By James Moylan
We have reached a tipping point in western world culture. Or at least that is what everyone keeps saying. Perhaps it was the Trump ‘gropey feely p***y’ tape and the fact of his subsequent election? Perhaps it is simply the culmination of many years of gross hypocrisy suddenly catching up on a few perverted sickos? But, however, it seems that the Age of Sexual Politics has Blossomed
Have you been keeping count?
Actor Ben Affleck, former head of Amazon Studios Roy Price, producer Bob Weinstein, celebrity chef John Besh, Director James Toback, prominent tech figure Robert Scoble, animator, producer, and director Chris Savino, magician David Blaine, director Roman Polanski, musician R. Kelly, musician Ethan Kath, former President George H.W. Bush, former NBC News political analyst Mark Halperin, director and producer Rick Najera, actor Kevin Spacey, actor Jeremy Piven, director Brett Ratner, actor Dustin Hoffman, actor Steven Seagal – [deep breath] – actor George Takei, showrunner Mark Schwahn, actor Jeffrey Tambor, Minnesota Senator Al Franken, former judge and current Alabama Senate candidate, Roy Moore, former Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives, Jeff Hoover, former senior vice president in charge of news at NPR, Michael Oreskes, New York Times White House correspondent Glenn Thrush, television host Charlie Rose, the current President of the USA, amongst many many, many, others, including the Great Burke of the Backyard, have all been accused of various degrees of sexual impropriety.
Who would have guessed? Well, everybody, I s’pose. We all know there are an awful lot of utter scrotes running the place. And we have always all known this collectively and individually. But we also knew that these guys had clout and influence and were and are important MEN. But now, suddenly, people are talking and listening to the talking. However, I am yet to be convinced we have really reached a point where our culture has suddenly changed. I am of a far more cynical breed. I think that what is happening is we are seeing genuine wrongdoing being selectively used by some people for personal and political reasons. I think that suddenly we have arrived at the point where Sexual Politics has simply merged with real politics. But will it change anything important? I don’t think so.
The list above are just those who have been thrown to the baying pack by the capitalist elite, on behalf of the politics of the capitalist elite. It changes nothing about our society. Nor does it address the inequity or inequality evident in our systems of relationship. Now the rich elite and political forces within have a new sort of weapon against each other. It is not available to virtually every woman in society, nor is there any appreciation that this will change.
Those who benefit the most from all of the impositions of sexual, symbolic and actual violence in our society are cossetted away in mansions and remain secure in their anonymity. The owners of capital, and so the owners our press and television outlets, are safe to arbitrate and be responsible for all sorts of ongoing violence simply because they are not publicly as well as ethically perverse.
Yes, I am horrified that the sexual abuse that has become public has occurred. But I am not surprised. If anything, I am just surprised that it has been so blatantly discussed. Hooray! Yet it is distressing that this will be used to further smother all the daily non-sexual perversions that we are obliged to appreciate as normal.
We live in a dying ecology, with the largest reef system in the world slowly decaying and degrading before our eyes, while we watch as our politicians and ‘captains of industry’ move to open up the largest coal mine ever envisioned despite the majority opinion of the populace.
We live in a land where our Prime Minister has extensive assets filed away in offshore bank accounts … yet we simply nod.
We live in a land where we blame the poor for their own neediness and ignore the locked garbage bins behind the supermarkets in every suburb of every town in the land.
Yes I am shocked at the recent spate of sexual abuse stories; but they simply highlight our facility for hypocrisy and make me cry for the everyday perversions that are imposed upon us by fat arseholes in big cars with big bank accounts and overblown influence!
However, I have to cut this rant short. Maintaining the required degree of defiant pessimism in the face of such apparently good news is hard work. It is always good to see some really hideous individuals get done over in the press. It does us all a power of good. But let’s not mistake a spark for a conflagration.
There are many perversions in our society that are just as big and known to all of us as is the fact of sexual indiscretion and violence. It is just that these other perversions of capital and greed are often protected by barbed wire and guns as well as public courtesy and tradition. These sorts of perversion are a little harder to discuss and much harder to address and subvert; let alone hold the perpetrators accountable.
Yet it is these arbitrary perversions that we can all see that will actually kill our species if we continue to allow them to reign unfettered. We have to come together and say ‘enough’. With billions of us on the globe we can only each have ‘enough’ – or we all die. Globe and all.
We live in a perverted society where perversions, both big and small, are appreciated as the facts of society. So let’s not get carried away because we have assisted some already smug people in becoming even more smug by casting down some indisputably ugly scrotes. It is only a significant development if it presages a fundamental change in our appreciation of the import of money and aggregations of the stuff. But, unfortunately, I can’t see that happening. Relatively, all the other perversions are just small beer.
