The problem with talking about Farrow and Allen

I wasn’t going to really write about this because, who really knows, but then a labor journalist I really like decided to weigh in and I just wanted him to shut up. Let’s just go over the facts briefly, and then we’ll get into everything wrong with this.

• Dylan Farrow accused Woody Allen of molesting and raping her as a seven year old.
• Mia Farrow and Woody Allen had an awful divorce, and Allen married their adopted daughter.
• A criminal cause was never pursued, but according to my understanding that was the decision made to protect the alleged victim, not because there was no evidence.

 Allen is an excellent filmmaker, though I’m not a huge fan of his work. And because he’s super famous and talented, he gets to not have to take accusations like this seriously. In fact everyone just kind of ignores them. We’re never going to know. But we do know a little about history, child abuse, power, and the discrediting of witnesses.

First, the 80s was a different time. I don’t know much about it, but there was a rash of therapists convincing their patients that the patients’ fathers had molested them. Many of these accusations were untrue, lives were ruined, and the profession learned more about how to and how not to interview children. That said, some of these accusations were true.

Second, child abuse is an issue as is sexual abuse. One of the reasons children make such easy targets for preferential offenders is that they often don’t know what the relationship between themselves and the offender is supposed to look like. So a kid might not like the way the offender touches them, but without someone sitting the kid down and saying “don’t let anyone touch your genitalia” then the kid might not realize the problem is bigger than discomfort. We live in a puritanical society, and because of these we don’t talk to our children about sex or abuse.

Third, power, people with it exploit it over others. There are many studies documenting how normal, average people will abuse others when they have the authority to. No, all sexual predators aren’t in power, but often sexual assaults are about power. Additionally, the powerful don’t really have to pay for their crimes. When taken into account that most rapists never do either, we’re looking at a small group of people who actually are punished for the abuses they commit.

Fourth, it is amazing how you can never believe a sexual assault survivor. I noted this last week with the Oberst case. Apparently, all women (overwhelmingly) are hysterical nut jobs just trying to ruin famous men. I’m not even talking about Mia, who is regularly painted as a vindictive manipulative parent, but poor Dylan who has been brainwashed. We do all see that right? That the women in these cases are always painted as hysterical and the alleged perpetrators as victims.

Ok, so now let’s talk about the Tweet of issue by Mike Elk. See below. 

There is so much wrong with this. Elk is perfectly in his right to, well I’m not really sure. He isn’t exactly defending Allen, but he is definitely sympathetic to Allen due to personal experiences (see how I’m noting he has reasons and not calling him hysterical because of events in his childhood? Yeah, that’s how you do it because he isn’t hysterical this is just his perception and interpretation of the situation). However, this analogy between Emmett Till’s accuser, Carolyn Bryant, and Dylan Farrow is way out of line. For a lot of reasons.

First, Till wasn’t accused of rape. But I imagine Till’s specific case isn’t the point here, and maybe the Scottsboro Boys would have been a better example. I think Elk is trying to draw parallels between false rape accusations and the Farrow-Allen drama. Yes, false rape accusations happen (estimates are between 2 and 8 percent of all accusations with the majority of people never reporting). They were presumably more frequent when race was a factor because racists love few things more than protecting white women’s honor. There were many black men murdered for showing interest in white women…or more likely just because racists could. Allen is not a black man in the south during the Civil Rights Era. This offends me to my core. These situations are not the same.

Second, while the accused should get the benefit of doubt in court, this is never going to go to court. No one is arguing that Allen is locked up. I’m not going to watch his movies because as I said before I’m not really a fan, and I do think he has sexually abused children. I don’t think Dylan was the only one. I view his marriage as suspect. The accusers should also get the benefit of being believed. And that is what is missing here. See the phrasing here equates Bryant and Farrow, and that is unfair to Farrow. Sure there is no evidence Allen raped a seven year old, but there is no evidence that Dylan and Mia Farrow are making it up either. So equating her with a woman who stood by as a teenager was murdered is pretty extreme, but I suspect Elk was trying to compare Farrow to a liar who made false rape accusations against black me. 

In the end I trust women so I trust Dylan. Have an opinion, but let’s not pretend that opinion is unbiased. In what can only be described as white guy fashion, Elk apologized for confusing the facts surrounding Till's denial of due process and offending anyone. At no point that I've seen has Elk apologized for asserting Farrow to be a liar on par with those who fabricated sexual assaults rooted in racism.

In These Times Magazine’s staff get their union cards.

This was the big news on Tuesday. It felt like everyone was talking about on Twitter, but Dave Jamieson had a piece up at Huffington Post. In These Times Magazine joined the Communications Workers of America; their local is Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, which also represents the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, and Bloomberg BNA. Not surprisingly the decision to unionize was unanimous about staff and was unopposed by the magazine’s management. Staffers hope that representation through CWA will give them a greater voice if they face another financial squeeze. 

What in the fresh hell is this?

Oh Comcast, I hate you so. I hate everything about you. Your pseudo monopoly on the Mid-Atlantic. Your shitty service. The way one of the service guys you sent out spent an hour in my apartment during which he took a break to get stoned. But I am bound to you if I want Internet access in my apartment, but you will get no more money from me. Which is why I’m pissed about your relationship with Netflix. Netflix, who I pay for a service.

I’m not an expert on much of anything, let alone net neutrality, but that is what I’m going to attempt to write about. Edward Wyatt and Noam Cohen write about the Comcast and Netflix service deal for The New York Times. Comcast as you know may be the corporate manifestation of a lesser devil, has announced an agreement on Sunday that Netflix will pay Comcast for faster and more reliable access to Comcast’s subscribers. This is new because previously content providers didn’t have to pay for access to customers of broadband providers.

However, the broadband companies are growing more and more powerful, and then they increased their leverage over sites whose traffic takes more of the network’s capacity. Think Netflix and YouTube specifically being pushed around by Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T. I’m not asserting that Netflix and YouTube have no power or responsibility here, but the broadband providers appear to be the cause. Of course this agreement comes 10 days after Comcast agreed to acquire Time Warner Cable for $45 billion, this will make Comcast the provider to about one-third of American homes as a cable provider and they’d be the high-speed Internet company for 40 percent.

So does this agreement between Comcast and Netflix violate net neutrality? A definitive we’re not sure, and that isn’t just me who has a limited understanding of how the Internet works outside of my connection. Refresher net neutrality pretty much allows all content providers to have equal and free access to consumers. People close to the deal are on the side of this is pretty common for a middleman to carry traffic to a broadband provider, which then moves it to the consumer’s home. We don’t know how much the agreement is worth. The press release notes that “Netflix received no preferential network treatment under the multiyear agreement.”

However, there are skeptics such as Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor and advocate for net neutrality. He says this is the first of such agreements where broadband providers can extract payment for sending specific content through its network. One of the fears here is that wealthy companies will be the only companies that can afford to pay for these deals so it stifles new companies.

The agreement follows that January ruling from the federal appeals court which said the Federal Communications Commission overstepped its authority with the net neutrality rules. Had the court upheld the rules this deal might not exist. The broadband providers are playing down their role in service problems. They’ve been blaming middlemen who in their opinion are “trying to shove too much data through too small a pipe.”

*Side eye* Netflix will no longer use an intermediary to deliver content. So the Comcast-Netflix deal is “paid peering” which is a deal struck between companies that manage the plumbing of the Internet, usually invisible to consumers. This shouldn’t be confused with “paid prioritization” which is a net neutrality violation where companies pay to be moved through the pipes more quickly.

So obviously I’m opposed to Comcast growing even more, I think they have enough. I’m also a proponent of net neutrality. There is no reason some companies content should be prioritized over others for a fee. I just can’t get past the implications of that on alternative media. At this point we’ll just have to wait to see how this works in the long run and what other companies begin cutting deals like this.

People scrutinize public appearances, statements, and appearances of white dudes so they quit…

Ok, I give zero fucks about most pop culture, unless we’re talking The Walking Dead and House of Cards. Occasionally, I’ll dabble, and I do enjoy reading Perez Hilton when I can’t sleep…don’t judge…but for the life of me, I don’t get why we’re obsessed with entertainers. I just don’t.  What I do love? When public figures freak the fuck out when their privilege is challenged, particularly the white dudes.

Alec Baldwin, Piers Morgan, Shia LaBeouf, and probably dozens of other white dudes are really tired of people judging everything they do because we’re somehow persecuting them for holding the accountable. This policing has clearly got to stop *sarcasm*.  Don’t get me wrong, I’d hate to be followed everywhere, but I also wouldn’t make transphobia, homophobic, racist, etc rants. I intentionally used the word “policing” because we don’t police white cis men’s behavior the way we police people of color, other  genders, and other sexualities (Anyone got better inclusive language that doesn’t keep cis white dudes at the center? I’m trying to make it clear that anyone who deviated from the standard by which we measure is policed in appearance and behavior in a way cis white dudes just aren’t). Additionally, this policing is more than self-policing, which a guy I know likes to complain about men are held to an unrealistic standard because of comicbooks (no, that is all). I’m talking about dress being used against you in court, or racial profiling, or the media deciding you’re the worst person ever because you cheated on your boyfriend complete with death threats. And yes, all of those are real examples.

So when Alec Baldwin pens a piece claiming he’s stepping back from public life, I just have one question, why bother penning the piece? Delete your Twitter account, delete Facebook, refuse all interview requests moving forward. Just do it. However, in that piece where he claims he was unjustly labeled a bigot, Baldwin using the T word in regards to a transgender man, so clearly he learned a lot. Reading Baldwin’s piece is kind of surreal. He talks about how lucky he is, but then everything changed because he was called a homophobe. THE HORROR! Some perspective maybe? My life’s ok, and I’m called a cunt by strangers pretty regularly, meaning I’m reduced to my genitalia on a regular basis by people who give zero fucks about who I am. Want to talk about street harassment? I suspect some of my friends of color have similar experiences. At the end of the day, I shrug my shoulder and walk it off because fuck those guys and what can I possibly do? Perhaps, Baldwin was hit so hard by being called a homophobe because deep down he knew it was true? And epically, Baldwin concludes by apologizing if he offended anyone, you know instead of apologizing for what he said and did.

Allison Kilkenny does a pretty great take down of Morgan and Baldwin. She notes their privilege is the real problem for both of them. Kilkenny notes the similarities between Morgan and Baldwin’s decisions to step back (though Morgan’s decision was probably aided by CNN pulling the plug finally). They are also both pseudo liberals. Morgan and Baldwin both keep saying their didn’t do anything wrong, which is bullshit. Morgan was so disrespectful to Janet Mock, and then went on to engage with Twitter activists about how he’s the real victim, because you know he says so (?). For Baldwin, his major issue is that technology has allowed people to capture his horrendous behavior, tough guys, I’ll break out the tiny violin. Kilkenny nails it:

“Now, here’s the thing: I believe everyone has the right to take a mental vacation. I’ve seen some of my friends (primarily women journos and activists) be relentlessly hounded by anonymous internet trolls, bullied and threatened with rape, until they left their online lives just to preserve their sanity. But let’s be very clear that what Morgan and Baldwin are describing is entirely separate from the noble existences of persecuted activists. Men like Morgan and Baldwin are accustomed to holding all the power, which is why they’re mystified and peeved by the public backlash they’ve received for, in most cases, being privileged dicks.”

Kilkenny continues by explaining what Morgan and Baldwin are really doing, which is giving up, another privilege of those with power. They don’t need to work; they don’t have to listen to people who disagree with them or want to hold them accountable. I think this is the point of all of this. People with privilege aren’t used to being held accountable, and because of that they decide they can walk away. Well, too damn bad, and welcome to the world everyone else lives in. I’m sure Baldwin, Morgan, and the rest of them are going to be alright. But as my mother told us, “grow thicker skin.”

Conor Oberst is an asshole

I know, we all knew that. I remember back in college everyone was like “Oh, of course he’s a jerk, because he’s brilliant.” Now, there is debate about whether Oberst is brilliant or not, but he does seem to be falling into that famous/talented/special white guy box that lets them get away with things like rape. And with the resurgence of Woody Allen in the news, I can’t help but feel an intense anger that Oberst would think, “Hey, someone is accusing me of rape, and I have a lot of money so I’m going to sue her.” That will shut a bitch up, amiright?…or as we call it in academia, that will silence marginalized and disempowered people from speaking up.

Back in December, xoJane posted an article entitled, “It happened to me: I dated a famous rock star & and I got was punched in the face.” I read the piece when it came out; the series “It happened to me” can be spot on or really off the mark. This one sounded pretty legit. In the comments, a woman posted three comments claiming Oberst allegedly raped her at a concert when she was 16. The claims (in the comments and on Tumblr) have been deleted so The Wire’s Allie Jones seems to be pretty skeptical, but as anyone reading this knows, I am solidly in the #IBelieveHer camp. Oberst denies meeting the woman, and announced Thursday that he’s suing her for defamation.

The comments made by the woman (which I read when she made them) indicated she had a lot of emotional trauma from the alleged rape, which she asserts happened 10 years ago in North Carolina during a show. She claims Oberst’s older brother was her English teacher and introduced them as a 16^th birthday present. Oberst denies all allegations. The statement he released:

“Today Conor Oberst filed a libel lawsuit in a New York federal court against Joanie Faircloth, a resident of North Carolina, who falsely accused him of rape in the comments section of the xoJane website in December 2013and again, some days later, on her Tumblr page. The suit counters Faircloth’s baseless allegations and states that Oberst never had any physical contact with her, either at the convert in Durham, NC at which she claims the attack took place, or at any other time. The only connection between Oberst and Faircloth was one of artist and fan—a fan who has posted laudatory comments about Oberst elsewhere online, including describing attending his band’s concert as the ‘Best memory ever!’

“The lawsuit filed today outlines Faircloth’s history of inventing stories and personalities online in order to gain attention. Although her false statements about Oberst have since been deleted from the locations where they were initially posted online, Oberst’s suit alleges that her malicious lies spread across the Internet and are archived by multiple blogs. Through his attorneys, Oberst requested that Faircloth recant her false accusations, but she ignored the requests. Oberst has thus been forced to proceed with this libel suit in order to set the record straight and to clear his name.

“Oberst is seeking to promote the truth and repair the distress this has brought upon him and his family. Oberst intends to donate the proceeds of this suit to charities benefiting the victims of violence against women.”

 Jones continues by discussing the practices of xoJane and her work past experience with them. It is worth a read, but the point is that xoJane provides a place for women to share their stories with one another however xoJane doesn’t protect the commenters from being libel. xoJane didn’t comment for Jones’ article.

I wanted to talk about something else, specifically Oberst’s statement and the alleged victim. First, I’m pretty sure 10 years is past any statute of limitations in the states for rape. There is obviously going to be no physical evidence, and I’d hazard to guess the alleged assault happened before everyone started documenting very aspect of their lives. So in the end, there is nothing, nothing the alleged victim could do to Oberst except write some comments online.

Now, as for Oberst’s statement, WTF? Ok, even if he is innocent of all allegations, he attacks the alleged victim with your standard women are hysterical, and look she enjoyed a concert, and they lie! I’ve told lies before, so I hope no one can prove that or someone may use that as an excuse to make me unrapable. And make no mistake, what that statement does is what every defense attorney does to alleged victims, make them someone who can’t be raped or are lucky someone so important would pay any attention to them, are sluts or crazy, unbelievable.  And as we all know, men in power with fans could never abuse anyone. The characterization of the alleged victim by Oberst’s camp alone gives me pause when I read about how any proceeds would be donated to women’s organizations combating violence against women.

If the allegations are false, I feel for Oberst, but why? Unless, she like Oberst asserts is crazy, because obviously anyone who would come forward about sexual assault in the US must be insane (I don’t mean that, well not entirely). Oberst isn’t as famous as he used to be so if the allegation is just for attention why not make it years ago when Oberst was relevant? False rape allegations are rare. And powerful men do horrifying things as those links above suggest. The woman made the allegations on a site where anyone could track her, and she used her real name. All of these things in my mind point to, she probably isn’t lying. But I’m sure we’ll never know, and she (like rape survivors on college campuses) will be punished for not being able to prove their rapes…now with litigation on top of harassment, threats of violence, the physical and psychological trauma that comes with rape.

And finally, what happened to being the bigger person? Oberst has a lot of power here compared to his alleged victim, why not use your platform to say, “I didn’t do it, but I’m not going to engage in these false accusations any further.” But no, Oberst is going to sue a potential rape victim for libel statements in a federal court. I know I can’t wait for the fallout from that if he wins. Because then won’t rapist who are accused but don’t serve jail time be able to sue their accusers? And given the small numbers of rapists who serve time, this could get really ugly. 

**UPDATE: So I saw that the accuser is now retracting her statements and claiming she never made them. This is making it look more and more like false allegations. Additionally, someone was trying to track her story back based on the dates she gave. Legit. I'm still not ok with suing accusers.