Blaming everyone except the molester who groomed the child and won the trust of the child's parents is one of the most f***ed up things Morrissey has said. "Where were the parents," was an ignorant statement.
This kid was in a play with Spacey and Spacey had planned this.
Blaming the victim helps keep other victims from coming forward.
It's the exact same mentality that used to, and still does in many cases, lead to people asking, "what was she wearing," when a woman has been raped.
Spacey was not a movie star at the time and didn't have a decades long track record of sexual assault.
You say "without parental or adult accompaniment," but Spacey was the trusted adult accompaniment." He'd carefully maneuvered himself into that position.
Well, I guess we can agree to disagree. Or we can just disagree.
There are two immutable contextual points here that conveniently are being evaded in everyone’s arguments and treated as though they don’t even exist. Both more important than anything else that has been said, in my opinion. The first, is that every single human being brings their history and their own unique experience into any conversation they have, and any contribution with a remark they make. And in fact, there is nothing wrong with that. It’s how discussions happen, and it’s what drives discourse.
You think Morrissey (and others, presumably? Also me? Also many others?) “blame everyone except the molester”? And moreover, that “where were the parents” was an “ignorant” thing to say, and further still, that “Spacey was the trusted adult”? Ok. Just NO, to all of that.
Let me start here: by bring my own history and experience into this post and into my comment. Because that’s all I can do. I don’t speak for Morrissey. I don’t claim to know his own life experience. I am an individual, unique person with a well functioning brain and this is my comment, from the perspective of my own life experience. When I was 14, it was the first age where I had fully grown adults treating me inappropriately, and interacting with me inappropriately. It continually increased and escalated until 15 and 16, just because by then, more time had passed, which by definition allowed more possibilities for any instances of anything, to continue to occur. I was definitely sexually propositioned by people much older than I was when I was still a minor, and I was horrified. What I can tell you however is that as naive and clueless and innocent and idiotic as I was at 14 years of age, at no point did I ever have to get anywhere NEAR as far as an adult male’s private bedroom at night time after attending an adult party by myself, for that to happen.
Number 2: Spacey was NOT that 14 year old’s “trusted adult” accompaniment”. WHAT? Are we even being serious right now? If we weren’t forum friends, I would have assumed that was the biggest troll statement I’ve read on Solo in years, and that would have been saying something.
Spacey was not that kid’s babysitter, nor was he that kid’s guardian, and nor was he any longer a “co-worker”. Like, sorry, what am I even reading? You think because that kid had a job at 14, that he should have been out without parents or a true guardian, at adult parties as a minor, by himself, at night, and that it should have been normal to then go back to people’s hotel rooms?
Point number 3: let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that that really did happen and that that kid really was that naive. And let’s say also for the sake of argument, that this poor naive kid who apparently didn’t have even two brain cells to rub together, was also unfortunate enough to have parents who, for whatever reason, thought it was perfectly fine for their 14 year old minor child to be going around to adult parties by himself.
This all sets the stage nicely for a conversation about so-called “victim-blaming”. When I see people - in discussions about this particular alleged incident - throwing around the dirty accusation of “victim blaming” in response to any lucid thought or intelligent comment presented by anyone else on the subject, it just makes me think, “are people who persist in this vein really that stupid? Or are they deliberately just pretending to be?”
“Blaming everyone except the molester” is not something Morrissey did, and it’s deeply offensive to read this. “Blaming everyone except the molester”
is something you and many others choose to accuse other people of doing.
This is why I believe “victim blaming” bandied about like a dirty insult in the discussion of this case by many people on this thread and in many other places where this pathetic discussion has been repeatedly been had ad nauseum, is one of the most disingenuous retorts and one of the most feeble-minded throw-away ripostes, that only the truly unthinking hoardes with a complete inability to come up with three single logical thoughts of their own, continue to make.
And the reason the false accusation of the pedantically and voraciously abused “victim blaming” epithet is disingenuous, and why it does more than anything else to harm genuine victims:
When somebody, anybody, comes to any discussion on this subject with a thoughtful comment and a considered and legitimate question- to try and tar and feather that person with the “victim blaming” brush is nothing other than a deliberate and concerted attack intended to COMPLETELY and
definitively shut the entire conversation down.
And the irony, oh, the sheer IRONY of that, is that the reason it is NOT victim blaming is because the comments are part of a wider societal discussion that NEEDS to occur.
Going back to personal, unique experience - which, presumably, even in this day and age, I can still make a comment about, and reflect on, and presumably still have an opinion on. Here are my truths and my comments on my own life experience. In no particular order, and the sentences are not tied to one another. I am both a victim and a survivor of sexual assault. I hate everything about #MeToo. I was not sexually assaulted when I was 14. I was propositioned though numerous times when I was underage - and it was *never* in any kind of dubious circumstances. It was like, if I was alone in an elevator at a hotel, day time, after going down to the gift shop from my parent’s room to buy candy. More facts: I also had a job and worked from when I was 14. I certainly would not have met outside of the work place with any of the adult guys I worked with, to go to adult parties with them. And if I did, I still can’t imagine what it would have taken for me to think I should end the night by going to one of their hotel rooms with them. Like, WHAT? Sorry, as naive as I was as a child - there was NO confusion on my part that I was 14.
NEXT: Do you think if I had a child, or if you had a child, that it would it be an intelligent decision on either of our parts, to tell that child to do whatever they want, to go wherever they want to go, and for us to not keep an eye on them because
IF anything bad should *ever* happen, it’s not their fault! And no one will ever be allowed to say anything of intelligence ever, even as part of a necessary, wider societal conversation… because,…”no victim-blaming” will protect them!
You brought up rape. Fine. Let’s talk about rape, and the fact that there is an entire warped ideology and entire agenda now, that has tried (and largely succeeded) in infiltrating societal thought with the idea that we CANNOT and SHOULD NOT take any responsibility whatsoever any more, neither for our own nor for our children’s safety. What is this warped lie? Do you not see how the permeation of this idea into young and highly impressionable minds keeps people both dumb, and dumber, and serves only to keep them under the thumb and in a perpetual state of falsely imposed victimhood?
What if I tell my daughter to wear whatever she wants, whenever she wants, and to go whereever she wants, because IF she’s then ever attacked, it’ll be fine - because no one’s allowed to “victim blame”? WHAT? Just NO.
These kinds of thoughtless infiltrations of illogical nonsense into the collective minds of large swathes of the population who are apparently totally incapable of thinking for themselves anymore, serve only to
subjugate people.
When you start to indoctrinate people that they are no longer responsible for their own safety, for their own actions, or for their own thoughts - what are we left with? A society with norms that have unravelled and that have been so far broken down and destroyed that all that remains is … decline into entropy.
And let me be crystal clear: none of this is to say that bad things won’t continue to always happen, and that some things can’t be avoided no matter how much care or common sense we raise and instill our children with.
But that isn’t the issue. The issue is, why is it suddenly dangerous and disallowed to have free speech, and free thought anymore?
Back to rape. Would I tell my daughter that if she leaves home and goes to visit a third world country, rampant with crime and unfettered sexual violence against women, pick a place, any place, the world is full of them, that she should be her own person and wear whatever she likes, because *even* if she goes out alone a 3am in some dark alley in a bikini, it doesn’t matter because
IF she’s raped and/or murdered in a situation that even the smallest modicum of common sense would have likely rendered completely avoidable… it won’t matter, because it will only be the perpetrator’s fault! So yes, f*** intelligent conversation and any common sense and do what you want, come whatever may, because you have #Women’sRights and that’s what should keep you warm at night, should anything ever happen.
So, what does that mean? That these are societal, Westernized, #First World problems? Yes, I think it does mean exactly that, in the sense that I doubt we could expect to see this level of national, collective idiocy anywhere else in the world, and certainly not in less wealthy or more dangerous countries/societies; because any thinking human beings would tell us to f*** right off, if we told them their children didn’t need guidance, and didn’t need protection, and didn’t need common sense or ANY suggested common sense dictums or rules to abide by in order to even TRY to minimize their exposure to danger. God knows there’s still enough danger out in the world even with any precautions we can think of, to ensure bad things will still
always happen.
So to me, this is not about “victim blaming”. On the contrary, “victim blaming” is a weapon used to shut down conversation.
And that’s why I said I always ask myself whenever I see people do this, whether they can really be that dumb?
Or does it just serve their self-interest in a given moment in time to pretend to be, when tbey want to attack anyone who raises *any* points in the context of a wider conversation that can be had on these subjects - subjects which affect and can pertain to all of us.
Asking questions doesn’t stop other victims coming forward. I find that offensive. Asking questions is what intelligent human beings should always do, and it’s largely how we can learn something about what NOT to do, or how to prevent something from happening again.
Disingenuous doesn’t even
begin to encompass it, and this is a really sad subject.
The icing on the cake is how utterly demeaning and how
humiliating it is to genuine victims, to be disseminating a continuing ideology that creates an environment where they are poised for nothing *but* victimhood,
This thread and your comment warranted this answer, because it’s absolutely exhausting to only ever be slapped across the face with one narrative all the time, and to see anyone who dares say anything be attacked under these false flags where people try to imply with this “victim-blaming” epithet that they are (the only ones) on the side of victim, and that this is enough, and that this is all any victim needs.
That’s not only offensive, but is also the biggest lie of all. And again, one that only the wholly unthinking could ever swallow.
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