Open Letter From Dylan Farrow on Abuse by Woody Allan

[brekin]

Hey Fourthbase,

I replied at length to your reply yesterday but it didn't seem to go through. I don't have the stamina to do it again, point by point, and I doubt it would change your opinion much anyway. In a nutshell though what mystifies me the most from everything you posted is your lack of empathy for Dylan Farrow. Whether the allegations are true or not it seems you feel free to minimize, discount her suffering (if you read her letter she lays out how she has suffered) because, because? All I can surmise so far is because she is obliquely connected to the star machine and is materially ok. And perhaps she doesn't fit the profile of the victim or whistleblower you prefer who I guess needs to be eating ramen in some safe house in Mogadishu and have no famous relatives.

You also don't seem to understand the internet is connected to the real world. You haven't suffered on it because you are anonymous, she is not. I don' t think you get that she is a modern day Cassandra. Sure she has her share of knee jerk supporters and ideological victimologists who have rallied around her not as a person but for the cause. But the next time you walk down the street and no one gives a fuck or you go to a job interview and they google you to find next to nothing- think what her life is like now and forever. As for Allen, he pressed go on this of his own accord more than a few times with his own conscious choices. She was born into her controversy and that at the very least should be worth some compassion. To compare her plight to the kardashians and "Team Farrow" publicity campaign to me shows that your operating with as much moral sensitivity to this as, that I can only say, sorry, but is as bad as the reality tv crap you are condemning.

P.S. The whole gender thing I'm passing on, but for what it is worth, I could see a female making the same statements you've made so I don't think your gender (I assume is male) proves anything on this.

[Nordic]

This thing is reminding me of the OJ Simpson trial in which white people just KNEW he was guilty (and I was one of those until recently) and black folks knew (justifiably as I see it now) that there was actually plenty of reasonable doubt.

Men (in general!) seem to be assuming the victim is lying because that Mia is such a "psycho", and women seem to assume she's telling the truth.

Two worst-nightmare scenarios are being presented here. One, it's a woman's worst nightmare that she get molested (when she's a kid), then her worst nightmare that a man she trusts turns out to be a rapist or a perv, then even later that a man she loves and trusts is actually after her child daughter, a la Humbert Humbert or Woody Allen.

A man's worst nightmare is that he is falsely accused as a pedophile or a rapist.

I once dated a woman who had a huge white German Shepherd that was highly trained to protect her. One word from her, some secret code word, and that dog would have literally ripped my throat out.

When you are with a woman who has a young daughter it's somewhat similar in that one word from the girl and your life is over.

When my wife and I first moved in together her daughter was 5. One day the girl got extremely mad at me about something and blurted out "he hit me!" to her mother. I was shocked and kind of hurt, and her mother gave me a look. Quickly the girl recanted, bursting into tears and admitting she said that just because she was mad at me. But for a minute I wasn't sure what was going to happen.

Men are scared of this because there's absolutely zero you can do in this situation and we all know that it's possible. Our physical strength superiority diesn't protect us in this situation. Any "psycho" female can fuck up your life.

I can only assume this is why so many men have a bias in this case.

Just trying to make sense of it without hating on my fellow dick-owners too much.

[Project Willow]

It's unfair for me to mod my own conflicts, so if another one is hanging around, feel free to butt in because, I've got to get a little something off my chest, and it's not going to be pretty.

Meanwhile, perhaps you could dwell on the possibility that you are, obliviously, a passive-aggressive bully.

Fuck you.

This is not in the slightest meant to diminish the importance of your personal history, nor to suggest you are anything but very intelligent, nor to imply that you are not entirely capable of being entirely rational, objective, reasonable, respectful, grounded, patient, wise, etc. But here, and in certain other threads, you impose your will too often at the expense of deliberation, fairness, rigor. You are a profoundly positive presence, overall. But you are continually unfair to me. You have misread me somewhere along the way as an adversary, and that misimpression has persisted -- willfully, I suspect. You seem to want to see me as an enemy.

Utter fantasy. How many times have I had to say to you that you can't read my mind. You don't know what I think, about you, and apparently, much of anything else.

In some ways, I am, if the enmity we're talking about is my distaste for the absolutist approach you sometimes take and to which you then passive-aggressively mandate conformity from others. So, it's not so much that you overtly demand obedience to The Only True Interpretation, or whatever. It's that whoever disagrees with you, or ever takes you to task for some discursive party-foul as we are all prone to deserving, you wind up caricaturizing the messenger as anti-victim, anti-woman, anti-etc. and then launching an epic guilt trip. Or, an attempted guilt trip, in my case.
Because: I will suffer none of that shit. Not if I don't deserve it. And, quite frankly, in every fucking instance where you've attempted to guilt-trip me, I have deserved approximately none of it, and it has been both easy but also tedious to have to thwart your attempts to villainize me, as I have done every single time in recent memory, using nothing but endless reasonability and a healthy, arrogant dose of earned personal animosity toward you.

It's all in your head, dude. If you feel guilty, that's your guilt, not mine.

Look here. If someone says something I think is sexist or reflective of the culture of denial, or cruel or insensitive, I'm going to say it. I'm going to speak my truth, from my point of view in the world, just like Sunny, and Nordic and any number of other people have done in this thread. I don't care how you interpret it, I don't care if you think I'm being too forceful or coercive. If you can't handle it, you can't handle being part of a discussion board.

I'm doing it once again, now. You claim I'm making shit personal, and you always claim that others are always the ones playing dirty with ad hominems, etc. And sometimes, you're right. Someday you may even be right about me, lol. I'm sure I've been a douche to you here at some point in the past, well, probably. I've been a dick to everyone here, at some point.

Being an asshole to everyone doesn't make it okay to be an asshole.

But on the whole it is you doing the personalizing, and you doing it unfairly, first. And then being called on it. And then calling being-called-on-it an attack. This is why I was not happy about you + modship. But you seem to be respecting the line between being-a-regular and being-a-mod, and I have yet to see or hear about you abusing mod powers, not even once, so bravo.

Patronizing bullshit. You don't know me. You don't have a clue.

I do actually respect you, PW. A lot. The fact that I call you on shit so bluntly, but thoroughly, should be taken as the sign of respect from me that it really is. I have no intention of ever being conscendingly over-cautious or over-sympathetic around you. I respect you too much for that. I'm not going to euphemise any contempt I might feel. But, yeah, I do have contempt for some of the shit you pull. Don't take it personally, I despise something about everyone, and there is hardly a fucking shortage of shit I loathe about myself, not least of which is my occasional tendency to be a royal asshole to others, so I try to be sensitive to that, more now than ever before, but I have my limits, namely, if I feel the need to be an asshole back to someone else who is being one in some way, then I'll let myself be as much of an asshole as I feel is required. You earned it.

Fuck you again. If someone's being an asshole to you, report it to the mods. Go ahead and find every fucking post of mine in which you think I am being an asshole to you and report them. Do it. Post them here too. Hell, make a whole thread of posts where PW is being an asshole, then we'll see who's being the fucking bully.

But I'm trying to be relatively nice about it. It's ultimately not your fault. You might not fully realize that you frequently bully people, and since you probably take great pride in considering yourself an anti-bully, it's unlikely you'll wise up to your own ironic bullying anytime soon. And I'm okay with that. I'll just keep doing this, as patiently as I can, again, and again, until it's no longer necessitated. And I feel this to be a duty, because this is an anti-fascist board, and bullying is kind of synonymous with fascism, and fascism in the form of passive-aggressive coercion is still a kind of psychological fascism. If you were to begin recognizing the extent to which I'm simply observing and articulating shit as objectively as I can, not only for my benefit or the board's but also yours, then it might even occur to you to thank me. You're welcome, hypothetically, in advance.

Really, really, really, did you actually just type that? Who the fuck do you think you are?

Grow a pair of ovaries, stick to the topic, and argue the merits of your case, if you have one outside of crying "no fair, no fair she insinuated I was sexist!"

[FourthBase]

So...you're saying I'm wrong? That's about all I can discern. I'm not exactly sure how I'm supposed to be wrong, though. You didn't offer much in the way of actually, you know, saying anything useful. You just lashed out.

I don't need to read your mind, and I cannot. I can read your posts, though, here and in every other thread where you've carried yourself in the same way I outlined above, which you didn't actually wind up disputing. That's not fantasy, it's history. It is reality, right now, as I type. Did you mean to dispute what I said, and just forget? Or do you feel that you're above responding to me, because I'm a [this] or a [that] or whatever the fuck you see me merely as?

And, uh, yeah. I don't feel guilty about any of the bullshit you ever try to put on me or anyone else here. And, oh, look, now here you are, actually telling me that it's an utter fantasy, all in my head. Shall we sign you up for the False Message Board Memory Syndrome Foundation? No need, thankfully, because a search engine precludes both fantasizing and denialism. I'm not left with much choice than to do exactly that, to gather evidence to indict you as a passive-aggressive psychological-fascist. It won't be hard, it'll just be tedious. It'll take a while. I will both post the result as a topic on the General forum, and I'll submit it to the proprietor as a petition to have you removed from a modding role as a matter of principle, since having an ironic bully moderate an anti-fascist board is a pitiful joke. I don't give a shit how likely or unlikely that petition would be to succeed. Later.

[FourthBase]

Hey Fourthbase,

I replied at length to your reply yesterday but it didn't seem to go through. I don't have the stamina to do it again, point by point, and I doubt it would change your opinion much anyway. In a nutshell though what mystifies me the most from everything you posted is your lack of empathy for Dylan Farrow. Whether the allegations are true or not it seems you feel free to minimize, discount her suffering (if you read her letter she lays out how she has suffered) because, because? All I can surmise so far is because she is obliquely connected to the star machine and is materially ok. And perhaps she doesn't fit the profile of the victim or whistleblower you prefer who I guess needs to be eating ramen in some safe house in Mogadishu and have no famous relatives.

You also don't seem to understand the internet is connected to the real world. You haven't suffered on it because you are anonymous, she is not. I don' t think you get that she is a modern day Cassandra. Sure she has her share of knee jerk supporters and ideological victimologists who have rallied around her not as a person but for the cause. But the next time you walk down the street and no one gives a fuck or you go to a job interview and they google you to find next to nothing- think what her life is like now and forever. As for Allen, he pressed go on this of his own accord more than a few times with his own conscious choices. She was born into her controversy and that at the very least should be worth some compassion. To compare her plight to the kardashians and "Team Farrow" publicity campaign to me shows that your operating with as much moral sensitivity to this as, that I can only say, sorry, but is as bad as the reality tv crap you are condemning.

P.S. The whole gender thing I'm passing on, but for what it is worth, I could see a female making the same statements you've made so I don't think your gender (I assume is male) proves anything on this.

Since I do not yet know what actually happened, I do not presume to know how much compassion I should have for her, relative to the compassion I should have for Allen. It's all hypothetical at this point. Or hearsay, basically. "My feelings were hurt!" Sometimes, when people say this, their feelings shouldn't actually have been hurt. I know it's blasphemy to posit this in an age of Validation, but sometimes people overreact to shit. Sometimes people overreact to nothing at all. Sometimes. Maybe only occasionally. Maybe rarely. I do not even presume to be able to estimate that. But, sometimes. Sometimes people are totally pretending, like con artists and Republicans when they feign grief over poverty. Sometimes people half-remember shit selectively, usually in their favor, but sadly sometimes the opposite. Sometimes people remember everything completely, but make a mountain out of a molehill, or a molehill out of a mountain. Sometimes everybody is both right and wrong. If you think we know enough about this situation to make sound conclusions, then that's a sure sign you're either thinking-with-an-agenda or not-really-thinking-enough. What we do know about the components of suffering usually associated with revealing disruptive information, in terms of weighing the consequences on one's life as an indicator of truth-telling ("Why would X lie, look what it has cost!"), in terms of what we know about Dylan Farrow? No, I don't see how she ought to be suffering much. If what she remembers in that letter as happening actually happened, then this should be the most liberated and empowered she's ever felt, no? Plus, okay, sure, she has a bunch of haters and doubters -- and less-caustic and even-quite-emotionally-supportive strangers on the internet who are expressing some obligatory agnosticism in as even-handed a way as possible but apparently they're oppressing her, too -- and then there are the rank Woody fanboys who will be apologists for him no matter what and who are probably the people responsible for the nastiest takes on Dylan -- which is all the price of choosing to reveal this information in Vanity Fair and the NYT, a price any mature adult would have or should have prepared himself or herself to pay, to endure with a quiet, confident mind. "Poor me, I didn't anticipate that making this a national spectacle again would elicit so much non-tender-and-unconditional-support from the tens or hundreds of millions of strangers who'd weigh in on it in the aftermath...oh my deep, deep suffering!" Please. I'm assuming Dylan has access to the best therapists in her region. She's surely not as delicate as you are presupposing her to be -- or, if she is, then she shouldn't be. She's not the only person who's ever been diddled. A lot of us have been. At least she has hundreds, thousands -- shit, maybe millions of supporters now. She has the majority of her family as tenaciously on her side as I have ever seen a family be. Even the brother who defected doesn't blame her so much as the mother. Most people do believe Dylan Farrow, though. Hold up...did some of you not realize that? Most people, upon hearing that Woody Allen diddled a daughter, have gone, "Hmmm...yep, I buy that." Perhaps some of you mistakenly believe that Dylan is going generally disbelieved? Surely as shit draws flies, some people here would class me as a Dylan hater/doubter, despite my repeated clarifications, but, again, even my gut instinct is to believe her. I wouldn't be thrilled with the idea of Allen alone in the same room as any of my young female relatives. But that's a gut instinct. Discourse isn't just a matter of confirming your gut instincts.

[FourthBase]

Men (in general!) seem to be assuming the victim is lying because that Mia is such a "psycho", and women seem to assume she's telling the truth.

Two worst-nightmare scenarios are being presented here. One, it's a woman's worst nightmare that she get molested (when she's a kid), then her worst nightmare that a man she trusts turns out to be a rapist or a perv, then even later that a man she loves and trusts is actually after her child daughter, a la Humbert Humbert or Woody Allen.

A man's worst nightmare is that he is falsely accused as a pedophile or a rapist.

I once dated a woman who had a huge white German Shepherd that was highly trained to protect her. One word from her, some secret code word, and that dog would have literally ripped my throat out.

When you are with a woman who has a young daughter it's somewhat similar in that one word from the girl and your life is over.

When my wife and I first moved in together her daughter was 5. One day the girl got extremely mad at me about something and blurted out "he hit me!" to her mother. I was shocked and kind of hurt, and her mother gave me a look. Quickly the girl recanted, bursting into tears and admitting she said that just because she was mad at me. But for a minute I wasn't sure what was going to happen.

Men are scared of this because there's absolutely zero you can do in this situation and we all know that it's possible. Our physical strength superiority diesn't protect us in this situation. Any "psycho" female can fuck up your life.

I can only assume this is why so many men have a bias in this case.

Just trying to make sense of it without hating on my fellow dick-owners too much.

Great post.

(Not sarcastic.)

[FourthBase]

Question: Why did multiple Farrow children grow up with multiple names?
That's odd, isn't it? Or is it just a Californian new age thing?

And what exactly do we know about Mia Farrow's brother who is definitely a child-raper?

If there weren't such an immediate over-commitment to taking Dylan's and Mia's side, or if some of the superficial facts were re-expressed, I think there'd be a lot more critical examination of and speculation about Mia's world. And not necessarily the kind that would exculpate Allen, either. I mean, what if the whole goddamned lot of them are vile weirdos?

[brekin]

Fourthbase wrote:

"Poor me, I didn't anticipate that making this a national spectacle again would elicit so much non-tender-and-unconditional-support from the tens or hundreds of millions of strangers who'd weigh in on it in the aftermath...oh my deep, deep suffering!" Please. I'm assuming Dylan has access to the best therapists in her region. She's surely not as delicate as you are presupposing her to be -- or, if she is, then she shouldn't be. She's not the only person who's ever been diddled. A lot of us have been. At least she has hundreds, thousands -- shit, maybe millions of supporters now.

Has it occurred to you that not everyone reacts to traumatic events the way you have or the way you would like them? Perhaps different variables of the same type of crime (family vs. strangers, violent vs. coercion, etc, etc,) can be experienced completely different by people of different temperaments, backgrounds, and histories? And do you think even the best therapist can just magically make everything ok? A lot of people have been raped. Just because it is common doesn't mean it isn't horrifying and possibly life derailing. Having supporters is suppose to remedy that? Think for a moment why she would need supporters for a moment. Perhaps because her alleged abuser is incredibly powerful, popular and influential and she was basically a back story rumor for years. I wish every victim had the same media attention (if they chose it) and family support she has. Of course they don't. But that is no reason to malign her and minimize her suffering.

Fourthbase wrote:

Surely as shit draws flies, some people here would class me as a Dylan hater/doubter, despite my repeated clarifications, but, again, even my gut instinct is to believe her. I wouldn't be thrilled with the idea of Allen alone in the same room as any of my young female relatives. But that's a gut instinct. Discourse isn't just a matter of confirming your gut instincts.

Weirder still. You basically, when you get down to it, do believe her over Allen. The only thing I can surmise at this point Fourthbase is basically you resent her because of the attention she is getting. Why is that? Should she have just sucked it up, because "she's not the first person to be diddled" and just went on with her life? When she has a chance to expose a powerful possible perp like Allen? To me it seems she's done the right thing by coming forward. And you resent her for that. Why?

Fourthbase wrote:

And what exactly do we know about Mia Farrow's brother who is definitely a child-raper?

Whoah, first I heard. His response to the scandal in 1992 is golden. I guess he beat Allen to prison now and will be leaving the light on for him.

Villiers-Farrow made headlines in 1992 when he commented on the controversy surrounding sister Mia's custody battle with Woody Allen, and Allen's relationship with Farrow's adopted daughter Soon-Yi. At the time, Villiers-Farrow told People magazine, Allen "is going to be indicted, and he's going to be ruined. I think when all of it comes out, he's going to go to jail."

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local ... 22321.html

[FourthBase]

Yeah, you're misinterpreting me. I'm not saying a rape itself should not have bothered her, should not bother her still. Of course not. Christ, do you have your interpretation machine set to "Worst"? I'm talking about the degree to which we are being expected to assume that her coming forward now is making her suffer anew. For one, we don't know if she what she's saying happened, happened. She might be suffering, but not actually have a reason to suffer. But more significantly, if she is revealing the utter truth, then how has what's transpired the last few weeks/months constituted suffering? Specifically the kind of suffering that warrants being juxtaposed against doubts, to say, "Well, if she's suffering [from speaking out, not from having been raped before] this much, then surely she's not making it up", which is what was argued earlier, if you recall. What is that suffering? How is she being harmed, what kind of harm, by who, compared to how much she is being helped, what kind of help, from whom? Not being totally believed by absolutely everyone is not a form of suffering. Having a swarm of absolutely inevitable and predictable haters say mean and ignorant shit about you somewhere on the internet after you broadcast anything whatsoever about yourself on a national scale is not suffering. Of all the unusual things about this case, the response on the internet is not one of them. Histrionic solidarity versus nihilistic trolling. Nothing new, nothing special. Anything else? What is supposed to have brought Dylan new suffering in being challenged by the same people who have always challenged her? Except this time she has the weight of Vanity Fair and the New York Times to back her up. That's suffering? Her brother's brand new MSNBC career is getting priceless publicity. She's being validated almost every way she turns. What is she supposed to have lost by stepping forward again?

[FourthBase]

Whoah, first I heard.

By the way, it shouldn't have been.
Didn't you read the Daily Beast article?

[brekin]

brekin wrote:
Whoah, first I heard.

Fourthbase wrote:
By the way, it shouldn't have been.
Didn't you read the Daily Beast article?

Dude, you is a trip. I believe so, I've read too much about this controversy. Perhaps that info wasn't bolded for my reading pleasure/comprehension?

[brekin]

Fourthbase wrote:

Yeah, you're misinterpreting me. I'm not saying a rape itself should not have bothered her, should not bother her still. Of course not. Christ, do you have your interpretation machine set to "Worst"? I'm talking about the degree to which we are being expected to assume that her coming forward now is making her suffer anew. For one, we don't know if she what she's saying happened, happened. She might be suffering, but not actually have a reason to suffer. But more significantly, if she is revealing the utter truth, then how has what's transpired the last few weeks/months constituted suffering? Specifically the kind of suffering that warrants being juxtaposed against doubts, to say, "Well, if she's suffering [from speaking out, not from having been raped before] this much, then surely she's not making it up", which is what was argued earlier, if you recall. What is that suffering? How is she being harmed, what kind of harm, by who, compared to how much she is being helped, what kind of help, from whom? Not being totally believed by absolutely everyone is not a form of suffering. Having a swarm of absolutely inevitable and predictable haters say mean and ignorant shit about you somewhere on the internet after you broadcast anything whatsoever about yourself on a national scale is not suffering. Of all the unusual things about this case, the response on the internet is not one of them. Histrionic solidarity versus nihilistic trolling. Nothing new, nothing special. Anything else? What is supposed to have brought Dylan new suffering in being challenged by the same people who have always challenged her? Except this time she has the weight of Vanity Fair and the New York Times to back her up. That's suffering? Her brother's brand new MSNBC career is getting priceless publicity. She's being validated almost every way she turns. What is she supposed to have lost by stepping forward again?

Fourthbase, just as you think I have my interpretation machine set to "Worst" I think you have yours set to "Whats the big fucking deal?". I don't know how more I can lay out the scenario for you. Everyone has their own personal truth, I would imagine. But not everyone, most everyone, doesn't have to have their own personal truth be weighed and either dismissed or accepted by the rest of the world. Especially when this personal truth has been probably the most damaging thing that has informed their life and identity and who they believe perpetrated it is a celebrity titan. Forget even whether it is true or not objectively, I think most people believe that Dylan believes it is so and there is more than enough evidence to suggest Allen did it and was (is) more than capable. Just consider that if you believed in graphic detail that your adoptive father (will just pretend it was Jack Nicholson for a hypothetical) abused you when you were very young but you grew up with the world not giving a fuck and yet you suffered immensely while his celebrated face was continually thrown up on billboards and he was celebrated by society. Don't you think that would cause some suffering?

OK, why would that suffering suddenly (poof) go away when as an adult you came forward to say that the allegations made earlier were true? And again your own personal truth and experience are not taken to be the truth by many, many people? (Not saying they should de facto be, but that is just the plain fact of the matter.) Sure, Dylan has some supporters and they may be many. But the majority of the world don't want to believe bad things about people who inspire or entertain. People don't want to have to deal with moral questions of this magnitude with celebrities who have reinforced their worldview for years. Dylan basically stood up in the middle of the Zeitgeist and said "That revered and celebrated cultural icon is a molester and you are collaborating with him by continuing to celebrate him." Many, many people in hollywood and out of it don't want that, and that is why they want it to be a "family issue" or a "legal issue" or a "complicated issue" and not a moral issue that everyone who goes to the movie has a vote in.

That is why she is not being validated. Validation would be a huge campaign and boycott by the industry and populous of Allen. That ain't happening (not saying it should, although if I had a vote with the evidence I've seen I'd say yes if it came down to it). People in the mags and internet agree with her, some don't, some don't want to make up their minds, that is a long way from validation, and I would guess after suffering almost your entire life in the shadow of your uber famous abuser, thinking that if you came forward, the world would honor the truth- and the world just wringing its hands, well that has got to cause some suffering.

[FourthBase]

Don't you think that would cause some suffering?

Holy shit brekin, yeah, and what I'm talking about, again, is new suffering specifically from coming forward again.

OK, why would that suffering suddenly (poof) go away when as an adult you came forward to say that the allegations made earlier were true? And again your own personal truth and experience are not taken to be the truth by many, many people? (Not saying they should de facto be, but that is just the plain fact of the matter.) Sure, Dylan has some supporters and they may be many. But the majority of the world don't want to believe bad things about people who inspire or entertain. People don't want to have to deal with moral questions of this magnitude with celebrities who have reinforced their worldview for years. Dylan basically stood up in the middle of the Zeitgeist and said "That revered and celebrated cultural icon is a molester and you are collaborating with him by continuing to celebrate him." Many, many people in hollywood and out of it don't want that, and that is why they want it to be a "family issue" or a "legal issue" or a "complicated issue" and not a moral issue that everyone who goes to the movie has a vote in.

Yeah, again, I'm not saying the old suffering would go away, I'm saying there ought not to be much new suffering, considering the overwhelmingly positive response to her. And no, it's not a moral issue yet for others because we still can't possibly know what happened, in fact, the foremost moral issue here as I see it, for us, is whether we're going to abandon our critical thinking capacity in order to try to prove ourselves More Sensitive to Victimhood Than Thou, regardless of the particulars here. A lot of you are, it seems. It is a complicated family issue as far as others can ascertain, because we still don't actually know what happened. It's disputed, and there is conflicting evidence and testimony, and this is not a fucking courtroom and we are not a jury. Do professionals in Hollywood have to decide whether to work with Allen again? Yeah, they always have. And the situation with Allen has always been indeterminate. Nothing is probably going to change much just because Dylan came forward again with the exact same charges as 20 years ago. But, it might. You're just not going to see people make a big deal out of it because all they will be able to do is follow their gut instincts, and if they're morally-decent human beings, then they won't, as strangers, schedule a press conference to announce they're no longer working with WA because he molested Dylan, based on a gut instinct, when they ultimately have no idea. You'll just see people, if any, quietly stop working with Allen. And us movie-watchers? I never paid to see an Allen movie, anyway. But, same deal.

That is why she is not being validated. Validation would be a huge campaign and boycott by the industry and populous of Allen. That ain't happening (not saying it should, although if I had a vote with the evidence I've seen I'd say yes if it came down to it). People in the mags and internet agree with her, some don't, some don't want to make up their minds, that is a long way from validation, and I would guess after suffering almost your entire life in the shadow of your uber famous abuser, thinking that if you came forward, the world would honor the truth- and the world just wringing its hands, well that has got to cause some suffering.

Are you fucking serious? You want people to stage an official public boycott, based on zero certainty of what happened, nothing but hunches and confirmation bias? Even if Allen molested Dylan, there's no way for strangers to know with any reasonable amount of confidence. Sorry. But that's what you're setting up as the minimum for validation? Get real. She's been validated more than 99.999% of childhood sexual abuse victims. She has little to no good reason to feel any new suffering. Not unless you re-define suffering to include not-being-universally-and-automatically-believed-to-the-point-where-everyone-in-the-world-hates-Woody-Allen-as-much-as-she-does.

[FourthBase]

brekin wrote:
Whoah, first I heard.

Fourthbase wrote:
By the way, it shouldn't have been.
Didn't you read the Daily Beast article?

Dude, you is a trip. I believe so, I've read too much about this controversy. Perhaps that info wasn't bolded for my reading pleasure/comprehension?

That's why I don't often bold anything in articles, unless really warranted, because it implies that some of an article is not worth paying as much attention to as another. I expect everyone to pay attention to everything, like I try to do as much as possible.

[brekin]

Fouthbase, your distinction between the old suffering and the new suffering is bizarre to say the least. And again, who are you to determine how much of either should she have felt or be experiencing? I mean even if Allen is 100% innocent (which I sincerely doubt in all honesty) her life has been severely disturbed by these events which have played out in the media. It is one thing to say (not quoting you here, just throwing out some opposing framework) "Hold on, we don't have all the facts." but it is a whole other ball game to say "Well she probably only suffered this much back then and now it should be much less." I can say from personal experience that I've been consumed with rage and long simmering blackness related to things 1000% less severe and 1,000,000% less publicized, even if she lives some pampered lifestyle I don't think you can minimize her experience just because some people have rallied around her blindly.

This is a matter for the courts in part, but since it got fumbled there and probably isn't going to go back, then it is playing out in the public. The reason the public is concerned is because Allen is a public figure that we patronize him. And even if it was in the courts its not like they don't make mistakes or are susceptible to corruption and incompetence, no? Every thread on RI I could go through and say this is a complicated ______

issue as far as others can ascertain, because we still don't actually know what happened. It's disputed, and there is conflicting evidence and testimony, and this is not a fucking courtroom and we are not a jury.

I mean what isn't disputed? And really every time two people get together they are a fucking courtroom and a jury.

Fourthbase wrote:

Are you fucking serious? You want people to stage an official public boycott, based on zero certainty of what happened, nothing but hunches and confirmation bias? Even if Allen molested Dylan, there's no way for strangers to know with any reasonable amount of confidence. Sorry. But that's what you're setting up as the minimum for validation? Get real. She's been validated more than 99.999% of childhood sexual abuse victims. She has little to no good reason to feel any new suffering. Not unless you re-define suffering to include not-being-universally-and-automatically-believed-to-the-point-where-everyone-in-the-world-hates-Woody-Allen-as-much-as-she-does.

Serious as internet proposal. And we don't have "zero certainty" of what happened. We have testimony from baby sitters, nannies, an eyewitness account from the victim, Psych doctor reports, the alleged perpetrator's bizarre testimony, related behaviors and incidents expressed by the perp going back years and currently, etc, etc, etc We are much, much higher than zero. If we had zero certainty then you yourself would probably not have a gut instinct at all regarding Woody. Zero certainty is saved for deep quasi-mythic historical events with no records and no physical evidence. And I'm getting tired of my own amazement at how you are an authority on how you can determine how someone else "has little to no good reason to feel any new suffering". I mean how do you know? You are such a stickler for uncertainty regarding the alleged incident when after reviewing the available evidence it is pretty easy, and not really hasty at all, to form a opinion, one way or the other. But when it comes to what the supposed victim should have felt then and now, you suddenly operate with absolute certainty. Do you see the discrepancy?