Interesting societial issues raised by the MeToo# Movement

The Me#Too Movement has raised some interesting and disturbing societal problems...which I've always been aware of, and had resigned myself to long ago. But never really thought too hard about or addressed.

I was reading a review of The Tale -- which is a memoir about a child rape. What jumped out at me while reading the review, and what apparently upset the reviewer is this:

Teen girl sexuality is often packaged as a dangerous, irresistible elixir wielded by wiser-than-they-seem temptresses in bikinis, lustily grooming themselves poolside. Coquettish. Precocious. It’s a putrid myth we’re taught about ourselves, that if in teenhood a man finds himself hopelessly attracted to us, the kernel of essential badness and transgression comes from us, not from him.

I’m so used to seeing — reading, hearing, knowing — that girlishness through hypnotized male eyes that I didn’t even blink at the early flashbacks of “The Tale,” as we see adult Jennifer (Laura Dern) remember being a 15-year-old Jenny (Jessica Sarah Flaum), taking horseback-riding lessons and basking in the attention of the seemingly fascinating teacher Mrs. G. (Elizabeth Debicki) and a local running coach, Bill (Jason Ritter).

But then the flashback cuts. No, says her mother (Ellen Burstyn). You were younger than that. She hands adult Jennifer a photo album. “That was 13,” she says, tapping a photo.

Now, as a child, I remember running into various dangerous situations that I barely avoided.

( personal experiences - nothing too triggering, I've never been raped or molested. )

And that brings us to another disturbing article, this one on Morgan Freeman. A journalist began researching the sexual harassment allegations against Freeman after how he'd treated her at a party, making her uncomfortable.

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1. Who in the heck is Lisa Freitag and how did she become a panelist at "WisCon", which is a feminist science fiction & fantasy convention held annually in Madison, Wisconsin. I'm wondering how the panelists at various conventions are selected. Could I just apply, voila, panelist? (Not that I'd want to, I can think of few things more torturous than sitting on a panel in front of a large audience of people and asking questions, and having them argue with me. I'd rather do what I'm doing now which is prepping for a colonoscopy tomorrow. Seriously I would. I hate crowds of people. I hate being the center of attention. I despise public speaking. And I don't consider myself the authority on anything. The whole idea makes me shudder.) Anyhow this individual went to a convention that is geared towards POC, LGBTQ, Feminists, etc...and decided to promote ideas that would not only offend them but make them feel unsafe. Can you think of anything more colossally stupid, egotistical, and inappropriate? So, she gets banned. And..I'm thinking I never heard of you prior to this, and now, congrats, I still have no idea who you are, except that you an idiot and another example of an insanely narcissistic ego driven culture gone berserk.

ETA: I looked into it and apparently anyone can apply to be a panelist, you just have to be a member, submit an idea, get it vetted, meet with other panelists, and do a big survey. But..this seems odd to me. Shouldn't you have credentials? I've seen panelists organized for various forums and they always have credentials and usually are rather well-known in their field. Why go to a panel where you don't know the panelists? I'm guessing they do know them?

But also, if it weren't for the internet? I'd have no idea Wiscon existed or any of this happened.

Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, I miss the days when we didn't have the internet. The good old days, back in the 1980s and 90s, when I was blissfully unaware of half of this stuff.


2. Having re-watched a good portion of Angel S5 now, I've come to a few conclusions that I didn't the first few times I saw the series.

* After the writer's found out that the series wasn't going to be renewed after the 100th episode "You're Welcome" -- they dropped the episodic/serial hybrid formula that the network imposed on them, and did whatever they damn well pleased, screw the network. Well within reason, WB unlike UPN had a standards and practices system. Because the series shifts completely after that episode, as does the tone. Also, it's much better written, with the exception of one or two episodes.

* This is pure Noir, complete with femme fatals, and anti-heroes. They just drop all pretense of being anything other than noir after You're Welcome. It's hilarious actually. I can't help but wonder what would have happened if they'd been told that they hadn't been cancelled, and if they continued with the evil law firm motif they'd stay on the air. (I seriously doubt if they hadn't been cancelled, we'd get a season in hell. They were low budget, their budget was smaller than Buffy's. It was so low that George Lucas visited the set to see how in the hell they were accomplishing the effects they had on such a small budget.)

* Every single episode is about deception, manipulation, and pulling people's strings. Every single one. I learned much later that Gellar was never asked to be in Girl in Question nor supposed to be in that episode. Makes sense, Buffy isn't in it. They see her from afar. To Angel, Buffy is a girl with blond hair. In Soul Purpose he only sees the back of her head in his dream and hears her voice. The girl out of reach...just as Darla was the girl with blond hair who remained out of reach. It's hard to know how Spike feels about it all -- since we're mainly in Angel's POV and only see it through Angel's perspective. Spike from Angel's perspective sees it the same way Angel does, and is an annoying reminder of his own failures. Yet at the same time a beloved brother in arms, who remembers the past, but is thankfully unassociated with what occurred with Connor and has no knowledge of his son.

At any rate -- in that episode it's clear that Angel and by extension Spike are being manipulated by multiple parties, much as they have been in other episodes. They can no longer find the villain. And at this point are their own worst enemies. They don't care about the bag they are supposed to retrieve. No, they care about finding Buffy. But Andrew and the slayers in Italy are having a fine old time manipulating them on that end. Buffy's decoy is in Rome and the Immortal, if he's even there and isn't really just Andrew playing with them, has been involved with the decoy. (In the comics we learn this and I rather like the idea.) Meanwhile the Italians, both WRH and the people in the field are playing with them in a game of where's the bag. They are made to look like fools, and they are, having literally lost their heads over a girl. But Andrew is right -- neither is really interested in the girl, so much as their own ego in saving her and having her. She's just a girl to them.

Illyria meanwhile plays with Wes on the same idea. Posing as Fred, right down to the vocal mannerisms. It's an amazing piece of acting on the part of Amy Acker -- who shifts from Fred to Illyria within the blink of an eye -- and just using facial reactions, not words. How well does Wes know Fred? Also Illyria now has three sets of memories in her head -- Fred's original memories - complete, the reconstructed ones (which are snippets), and her own. Fred's personality is coming out.
She knows Fred better than Wes does. And she easily deceives her parents, who don't know their daughter much at all and see what they want to see. It's similar to the Spike/Angel - fake Buffy deal, we have someone posing to be someone else. They look like the other person, but we don't see what lies underneath.

There's a lot of metaphors about what lies beneath the surface, and how we only see the surface, nothing else. Or what we want to see. It's quite brilliant in places.