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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   28048 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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Russell Brand Accusations

Russell Brand has been accused of sexual misconduct and/or rape by four women in a large exposé by the Sunday Times [2]. The mainstream consensus online is that the testimony of these women is absolutely correct. I wonder, though, how many false accusers we should expect given the context of Russell Brand.

Russell Brand is not just some guy, he was at one point a party icon in the UK. As such, he has slept with 1000 women. And these are not just some women, just like Brand is not just some guy. This is not a sample size of the median woman in the UK. The women he slept with would differ psychologically from the average woman: more likely to make poor choices, more likely to be partying, more likely to be doing things for clout (like Russell Brand), more likely to be involved with drugs and mental illness. A study on the lives of “groupies” in the heavy metal scene found that groupies were more likely to use sex for leverage, to come from broken homes, and to have issues with drugs and alcohol. (This is not a one-to-one comparison; heavy metal is different than the rock n roll persona of Brand).

Scott has written that up to 20% of all rape allegations are false. But with Brand, we have a more complicated metric to consider: how many false accusers will you have sex with if you’ve had sex with one thousand women who make poor choices? Scott goes on in the above article to note that 3% of men will likely be falsely accused (including outside of court) in their life. If this is true, we might try multiplying that by 125 to arrive at how many accusers Brand should have. That would bring us to four, rounding up — but again, this would totally ignore the unique psychological profile of the women he screwed.

There’s yet more to consider. Brand is wealthy, famous, and controversial. His wealth and stature would lead a mentally unwell woman to feel spite, and his controversy would lead a clout-chasing woman to seek attention through accusation. What’s more, (most of) these allegations only came about because of an expensive and time-consuming journalistic investigation, which would have lead to pointed questioning.

All in all, it seems unfair to target a famous person and set out your journalists to hound down every woman he had sex with. It’s a man’s right to have consensual sex with mentally unwell and “damaged” women, which would be a large chunk of the women Brand bedded. Of course, this cohort appears more apt to make false accusations. Quoting Scott,

in a psychiatric hospital I used to work in (not the one I currently work in) during my brief time there there were two different accusations of rape by staff members against patients […] Now I know someone is going to say that blah blah psychiatric patients blah blah doesn’t generalize to the general population, but the fact is that even if you accept that sorta-ableist dismissal, those patients were in hospital for three to seven days and then they went back out into regular society

It’s a man’s right to have consensual sex with mentally unwell and “damaged” women

This is the point at which I stop going along. Haven't you heard the good old "don't stick your dick in crazy"? And nobody, man woman or other, has the "right" to have sex with anyone.

I think Brand's in a grey area; he did like to get involved in some tacky shit in order to keep the edgy image going. He probably did sleep with women who were flaky, crazy, or unstable. And those women probably were in some sense vulnerable, thought that pulling a big name famous guy would result in more than it did, might even have hoped for a relationship. Years later, they've imbibed the notion that they weren't able to consent or that he coerced them into sex.

And y'know? If they are mentally unwell, they aren't able to fully and properly consent. So are the accusations false? They're in that fuzzy area of "not quite false, not quite true".

Consider it karma for the shit he pulled back when he was being an edgelord: the Andrew Sachs prank phone call. Andrew Sachs was an actor, a genuinely nice guy, and best known for his role as Manuel in "Fawlty Towers". He was also of Jewish ancestry and his family had settled in Britain after fleeing the Nazis:

Sachs was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Katharina (née Schrott-Fiecht), a librarian, and Hans Emil Sachs, an insurance broker. His father was Jewish and his mother was Lutheran, with Austrian ancestry. The family moved to Britain in 1938 to escape the Nazis.

In 2008, when Sachs was 78 years of age and Russell Brand was 33 and his co-presenter Jonathan Ross was 48 years of age, they were going to do a pre-recorded section for Brand's radio show. That didn't go as planned, because the two shitheads Brand and Ross (and I've always thought Jonathan Ross was a dickhead) thought they could be so funny by being loons:

On Thursday 16 October 2008, Sachs, who portrayed Manuel in the 1970s BBC television sitcom Fawlty Towers, was scheduled to be a phone-in guest on Brand's evening radio show. The show was pre-recorded due to Brand's work commitments. Brand had briefly been in a relationship with Sachs' granddaughter Georgina Baillie.

After being unable to reach Sachs on his home telephone, Brand and his co-host of the week, fellow Radio 2 DJ Jonathan Ross, left Sachs four voice messages on his answering machine. In the first message, Brand joked about Fawlty Towers and the fact that both he and Sachs had appeared in The Bill, but was interrupted by Ross shouting out "he fucked your granddaughter". The rest of the message and the following three messages were all characterised by Brand and Ross attempting to apologise for Ross' outburst, but each quickly descended into farce; for example, Brand sang to Sachs: "It was consensual and she wasn't menstrual", and Ross asked to marry him. Brand later said that listening to the calls was like hearing "two idiots dancing towards a canyon"

On 25 October, Brand presented his last edition of his radio show with co-host Simon Amstell, which they performed live. Shortly before going on air, Brand was informed that The Mail on Sunday would be running a story about the phone calls. During the show, Brand apologised to Sachs, but also devoted much of the show to deriding the Daily Mail for its support of Nazism in the lead-up to World War II. In his apology to Sachs, Brand said: "What's worse – leaving a swearword on Andrew Sachs' answerphone or tacitly supporting Adolf Hitler when he took charge of the Third Reich?"

Sachs later stated he had not given permission for the messages to be broadcast. The BBC originally stated that they were "not aware of any complaint by Mr Sachs", but later confirmed a complaint had been received, and apologised. Brand issued an apology for making the calls but stated it was "funny" during his last radio show, before the Mail had printed the story.

So broadcasting to the public stupid messages where you yell at an elderly man about fucking his grand-daughter, then 'apologise' by invoking Hitler to that same man whose family had to flee the Nazis is so thigh-slappingly funny. I hope Russell is laughing as heartily now with these accusations, it's all only a bit of lewd fun isn't it!

And y'know? If they are mentally unwell, they aren't able to fully and properly consent. So are the accusations false? They're in that fuzzy area of "not quite false, not quite true".

If they're not children and aren't subject to conservatorship, they should be presumed to be able to fully and properly consent. Again, when it comes to "guilty" or "not guilty" there is no middle ground.

Ah come on, Nybbler, we have the concept of impaired consent by reason of drugs, drunkenness, mental state at the time, which doesn't have to reach the level of "so impaired that they need to be under conservatorship".

I'm pushing back against "a man has a right to fuck crazy bitches" with "stick your dick in crazy but don't be surprised what happens after". It's the equivalent of "how was I to know the leopards would eat my face?" If you're having sex with someone unstable because she's easy and will do wild shit in bed, you have no right to be surprised when she later goes on to claim crazy stuff about you.

Okay. But then these women shouldn’t be allowed to make any decisions (eg they shouldn’t be able to drink, shouldn’t be able to sign contracts, shouldn’t be able to vote). If that isn’t the standard, then they have agency and can consent to sex.

I am at the stage that if people are going to be crying about "this poor 25 year old infant had no agency about the guy she slept with", then yeah - they should not be allowed behave like adults.

On the other hand, for both women and men, there are people it is too risky to sleep with, and if you go ahead and do it because you're too horny or careless or whatever, then it's like running the risks of STIs- you can't be surprised you got a dose of the clap if you've been promiscuous, have not used protection, and have slept around with people who are in impaired states or none too careful about their sexual experiences.

There's allegedly a graffito from Pompeii:

VIII.2 (in the basilica); 1882: The one who buggers a fire burns his penis

I am at the stage that if people are going to be crying about "this poor 25 year old infant had no agency about the guy she slept with", then yeah - they should not be allowed behave like adults.

That's where we are. I believe Evan Rachel Wood is the superannuated poster child for this one.

But then these women shouldn’t be allowed to make any decisions (eg they shouldn’t be able to drink, shouldn’t be able to sign contracts, shouldn’t be able to vote).

Yes_Chad.jpg

Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand. If we are not willing to let such women suffer the consequences of their mistakes, which we obviously aren't, then they cannot be permitted the freedom to make those mistakes in the first place.

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