't a vice more dominant among either subculture. (To say nothing of drinking or substance abuse.)

[amenirdis]

No, it's not more prevalent, but in certain parts of the community it's completely acceptable! That's the thing that's problematic. If I had worked for Greenpeace or the Sierra Club or certainly the Democratic Party and had a donor trying to rent my assistant for $5,000, I wouldn't have had board members saying that it was ok. Can you imagine if it were the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders having a meeting, and a national board member brought three eighteen year old girls to share his hotel room, college students who he was paying tuition for in exchange for "companionship?" Nobody blinked an eye. Nobody said it was inappropriate. Nobody did anything at all. I can say with absolute certainty that if that had happened at a DNC meeting, the board member would have been told that his escorts could not stay. Possibly he would have been censured or removed from the board. We have an acceptance of these kinds of abuses in a certain part of the community that really, truly, is not ok.