Wednesday, February 21, 2018

White Roses at the Brit Awards

Oh deary, deary me.
This doesn't stand a snowflake's chance in hell. The music industry is THE site of sexual abuse and coercive control. Rather than tweeting #MeToo, women (and young men) should be tweeting #NotMe in the rare instances when they haven't been propositioned, attacked or enticed into uncomfortable power-balance situations, or maybe #NotMeYet.
The industry is full of 'feminist men' who use the badge to get women to trust them, and then do the Harvey on them. Or procurer-type women working for the Harveys who persuade young women that it's really feminist to take off your clothes to appear in a pop video ostensibly because its a sign of freedom, but in reality because it shifts units and 'everybody is doing it'. Feminism used as a lure is particularly prevalent in the twenty-something generation, rather depressingly.

Years ago, I had a boss who spontaneously yelled at people when he got annoyed. He was quite public about it, and lots of people were terrified of him. He was actually one of the nicest people I've ever worked for or with, because what you saw was what you got. He never yelled at anyone in private; he was so incapable of controlling how he felt that he was also unable to be secretive, involve people in narcissistic plots or cabals, or make women feel sexually uncomfortable. The shouting could be undermining, but he cooled off pretty quickly. You felt that he was totally safe and trustworthy, and I had a lot of honest conversations with him. He was easy to respect, because he had no fake 'wokery' about him. That's not to say every man who shouts is honest, nor is every quiet man a fraud; feminism is a work in progress that everyone can contribute to, and there is no 'we've done it now' about it.

Not all women are the same, and neither are all men; wouldn't it be great in life if there was time out to reassess everything? Not just the abuse of women, but the abuse of little boys by sports coaches, and in boarding schools.

Whenever I've interviewed women in the music industry for research purposes, I get told the most blood-curdling stories. This almost stalled the PhD before its time, and nothing has changed. The women often don't want these stories to be heard, because then all they will be is victims. Jean Seaton, who was one of the supervisors on my PhD, gave good advice: the women are not victims, they are people who have survived despite the attempts to demean and derail them made by men in the music industry. In fact, they are professional people who are thriving.

So the white roses? Leave them in the fields, and let nature take its course with them. Human responsibility is the only solution, and the recognition that even the most charming and plausible people can fool people who think that they themselves are too intelligent to be taken for a ride.
Always believe.

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