It's also surprisingly easy to make good art and not abuse people
It’s just so easy to not sexually harass people you have supervisory authority over
It’s extremely easy to never do that
hey, what's the point of being an artiste if I can't play grabass
A story I told elsewhere on another thread goes like: I went to a party in Soho in my mid-to-late 20s, put on by [a famous literature professor], and attended by [a famous film director], [a famous Broadway actor], [a famous composer], [a very famous author]-- all of whom were between age 45 and 65, all of whom were white and male and wealthy and gay and had "achieved their dignity". The party had many other similarly well-heeled influential white fags in addition to the ones whose names I knew.
The party was also attended by an equal number of gay men aged 20 to 30, including myself, who were all aspirants, people who looked up to these men in positions of power and influence. It became clear to me, as the night went on, that this party, which began as a cultural sort of salon, would conclude with many of these people pairing off to fuck.
I sat with [a famous film director], who was maybe 47 and extremely handsome, who pointed at the 21-year old singer (an gay escapee from Central America) and told me they'd been sleeping together. "I have to break things off with him," he said, affecting an air of melancholy, but unable to conceal the pride with which he was allowing the effects of his agency and influence to be displayed, "because he's becoming too attached to me. He told me he loved me last weekend. I don't think it will last much longer."
I stepped out on to the balcony for a cigarette with [a famous musician] and [the very famous author], who were talking about a particular service that Marc Jacobs employed. "They have a network of rent boys all over the world," the author said, "it doesn't matter where Marc is, at 10pm a young man will knock on his hotel room door, and Marc can decide if he's to come in or to leave. It's all set up through his secretary."
I did not judge the dynamics that were on display, because fags already have a history of being branded as perverts and pedophiles. But the question that this entire experience left me asking myself was this: what comes first? Do these men, playing at "culture", but talking about sex, do they aspire toward dignity and affluence because of a passion for their cultural interests, and find that sex follows their achievements? Or: is their aspiration toward dignity and affluence entirely motivated by sex, and to be surrounded by young gay men for as long as their influence and physical appeal can sustain that attention-- is the cultural stuff just a means to an end?
(If this sounds preposterous, that "that gay author is only writing books to bang young men", then I urge you to read more gay literature and the biographies of the gay men who write it, but anyway.)
I tried over the years to ask this question of older gay friends but never really got an answer-- the conversation would quickly turn away from "what it all means" and back to conversations about dicks and butts. But I've been thinking about it recently, as these stories have slid away from being between boundaries of "what is defined as consensual" and is now just a larger cultural indictment toward the very nature of power, and the way that powerful men wield it.
So in short, hey, what's the point of being an artiste if I can't play grabass is kind of the actual question here, as far as I'm concerned.
I don't know if there's an easy way to answer ums's question of Morbs-- but I do feel that the dialogue which once focused on rape, and then sexual assault, and then coercive sex, and then sexual harassment, and then sexual misconduct, it seems to be conflating ALL forms of male pattern badness, and urging the reader/listener into corralling every creep into a box of predation, sexual assault, illegality, the purpose of which seems to be the implication of carceral punishment, either legal or social. But I don't believe in carceral punishment, neither (I think?) does research. But I don't think many of the accused-famous-people (from basically Louie CK's level of 'crime' on downward) really deserve to lose their job, so much as they should go through a response system that doesn't exist yet. One that would allow them to respond to allegations frankly and fully, to slim down the possibility of legal recourse and thus skip all the meaningless denials, agree to some manner of punishment/rehabilitation that didn't feel rote or stupid, and reorganize the power structure that put them in the place in which they were able to abuse that power so that they were no longer able to abuse it.
On a fundamental level, these problems would be solved (and replaced with new, glorious problems for our future selves to solve) if there was greater gender parity of people in positions of power, but destroying the lives of powerful men who copped a feel seems to me to be a shit way of achieving what could be achieved more effectively by, say, requiring Hollywood studios, colleges and universities, record labels, music festivals, art galleries, and awards programs in all fields to meticulously enforce a 50/50-or-better gender split favouring women in their hiring, green lighting, curation and awarding practices.
But hey, then we wouldn't be able to engage in truth-to-power fantasies, and what fun would that be?
Even if my post is shit logic I hope I get bonus points for "male pattern badness" *cough*
― flamboyant goon tie included, Tuesday, 13 February 2018 19:27 (six years ago) link
Well, a decade or so later, I think that the impulses are intrinsically linked. I'm now in the "currency was invented so that men could affect sexual and social viability through their cabbage years" camp, a natural logical dovetail from the "prostitution is the oldest profession" adage I guess
A non-progressive attitude that I'll cop to in all of this hurricane of information is that I actually really do care about these "old white men", where they'll go or what they'll do, I don't really subscribe to the "fuck em" rhetoric because they're (we're) gonna be voting til they're dead, and we're all gonna be old and desperately lonely some day, and at 38 I'm already starting to understand the profound terror that accompanies the loss of power as one loses bodily agency, social and sexual viability,
I mean, fuck it, I just bought a dog
She's so cute I love her
― flamboyant goon tie included, Wednesday, 14 February 2018 01:40 (six years ago) link