Wednesday, 28 February 2001

RANTING & RAVING

It's funny. Just at the moment when I am thinking about all the personal stuff that I don't or can't write about in this week's Ranting & Raving, I get an e-mail on a piece about how many web writers are getting a little too personal for this writer's taste. (Click here).

All I can really tell you is that transition is harder to go through than I sometimes realize. So many fascinating options and yet, every one of them has weaknesses to go with the oh-so compelling strengths. But I won’t bore you with that. Not today, at least.

Fortunately, a reader wrote in yesterday about sexual harassment, as mentioned in yesterday's column, and inspired a response long enough to appear to be a column. And so, I'll leave you with that and sit here licking the wounds I am so lucky to have. (I really do appreciate how lucky I am… it just doesn't always feel that way.)

READER OF THE DAY: KanSas writes: "Dave, you really do deserve to be taken to task for trying to make light of sexual harassment and I am going to step up to the plate. NO one has to put up with unwanted sexual advances and being touched in ANY WAY!!! I do not give a fuck if people feel that because it happens often enough, it is ok or if men hit on waitresses on Sunset Plaza. If a customer is making unwanted advances, they should not even bother waiting on them. I would stick up for you if some woman was sexually harassing you (even if you wanted me to get lost)."

DAVID RESPONDS: I don't want you to get lost at all though, after reflection, I think that may have been meant as a joke, as though I would want you to allow me to be harassed in peace because I might enjoy it. If the joke was intended, it is kind of sexist, no? Clearly, some behavior that some women may well see as harassing from some men are seen as mating behavior by others, on both sides of the equation. I have been sexually harassed, by men primarily, and I don't enjoy it at all. But, then again, I rarely see my physical attractiveness as bait that I can use on the job. Which brings me back to the Catch-22.

Who gets to draw the line when you make harassment legally actionable. I don't think it's okay for men to act like idiots, but one also has to understand that many of the women working the Sunset Plaza restaurants – and in Hollywood, in all kinds of jobs - do use their looks to increase their bottom line.

This all speaks to Raw Deal: A Question of Consent, the movie that I consider the most compelling I've seen this year, even if it has limitations as a documentary. The film is, as many of you already know, about the accusation of rape by a stripper who was working a University of Florida frat party. At the core of the film are two videotapes, shot by frat boys the night of the party, at issue. And in the movie, you watch the rape. I call it a rape without any question. But what is so amazing is that the line is so thin. Here is a woman who is drinking endlessly, dancing naked, even manually copulating a guy… but she clearly has drawn a line at penetration of her vagina or mouth. She never puts it into words, but if you choose to pay attention, you can absolutely tell. And the answer is, even as she writhes naked on top of a naked man, that if the boy was paying attention, he would know that she didn’t want to be penetrated. But he just wasn't interested.

Ironically, a 10 second shot of penetration in Baise Moi was cut earlier this week so that the film could be shown in England. Other explicit acts of sex were okay, according to the censor, because they were consensual. I disagree with that kind of thinking, because allowing graphic images when sex is "good" and hiding them when the sex is "bad" creates a mystery about the "bad" sex that I consider more dangerous than any form of direct speech (or image).

But back to my original point… there is no question about what is wrong, and it is what any person decides is wrong and can express, even in a subtle way. There are some things that are clearly wrong, even when the victim suffers silently. And then there are public acts that teeter on the line between invasive and social. That's Sunset Plaza Land. If the waitress has the freedom to flirt to increase her tip, how far does the guy have a right to go in response? Again, I would say that anything physical is automatically over the line unless very clearly invited. Beyond that, the waitress has the ability to express discomfort. Having done that once should be enough to draw the line. If the customer persists, the manager should intervene. Or, as was the case three months ago when an idiot friend of mine overreached verbally, the waitress abused him verbally in such a smart way that he didn't even get it and she seemed to feel fine about the whole of the event. She probably would tell you that she doesn’t need protecting. But how does my idiot friend – who I haven't seen since – know the difference between her tools and the limited tools of a less experienced woman and waitress the next time out? And can we blame the smart, tough waitress for creating an atmosphere of danger for the less tough waitress he ran into next simply because she didn’t do what she might consider self-victimization by claiming a foul? It's a very problematic circle of issues.

But again… back to the core. The answer to all of this is simple. Pay attention. Assume in a business situation – as one, ironically, should in a strip club - that people are pleasant because they feel they have to be, not because they are into you. Until you have developed a level of intimacy with a person – lover, friend or employee, temporary or permanent – you have no status that allows you to be very presumptuous. If you must ripple the pond, throw a small rock first and pay careful attention. That's what you would do if you were developing a relationship with someone with whom you had something to lose. What people sometimes forget is that we have a stake in EVERYONE. No matter what someone's status, they are people, not objects. And if we all saw the world as filled with people, not objects, we would all be happier.

Which once again goes to the documentary. Seeing this woman in this terrible, criminal sexual situation wasn't the most horrible part of it for me. Listening to a guy who was not accused of the rape, but who was in the room, refer to the woman in inhuman ways pretty much every time he opened his mouth… the absolute inability to see a person – nevermind that she's someone's mother and someone's daughter – his inability and the inability of a fraternity full of young men to connect with this woman's humanity is the greatest tragedy, in my mind's eye. And not just for her, but for every guy who thought of that evening as a good time. I slip now and again and degrade someone in an unkind way… certainly not anywhere near that level. But I know, when I stop and think, that it reduces me as a person. But to see other humans as objects and to revel in that distinction… sick.

READER OF THE DAY 2: And now, like desert for good children who have put up with my pontificating, here is a very fun site, sent in by Jim. Thanks Jim. (Click here.)

E ME: What do you have to say about it? And how does it relate to movies? Does film give boys and girls the wrong ideas about relations with the opposite sex?