With the arrest and charging of Harvey Weinstein, former film producer, comes a bittersweet victory for Hollywood and women in general. Him and the likes of Bill Crosby are high profile abusers, using their positions to exploit women. They are not the first of course. Abusers range from DJs, actors, and singers to an Olympic athletes’ doctor, members of the UN peacekeeping force, and development workers. But to my mind—and I expect critical and strong feedback here—actors, directors and the like are idolized for their looks, fame, money, ability to progress ones career etc, by the women they subsequently abuse. These women may not be nearly as vulnerable as those being abused by doctors, peacekeepers and others in a position of trust. Now before you start punching the newspaper, let me say I in NO WAY condone any act of violence, physical, mental, or sexual against any female (or male). I also fall into the #metoo category, twice over (discounting the ‘small stuff’). What I am saying is that those who are physically in positions of trust, such as doctors and peacekeepers, are generally in close contact with people whose very lives are precariously in their hands. There is something particularly abhorrent about that kind of advantage taking.
As #metoo, correctly, intensifies is there a line to be drawn anywhere? When does sexual innuendo and light teasing become sexual assault? There is not a single female on this earth who has not suffered some kind of teasing; and probably frequently. But what is seen to one woman as easy-going banter from a colleague is viewed as sexual abuse by another. I wrote in an earlier column about being verbally abused by a young guy on a scooter. To me it was just annoying and silly. Yet to the young Nepali girl who grabbed me by the arm when he started verbally abusing her, this was sexual abuse, and terrifying.
I’m reading today that Morgan Freeman has also been accused under #metoo. His ‘sexual abuse’ of colleagues was to his mind jokes and compliments. Being that he is 80 years old, he will have grown up in a society where joking and complimenting women with the likes of “your legs look fabulous in that short skirt” (my words), was perfectly acceptable. But as time has gone on, this kind of comment is not only uncomfortable, but labelled “sexual abuse”. Men must now take care not to offend women by saying or doing anything that can be construed as abuse. Again I ask, is there a line to be drawn and where do we draw it?
Something those in Asia will find extremely strange and hard to understand is that in the West you cannot even talk to a young child that you do not know lest you be accused of child molestation. Earlier this week there was a child of about four crying on the stairs of the venue I was in. Naturally I stopped to ask why he was crying and where was his mother. If his father had not turned up at that point I would have lifted the child off the stair and tried to find someone who knew him. This kind of thing cannot now be done in the West without risking being accused of kidnapping or abuse. Where do we draw the line?
Which brings me to another question—when is art, art, and when is art, pornography? This is certainly an age-old question but in the days of social media when is it right to post so-called art pictures which are, to the majority, merely porn? If someone, who is not a photographer by profession, takes semi-nude pictures of (consenting) strangers on his phone and posts on social media under the heading “art”, is it art or is it pornography? Are we so numb and jaded by erotic imagery that we don’t even care? Where do we draw the line?
