In which the pond wonders what Rosa might make of Dame Slap ...

Was it only the other day that Ridders was complaining about the new Victorians?

And now today, Dame Slap delivers that delightful Victorianism "who sleeps with whom", when surely she's not talking about naps, she's meaning to say "who fucks with whom" ... because "fuck" has a certain overtone which sleep doesn't quite convey.

There's a reason "fuck" in common parlance carries a weight of slang and meanings 

Because when "fuck" moves beyond the nap stage, that's when complications start to set in ...

In the United States, the situation in relation to Congress - that's the political Congress, which includes other kinds of congress - has been particularly difficult ...as outlined in this WaPo piece back in October 2017, which included the story of an intern groped in a lift by a Republican senator ... until the doors reopened ...

...If Whitehouse had chosen to pursue a complaint against the senator, she would have discovered a process unlike other parts of the federal government or much of the private sector. Her complaint likely would have been thrown out because interns have limited harassment protections under the unique employment law that Congress applies to itself.

Congress makes its own rules about the handling of sexual complaints against members and staff, passing laws exempting it from practices that apply to other employers. 
The result is a culture in which some lawmakers suspect harassment is rampant. Yet victims are unlikely to come forward, according to attorneys who represent them. 
Under a law in place since 1995, accusers may file lawsuits only if they first agree to go through months of counseling and mediation. A special congressional office is charged with trying to resolve the cases out of court. 
When settlements do occur, members do not pay them from their own office funds, a requirement in other federal agencies. Instead, the confidential payments come out of a special U.S. Treasury fund. Congressional employees have received small settlements, compared with the amounts some public figures pay out. Between 1997 and 2014, the U.S. Treasury has paid $15.2 million in 235 awards and settlements for Capitol Hill workplace violations, according to the congressional Office of Compliance. The statistics do not break down the exact nature of the violations.

In short, a mess, arising from very specific situations and institutional indifference and neglect ...as per Vox here:

...The legislation, the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 Reform Act, would dramatically change the process victims of sexual harassment endure on Capitol Hill in order to get justice. It eliminates “cooling off periods,” lifts a rule barring victims from going straight to court, and provides an attorney to victims who go through the internal process. It would also force members of Congress guilty of sexual harassment to pay back the Treasury for any settlement money given to victims. 
The House of Representatives passed the bill via voice vote on Tuesday morning, sending it to the Senate. A separate measure, prohibiting sexual relationships between members and their employees and creating the Office of Employment Advocacy, will go into effect immediately. 
The vote comes after at least six members of Congress have been accused of sexually harassing congressional staff — including a member of the very committee tasked with investigating members of Congress accused of harassment. 

Oh yes, that was particularly rich ...come on down Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) and strut your stuff in another Vox story ...

...The lawsuit was just another step in the process. Greene had already been through a months-long mediation process on Capitol Hill, through the Office of Compliance. She would also be subjected to two new investigations, one through the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), the other through the House’s Committee on Ethics. Both would examine thousands of pages of evidence, from Gchats to text messages, and interview members of Farenthold’s staff, with the committee interviewing Farenthold. One would reject her allegations by a 6-0 margin; the other would “pause” its investigation into Farenthold for more than a year before relaunching it in the wake of the #MeToo movement on Capitol Hill. 
Nearly four years after Greene says that Farenthold’s harassment began, the OCE’s staff director is now under investigation himself for assaulting women. And the House Committee on Ethics has announced the formation of a new subcommittee to investigate allegations against Farenthold (who has decided to retire). But the question remains: In the #MeToo era, are the House of Representatives’ ethics processes up to the challenge?

Probably not, as noted in that first story ...

The sudden media attention on these cases revealed an astonishingly complicated, expensive, and long process that victims must endure to have their complaints heard inside Congress or in front of a district judge. If the full legislation becomes law, it would fundamentally change an archaic system that attorneys who have represented victims of sexual harassment on Capitol Hill say is stacked against them. But it’ll be up to the Senate to pass it — and up to Congress to actually enforce it.

Of course the Republicans have a lot of problems in this area, and not just thanks to Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX).

They have a certified self-confessed pussy groper and beauty contest voyeur as their president ... and a White House remarkably tolerant regarding domestic violence ... which can, of course, affect men as well as women ...

 

All this is just a bit of background for Dame Slap's piece ...

It would be remiss of the pond not to remark on the Lobbecke.

The pond knows he has a huge fan base, and it's particularly touching the way that phallic staff of regulations seems to be stifling the woman in the bed, while rampant ducks flap freely above the hapless man ...

In that spirit the pond offers a few more ...

 

That'd be the due process of frying or hanging or otherwise taking out five innocent boys ...

And so to Dame Slap wondering what to do, what to do ...

A teacher and a student? Uh  huh.

Does that also apply to a university lecturer and a student, both likely to be above the age of consent?

And what of power imbalances in other professions, businesses and trades, if there's no proper recourse or way to redress what sometimes happens?

It wasn't so long ago, in the Australian film and play The Heartbreak Kid, that a young teacher's fling with her Greek student was seen as liberating and a generally good thing ...

At the time it was construed as a rebellion against patriarchal conservative Greek values ...

These days, the problem is that the patriarchs now see a good chance of making out themselves ...

Never mind ... as always there's a point to the story, and as always, it's the fault of leftists and feminists.

Yes, it wouldn't be long before Dame Slap veers off to contemplate that prime doofus Andrew Sullivan invoking a "cultural Marxist idea" ...

Uh huh... would that be the "cultural Marxism" of a Rosa Luxemburg?

From earliest youth, Rosa had looked upon radical politics as a means of living life fully. She wanted everything: marriage and children, books and music, walks on a summer evening and the revolution. Personal happiness and the struggle for social justice, she said, shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. If people gave up sex and art while making the revolution, they’d produce a world more heartless than the one they were setting out to replace. Leo, on the other hand, withdrawn and depressed—he hated daylight, sociability and his own sexual need—told her this was nonsense; all that mattered was the Cause. (The Nation).

Poor old Rosa ... always the wrong man, always the right idea ...

“Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of ‘justice’ but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when ‘freedom’ becomes a special privilege.” (at the head of an archive of her writings here, and Greg Hunters can trip off here).

Well the pond has got a tad ahead of itself, but only so that it might mock the mindless stupidity of vacuous, meaningless generalities about cultural Marxist ideas, as if Marxism was some kind of monolith of greyness and dourness, and as if Rosa had never existed ...

In the end, it's the usual Dame Slap hysteria, misdirected and misplaced, and with meaningless cant.

Don't protect us, just respect us?

So much for AVOs ...

Here's the thing - don't grope women if they don't want to be groped, don't sexually assault women, don't indulge in violence towards women (and in reverse, ditto women to men), and if in a position of power, don't leverage that power in a way that exploits the power for sexual purposes, in the workplace or wherever ...

And above all avoid the cant and hypocrisy of righteous religious fruitcakes who will reliably suggest that sexuality is the work of the devil, and anyone who bites on that apple will end up in hell. That's why repressed, warped Republicans want to go the grope in a lift...

And don't imagine it'll all work out if someone says "I'll be sure to respect you in the morning ..." or imagine that Dame Slap and Andrew Sullivan have the nostrums that will fix things ... because at some point, the guy who groped you might well end up being the President of the United States, and the next thing you know you'll be told that's all the fault of cultural Marxists and leftists feminists ... 

Sure the Republicans have thrown the baby out with the bathwater - they always do, because they're clueless - but don't imagine that it will all work out if women don't have recourse where men unashamedly persist.

That's the way it goes with power imbalances. As Henry Miller is once alleged to have said - though perhaps only the pond alleges it - "in the land of fuck, it's fuck or be fucked" ... and if that's the way it goes, then anything goes, with or without consent ...

Even with consent, it's a perilous enough journey if the voyagers are heavily burdened by hypocrisy, cant and righteous blather.

That's a road much travelled by the likes of poor old Barners ...

But as we're speaking of respect, what about due respect for that giant carp Pope discovered in the river this morning, with more fishy Pope here ...