Re: Justice, Minister

1

How many years of that was for tongue? Do they have a mandatory minimum for that?


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 8:23 AM
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2

What is up with the lecherous Israeli politicians this year?


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 8:30 AM
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3

Isn't it difficult to put your tongue into someone's mouth when they don't want you to? Although if the victim is caught by surprise I guess it's easier. Or this guy just has a very strong tongue.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 8:33 AM
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Isn't it difficult to put your tongue into someone's mouth when they don't want you to?

I would think so, but then I've never met anybody who didn't want me to.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 8:38 AM
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5

If they're trying to yell or talk, probably not so hard.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 8:39 AM
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6

2: Dude, try not to be one of the New New New Antisemites.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 8:43 AM
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I don't think it's actually that hard. Especially since he's already gripping her face with his hand - maybe applying pressure to her jaw. Yeah, and what 5 said. If she's trying to make noise, y'know.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 8:43 AM
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6: I'll try, Lindbergh.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 8:45 AM
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9

It's only a matter of time before "Hitler" becomes the new "hooker," isn't it?


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 8:46 AM
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10

I'm having a difficult time accepting the rape accusations against the Israeli President--not because I disbelieve the accusors but because it makes me so sad. My friends who visited Israel came back with stories about how much Israeli women kicked ass; if the President really almost got alway with raping like FIVE of his subordinates, that would suggest an awful sexism still manages to silence victims and entrench privilege.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 8:47 AM
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10: I haven't got fully formed thoughts in this regard, but I'm starting to think that sexism operates on a couple of different axes that really aren't terribly strongly related. There's "How much direct hostility toward or abuse of women is there?" and then there's "How strong is the societal pressure for women to behave in an acceptably feminine way?" It seems possible that Israel is pretty bad on the first axis, but pretty good on the second.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 8:52 AM
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how much Israeli women kicked ass

I'd guess that in a culture like that, they're also less likely to file complaints.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 8:53 AM
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'm having a difficult time accepting the rape accusations against the Israeli President--not because I disbelieve the accusors but because it makes me so sad.

I don't get that at all; that seems crazy.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 8:56 AM
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14

Rape accusations make Tim happy.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 9:01 AM
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Imagine if President Clinton had been in Israel when he was in the same room with that blogger's breasts.


Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 9:01 AM
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14: No. It's just that given a powerful person, people roll over all of the time on V. Bad Things. Even in a pretty just society. It's one thing to say that women don't report rape b/c women are always considered less credible than men as an artifact of sexist attitudes. It's another thing to say that a woman wouldn't lodge a rape complaint against a sitting President because she's afraid of the specific power he wields, and what he will do with it if she does. Cripes, the WaPo as an institution was afraid of taking on the government.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 9:07 AM
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Well, there's also the naive part of me that hopes that the people to whom we give power wouldn't abuse it so badly. (And yes, this is why I felt personally disappointed by Clinton's behavior.) The Israeli President is more of a symbolic office, sure, but Christ, what an asshole.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 9:13 AM
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Let's not mention that he's Iranian.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 9:16 AM
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Oh, that's right! I had forgotten that detail!


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 9:18 AM
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20

Sshhhhhhh!


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 9:21 AM
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The Israeli Justice Minister was Iranian? I just looked at the photo and he doesn't have a moustache, so that can't be right.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 9:22 AM
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No, the Israeli president.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 9:23 AM
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Israel's President is Iranian? Then we've already lost!


Posted by: Walt | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 9:52 AM
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Wow, score one for Israeli justice.


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 9:59 AM
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Recently I started paying attention to just how often kisses in movies are against the kissee's will (at least for the first couple seconds, or until the second try immediately after she's said she doesn't want to be kissed). It's somewhat disturbing how common it is, now that I've started paying attention. In short, kissing a woman against her will is not only not discouraged her, it's presented as the typical mode of seduction.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in." (9) | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 11:55 AM
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err, "here" not "her"


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in." (9) | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 12:02 PM
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In short, kissing a woman against her will is not only not discouraged her, it's presented as the typical mode of seduction.

So true. And she almost always really wanted it after all. I'm sure we could do a thread about pernicious social scripts in the movies, with "threatening someone with pain/death will get them to tell you what you want."


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 12:08 PM
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I wish to nominate the idea that public embarrassment, like standing outside her window with a boom box playing Peter Gabriel, or singing to her in front of a stadium of your fellow high school students, is the surest route to true love.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 12:15 PM
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29

As a pernicious movie idea, I mean.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 12:16 PM
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Yeah, movie/book/TV notions of romance are fucked up. But I think that's partially a result of the decision to make romance the cornerstone of a genre.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 12:23 PM
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I knew one guy who, for a couple weeks, spent a few minutes of every day parked under a girl's window playing a Nickelback song as loud as possible on his car stereo. However, he only started doing this after she had dated him for three months, discovered that he was an emotionless psycho, and broke up with him.

Conclusion: Because he was an emotionless psycho with no relationship-related ideas of his own, he must have gotten the idea to do this from movies.

Inference: Nobody would ever get the idea to do this on their own.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 12:28 PM
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30: Only insofar as we have fucked-up ideas of what "romance" is. True stuff about courtship and mating and domestic life would be really interesting.

31: What's great about stories like that is how nice it is when people prove that your judgments of them were, if anything, too charitable.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 12:43 PM
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30: Only insofar as we have fucked-up ideas of what "romance" is. True stuff about courtship and mating and domestic life would be really interesting.

I don't have a strong sense of how the interplay between the two works. Growing up, I'm pretty sure I got a lot of my sense of what it meant to be "romantic" from different movies. I don't think it was beneficial, but the people I was interested in got their sense of romance from similar places. And if you want to play, you have to observe most of the rules. (This gets to be less of a problem as you get older, I think.)

I suppose I'm saying that there's a feedback loop in there.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 12:55 PM
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There is in terms of behavior. I think that what a lot of romance / domestic literature/art/film is trying to do is figure out how to use gestures to express emotion--liking, being afraid of vulnerability, giddiness--and social realities, like that women traditionally weren't "supposed" to fall for men who weren't committed to them, b/c of the risk of social opprobium and implied sexual desire.

I guess what I'm saying is that the feelings and what one does about them are interesting, but that because social reality *and* inner reality both have to be taken into account, we end up with these kinda screwed up generic tropes, either b/c writers are trying to overcome some block (how do you bring two characters together if their social realities keep them apart?) or b/c we've kept outdated gestures after their cultural significance is mostly gone (e.g., forcing a kiss on a girl--an obvious remnant of the idea that the heroine is never supposed to declare herself before the boy's made a clear gesture of commitment).


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 1:01 PM
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I only watched the first two seasons of sex and the city. I think the last episode I saw was the one where Mr. Big is engaged to some young brunette he met in Paris. A few weeks ago I caught a much later episode---Carrie is dating someone else, Mr. Big keeps calling her and being weird, saying weird things about his failing marriage, blah blah, she goes to a hotel to work b/c her boyfriend is working on her apt, Mr. Big showup. She tells him to leave her alone and goes to the elevator. She tries to stop him from following her into the elevator. She pushes him away. She pushes a cart of some sort against him. She verbally and physically protests. He keeps kissing her. It's painful to watch. I like Chris Noth, and it was painful to watch him be so violent.

Next shot: they're both lying in bed sharing a cigarette, calm as as the sea.

I found it nausea-inducing. I couldn't believe I'd never read or heard anyone complaining about this.


Posted by: Ile | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 1:14 PM
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10: I think you have too rosy a picture of Israeli society. My former sister-in-law nearly got kicked out of the country for organising the women on her kibbutz to refuse to do all of the cleaning, cooking and childcare - "women's work" in the eyes of the men. Gender roles are apparently not as equalised as "Israeli women kick[] ass" would lead one to believe. One must also factor in the various ultra-orthodox groups, where women are pretty much subservient to men. Note the sex-segregated "mehadrin" busses where women have to sit in the back. There have even been attacks by Orthodox men on ordinary busses when a women refused to move from a seat in the front.

I think I got my sense of romance from science fiction, the OED and the Edwards Scientific catalogue. The Biophysicist bought me a lovely, girly gift this weekend. Now all my knife racks are level. That's romantic. Whilst I love flowers, they aren't as significantly me as tools, gadgets and the occasional Swiss Army knife [tho' the latest does have flowers on it - again, a girly gift.]


Posted by: DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 3:09 PM
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Swedish defense lawyers fairly often try to portray rape victims as promiscuous, etc, but a study last year said that that tactic tends to backfire pretty badly and yield a higher sentence.


Posted by: David Weman | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 4:07 PM
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I think you have too rosy a picture of Israeli society.

I don't doubt it! It was an emotional reaction, a jolt of disillusionment, that I was trying to make sense of. I have read about some pretty egregious gender-role enforcement among more orthodox communities, but, I suppose I'd harbored some rosy notions about secular Israeli society.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-31-07 4:19 PM
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