News Woody Allen Is Not A Monster. He Is A Person. Like My Father.

[Lost Pup]

A response, on Gawker, to Dylan Farrow's Op-Ed

http://gawker.com/woody-allen-is-not-a-monster-he-is-a-person-like-my-f-1518291644

 

[Echo]

Excellent article. Thank you for posting it.

 

[ms spock]

Most of us would sooner discard all parties who have been tainted by this event than we would look at how tenuous the sanctity of children really is, how commonplace abuse is, or see the capacity for the mostly good to do periodic evil. We live in the same universe as those who abuse kids. We walk among them. If we want to end the sexual abuse of children, it will begin with the recognition that we are simply not that different from them.
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That is what happened to me. I was discarded.

I totally dissociated and felt like the world was not real and I was not real reading this. Powerful stuff. I have been throwing ideas around like this in another thread. Very interesting article. I have come to believe that if we don't see the normal people as they are both normal and child rapists then we will never stop it. That dichotomy gives them the room to operate.

 

[Pencil]

Excellent indeed. Plus, the prose is more than 'gorgeous', it is iridescent.

 

[Lost Pup]

[ edited because comment it was responding to was deleted in editing ]

 

[WillyKat]

Thanks for posting.

I believe children's accusations of sexual abuse and seriously doubt there's any reality to the idea of "planting" memories.

There's a bunch of people out there that make a living out of denying that repressed memories are real. Some of those are university professors. It's disgusting!

 

[Abstract]

Thanks for sharing pup. A lot of interesting thoughts in it and well communicated. I still struggle with understanding how accepting perpetrators more will protect children from being abused longer term. I am a supporter of human rights and dignity for all but that is all. I do appreciate how he broke down peoples expectations of who a perpetrator would be and how people section off and deny the reality. That someone doing normal things in normal ways does not mean they are not also capable of monstrous acts. I would prefer that a few sentences were worded differently but am glad to have read the article and give due credit to him for having the courage to write it and post it out there.

 

[Survivor2Thriver]

The article missed the obvious. Or was it trying to avoid a glaring fact?

Woody Allen likes them young. No dispute there!

 

[Hashi]

A response.. to Dylan Farrow's Op-Ed

Surely this is a response to the media/celebrity response to Dylan Farrow's open letter? She doesn't call Woody Allen a monster in the letter. Nor does she say anything along the lines of him being all bad. In fact, I took her approach to be essentially the same as this one - not to see people in only one light, and that how other people accepted Woody Allen made her fear being disbelieved.

I agree with WillyKat that there is a lot of verbiage in this article. For me, that's more than frustrating. I think it allows a polemic to appear as more balanced and reasonable that it actually is. It has a lot of width (words) but not much depth. It doesn't address all sorts of related and difficult questions. Why do some survivors go on to perpetrate abuse themselves, and other survivors don't? How do we deal with questions of responsibility? However compassionate we might be about someone's own psychological damage, what do we do about the need to keep others safe from them? What implications does that have for how we deal with other offenders and other crimes?

It may have been enough for the writer to understand his Dad's history and hear his Dad acknowledge the truth to him. If his Dad is still around children, that isn't enough for me. And I think that's the problem for me with the whole article.

More than anything there is the greatest unanswered - in fact, unasked - question that I have a result of having worked in the criminal justice sector. Both research studies and anecdotal evidence (for example, the project workers and prison officers I know who run programmes for sex offenders) repeatedly show that many paedophiles simply don't think what they did was wrong. They realise that other people think it's wrong, they understand that it works for them to say they realise they have harmed others, but they often don't believe it themselves. So their actions after release are driven by a) finding ways to continue their behaviour and b) being better at hiding it. How do we make sure we don't enable both those things, through acceptance?

Compassion is good, but let's also be realistic and have adequate safeguards. How we do all those things together is rarely discussed.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

There are a lot of idiots out there. They expect evil to look like the joker in "Batman" or the wicked witch of the west in "The Wizard of Oz". People can't seem to wrap their minds around the fact that some of the worst types of evil in this world are performed by those who don't necessarily look evil or act evil to the majority of society. But, such is the nature of evil. It would lose it's power if everyone could see it for what it is.

This may sound crazy... My molester was the Donna Reed of the 80's. Yeah, happy homemaker, wife of the preacher, even sewed me some handmade toys. When I finally disclosed my abuse 25 years later, nobody doubted me. I am fortunate in that it showed me that some of the most evil acts in the world can easily be hidden by sunshine and roses. In this respect, I am enlightened in a way that many are not. I can see the truth whereas many prefer to stick their heads in the sand, believing that if someone appears good, they must *be* good.

 

[crazy8]

Great article!

 

[Abstract]

Personally I don't have any problems with the style of the article. I do think language use like this makes something less emotional but that can have advantages. Those that get defensive and do not want to consider a topic are often won over more easily by less emotional arguments and ones that come across as reasonable. I think there is space for a variety of different ways of presenting something.

I also don't feel that we need to cover all aspects of something in an article for it to have value. Enough has to be said to covey a sense of the persons general viewpoint. I am not completely sure the writer did that in a way that stops any misconceptions. I suspect that he isn't excusing the behaviour of perpetrators in the way it could be interpreted. Some of the content is unfortunate as I suspect it doesn't fully reflect the ethos of what was intended. I may be wrong but if I am not then I think it is shame as these gaps leave it open to being read differently.

If I am wrong then I don't agree as I believe it is important to still hold someone responsible for their actions

The other thing I wanted to say is that perpetrators differ an awful lot. Some may never go near an actual person and do feel regret but an awful lot who do act out their abuse in person or live usually have no remorse, no guilt and no care about the effect they have had on their victims. If they did then there is a limit to how much harm they would be able to inflict on others. Many are very manipulative and are good at winning people over. I have sympathy for Loscarn but we also have to consider that a lot of the distress came out when he was caught. Would he have been looking for help and being suicidal if he hadn't? By not having examples of other thinking of abusers that are more usual I think it skews the view of normal reactions quite a bit even if that wasn't the intent.

Still glad to have read it though.