My 1977 article BRYANT’S BRIGADE USES HITLER’S TACTICS

This article originally published in the LA Times in 1977 was picked up by the wire presses and published in papers throughout the United States. Depending on ones perspective, I either became quite famous or infamous as a result of the publication of this article.

I became subjected to reams of hate mail and almost daily bomb threats on campus. Of course, such was to be expected if I what I wrote in the commentary was correct. On the plus side, I also received much positive feedback; Harvey Milk in some of his speeches employed my perspective and the Briggs initiative was
defeated. Actually, the Times used one whole page here; first having Briggs state his position and then having my essay.
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Bryant’s Brigade Uses Hitler’s Tactics
BARRY M DANK
Los Angeles Times (1886-Current File); Oct23, 1977;
ProQuest Historical Newspapers Los Angeles Times (1881 – 1986)
pg.H5
Bryant’s Brigade Uses Hitler’s Tactics

BY BARRY M. DANK

In recent months, two of the sociology courses I teach have seemed to merge into one. They are titled “The Holocaust” and “So¬cial Psychology of Homosexuality.”

What has made them come together in my mind is the parallel between the rise of Na¬zism in prewar Germany, which ultimately brought about the extermination of 6 million Jews, and the current antihomosexual move¬ment in America, led by singer Anita Bryant and supported by State Sen. John V. Briggs, who wrote the article above.

Although contemporary political figures are often labeled as modern-day Hitlers, the designation usually comes from persons whose knowledge of Hitler and Nazism is rather meager, and so I discount the comparison. In the case of Anita Bryant and her followers, however, such an analogy should not be light¬ly dismissed. As David Lehrer, Western states counsel for the Anti-Defamation League, has noted: “There’s a whole new cadre . .. around who are smart enough not to wear swastikas. They join the Klan now or create churches. . .but they’re Nazis just the same.”

Just as Hitler viewed the Jews as a power¬ful force that was polluting and destroying so¬ciety, so do Bryant and her followers view ho¬mosexuals as social defilers. Hitler reduced the Jews to vermin who were infecting the master Aryan race. The Bryant brigade talks as though homosexuals are alien perverts bent on destroying the fabric of Christian America.
A powerful motivating factor in anti-Semi¬tism throughout the ages has been the myth that Jews engage in ritual murder of Christian children. Playing on fear of this bizarre beha¬vior, Hitler had Jewish teachers fired as one of his first anti-Semitic actions.

Bryant and her supporters invoke a differ¬ent, but similar, idea—that homosexuals subtly recruit children to homosexuality through exposure to their “life-style.” Predictably, the initial goal of their campaign is to prohibit ho¬mosexual schoolteachers from the classroom— a ban that Briggs advocates on this page.

Hitler maintained that being a good German entailed being anti-Jewish, while Bryant preaches that to be a good Christian requires being antihomosexual. But, many Jews were assimilated into the mainstream of prewar Germany and therefore were hard to identify, just as many homosexuals are now integrated into the dominant heterosexual culture in America. In order to avoid being mistaken for Jews, Germans tended to keep their dis¬tance from known Jews and from groups sym¬pathetic to them. Likewise, most heterosexual Americans who do not wish to be mistakenly identified as gay shun known homosexuals and prohomosexual organizations.

Committed to the idea that Germans in par¬ticular, and Aryans in general, were a master race ordained by nature to rule the world, the Fuehrer saw the “subhuman” Jews as the ma¬jor stumbling block. Although they existed as a relatively powerless and vulnerable minori¬ty in every European country, Hitler insisted that the Jews constituted a powerful interna¬tional conspiracy.

Leaders of the present antihomosexual movement do not directly invoke the concept of a divinely ordained master race, and yet they speak as though they are acting as the agents of God. In fact, they diminish their own personal responsibility by appealing to the au¬thority of God’s will.

At the same time that they overlook the re¬latively weak position that homosexuals as a group occupy in this country and throughout the world, they capitalize on a long tradition of antihomosexual sentiment in Western civi¬lization.

Initially I was reluctant to extend this anal¬ogy beyond these few significant similarities. After all, Bryant and her followers do not call for the physical elimination of homosexuals. But then I remembered that neither did the original recruits to Nazism contemplate geno¬cide as the ultimate consequence of their fer¬vid anti-Semitism. Even most German Jews at first refused to recognize the danger signals, just as some homosexuals today still regard the antihomosexual crusade as a bad joke that will fade away. But Hitler proved he was in¬deed to be taken seriously, and in recent months the vast majority of homosexuals have come to realize that Anita Bryant’s crusade is no laughing matter.

We know all too well the outcome of Hit¬ler’s campaign: In the late ’30s German Jews found their fate sealed by a ruling cadre of fanatics determined to “purify” the Father¬land. Ultimately, most Germans acquiesced in this goal, only later claiming they lacked the power to thwart Nazi intentions,

Anita Bryant’s crusade is committed to purging American society of homosexuals to “Save Our Children,” and it is here that the analogy with Nazism breaks down, though the movement hardly becomes less ominous. The difference has been expressed many times be¬fore, but it deserves underlining once more: While Germans of the Hitler era attempted to root out their Jewish neighbors, the current target of antihomosexuals in America live not next door but under our own roofs. They are our own children.

It remains to be seen whether we as parents will stand by and watch our children sacri¬ficed in the very name of Christianity and the American family.

Barry M. Dank is an associate professor of sociology at Cal State-Long Beach.

Kangaroo court

This is a comment from Grant on the blog Thoughtleader-

“I have run out of ways to say the same thing. I suspect that you may be a person for whom the law has always worked and worked well and hence you have great faith in it. I agree that it is the best system we have for handling crimes and disputes and in most cases it works very well indeed.  However, when the fallability of the law presents itself, the law is outdated or the law is under the control of people who do not have its fair and logical elements foremost in their minds, the law becomes a very scary thing indeed. Where you once had justice you now have a system with massive power to abuse. I suggest you look north to the Zimbabwean trial of Roy Bennet for terrorism for a great example. There seems to be a widely held belief that this personal abuse side of the law was in evidence at the Polanski trial. As such I understand why he fled. You do not consider this to even be an option because for you the law is absolute, untaintable, especially in the free, democratic USA. I wish it were so. The possibility exists that Polanski fled because he raped a young girl and the judge was onto him. The possibility also exists that he fled because the legal system became a kangaroo court and he knew the signs better than most…”

 I think that he understand the dilemmas that Polanski has faced re justice in LA.  But I would hesitate in embracing his belief that the criminal justice system works in most cases.

On THE VIEW Emma Thompson silent on Polanski

The Emma Thompson scenario re Roman Polanski is getting more and more bizarre. As I   indicated in a previous post, a number of feminist blogs and then the media in general reported that Thompson was to withdraw her name from a petition in support of Roman Polanski.  Apparently Thompson indicated to a student at Exeter College where she was lecturing that her name would be withdrawn from the petition.

What the dankprofessor found to be strange was that there was no public statement by Thompson announcing said withdrawal.  And to add to this strangeness, yesterday Thompson appeared on THE VIEW with an audience of a couple of million and said absolutely nothing about Polanski.

Such must have been disheartening to those avowed feminists who were very excited about Emma’s apparent withdrawal.  But as the dankprofessor has previously stated such is contradictory with feminism since these people are looking up to a power figure for validation, and, in this particular case, looking up to a celebrity.

And what also disturbs the dankprofessor is not that Emma Thompson signed or not signed or changed her mind about signing a petition, but rather that she finds signing to be sufficent.   Is it too much to expect the Emma Thompson make a public statement indicating her reasons for signing or not signing?  Signing a petition is easy, explaining why one signed is not so easy.  Are the anit-Polanski crusaders going to give a pass to Thomspson because she is a celebrity?

Rape victim supports Polanski

The post “Why I Defend Roman Polanski” by Ladyjane from the Ladyjane’s blog follows-
 
Okay, so here we go…. I swore I’d never write about this, and haven’t in the nearly 40 years since it happened, but since there’s been so much attention focused on a similar crime committed more than 30 years ago by Roman Polanski, I thought it might be helpful to hear from someone who knows firsthand the difference between statutory rape, and rape as conversion of genitalia into lethal weapons.

In the fall of 1972, when I was in my first year of graduate school, I lived in Greenwich Village on LaGuardia Place. One evening, I went with a few friends to an bar on the upper west side of Manhattan. It was quite late–after midnight. I had a few drinks which, given my petite size, readily went to my head.

The waiter was a tall, slender fellow maybe five or six years older than I–in his late twenties. He was an attractive fellow, had auburn hair, and pronounced cheekbones. I recall flirting with him, and giving him my phone number.

Meanwhile, the radio station where I had a show for two years, an FM station in Buffalo, WBFO-FM, I think, anyway, I finally convinced the station to send me a tape of one of the shows I did on William Blake. It was the one where I read from “A Vision of the Last Judgment.”

Concidentally, the tape arrived a few days before my waiter friend calls. We chat on the phone for a few minutes, and he invites me over. I tell him that I’d prefer to meet him in a public place, but then recall the tape—”Oh, wait,” I say, “do you have a tape recorder? There’s a tape I’d like to hear.” Yes, yes… he assures me, he does.

He lives only about half a mile from me in Little Italy, as I recall–maybe Mulberry Street. In any case, he suggests coming over during the afternoon before he leaves for work. I tell him I need to check something out first–hang up, and think about it. I know where the dude works, I think, I know where he lives, it’s broad daylight, and I have too much information on him. He’ll never do anything to me, so I call him back and arrange to come over the next day.

When I get there, he was fine. We sit and chat in the livingroom. I ask him where the tape recorder is—-”in the bedroom,” he says. I laugh. Okay, I tell him, bring it the hell out here. “I can’t,” he says, “it’s part of a console. Oh, come on,” he adds, “anything I can do to you in there, I can do to you right here.” Makes perfect sense, so I go in the bedroom, sit down on the bed.

He puts the tape of me reading “Vision of the Last Judgment” by Willliam Blake on, then comes and sits down on the bed. He starts kissing me, and fondling me. I say “Look, I’m not into playing games. I don’t want to do this–I came here to listen to the tape. I thought that was understood,” so he pushes me down forcefully, and starts unzipping my jeans. “hey,” I said “I said stop, I mean stop.”

He ingores me, and out of somewhere comes this insane and idiotic statement: “You can’t rape me, I’m an existentialist.” By this time, he has my pants off. He stops–sits back, and says: “What the fuck does that mean?”

I said, sheepishly, “It means that I have control of my vaginal muscles” demonstrating, with pride, my knowledge of what a sphincter muscle is, and how it’s used….

“Okay,” he says, then turns me over on my stomach, and pounds me—anally. I remember screaming, a bit, but mostly kicking him with the back of my feet and all my might.

“Hey,” I say, “if you’d only slow down, I might enjoy this.”

“You’re not supposed to enjoy this,” he says, so I take a deep breath—now it’s time to think, no time for emotions: 1) I’m not a virgin, so he didn’t take my virginity, and 2) I’m being forcibly raped–lord knows what the guy has in mind for me, and I don’t want to find out as I lay there being sodomized while listening to a recording of myself reading from William Blake’s “Vision of the Last Judgment.” It was all terribly surreal, but I wouldn’t allow myself to go there, but instead focused on two things: 1) what am I going to do to get out of there alive, and 2). What can I say to make him stop? I told him I was going to defecate. He said “It just feels that way.” I say “No, trust me, I’m going to. Don’t say you weren’t warned,” so he finishes up quickly, and I run to the bathroom.

Suffice it to say that what I saw in the bowl was not feces–it was blood–lots of blood. He tore me up, but there was no time to look as he charged in the bathroom, and into the shower. I had to flush the toilet fast before he saw anything.

He’s in the shower, and I say: “Well, it’s been fun, but I’ve gotta run. Got lots to do today.”

He quickly takes his hand and holds the door shut. “Where the hell do you think you’re going? ” he says.

From the window in the shower which emits lots of sunlight, I can see that he has a prominent scar on the right side of his face.

“How did you get the scar?” I ask “From a fight,” he says.

“Look,” I say calmly as I can, “I’m not a transient. I live half a mile from here, and have friends and family nearby. What happened here is your word against mine. There’s no evidence of a crime. If you put one hand on me, you will have committed a crime. If I disappear, it will be noticed. Don’t do anyting stupid—I’m not going to the police. Trust me. By the time by the police are finished with me, it’ll look like I raped you. Don’t do anything stupid, just let me go. You did me a big favor. You may even have saved my life. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I go to a stranger’s house again.”

He gulps hard, and looks at me quizzically: “You’re sure you’re not going to the police?”

I laugh “Like I said, by the time they get done with me, it’ll look like I raped you. Just let me go.”

And, he did. I walked up LaGuardia Place a half mile back to my furnished room. I told myself over and over again not to let this horrible act influence my feelings about sex, or men, and that what he did to me had nothing to do with sex, or men, that it was an act of violence that used the sex organs as a weapon. On the walk home, I told myself that a fraction of 1% of men would do that to women.

Still, I felt guilty because I was aroused by his smell. I felt like some kind of freak. I felt deeply ashamed that something like that could happen to me, and didn’t talk about it, or tell anyone one for two decades or more.

I lied when I told my assailant that there was no evidence a crime had been committed. I didn’t go to the police because, there was no concept of “date rape” then as there is now, and I would have been victimized all over again by scrutiny of my sex life.

Why do I tell the story now because there is a difference between statutory rape, or having sex with an underage girl, and rape—an act of violence that uses genitalia as a weapon. A man who wants to hurt a woman wouldn’t anesthesize her by giving her qualudes and booze before the act. The only way I knew, for sure, that it was rape, and not my pushing him a bit over the line was when he said “you’re not supposed to enjoy this.” Somehow, I don’t think Roman Polanski had the same thing in mind which is not to say that what he did wasn’t rape—it was statutory rape, and if she said she didn’t want it, he should have stopped, but I doubt if she, at any time, was in fear for her life. I was, and it was a valid fear.

To this day, I don’t allow myself to think about what might have happened to me if I had cried, and reacted differently, instead of trying to argue my way out of. I know why Polanski’s young victim, now a woman approaching fifty, wants the whole thing to go away, but I also know that were she torn apart the way I was, she might feel differently.

What Polanski did was a crime against the state of California, it was a felony, and running merely compounded it, but let’s not confuse that with an act of violence against women.

The reason I tell this story now, nearly 40 years after the crime, is in the hopes that people will stop calling Polanski a “rapist” in much the same way that they would one who perpetrates an act which uses sex as a vehicle to do grave bodily harm.

Most of those who call the loudest for Roman Polanski’s head have never themselves experienced rape. If they had, they would defer to the wishes of the victim for she is the one who was violated. She wants it to be over. Let it be over.

The dankprofessor must comment that many rape victims do call for the head of Polanski.  Whether the many is also the most I cannot say for sure.  I will have additional comments on rape victims responses to Polanski in a forthcoming post.

 

 

Roman Polanski on Sharon Tate

The sensational Sharon Tate blog reports on a Polanski 1974 Rolling Stone interview, “The Restoration of Roman Polanski” by Tom Burke, July 18, 1974. 

Polanski’s recollections of SharonTate and his life with her merits the attention of any person who wishes to have an accurate understanding of Roman Polanski.

Later, when he does talk about Sharon this is what he says: “Meeting Sharon?  When I hired her for ‘The Fearless Vampire Killers’, of course.  We got married in 1968.  By the summer of ‘69 she was very pregnant and I was very busy, working on a film script in London.  It seemed best she went back to the house we rented in LA and I could stay on and finish the film and get back to LA as soon as I could.  Everyday we would talk on the phone.  When it rang one day, I thought it was her but it was my agent in LA.  He was crying.  My reaction first was, naturally, no reaction, stunned disbelief, I suppose you call it.  Friends came to me quickly, I think we went out for a long walk, they called a doctor who gave me something, a shot and I slept.  Then I took a plane to LA. You must understand, there is much which now I cannot recall, which I have blocked out of recollection.  After the funeral, I stayed on in LA because I had the ludicrous notion that finding the murderer would somehow ease my grief.  I worked very close with the police for a long time, who, I have got to tell you, were quite human and wonderful.  I had no idea cops could be like this.  Sharon’s parents worked with them too.  Yes, I am still in touch with the Tates, naturally.  What a question!  I don’t think this is known: that just before the police found Manson and all of them, I offered a reward, $20,000 for public information leading to the arrest of the killers.  It wasn’t collected, no.  As soon as the police discovered Manson, I get the hell out of LA immediately, I could take no more, there was no more point to staying.  I had begun then to accept Sharon’s death, which I’d never really done before, which is really all that matters to me about it all anymore, that she is gone.  The worst started: I went to Switzerland and tried to ski and become very jet-set, the idea of work was impossible.  Everybody kept saying to me, get to work immediately.  Idiotic.  Only Stanley Kubrick understood, he told me, ‘You cannot and must not work now.’ “

The reporter then writes: “It is clear he wishes to get up, to pace the room, break it up perhaps. but he remains quietly seated and purposefully motionless.”

Roman goes on to say: “See I attempted for awhile there, before starting ‘Macbeth’, to become a hedonist, as the papers said we all were.  Jesus, I hated the press for a long time after it, because, I swear this, although I already knew how the press exaggerates, especially in sensational matters, I could not believe what was being printed about Sharon!  My God, ‘The Sharon Tate Orgies.’  Interviews given by people that Sharon and I never met!  I swear I could not find one word of truth in any story printed about us anywhere, and I would not and could not lie about this fact!  If there had been anything to any of that shit, I would admit it to you now.  My God, it was, is, unbelievable.  The murder was all a horrible mistake, you know.  Manson’s people were after somebody else entirely, who’d been renting the house before us!  What was actually going on there was this: Gibby Folger and Voyteck were staying in the house to keep Sharon company, we’d agreed on this, they were good friends and the place was big and it seemed a good idea since she was eight and half months pregnant.  Gibby was working very hard as a social worker, getting up at dawn everyday to go to work in Watts and studying speed-reading at night.  I was planning a film involving dolphins–’The Day of the Dolphin’–and Voyteck wanted very much to work in movies and was devoting lots of time to research on dolphins for me.  Jay Sebring was another friend who came up often, but never stayed all night one night at the house.  I was dying to finish work and get there; the last time I talked to Sharon, only hours before her murder, I told her I’d get there the following Monday even if work wasn’t finished.  Things had been so perfect between us: we’d had some nice times in that LA house.  Sharon would cook dinner for friends and after we’d all sit outside and look at the sky, the constellations, and talk about everything.  Just quiet, pleasant evenings.  Sharon and I would make plans, we had a wonderful future extensively mapped …”

The reporter closes this part of the interview adding: “Still he sits perfectly calm, though his eyes are such that it is uncomfortable to meet them.”

Emma Thompson and Roman Polanski

Although I support the efforts of Roman Polanski not to be extradited to the United Sates, I am also generally sympathetic to those who speak out against any differential treatment  of  celebrities.  

Celebrityhood should not make celebrities qualified for any kind of special treatment.
But we all very well know that such is not the case in America.  Too many Americans worship their stars.  Some do so to such a degree that if anything bad happens to one of their heavenly bodies they become psychologically unglued.    Such was recently demonstrated when Michael Jackson died; there was massive mourning throughout the United States, and a media frenzy that even surpassed the trials and tribulations of OJ Simpson.

And now we have Emma Thompson, an accomplished actress and humanitarian, who has caused many people on the feminist left to go into seizures of despair and heartbreak, particularly see the Jezebel and Shakesville blogs.

And what did Emma Thompson do that caused such distress- she signed the Bernard Henri Levy petition in support of  freedom for Polanski.  Here we have one actress and one signatory of the petition.  But what we also have is too many feminists treating Thompson as being the Ultimate one.  She is treated with adoration  just as all “true” celebrities are treated.  Her falling from her scared superior position has caused much suffering by her worshipers.
But according to the Shakseville blog, all has not been in vain- 

Last week, a reader named Caitlin e-mailed Shakesville blogmistress Melissa McEwan — who had written about being heartbroken by Thompson’s decision to sign — with a proposal. Caitlin is a student at Exeter University, where Thompson was scheduled to speak last night, and knew she’d have the opportunity to meet the actor. In her e-mail, Caitlin wrote: “I have set up a petition online, in the hopes that I can hand her a list of names and comments next week from the online community (and my own university, hopefully) showing our dismay at her decision to sign the Roman Polanski petition.”
The petition got 410 signatures and numerous comments, which Caitlin brought to her meeting with Thompson last night. In a follow-up e-mail to Shakesville, Caitlin writes:
Emma did not have much time between meetings, but she gave me all of the time that she had. I asked her why she had signed the petition, and she explained about how well she knows Polanski, how terrible his life has been, and how forgiving the survivor of the rape all those years ago now is. She said she thought the intentions of the judge were unclear, as were the intentions of those who arrested him recently. She told me that a lot of her friends had rung her up asking her to sign the petition, so there had been a certain amount of pressure. She said that she had already been thinking a lot about the petition, as others had expressed their dismay at her signing it.
I handed her our petition and the comments. She read them both through thoroughly, and came back to me. She said, while she supported Polanski as a friend, a crime is a crime. I don’t know whether she had realised the extent of Polanski’s crime, but she is now fully aware. She will remove her name from the petition – in fact, she said she would call today and sort it out. Even though, she stressed, Polanski has had some truly terrible experiences in his lifetime, experiences that we couldn’t even imagine and which should not be taken out of the equation, she agreed that she could not put her name to a petition asking for his release.
Assuming that she will be true to her word, her name will be removed in the very near future. Hopefully the press will pick up on it.
She left me with this, to pass on to everyone who has signed the petition/raised awareness of this issue: “Know that I will remove my name because of you, and all of the good work that you have been doing. I have read your petition. I have heard you. And I will listen.”
If she follows through, hooray for Thompson — and either way, hooray for Caitlin, who had the guts to use a brief meeting with a celebrity to do what many of us have wanted to over the last month: Ask what the fuck went through her head before she signed. And it sounds like the usual — he’s suffered, he’s charming, the victim wants it dropped, judicial shenanigans, all the cool kids are signing — minus any thought of what he actually did to the victim in 1977, before fleeing the country. Lévy conveniently left any mention about that out of his petition, but Caitlin did not. And that information is rather crucial to making a decision about whether to call for leaving poor old Polanski alone. I’ve been wondering the whole time how many of his supporters have taken a good look at it, and how many just got a phone call saying, “It’s a witch hunt — sign this” and agreed.
Here’s hoping not only that Thompson makes that call, but that her change of heart gets enough real media attention for other celebrity signatories of the Free Polanski petition to think twice about who and what, exactly, they agreed to stand up for.

Of course the Jezebel blogger comes out patronizing both Emma Thompson and all other signatories.  They just couldn’t know what they actually signed.  I signed the petition and I knew just about all aspects of the Polanski case that have become public.  And I assume that such was also the case for many of the other signatories.
What I find so terribly depressing is that apparently so many, (see the comments on the Shakesville blog )are so dependent on any power figure.  Doesn’t such dependency represent the antithesis of what feminism is all about?

Speaking only for myself, if Harrison Ford decided to remove his name from the petition I would be unfazed.  What does Harrison Ford have to do with me? I speak for myself; Harrison Ford speaks for himself.  Why should I or any body else petition Harrison Ford? If such petitioning would occur as it has occurred in reference to Emma Thompson, it just demonstrates the dependency and vulnerability of the petitioners.

NOTE: EMMA THOMPSON HAS NOT PUBLICLY CONFIRMED THAT SHE HAS WITHDRAWN HER SUPPORT OF POLANSKI. IF SHE DOES SO, I WILL WITHDRAW THIS NOTE.

Targeting Polanski in jail or prison

In one of my recent posts, on The Polanski Danger, I took the LA Times to task for claiming that Polanski remains a danger to others and therefore he should extradited and be sentenced for his crime.

What I failed to note is if Polanski is returned to the LA County jail system or to a California prison, he will be in a state of danger.  He will become a target for those inmates who want to make a name for themselves by killing a celebrity or a target of many inmates who hate child molesters since they had been molested as a child.  Of course, in an attempt to avoid this Polanski in effect would be put in solitary confinement.

Bringing Polanski back in will cause more suffering, including more suffering by Polanski’s victim.  I guess somebody must win if Polanski returns.  Who might that be other than Steve Cooley? Well, the dankprofessor knows that justice will not be the winner.

Roman Polanski is the painted bird

Sean Beaudoin in his ON POLANSKI post gets it right when he states-

 What does matter, and what I hear almost no one mentioning, is Polanski’s background. Not his artistic background, but his background as a human being. Geraldine Ferraro ignorantly and self-righteously claimed in her recent NY Times polemic that “he’s rich and continues to lead a charmed life.” Ms. Ferraro, apparently not having done an ounce of research since vetting Walter Mondale’s chances of winning more than one state against Ronald Reagan, could not be more wrong. Polanski lived through a horrific childhood, a childhood of truly cinematic brutality and deprivation in the woods of Europe as a Jewish orphan riding out the end of World War Two. His pregnant mother was killed at Auschwitz. Jerzey Kozinski, in fact, based his epic and disturbing work, The Painted Bird, on Polanski’s early experiences. If even a tenth of Kozinski’s book is true, it’s astonishing that Polanski managed to make what he did of his life, let alone expressing a creative vision that wasn’t entirely one of dissolution and madness. Twenty years later, in a quintessentially American example of   brutal irony, Polanski’s pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was also horribly murdered. Her death, at the hands of the Manson Family, was one of the most sensationalized and bizarre episodes in a decade ridden with war, massive cultural upheaval, and narcotic self-abasement. Should we not at least take into account these factors when determining whether Polanski is a dangerous pedophile or a thoroughly flawed person who may, due to those experiences, have lost a certain degree of rationality and judgment at the time of his crime? This is the problem with adjudicating thirty years after the fact. It is simply unfair, if not unjust, to take any behavior out of the context of its era. Is it morally relativist to think we may not be entirely capable of judging decisions made under the moral yoke of Spiro Agnew, napalm, Owsley, and monthly political assassinations? Certainly any judge or jury or editorial could have then. And they did. A deal was reached, likely in some part because of Polanski’s celebrity, that seems ludicrously lenient now. But there were also unanswered questions that made the prosecution more difficult. Like, for instance, why was this girl made up to look like an adult and then dropped off at Jack Nicholson’s house at night by her mother, who without question knew her daughter would be alone with a notorious director? We can never know the answer, just as we can never know Polanski’s mindset, but what is certain is that we were very different people then. There were no missing child photos on milk cartons. There were no gossip websites or instantaneous cellphone photography to curb public behavior. In the drug-and-libertine haze of early seventies Hollywood there were few limits on debauchery, let alone documentaries about the Jon Benet-style sexualization of young girls,  or the very public Lohan and Spears censure of stage mothers who thrust their daughters into inexcusable situations in exchange for potential careers. If Polanski is to be brought to justice, why are there no similar calls for charges to be filed against the girl’s astonishingly and criminally negligent mother?

Yes, yes and yes again Polanski’s background as a human being is relevant but somehow so many people either deny that his background is relevant or simply avoid looking at his background. Of course, not fully looking at Polanski’s humanity is a form of dehumanization.

And Beaudoin believes that Polanski’s survival experience in Poland was the source material for Jerzy Kosinki’s novel, THE PAINTED BIRD.  Whether or not Polanski was Kosinki’s painted bird is beside the point.  The dankprofessor’s concluding point is that in today’s world Polanski is the painted bird.

LA Times and the Polanski danger

The LA Times in its editorial of October 31, “Polanski’s Victim is not Judge and Jury” presents various arguments as to why Polanski’s victim’s call for the case to be dropped against Polanski be ignored.

However, the Times editorial does go beyond the fringe in terms of their following statement-

 ”Even if Geimer no longer holds a grudge against Polanski, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t pose a continuing danger to others.”

Polanski representing a continuing danger to others!  There is not a scintilla of evidence that Polanski over the last 31 years has done anything of a dangerous nature.

Now if the LA TIMES takes its editorial function seriously and really considers Polanski dangerous, why do they support his forcible return to the United States?  Shouldn’t they be arguing that Polanski be able to return to France?  And if it turns out that he becomes a danger in France then it would be a French problem, not an American problem.

Also see follow-up post- Targeting Polanski in jail or prison.

Copy of the Sharon Warner vs UNM lawsuit

Click here to view an unedited copy of the Sharon Warner lawsuit against the University of New Mexico.  I provide this to the dankprofessor readership without comment.  All of you know where I stand, it is just more of the same old same old in different garb.

Bernard-Henri Levy on Polanski.

Bernard-Henri Levy had a powerful and emotive essay on the Huffington Post.  In the dankprofessor’s opinion  he gets to the core of the matter re those who are condemning Polanski when he concludes his essay on the following note,

Because it is shameful, finally, that we can’t, when we talk about his life, evoke his childhood in the ghetto, the death of his mother in Auschwitz, the murder of his young spouse, eviscerated along with the young child she was carrying, without the prayers of the new popular justice crying, “Blackmail!’: even for the most abominable serial killer, the prevailing “culture of excuse” jumps to scrutinize the difficult childhood , the broken family, the traumas — but Roman Polanski would be the only person in the world under judicial jurisdiction not to have the right to any kind of attenuating circumstance…

It is the entirety of the affair, in truth, that is shameful.

It is the debate that is nauseating and from which we must abstain.

I hardly know Roman Polanski. But I know that all those who, from close and from afar, join in this lynching will soon wake up, horrified by what they have done, ashamed.

Bravo to Bernard-Henri Levy whose call is really to view the life of Polanski in holistic terms.  Almost all avoid or deny that  the murder of his mother, the the murder of his wife and about to be baby have any relevance to Polanski’s life after these terrible tragedies.  It is so much easier not to look at the horrors that Polanski went thru.  To deny that one’s past has anything to do with one’s present is surreal.

As for Levy’s final line that those who “join in this lynching will soon wake up, horrified by what they have done, ashamed.”  Such is unlikely.  To experience the horror they must become open to Polanski’s horrors; the risk of doing so is that they would then have to deal with their feeling of guilt.  Such would end up making them more similar to Polanski who has felt survivor guilt throughout much of his life.

Sharon Warner targets the University of New Mexico

Albuquerque TV station KOB has reported on the lawsuit of Sharon Warner against the administration of the University of New Mexico.  To see segment and text of the report click here.

The KOB report has nothing really new to say.  The dankprofesor says that Warner’s lawsuit is simply about getting her own way.  UNM would not discipline Lisa Chavez and now Warner will attempt to discipline UNM.  Warner is a stern disciplinarian; she won’t take no for an answer.  I know the type; all too many of these people in the university world.  They won’t be satisfied until they obtain an academic position from which they can work their will.

As for Professor Chavez, she was thoroughly investigated by the UNM administration.  The investigation revealed that she had not violated UNM rules.  Now all she wants is to do her professorial work and to be left alone.

To read all my posts on Warner, Chavez and the University of New Mexico, click here.

Sharon Tate’s sister calls for Polanski release

Debra Tate, the younger sister of Sharon Tates has called for the release of Polanski from a Swiss jail.  Watch her on MSNBC by clicking here.  The interview with Debra comes at the end of the segment, and it is definitely worth waiting for.  You will also find the text of the interview.

Response to Boston Globe op ed on Polanski

The Boston Globe published an op ed piece on Roman Polanski.  Following is my response which was published as a comment-

Graff concludes her essay with a “bring him home”. The ‘him’ of course being Roman Polanski.http://dankprofessor.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/on-roman-polanski/

But if she knew anything about Polanski she would know that Polanski did not and does not have a home except for one period of time. That time being when he was married to Sharon Tate. Whatever home he had then was terminated
when the so-called Manson family killed Sharon Tate, killed Sharon and Roman’s baby to be and killed two dear friends of Roman who he had asked to stay with Sharon while he was in London. So his respite with a domestic life ended. Before that he lived in France and before that in Poland where he witnessed the mass murders of the Holocaust and lost his mother to the Nazi murderers.

Nothing to do with his 1977 illegal sex with a child of 13 you say. Please, welcome to never never land. Terror hurts and is long lasting, nine years is nothing. But all too many want to know nothing about Polanski; they don’t want to know about him so they can engage in a guilt free stoning. Maybe after the stoning if they say oh my God what have I done, maybe then they might feel guilt. But now before the stoning, before justice occurs maybe they might learn a little bit about survival guilt. Yes, this is the sort of guilt that Polanski suffered from-
tortuous guilt, if only I had not gone to London, I should have been able to do something,
I should have been with them. I should have died. To find out about Polanski rent the last film he made prior to the 1977 rape; the film is THE TENANT, made in 76, directed by Polanski,
and starring Polanski, starring him because the film was about surivior guilt and madness; it was about him. See my post on this if you care to understand-

And no I am not a celebrity and not a part of any elite and I am not an apologist for Polanski. All I ask is that people do not embrace revenge under the guise of justice, and that they open their eyes- wide open. Maybe once they hav e done this, they will understand how truly devastating the consequences were of the Manson murders.

Home, Polanski’s only home or escape if you will has been thru his movies which, of course, have been horror movies most of the time and that is what we are dealing with people- horror.

Sharon Warner sues University of New Mexico

The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that Sharon Warner former director of the UNM Creative Writing program has filed a lawsuit against the University of New Mexico.  “Warner said she has suffered lost wages, lost promotional opportunity and emotional distress” caused in part by the decision of the UNM administration not to discipline her colleague Lisa Chavez for taking part in an off campus S-M phone venue.  Professor Warner had previously resigned as Director of the Creative Writing program as a protest against the UNM administration for not disciplining Chavez.

Professor Warner had argued previously that students had been harmed by Chavez’s actions, but she was unable to cite any student suffering from said harm.  Now Warner is arguing that she has been harmed by the administration doing nothing in reference to Professor Chavez, she finds such to be emotionally distressing.

The dankprofessor sees her bottom line as being that professors have a right not to be upset or offended by administrative actions.  If professors had such a right, professors throughout the country would be filing lawsuits on a daily basis against university administrations.  During my thirty plus years as a professor I was upset many times, too numerous to count, by actions of the university administration.  Some times I was very disturbed by these actions, some times I had trouble sleeping, but I viewed this as being all part of the game, as being a grownup, as being a professional.  My turning around and then suing the university for causing me to be distressed would have represented for me a giant copout, a comedy of the absurd.

Last year in a letter to the faculty of the English Department, UNM President David Schmidley wrote in regards to the Lisa Chavez controversy that “The university is, first and foremost, a place where students, faculty and administrators alike constantly engage in learning. It’s now time for all of us to learn anew the lessons of repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation.”

President Schmidley’s advice is still good advice. But rather than getting any attempt at reconciliation from Sharon Warner instead at some time in the future he will probably get a summons to appear in court.

Polanski probation report

The New York Times reported the following in regards to the September 1977 Polanski probation report-

The report, submitted by acting probation officer Kenneth F. Fare, and signed by a deputy, Irwin Gold, recommended that Mr. Polanski receive probation without jail time for his conviction on one count of having unlawful sex with a minor. In a summary paragraph, the report said: “Jail is not being recommended at the present time. The present offense appears to have been spontaneous and an exercise of poor judgement by the defendant.” It went on to note that the victim and her parent, as well as an examining psychiatrist, recommended against jail, while a second psychiatrist described the offense as neither “aggressive nor forceful.”

Despite Ms. Geimer’s age and her testimony that she had objected to having sex with Mr. Polanski and asked to leave Jack Nicholson’s house, where the incident occurred, the probation report concluded, “There was some indication that circumstances were provocative, that there was some permissiveness by the mother,” and “that the victim was not only physically mature, but willing.”…

The report paints a sympathetic picture of Mr. Polanski’s background. Compiled when Mr. Polanski was 44, the report began with an account of his fractured childhood. It described his birth to a Polish national father, Riszard Polanski, and a Russian national mother, Bula Katz, and told how his Jewish family was confined behind barbed wire in a Krakow ghetto during the German occupation.

In 1941, the report noted, Mr. Polanski’s mother was taken to Auschwitz, not to return. Later it said, “the defendant’s father cut the wires permitting the defendant to escape” the ghetto, to spend the war with Polish families.

Recapping the defendant’s background, the report said Mr. Polanski was blocked from attending advanced art school after the war “because of his Jewish origins,” lost his religious faith, and twice suffered a fractured skull, once as the result of an assault in Poland, once after a car accident. It noted a first marriage in Poland, and a second to the actress Sharon Tate, who, it said, “was killed by members of the Manson gang in Los Angeles in the well-documented case in 1968.”

Mr. Polanski’s income in 1976 was recorded as being $60,000. His local residence was the Chateau Marmont. He admitted to smoking an occasional marijuana cigarette and to having used cocaine once, but was self-described as only a “social drinker.”

According to the report, Mr. Polanski had no past criminal record, though the district attorney’s office on Aug. 10, 1977, had rejected a complaint alleging grand theft property and misdemeanor assault and battery. The complaint resulted from a visit to the grave of his wife, Sharon Tate, in Culver City, Calif.: Mr. Polanski took the camera from a German photographer who tried to photograph him from some bushes, but the district attorney decided he was simply trying to “protect his right of privacy.”

The report noted all of the assertions Ms. Geimer made in her grand jury testimony, along with the list of original charges, which included rape by drugs and sodomy. It also noted that a test “strongly indicates semen” on the girl’s underclothes, but that vaginal and anal slides were negative, and there was no evidence of physical trauma…

Mr. Polanski, interviewed by the probation officer, said he had not realized that his request to photograph Ms. Geimer without a top was problematic. “Topless photograph is acceptable in Europe. I didn’t realize it was objectionable here,” he said.

According to Mr. Polanski, “the whole thing was very spontaneous. It was not planned,” he told the probation officer. And, said the report, he “expressed great remorse regarding any possible effect the present offense might have upon the victim.”

According to the report, a number of Hollywood luminaries submitted letters endorsing Mr. Polanski’s good character. They included the set designer Richard Sylbert; the producers Howard W. Koch, Dino De Laurentiis and Robert Evans; and the actress Mia Farrow.

One psychiatrist who examined Mr. Polanski, Alvin E. Davis, found he was not mentally ill or disordered, and not “a sexual deviate.” “He is of superior intelligence, has good judgement and strong moral and ethical values,” the report said of Dr. Davis’s conclusions.

“He is not a pedophile,” Dr. Davis is quoted as saying. “The offense occurred as an isolated instance of transient poor judgement and loss of normal inhibitions in circumstances of intimacy and collaboration in creative work, and with some coincidental alcohol and drug intoxication.”

Dr. Davis was also quoted as saying that “incarceration would serve no necessary or useful purpose.” Another psychiatrist, Dr. Ronald Markman, was quoted as saying that Mr. Polanski was “not a mentally disordered sex offender, and therefore, not in need of hospitalization.”

With that information in hand, the probation officer went on to describe a culture clash that occasionally occurred when creators from Europe fled the Nazis and Communism to reside in Los Angeles. “Possibly not since Renaissance Italy has there been such a gathering of creative minds in one locale as there has been in Los Angeles County during the past half century,” said the report. “While enriching the community with their presence, they have brought with them the manners and mores of their native lands which in rare instances have been at variance with those of their adoptive land.”

So, the report concluded, remorse, cultural differences, a certain permissiveness and provocation, and the unlikelihood of a repeat offense conspired to make probation without jail (beyond the 42 days Mr. Polanski served while being evaluated) an appropriate punishment for Mr. Polanski’s actions toward a 13-year-old girl. But Mr. Polanski fled when Judge Laurence J. Rittenband indicated that more jail time and possible deportation were in order.

And, having been apprehended in Switzerland, Mr. Polanski is now up against the manners and mores of an era that often takes a harsher view of sex crimes.

What LA County Probation did is what probation authorities are supposed to do and that is to look at the individual offender and to reach a recommendation based on the specifics of the individual. Of course, what we find at the present time is a position advocated by many that Polanski’s background, and prior traumas are simply irrelevant in terms of how he should be punished. These advocates have what apears to be a robotic view of justice. One looks at the specifics of the criminal behavior, and reaches a verdict based on those specifics; one does not look at background specifics of the offender.

Such represents a dehumanized form of justice. Even the victim is not deemed to play a role in determining the sentence. In the present case, the victim, who is now an adult, her feelings about Mr. Polanski are deemed to be irrelevant.

Of course, what we are too often dealing with in the present case are those who are seeking vengeance. They are not interested in any dispassionate analysis of Mr. Polanski or even Ms. Geimer. They seek to inflame self and others by reviewing the details of Mr. Polanski’s crime not with the goal of understanding but rather with the goal of getting their pound of flesh. They demean and discard persons who believe that Mr. Polanski should not be in jail or go to jail as persons who support rape and rapists and child molesters or our simply uncaring members of a so-called Hollywood elite.

I am not a member of any Hollywood elite. I am not supportive of rape and child molestation. I am supportive of a humanistic criminal justice system. And in regards to Polanski, I am supportive of the LA Probation Department’s recommendations. Unfortunately for Roman Polanski, he would have had a much greater chance of justice in Los Angeles in 1977 than in 2009. Best for him and for us that he is not extradicted to the United States and be subjected to the wrath of the self-righteous.

Roman Polanski in his own words, Pt. 2

Roman Polanski in his own words, pt. 1

On Roman Polanski

 On Roman Polanski

By

Barry M. Dank*

There is no question that what Roman Polanski did to a 13 year old girl in the 1977 was wrong, and illegal. But it is also wrong to drag Polanski back to the US 31 years after the crime and have him spend an unspecified amount of time in prison. What possible good would come about by Polanski doing time for the crime? Obviously, it would not function to rehabilitate him or change him in some way. The fact that Polanski has had a stellar film career and apparently lived a law abiding life for 32 years after the crime is indicative that the case for changing Polanski is simply irrelevant.

Then there is a case for punishment. Polanski did something heinous and he should be punished. Of course, Polanski has been punished. He did 42 days at the Chino Men’s prison under the legal guise of being psychologically evaluated; his stay at Chino was for the purpose of punishment as viewed by the presiding judge. He has been socially stigmatized as a child rapist and has lived in a self-imposed exile. Just as in the rape situation Polanski’s decision making was screwed up when he decided to flee from a possible 16 month sentence and ended up living for 31 years in a situation in which he could be arrested and extradited back to Los Angeles .

But the 42 days and a 31 year exile as punishment dwells into insignificance as compared to the trauma and punishment he experienced as a child surviving the mass murders of the Holocaust while losing his mother to the Nazi murderers in Poland and to the trauma and punishment he endured when his pregnant wife Sharon Tate and his baby to be and his two friends were barbarized and murdered by the Manson gang.

But  many have argued that this insanity Polanski went thru simply had nothing to do with his rape of the 13 year old girl. For example, Ellen Snortland in an open letter to Roman Polanski states: “I assert that the statutory rape in 1977 will plague you until you make some type of sincere public amends. Backing an ‘end violence against women and girls’ film would be an astonishing act of atonement. Consider it. Talk to the lawyers.” Somehow Snortland avoids dealing with the fact that Polanski was intimately familiar with violence against women, that both his mother and wife were murdered, such is simply of no relevance to her.

To argue that his past traumas have relevance to Polanski’s illicit sex with a 13 year old girl in 1977 does not mean that I am excusing Polanski or condoning child abuse of any sort.

What I do argue with is the notion that Polanski’s criminal act should be fragmented off from the rest of his prior life.  To advocate that one should not look at Polanski past as it related to his actions in 1977 is a form of know nothingness.   Being horrified by what Polanski did in 1977 should not close us off from the horrors experienced by Polanski.

 I think it is a safe to assume that very few persons would not be adversely affected by the killings of their mother, their wife and their unborn child, as well as being at the scene of mass murder as a child. In fact, some who have been through such extreme situations become psychologically numbed and live a robotic life. Others may be plagued by depression, feelings of alienation and aloneness and anger.

As a person who has worked with Holocaust survivors and Parents of Murdered Children, I know that almost always survivors go thru periods of tortuous survivor guilt. No matter that they are morally and legally innocent, they all too often experience the burden of feeling- ‘I should have been able to do something’, or as Polanski stated in 1985- “Sharon’s death is the only watershed in my life that really matters. Before she died, I sailed a boundless, untroubled sea of expectations and optimism. Afterward, whenever conscious of enjoying myself, I felt guilty. A psychiatrist I met shortly after her death warned me that it would take me “four years of mourning” to overcome this feeling. It has taken far longer than that”.

Polanski’s filmmaking demonstrates that he was intimately familiar with the nature of survivor guilt. Such was quite apparent in his 1976 film THE TENANT, a film which he both directed and starred. This was the last film he made prior to his involvement in the child rape. I believe that this film can provide a partial understanding of Polanski’s psychological state around the time of the crime.

For this film Polanski insisted that he play the role of the protagonist. The viewer saw Polanski playing the role of a French citizen of Polish background (Trelkovsky) living alone in Paris gradually descend into madness. The Polanski character was plagued with feelings of survival guilt, and a complete ungluing of a sense of self as he gave full vent to his feelings of paranoia. Ultimately he buys a gun, has fantasies of killing others but eventually he commits suicide by jumping out of his apartment window. He ends up killing himself in the same manner that the prior tenant of the apartment had killed herself.

Viewers who understood this film and were aware of Polanski’s history “knew” that Polanski chose not only to direct the film but to play the major role because to a significant degree he was playing himself. Polanski and Trelkovsky both had lived alone in Paris, both were French citizens of Polish background; and both felt alienated and alone in their immediate environments. Both had gone thru experiences that separated them off from others, from others who could not possibly understand them and the horrors they had gone thru.

One of the most jolting scenes in the film is when Trelkovsy is sitting in a park looking quite morose and viewing a child playing. He stands up, walks over to the child and slugs the child in the face and then walks way. This image of Trelkovsky sitting in the park came to visually represent Polanski; it was used as the cover photo for his 1985 autobiography and as the photo for the DVD jacket of the documentary, ROMAN POLANSKI; WANTED AND DESIRED.  The usages of this photo by Polanski illustrates the blurring of Polanski’s identity with that of Trelkovsy’s.

 

On the other hand, some people believe that all we need to know about Polanski is that he is a pedophile, his sexual preference being children and adolescents.  However, looking at Polanski’s life then and now one can immediately discern Polanski’s attraction.  His present wife, Emmanuelle Seigner is 33 years younger than himself; Samantha Geimer at the time of her victimage was 31 years younger than Polanski.  So Polanski’s ongoing sexual preference is for those who are significantly younger than himself.  Maybe this preference is a defense mechanism used by some who have experienced catastrophic loss.  Such a preference could function to diminish feelings of powerlessness and helplessness in “intimate” relationships; of course, such feelings are illusionary. But for Polanski whose specialty is illusions he could see this as simply being an extension of his role of Director.

Polanski in the 1970s was a man on the fringe; his art saved him for a time but not all the time as evidenced by the rape in 1977. But also during his entire adulthood, Polanski has engaged in extraordinarily creative filmmaking. And his filmmaking may be viewed in part as representing a survivor mission, as a way of his expiating his guilt and his creation of a “monument” to those he loved and to those whose deaths he could not prevent.

In his autobiography Polanski stated: “In moments of unbearable personal tragedy some people find solace in religion.  In my case the opposite happened. Any religious faith I had was shattered by Sharon’s murder.  It reinforced my faith in the absurd.”

To now drag Polanski back in, to put him into a prison is absurd. Over the last 31 years Roman Polanski has freed himself from his psychological prison as evidenced by his devotion to his wife and 2 children.  I fear that Polanski may see his only way out as being the same way out he created in THE TENANT- suicide.

Barry M. Dank is an emeritus professor of sociology at Cal State Long Beach.  He lives in Tubac, Arizona.

  © Copyright 2009 by Barry M. Dank

Davied Letterman unplugged

The sexual puritans will now have a field day as a result of the revelations that there was an attempt to blackmail David Letterman for having sex with with staffers and his admission that he did have staffer sex. 

From the right he will be blasted for being a philanderer and an adulterer.  From the left he will be condemned as a sexual harasser who had sex with staffers who could not say no since differential power precludes consent.  Of course, the worst is yet to come.

UK lecturers “warned” to look but don’t touch

The BBC News reports (my comments are in the text)

A university leader has caused controversy by saying curvy female students are a “perk of the job”.

Terence Kealey, of the University of Buckingham, said lecturers were aware of females who “flaunted their curves”.

In a tongue-in-cheek article for Times Higher Education Magazine on the seven deadly sins of academia, he advised academics to “look but not touch”.

The National Union of Students condemned the comments as insulting and disrespectful to women.

Dr Kealey, a clinical bio-chemist and vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, likened the classroom to a lap dancing club and said admiring the curves of attractive students could help “spice up” marital sex.

In his article about the sin of lust, Dr Kealey wrote: “Most male lecturers know that, most years, there will be a girl in class who flashes her admiration and who asks for advice on her essays.
“What to do? Enjoy her! She’s a perk.” …

Dr Kealey recalled the days when sex between student and tutor, in return for academic favours, could go by unchecked.

“Thanks to the accountability imposed by the Quality Assurance Agency [the university watchdog] and other intrusive bodies, the days are gone when a scholar could trade sex for upgrades.”

OR to put it more accurately, the days are gone when a scholar and student can have a consensual relationships

‘Appalled’

Olivia Bailey, womens’ officer for the NUS, said: “I am appalled that a university vice-chancellor should display such an astounding lack of respect for women.

The dankprofessor is appalled that Olivia Bailey is not appalled at the lack of respect shown by the university vice-chancellor toward male lecturers.  To think that the curves of attractive female students could spice up marital sex, simply outrageous.   Of course, the good vice-chancellor neglects female lecturers who may get spiced up when in the vicinity of an attractive male student.  The vice-chancellor should be admonished for desexualizing female lecturers.

“Regardless of whether this was an attempt at humour, it is completely unacceptable for someone in Terence Kealey’s position to compare a lecture theatre to a lap dancing club, and I expect that many women studying at Buckingham University will be feeling extremely angry and insulted at these comments.”

I doubt it.  The dankprofessor thinks that Ms. Bailey should also be admonished for stereotyping female students as being “extremely angry and insulted”.  Ms. Bailey should restrain herself from creating female students in her own image.

His article has prompted a lively debate on the Times Higher Education website.

“I’m amazed that Terence K has a position in any university, and I’ll be damn sure never to apply for a job at Buckingham,” said one reader.

Another added: “Any scholar, who assumes that female students who show interest in the subject and ask for help because they have a crush on you or hope to manipulate you with their sexual charms, is a reality-challenged idiot.

Oh, please, he did not say all female students.  Does the reader really believe that no female student will ever attempt to manipulate a male lecturer with her female charms?  Manipulation goes on and on, everywhere, even at UK colleges, even by scholars using their scholarly abilities to manipulate their students and the their colleagues.

“And anyone who thinks that female students are there in the classroom expressly as objects of the instructor’s viewing pleasure needs to retire.”

But another said: “I’m appalled that everyone’s so appalled! – it’s just not that important, or offensive.”

Ditto from the dankprofessor.

Humour

Adding his own voice to the online debate, Dr Kealey said his article was a “moral piece” which used humour to encourage people to exercise self-restraint.

And he told the BBC: “It says that sex between middle-aged academics and young undergraduates is wrong. It also says that academics should enjoy the company of their students. That too is unexceptionable.

OK, for Kealey it’s all about age, no problem for the younger academic or for the older female student?

“The Times Higher readership is composed mainly of academics who would be expected to appreciate articles written at more than one level. The crudeness of some of the examples was to underpin the inappropriateness of transgressional sex and that is a conventional literary device.

Oh, God, it’s all about the crudeness of transgressional sex.  Or maybe its also about the crudeness of pedestrian sex.

“Sex between staff and students is not funny and is not a legitimate source of humour but it is legitimate to use humour to illuminate the ways that people finesse the dissonance between what is publicly acceptable and what is sometimes privately desired.”

Or maybe it’s about Dr. Kealey trying to finesse himself so he won’t lose his job.

A spokesman for the University and College Union said: “Harassment is not something to be taken lightly and I would be surprised, and deeply concerned, if any university, or vice-chancellor, tried to laugh it off.”

Isn’t this the first mention of harassment.  What has harassment got to do with anything?  I would hope that just about anyone would laugh off this comment.

Dr Kealey has been vice-chancellor at Buckingham – the UK’s only independent university – since 2001.

Hofstra student rape accuser becomes the accused

The Hofstra student who charged that she was the victim of a group rape on campus is now reported to have completely recanted her story.  Hofstra has apparently suspended her as a student and she faces criminal charges.  Those she charged as rapists have been released from jail.

The dankprofessor takes note of this in the context of an East Georgia College prof who was suspended after he protested that his university had no section in their university’s sexual harassment policy regarding false sexual  harassment charges.

The dankprofessor had hoped that after the Duke university false rape charges against the lacrosse team members that more university faculty and students and administrators would be less prone to jump to conclusions and really embrace notion of the presumption of innocence in relation  to alleged criminals, including those accused of rape. 

I guess that such hopes unfortunately represent a form of pipe dreaming.

Facebook

You can friend the dankprofessor on Facebook.  Just put my civilian name- Barry Dank- in the search box. When you friend me, use the accompanying message and state- referred from the dankprofessor blog.  I will be posting most of my blog posts on Facebook.

Prof accuses then becomes accused

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reports that

The abuse of campus sexual harassment policies to punish dissenting professors has hit a new low at East Georgia College (EGC) in Swainsboro. Professor Thomas Thibeault made the mistake of pointing out—at a sexual harassment training seminar—that the school’s sexual harassment policy contained no protection for the falsely accused. Two days later, in a Kafkaesque irony, Thibeault was fired by the college president for sexual harassment without notice, without knowing his accuser or the charges against him, and without a hearing. Thibeault turned to FIRE for help.

And help he needs.  It is surreal, to say the least.  Complain about the lack of protection for the falsely accused then you are accused of literally some unspeakable crime against something and are led away from campus and barred from returning.

I remember when I was a full time academic and at one of those so-called training seminars I pointed out that there was nothing in the policy about false accusations but then I went further and stated that the university policy inverted the values of our criminal justice due process system.  In the civilian world the accused is given all sort of rights, and may take avail of a public defender, but in the university world the defendant is provided with no rights while the complainant is given all sorts of assistance.  Could it be that in the university world the accused is presumed guilty and treated as one of the guilty, no pretense of fairness here while in the civilian world it is generally all pretence- due process on the surface, but the presumption of guilt structures the system; the only thing to be determined is what is the guilty person formally guilty of.

Please do click this link, it is all there for your viewing.  Of course, it is easier to engage in avoidance and denial.

UK lecturer attacked for suggesting SEX WORKS to student

 The Consenting Adult Action Network, www.caan.org.uk, reports that Simon Burgess a photography lecturer at East Surrey College of the UK faces disciplinary action and possible expulsion for suggesting a photography book SEX WORKS as a resource book to a student. 

 

 

 

SEX WORKS is by gender visual artist Del Lagrace Volcano.  Volcano is a well known visual artist having exhibited his works internationally.  Presently his work is being exhibited at the Glasgow Museum of Contemporary Art.CAAN reports that support for Burgess has been coming across the board from UK academics, artist communities and alternative sexuality communities. The dankprofessor expresses his support for the academic freedom of Simon Burgess and hopes that support from many American academics will be forthcoming.