Swans: Classic or Dud?

Neither one seems particularly believable, and only they were there. Life is like that sometimes.

I'll throw Gira to the wolves as fast as the next person if the story changes.

dude if you're holding out for watertight evidence one way or the other you're probably not going to get it. but that would be more relevant if you were on an actual putative jury.

if you're not, staking out an opinion - obviously without all possible evidence! - is simply staking out a political stance. is it more important to uphold the status quo, the default, whereby victims of rape face an uphill struggle to be believed, to not be labelled crazy, let alone to win actual court cases? or is it important, politically, to assert belief in victims, to help create a climate where we can, as a society, decrease the shaming and the stigma that currently attaches itself to them?

that's even before you go into the statistics re: numbers of "women who falsely cry rape" vs "rapists", and the plausibility of the accounts they've both put forward.

i thought her statement on race was re: the self-questioning she did after she called out a black man for sexual assault, having been silent about a white man's rape for years, and her realisation that remaining silent in that context would be the racist act

^^^

I don't see how you can read this as being driven entirely by self-questioning:

I will give you some history about why I am sharing the story about Thomas Sayers Ellis’s abusive behavior now. I didn’t always stand up for myself. Rape is a loaded word. No man wants to be a rapist. It implies cowardice as well as violence. It undermines the sexual power and magnetism that every man would like to have. No woman wants to be known as a rape victim, either. I want to be known for my strength, intelligence, and talent. Not known as a victim. My story with Michael Gira is an absolute tragedy that I have kept secret for too long. I am only speaking of it now because after being accused of “lynching” Thomas, I cannot ethically keep Michael’s secret any longer. He’s a white guy, and his crime was far worse than what Thomas did to me or Margaret.

(I mean, self-questioning is self-evidently there, but it appears there were also some external accusations she was responding to.)

I don't see what upside lying brings Larkin

Unless she's a sociopath who also is using this as damage control re: accusations of racism and oh yeah enjoys seeing her name in print

but those are all longshots, of course

the people who asserting Gira's innocence here -- what does the "regrettable mistake" line make you infer happened?

You've never had--or have known anyone who has had--a consensual sexual relationship that could be considered a "regrettable mistake?"

Maybe "getting involved with an artist on my roster when I have a wife and kids" is the regrettable mistake he is referring to?

and oh yeah enjoys seeing her name in print

i think you slept through women's studies classes

Given his prickly and vehement defense ("slanderous lie" etc) the previous day, this is how I read it, anyway. Not saying that's the truth, only that that's what I figure he meant

xp

and oh yeah enjoys seeing her name in print

maybe you should take these thoughts of yours to https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/

Longshot? 2 adults in a too small space, both asleep drunkenly one reads the other's unconscious body movement as a come on. The other is unaware because asleep. Excuse would have to do with the drunken semi consciousness and subsequently be a regrettable mistake?

You've never had--or have known anyone who has had--a consensual sexual relationship that could be considered a "regrettable mistake?"

― Wimmels, Wednesday, March 2, 2016 1:40 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Maybe "getting involved with an artist on my roster when I have a wife and kids" is the regrettable mistake he is referring to?

so you think in the wake of an accusation of rape, with a bunch of people waiting to hear his response, michael gira chose to address it by referring to a "regrettable mistake", with the assumption that everyone reading it would understand that to mean that the sex was consensual, while the broader relationship itself was the mistake. there is a one is a ten fucking trillion chance that he would commit

Given his prickly and vehement defense ("slanderous lie" etc) the previous day, this is how I read it, anyway. Not saying that's the truth, only that that's what I figure he meant

this whole thing is definitely a rorschach test. what do you think of the moon landing? fake, right? there's a one in five trillion chance it was fake, so higher than the chances that gira's "regrettable mistake" was an incredibly fucking confusing reference to their broader relationship rather than to the very serious, explicit, defined thing he was being accused of.

Then how do you square the initial response (again, "slanderous lie," also Jennifer Gira's threats about 'proving' that the accusation was a lie, etc) with Gira's actual statement not 24 hours later? I agree it isn't clear, but...it isn't clear.

we're still waiting on all this "proof" correct?

I'm gonna step off this convo, as somebody who is friends with Larkin I don't think I'm equipped to participate in this conversation without wanting to murder myself and everyone else

i don't believe gira's response is unclear. i think "regrettable mistake" is about as far as he's going to go, because big surprise, he's not going to admit to raping someone. but even if you did think that gira's responses were unclear and wavering...then that's reason to distrust his accuser (who has nothing to gain from this, unless you seriously think that all of this was a plot to allow her to gain additional listeners to the song she posted on bandcamp the other day? which...wait...i think you DO believe)?

fgti thanks for your posts

^

if you're not [holding out for watertight evidence], staking out an opinion - obviously without all possible evidence! - is simply staking out a political stance.

this is true & key. but does every real-world situation of a given generic type demand precisely the same political response from everyone who cares? i ask cuz, where political ends are concerned, i suspect that some cases are better suited to the application of certain tactics than others.

question then: "is this particular case a good candidate for immediate and public politicization?" some will say "yes" simply because a woman has accused a man of rape, and that's enough. tactically, though, i'm inclined to hold back and see how things break over the next few days/weeks.

i'm not accusing larkin, not poking holes her story, not leaping to michael's defense. just steepling my fingers atm. while i'm not all that concerned about the political significance of what i type into this little box here, i am a fan of knowing something before i say anything.

all of which is why i'm glad folks like fgti are here to comment from a position of real understanding. thanks, and sorry it's been rough.

Xps it's bullshit bc there isn't a single element of larkins story that DOESN'T ring entirely true. I bet at least half the woman I know have been in a similar situation at least once in their lives.

You have no clue, no fucking clue, what you're talking about.

this is true & key. but does every real-world situation of a given generic type demand precisely the same political response from everyone who cares? i ask cuz, where political ends are concerned, i suspect that some cases are better suited to the application of certain tactics than others.

why oh why do some people suddenly get really philosophical about the ~contingent nature of knowledge gained via discourse rather than by immediate experience~ when the subject is rape?

does one read about a bus crash in pakistan in the paper and suddenly think, wow, these words on the page look so clear, but actually i have no unmediated grasp of the event conveyed in them, how am i to be sure any of these so-called bus crash victims even existed??

so what does this highly specific kind of skepticism that pops up whenever women talk about abuse really mean hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Larkin has apparently lied about her relationship with Gira before, in a number of interviews four years after the incident, which people should really read as it's not just one "puff piece." I wonder how we decide that someone is suddenly telling the truth. Nothing about Gira's career screams "credible person." He used to tell (maybe still does) stories about being in prison that definitely made me wonder what exactly happened.

For all the people looking for motivations for recent comments on both sides, I think that both of them got caught up in rapid-fire exchanges on facebook and didn't think a lot about what they were saying. At some point lawyers presumably got involved, and it all goes quiet. That's not at all unusual.

I don't think we'll ever see the "proof," that's pretty obvious.

And if I were friends with either party, I probably wouldn't be involved in online conversations about it either. fgti, that's kind of crucial information that might have gone in post #1, not post #last.

xp to goole - thank u for saying that much more clearly than I could have

And sleeve/goole, this skepticism pops up about car crashes all the fucking time. People lie all the time. The idea that it's restricted to abuse is, once again, just wrong.

We're in the middle of a complete change in the way we view policing because everyone in the world just recently discovered that, wow, police lie all the time.

does one read about a bus crash in pakistan in the paper and suddenly think, wow, these words on the page look so clear, but actually i have no unmediated grasp of the event conveyed in them, how am i to be sure any of these so-called bus crash victims even existed??

Yes, this is exactly the same thing

Clearly it isn't.

xpost
does one read about a bus crash in pakistan in the paper and suddenly think, wow, these words on the page look so clear, but actually i have no unmediated grasp of the event conveyed in them, how am i to be sure any of these so-called bus crash victims even existed??

Am typing this while faced w/ a pile of beloved Swans CDs I don't imagine I'll ever want to listen to again - but this is pretty much a standard 'postmodern position', isn't it, eg baudrillard's 'the gulf war did not take place'? And this whole calamity has totally been 'mediated' - we know of it through social media, are 'discussing' it here via a wholly imaginary conversational space on the interweb; right or wrong, plenty of ppl are sceptical abt the 'reality' of cyberspace discourse.

I believe Anita Hill.

Look I could trot out the facts, that rape accusations are almost never false, that "getting the courts involved" simply results in more invasion of privacy (and so few convictions), I could also talk about how that ultimately Your Opinion means Nothing in this debate, and neither does mine, but that The Collective Opinion Of The World matters a fuck of a lot, and right now the world tends to favour the accused rather than the accuser, and that believing the victim in these situations is not at all weird or revolutionary, but a simple and logical response to the statistics of rape cases, and has no bearing on whether or not "Talker" continues to be my favourite album...

But more to the point, why the fuck do people have such a problem understanding this basic, simple idea? Why do I get called out whenever I am moved to type a completely non-controversial opinion about rape culture? I fucking know why and people won't talk about it. You haven't fucked somebody who is drunk? I have, I've totally been in situations where lines of consent have become blurred, both with myself as a victim and with myself as a potential rapist. You don't think I sometimes lie awake wondering if this ex or that might re-frame a (what I thought was) consensual encounter as a rape? This fear is missing the whole fucking point, tho.

The whole POINT of this debate, of trying to make an effort to believe women, is to remove the stigma of something so prevalent and so common, on both the sides of victim and abusers, so that ten years from now when [an ILXor] gets accused of rape, we can believe the woman, hold [ILXor] accountable, understand that rape is as common as drunk driving, and occurs in all manner of power dynamics, and is as much a product of Our Culture as it is Bad People Who Rape, and not wave our hands about "see what the courts say" or any other such bullshit. People get drunk and breach laws of consent. It happens, I'm sure I've done it, and I'm sure I've had it done to me, and basically if you're gonna drink and fuck then you're leaving yourself open to making "regrettable mistakes" which, if the victim should care enough, or be affected by it enough, may decide that you need to be publicly confronted.

This actually isn't about rape culture. It's about your friend and Michael Gira. Neither one comes off with much credibility.

if someone comes up to me and says "someone just hit my car" or "someone stole my lawnmower" or "i was at a party and someone sexually assaulted me", my first instinct is to believe them. however only one of those instances has an entire subculture devoted to the idea that this particular crime is not rarely but often and perhaps even MOSTLY lied about, and some of the reasons often include:

- she wants attention
- she regrets the consensual sex
- i think she maybe lied a couple times before
- well their relationship is complicated
- she's got a new song coming out with a similar subject

among many many other hoops people jump through.

This actually isn't about rape culture.

please stop posting

believing the victim in these situations is not at all weird or revolutionary, but a simple and logical response to the statistics of rape cases

This actually isn't about rape culture. This is about ethics in ILX opinionating.

I bet at least half the woman I know have been in a similar situation at least once in their lives.

Totally! It's one of the most common scenarios as far as rape goes.

we can believe the woman, hold [ILXor] accountable, understand that rape is as common as drunk driving, and occurs in all manner of power dynamics, and is as much a product of Our Culture as it is Bad People Who Rape, and not wave our hands about "see what the courts say" or any other such bullshit. People get drunk and breach laws of consent

yep.

why is this thread still going

I think I said the same thing way upthread.

then why do you keep posting

why oh why do some people suddenly get really philosophical about the ~contingent nature of knowledge gained via discourse rather than by immediate experience~ when the subject is rape?

― goole, Wednesday, March 2, 2016 12:06 PM (39 minutes ago)

pfft, if you'd been paying any attention at all over the last decade or so, you'd know that i get "really philosophical about the ~contingent nature of knowledge...~ when the subject is" every goddam thing in the universe. it's my only shtick!

the "you're only [asking questions/failing to pass an immediate verdict] because the crime is rape" line is complete bullshit when trotted out as a knee-jerk deflection. rape allegations do attract a unique and poisonous kind of bullshit "skepticism", absolutely, but that doesn't make everyone who ever reserves judgment a fucking enemy agent.

ftr i wasn't really posting contra you in the particular, just the tendency seen generally

if someone comes up to me and says "someone just hit my car" or "someone stole my lawnmower" or "i was at a party and someone sexually assaulted me", my first instinct is to believe them. however only one of those instances has an entire subculture devoted to the idea that this particular crime is not rarely but often and perhaps even MOSTLY lied about..

okay, true, but again, that doesn't mean that anything short of full support of all allegations in every case = alliance w/ redpill assholes.

and the difference between accusing "someone" and accusing a specific person is huge. if someone i don't know comes up to me and accuses some other person i don't know of some crime, my first response is typically not gonna be to simply believe them. i'll listen, think, gather info and only then decide whether there's even a reason for me to begin forming an opinion.

like, say i'm at a party. some strange dude comes up and points out another stranger standing across the room. "that guy's name is david," he says. "seven years ago, he killed a friend of mine, took a knife and slit his throat."

what am i supposed to think? what would you?

stop

we can believe the woman, hold [ILXor] accountable

woah i wasn't following the thread too closely, is an iLxor accused or rape?

like, say i'm at a party. some strange dude comes up and points out another stranger standing across the room. "that guy's name is david," he says. "seven years ago, he killed a friend of mine, took a knife and slit his throat."

what am i supposed to think? what would you?

― contenderizer, Wednesday, March 2, 2016 9:15 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't know what you would do but i would

https://media.giphy.com/media/xu1rPrOs0xIR2/giphy.gif

immediately

woah i wasn't following the thread too closely, is an iLxor accused or rape?

No.

and the difference between accusing "someone" and accusing a specific person is huge. if someone i don't know comes up to me and accuses some other person i don't know of some crime, my first response is typically not gonna be to simply believe them. i'll listen, think, gather info and only then decide whether there's even a reason for me to begin forming an opinion.

This was covered upthread:

If I told you that someone stole my car, would you believe me? Or would you come up with convoluted theories about how I just want attention or that I dumped it somewhere for the insurance?

This is a terrible analogy, I realise, but for all the men who cry "innocent until proven guilty", I would like to point out that people believe victims of crime all the time. It is this crime that they doubt, this crime that they hound women for speaking out about.

― emil.y, Friday, February 26, 2016 12:39 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, of course I'd believe you, but that analogy doesn't work here. If instead of "someone stole my car" you told me "(specific person x) just stole my car!," I'd probably have to ask a few follow up questions before rounding up a posse.

― Wimmels, Friday, February 26, 2016 12:52 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Even, "someone stole my car" is subject to question. Sorry, but people lie about all sorts of things, all the time. That applies to everyone in this story. The idea that we can somehow guess who's lying and who's telling the truth is insane. Unless you have proof, you don't know. I hate speculative conversations like this.

If someone said that their car was stolen, I'd have no opinion at all until I looked into the details.

I have no idea what happened. Probably nobody else does, other than the parties involved. Threads like this are like wondering about trees falling in the forest.

― dlp9001, Friday, February 26, 2016 1:02 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink