No. There is sexual harassment that might even have been seen as borderline acceptable in past decades and there is being a rapist. They're both irredeemable in any TL, especially with Weinstein's nasty habit of ruining the career of any girl who dared to fight back.
Blue Skies in Camelot (Continued): An Alternate 80s and Beyond
- Thread starter President_Lincoln
- Start date
Agreed. With sensitive subjects like this, you really have to exercise careful judgement. As this timeline continues, I will attempt to do this to the best of my ability when it comes to known predators, sexual harassers, and others who may be "MeToo'ed". Like many things, human behavior is a spectrum. There's a marked difference between inappropriate jokes that may have gone too far and a pattern of documented sexual assaults.
That is a question that I don’t believe I can answer, the line between “redeemable” and “irredeemable” is for other people, such as victims, to decide I think. But Cosby and especially Weinstein don’t fall into redeemable for me.
That's exactly what I thought I guess I just hope with the early Me too movement that animals like Cosby and Weinstein are caught way earlier than what they were in otl
Well he definitely won't be butterflies away then unfortunately. When did Weinstein start his crimes?
Chapter 124
Content Warning: This chapter deals with issues of rape and sexual assault. If you are not in a good place to read about such topics right now, I suggest maybe setting this update aside for now and coming back later. I will provide a TL;DR version of this chapter at its conclusion, if you would prefer to just get the highlights and continue on with the story. Thank you.
“Don't look back, ooh, a new day is breakin'
It's been too long since I felt this way
I don't mind, ooh, where I get taken
The road is callin', today is the day
I can see, it took so long just to realize
I'm much too strong not to compromise
Now I see what I am is holding me down
I'll turn it around
Oh, yes, I will
I finally see the dawn arrivin'
I see beyond the road I'm drivin'” - “Don’t Look Back”, Boston
“Possibility is not a luxury; it is as crucial as bread.” - Judith Butler
“Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. - Marilyn Monroe
On March 10th, 1977, French-Polish film director Roman Polanski, only a few years removed from his divorce to wife Sharon Tate, was staying at the Mulholland area home of his friend, actor Jack Nicholson, in Los Angeles. Polanski was a well-known and successful director at the time. Despite his divorce and the acrimony which surrounded it, he managed to snag a number of Academy Award nominations, including 11 for 1974’s neo-noir Chinatown, which starred Nicholson. Some of his other major films included 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby and a 1971 adaptation of Macbeth. By ‘77, however, Polanski had fallen into a slump. He hadn’t successfully completed a film since 1974. His friends were beginning to worry about him. Hence why Nicholson invited him to stay with him and Nicholson’s live-in girlfriend at the time, Anjelica Huston. Nicholson was out of town on a Colorado skiing trip on March 10th, 1977. Huston had stayed behind, but had gone out shopping for the day and thus was largely absent.
The director had, evidently, invited a 13-year-old girl named Samantha Jane Gailey over to Nicholson and Huston’s house. According to later testimony, Polanski had asked Gailey’s mother, a television actress and model, if he could photograph her daughter as part of his work for the French edition of Vogue. Polanski, amidst his film slump, had been invited to help edit the magazine. Gailey’s mother agreed to the private photoshoot, though Gailey herself later admitted to feeling “very uncomfortable” after the first session, in which Polanski photographed her topless, at the director’s request. The girl claimed that she was reluctant to commit to a second session, but agreed when her mother told her that it could be helpful to both of their careers.
“We started with photos of me drinking champagne.” Gailey would later testify, referring to the second shoot. “Then it got a little scary. I felt sick to my stomach. I realized that he [Polanski] had other intentions. I knew I was somewhere I should not be. Alone with someone I shouldn’t be. I just didn’t know how to get myself out of there.”
Polanski asked her to lay on his bed. She said she didn’t want to be alone in his bedroom anymore. She said “no” several times as he made his way toward her. But she did not know what else to do. “We were alone and I didn't know what else would happen if I made a scene. So I was just scared, and after giving some resistance, I figured well, I guess I'll get to go home after this.” Gailey would later recall.
Polanski encouraged her to drink the champagne used in the photoshoot; he also gave her a Quaalude, a hypnotic sedative. Then, despite Gailey’s protests, he proceeded to perform oral, vaginal, and even anal sex on her, each time after being told “no” and asked to stop.
At some point, Gailey later recalled, Anjelica Huston returned home from shopping and apparently grew suspicious of Polanski’s “behind closed doors” activities. She banged on the door and demanded to be let inside. Polanski lied, however, telling her that he and his young victim were simply “finishing up their photoshoot”. Huston eventually relented. Her decision not to immediately phone the police was later heavily scrutinized, as was Nicholson’s decision to leave Polanski alone in his house for an extended period of time. In any event, Gailey returned home that night, horrified by what had happened to her. She informed her mother, who then alerted the police. Polanski was arrested that night and taken in for questioning.
Above: Polanski’s friends, couple Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston. Both were later criticized for failing to prevent the rape of Samantha Gailey by Polanski. They would both apologize to Gailey and her family in the days following the trial.
Polanski did not deny that he “had sex” with Gailey. Instead, he pivoted toward claiming the encounter was “consensual”. He admitted to giving her drugs and alcohol, but denied that she was “unresponsive” and “incapable of resisting”. He encouraged the officers to shrug the “interaction” off, claiming that he was a foreigner in an unfamiliar country, unaccustomed to local morals concerning sex. He blamed both the victim and her mother, claiming quote, “Miss Gailey was not only physically mature, but willing”. He even called upon his personal psychiatrist, who vouched that Polanski was quote, “Neither a pedophile, nor a sexual deviant of any kind.” Nevertheless, the police, and the victim, were not swayed.
The director was charged with “unlawful sexual intercourse with a female under the age of 18”, “rape by use of drugs”, “perversion”, “sodomy”, perpetrating quote “a lewd and lascivious act upon a minor under the age of 14”, and “furnishing a controlled substance to a minor”. These were serious charges, each of them felonies. If convicted, the director was looking at serious prison time, possibly spending the rest of his life behind bars. Polanski and his lawyers attempted to secure a plea deal, the director being willing to plead down to a lesser charge, such as “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor”.
When this deal was offered to Gailey, her family, and her attorneys however, they balked. Though she knew it would be taking a tremendous risk, given the terrible treatment which often befalls those who make accusations of sexual assault, especially against an influential public figure, Gailey decided to go public with her allegations against Polanski. She gave a tell-all interview to the Los Angeles Times, which ran the story on its front-page the following day. The city and indeed, the nation were outraged. As she and her lawyers predicted, however, the story quickly descended into a back and forth case of “he said”, “she said”. Gailey and her family pressed forward with all six charges. Polanski and his team, however, felt confident that by the time that the case finally came to trial, the heat would die down, and he’d walk away a free man.
Polanski was apparently so confident of an acquittal, that he even gave a controversial interview with English novelist Martin Amis, in which he claimed, quote: “If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But … fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls!”
What Polanski and his attorneys did not count on, however, was a very public statement of solidarity and support for Samantha Gailey from one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history: Marilyn Monroe.
Above: Fifty-two years old by 1978, Marilyn Monroe’s acting career may have been winding down, but her career as a public advocate for feminism was only just beginning. (Art generated using Midjourney AI)
Monroe, who was horrified by young Miss Gailey’s story when she read the article in the Times, decided to publish an op-ed of her own in the weeks leading up to the trial. In the editorial, entitled, “The True Story of a Hollywood Sex Symbol”, Monroe recounted not only her own personal experiences of being sexually assaulted as a young girl at home, and after her move to Hollywood (including a terrifying incident from the so-called “party circuit” of the late 1940s, where three men tried to hold her to a bed and rape her), but also her perspective on the culture of Los Angeles and the film industry in particular. “The City of Angels”’ reputation for sin and darkness was, Monroe argued, a long-held open secret. But for decades, the nation chose to do nothing about it. Instead, it turned its head away, buried it in the sand. In exchange for this neglect, Hollywood entertained America, kept it distracted from the issues of the day, be they social and cultural or otherwise. She said she empathized tremendously with Gailey as, “she knew what it was like” to be pressured to “trade sex for fame”. To “sell your soul” in exchange for a chance at the big time. Beyond penning this article, Monroe also personally paid for all of the Gailey family’s legal fees throughout the subsequent trial against Polanski.
As if Monroe’s account weren’t damning enough for outraging the public and turning opinion decidedly against Polanski and predators like him, she then brought out an unexpected ally in this fight: California Senator Shirley Temple Black. Monroe would later explain how she called upon the Senator personally, visiting her in Washington to ask her to publish a story of her own, and to call for a harsh sentence for Polanski.
By 1978, Senator Temple Black had virtually done it all. Indeed, to many, she’d become somewhat emblematic of the American dream. During the depths of the Great Depression, she was the most popular child star in the country, helping people smile and giving them hope through those dark days. More recently, she’d become a darling of conservatives across the country thanks to her right of center politics and support for the Republican cause in Washington. To both conservatives and apolitical, middle America, the idea of anyone wanting to hurt sweet Shirley Temple was almost unthinkable. And yet, that was the very claim that the Senator would make in her tell-all autobiography, Child Star, published just before Polanski’s trial. Temple Black wrote about her own anguish at feeling that her films were part of a general trend of “overtly sexualizing children, and in particular, young girls” in Hollywood. She wrote of creeps who would visit the cinema just to watch her films and “get off” to the idea of the sweet, innocent girl (in the words of one British film critic), “shaking her well-developed rump”. She was eight years old in the film that review was written about.
More damning were Temple Black’s stories about Arthur Freed, a producer at MGM, who once called Temple into his office when she was 12 years old. He then proceeded to expose himself to her. Temple laughed nervously, which apparently threw Freed into a rage which resulted in him throwing her out of his office. Later, when she was 17, she was made a victim again when David O. Selznik, another producer, attempted to sexually assault her. She managed to escape that situation, but it was not the last time that the future Senator would have to deal with piggish creeps in Hollywood. Even after being elected to public office, Temple Black still struggled to be treated with the same degree of respect and esteem as her male colleagues.
Though it was not immediately apparent at the time, Monroe and Temple’s accounts of their harrowing experiences would not only enrage a large swath of the American public, it would also help launch a movement that would, in time, challenge the very foundations of sexism, misogyny, and sexual abuse of women in the United States and abroad.
This movement, eventually dubbed the “So Have I” movement (as in, “So and so has had enough and so have I”) would result in the calling out and exposing of all sorts of toxic, predatory behavior by men, not just in Hollywood and the entertainment industry, but in all aspects of American life. Business. Politics. Sports. The real cultural shift would start throughout the 1980s and 90s, but to many historians studying the “So Have I” movement and its roots, 1978, the Polanski Trial, and Marilyn Monroe and Shirley Temple Black’s damning publications were definitely a critical starting point.
Thanks in large part to public outrage against Polanski and predators like him, when Polanski was eventually found guilty on all six charges against him, the judge overseeing his case decided to make an example of him. Polanski was sentenced to a total of forty-one years in a state penitentiary. Though he would have a chance at parole, he would, regardless, be forever labeled a sex offender and be forced to register as such. The judge, Laurence J. Rittenband, also recommended to federal authorities that Polanski be deported immediately and barred from re-entry to the United States upon release, whether that be from parole or in 2019, when his sentence was up. In the end, Polanski would serve twenty of those forty-one years, being granted parole in 1998. He would be deported from the United States, returning to Paris, France, where he fell into obscurity, to spend the rest of his days in disgrace. Today, Polanski is probably best remembered as the first major public figure to be “So have I’d”, the term applied to those whom the movement exposes for their predatory behavior.
For their part, Samantha Gailey and her family felt vindicated by the verdict. It didn’t undo the horrendous wrong perpetrated against her. But at least she received some modicum of justice.
This discussion of the start of the “So Have I” movement must also be grounded within the greater context of the wider trends in feminism around this time. The so-called “Second-Wave” of feminism, which peaked in the 1960s with Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique was, for the first time, beginning to be critiqued, especially in academia.
While Second-Wave feminism advocated strongly for women’s right to work outside the home, and control their own reproductive destiny, many, especially in the African-American community and Civil Rights movement, felt that these goals rang hollow to the lived experiences of Black women. Due to centuries of poverty, many Black women were forced to work both inside and outside the home, for example. While abortion rights certainly did empower black women and white women alike, Angela Davis rightly pointed out that African-American also suffered under forced sterilization programs, which were not being widely discussed in conversations about reproductive rights and justice. Throughout the late 70s and into the 1980s, black feminism developed in parallel with mainstream (largely white) feminism. Alice Walker, author of the classic novel, The Color Purple and other works, coined the term “Womanism” which emphasized the degree of the oppression Black women faced when compared to White women, and appealed for greater inclusivity in broader liberation movements.
Even among non-black feminists, Second-Wave feminism was seen as having several issues by many within the movement. For one thing, Second-Wave feminism was seen as being very limited in what it was actually advocating for. Betty Friedan, for instance, infamously left lesbian rights out of her political agenda. Ideas of class and race caused clashes and continued to divide activists and advocates who should, truthfully, have been on the same side against the largely white, largely male dominated shape of society at large. If the patriarchy and indeed, de facto white supremacy were ever to be dismantled, you couldn’t have, for example, white, upper-middle class lesbians calling black, working class lesbians “counter revolutionary” for practicing the butch/femme dynamic, something most of the former group scorned due to its perceived “mimicking” of the male dominated, heterosexual lifestyle. Indeed, this conflict between various groups of feminists and LGBT+ activists was just a part of a much bigger divide in the movement, the so-called “Feminist Sex Wars”.
Also called “the porn wars”, the Feminist Sex Wars were really a series of collective debates within the feminist movement regarding a number of issues broadly relating to sexuality and sexual activity. These differences of opinion deeply polarized the movement, and arguably, led to it losing momentum in the latter half of the 1970s and first half of the 1980s.
On one side, you had arguably the “traditional”, Second-Wave feminists. This group opposed such things as pornography, erotica, prostitution, (some) lesbian sexual practices, and were generally uncomfortable with the role of transgender women in the lesbian community, sadomasochism, fetishism, and other sexual matters. They found most of these things “exploitative” and wanted them either banned, or at the very least, strictly regulated.
On the other, you had so-called “sex positive” feminist groups. These groups felt that women should embrace their own sexual identities and power. They embraced sexual minority groups, celebrated “sexual liberation”, and endorsed the value of what they called “coalition building”. Over time, this notion of coalition building would be rebranded “intersectionality” and would become one of the key concepts in the coming Third-Wave of feminism. Sex-positive feminists typically argue for decriminalization of prostitution (to help protect sex workers with regulations and government oversight), and are supportive of porn and erotica, so long as the women involved in producing it are not exploited.
As pornography and erotica exploded in popularity throughout the 1970s and into the 80s, riding the coattails of “sexual liberation” from the 60s, there was a strong backlash against them in some sectors of society, some of which bordered on the intensity of a “moral panic”. Preachers, from Sunday pulpit-dwellers to the uber-wealthy Televangelists of the New South, both decried the sudden openness about sex as “the Devil’s work” and pointed to declining church attendance and increased crime as evidence of the “moral decay” of America. Even with the fall of Jerry Falwell and his American Conservative Party, there was still a strong desire in the country for someone (indeed, a strong, white man) to step up and say “enough is enough” to all the sex fiends and the hippies. Former Vice President Ronald Reagan, preparing to launch his second campaign for President, was taking copious notes.
In an effort to provide a united front against possible conservative backlash, which threatened to undo the modest gains achieved during the Kennedy, Romney, and Bush years, the feminist movement and other allied movements needed to get on the same page about these and other issues. Would they, in time to stop a possible rollback?
Only time would tell.
...
Chapter 124: Don’t Look Back - The Fall of Roman Polanski; The Feminist Sex Wars
Above: Roman Polanski, mobbed by reporters following the opening statements in the sexual assault case against him, The People v. Roman Polanski (left); An intersectional protest, a key fixture of what would come to be called “Third-Wave feminism” (right).Chapter 124: Don’t Look Back - The Fall of Roman Polanski; The Feminist Sex Wars
“Don't look back, ooh, a new day is breakin'
It's been too long since I felt this way
I don't mind, ooh, where I get taken
The road is callin', today is the day
I can see, it took so long just to realize
I'm much too strong not to compromise
Now I see what I am is holding me down
I'll turn it around
Oh, yes, I will
I finally see the dawn arrivin'
I see beyond the road I'm drivin'” - “Don’t Look Back”, Boston
“Possibility is not a luxury; it is as crucial as bread.” - Judith Butler
“Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. - Marilyn Monroe
On March 10th, 1977, French-Polish film director Roman Polanski, only a few years removed from his divorce to wife Sharon Tate, was staying at the Mulholland area home of his friend, actor Jack Nicholson, in Los Angeles. Polanski was a well-known and successful director at the time. Despite his divorce and the acrimony which surrounded it, he managed to snag a number of Academy Award nominations, including 11 for 1974’s neo-noir Chinatown, which starred Nicholson. Some of his other major films included 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby and a 1971 adaptation of Macbeth. By ‘77, however, Polanski had fallen into a slump. He hadn’t successfully completed a film since 1974. His friends were beginning to worry about him. Hence why Nicholson invited him to stay with him and Nicholson’s live-in girlfriend at the time, Anjelica Huston. Nicholson was out of town on a Colorado skiing trip on March 10th, 1977. Huston had stayed behind, but had gone out shopping for the day and thus was largely absent.
The director had, evidently, invited a 13-year-old girl named Samantha Jane Gailey over to Nicholson and Huston’s house. According to later testimony, Polanski had asked Gailey’s mother, a television actress and model, if he could photograph her daughter as part of his work for the French edition of Vogue. Polanski, amidst his film slump, had been invited to help edit the magazine. Gailey’s mother agreed to the private photoshoot, though Gailey herself later admitted to feeling “very uncomfortable” after the first session, in which Polanski photographed her topless, at the director’s request. The girl claimed that she was reluctant to commit to a second session, but agreed when her mother told her that it could be helpful to both of their careers.
“We started with photos of me drinking champagne.” Gailey would later testify, referring to the second shoot. “Then it got a little scary. I felt sick to my stomach. I realized that he [Polanski] had other intentions. I knew I was somewhere I should not be. Alone with someone I shouldn’t be. I just didn’t know how to get myself out of there.”
Polanski asked her to lay on his bed. She said she didn’t want to be alone in his bedroom anymore. She said “no” several times as he made his way toward her. But she did not know what else to do. “We were alone and I didn't know what else would happen if I made a scene. So I was just scared, and after giving some resistance, I figured well, I guess I'll get to go home after this.” Gailey would later recall.
Polanski encouraged her to drink the champagne used in the photoshoot; he also gave her a Quaalude, a hypnotic sedative. Then, despite Gailey’s protests, he proceeded to perform oral, vaginal, and even anal sex on her, each time after being told “no” and asked to stop.
At some point, Gailey later recalled, Anjelica Huston returned home from shopping and apparently grew suspicious of Polanski’s “behind closed doors” activities. She banged on the door and demanded to be let inside. Polanski lied, however, telling her that he and his young victim were simply “finishing up their photoshoot”. Huston eventually relented. Her decision not to immediately phone the police was later heavily scrutinized, as was Nicholson’s decision to leave Polanski alone in his house for an extended period of time. In any event, Gailey returned home that night, horrified by what had happened to her. She informed her mother, who then alerted the police. Polanski was arrested that night and taken in for questioning.
Polanski did not deny that he “had sex” with Gailey. Instead, he pivoted toward claiming the encounter was “consensual”. He admitted to giving her drugs and alcohol, but denied that she was “unresponsive” and “incapable of resisting”. He encouraged the officers to shrug the “interaction” off, claiming that he was a foreigner in an unfamiliar country, unaccustomed to local morals concerning sex. He blamed both the victim and her mother, claiming quote, “Miss Gailey was not only physically mature, but willing”. He even called upon his personal psychiatrist, who vouched that Polanski was quote, “Neither a pedophile, nor a sexual deviant of any kind.” Nevertheless, the police, and the victim, were not swayed.
The director was charged with “unlawful sexual intercourse with a female under the age of 18”, “rape by use of drugs”, “perversion”, “sodomy”, perpetrating quote “a lewd and lascivious act upon a minor under the age of 14”, and “furnishing a controlled substance to a minor”. These were serious charges, each of them felonies. If convicted, the director was looking at serious prison time, possibly spending the rest of his life behind bars. Polanski and his lawyers attempted to secure a plea deal, the director being willing to plead down to a lesser charge, such as “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor”.
When this deal was offered to Gailey, her family, and her attorneys however, they balked. Though she knew it would be taking a tremendous risk, given the terrible treatment which often befalls those who make accusations of sexual assault, especially against an influential public figure, Gailey decided to go public with her allegations against Polanski. She gave a tell-all interview to the Los Angeles Times, which ran the story on its front-page the following day. The city and indeed, the nation were outraged. As she and her lawyers predicted, however, the story quickly descended into a back and forth case of “he said”, “she said”. Gailey and her family pressed forward with all six charges. Polanski and his team, however, felt confident that by the time that the case finally came to trial, the heat would die down, and he’d walk away a free man.
Polanski was apparently so confident of an acquittal, that he even gave a controversial interview with English novelist Martin Amis, in which he claimed, quote: “If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But … fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls!”
What Polanski and his attorneys did not count on, however, was a very public statement of solidarity and support for Samantha Gailey from one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history: Marilyn Monroe.
Monroe, who was horrified by young Miss Gailey’s story when she read the article in the Times, decided to publish an op-ed of her own in the weeks leading up to the trial. In the editorial, entitled, “The True Story of a Hollywood Sex Symbol”, Monroe recounted not only her own personal experiences of being sexually assaulted as a young girl at home, and after her move to Hollywood (including a terrifying incident from the so-called “party circuit” of the late 1940s, where three men tried to hold her to a bed and rape her), but also her perspective on the culture of Los Angeles and the film industry in particular. “The City of Angels”’ reputation for sin and darkness was, Monroe argued, a long-held open secret. But for decades, the nation chose to do nothing about it. Instead, it turned its head away, buried it in the sand. In exchange for this neglect, Hollywood entertained America, kept it distracted from the issues of the day, be they social and cultural or otherwise. She said she empathized tremendously with Gailey as, “she knew what it was like” to be pressured to “trade sex for fame”. To “sell your soul” in exchange for a chance at the big time. Beyond penning this article, Monroe also personally paid for all of the Gailey family’s legal fees throughout the subsequent trial against Polanski.
As if Monroe’s account weren’t damning enough for outraging the public and turning opinion decidedly against Polanski and predators like him, she then brought out an unexpected ally in this fight: California Senator Shirley Temple Black. Monroe would later explain how she called upon the Senator personally, visiting her in Washington to ask her to publish a story of her own, and to call for a harsh sentence for Polanski.
By 1978, Senator Temple Black had virtually done it all. Indeed, to many, she’d become somewhat emblematic of the American dream. During the depths of the Great Depression, she was the most popular child star in the country, helping people smile and giving them hope through those dark days. More recently, she’d become a darling of conservatives across the country thanks to her right of center politics and support for the Republican cause in Washington. To both conservatives and apolitical, middle America, the idea of anyone wanting to hurt sweet Shirley Temple was almost unthinkable. And yet, that was the very claim that the Senator would make in her tell-all autobiography, Child Star, published just before Polanski’s trial. Temple Black wrote about her own anguish at feeling that her films were part of a general trend of “overtly sexualizing children, and in particular, young girls” in Hollywood. She wrote of creeps who would visit the cinema just to watch her films and “get off” to the idea of the sweet, innocent girl (in the words of one British film critic), “shaking her well-developed rump”. She was eight years old in the film that review was written about.
More damning were Temple Black’s stories about Arthur Freed, a producer at MGM, who once called Temple into his office when she was 12 years old. He then proceeded to expose himself to her. Temple laughed nervously, which apparently threw Freed into a rage which resulted in him throwing her out of his office. Later, when she was 17, she was made a victim again when David O. Selznik, another producer, attempted to sexually assault her. She managed to escape that situation, but it was not the last time that the future Senator would have to deal with piggish creeps in Hollywood. Even after being elected to public office, Temple Black still struggled to be treated with the same degree of respect and esteem as her male colleagues.
Though it was not immediately apparent at the time, Monroe and Temple’s accounts of their harrowing experiences would not only enrage a large swath of the American public, it would also help launch a movement that would, in time, challenge the very foundations of sexism, misogyny, and sexual abuse of women in the United States and abroad.
This movement, eventually dubbed the “So Have I” movement (as in, “So and so has had enough and so have I”) would result in the calling out and exposing of all sorts of toxic, predatory behavior by men, not just in Hollywood and the entertainment industry, but in all aspects of American life. Business. Politics. Sports. The real cultural shift would start throughout the 1980s and 90s, but to many historians studying the “So Have I” movement and its roots, 1978, the Polanski Trial, and Marilyn Monroe and Shirley Temple Black’s damning publications were definitely a critical starting point.
Thanks in large part to public outrage against Polanski and predators like him, when Polanski was eventually found guilty on all six charges against him, the judge overseeing his case decided to make an example of him. Polanski was sentenced to a total of forty-one years in a state penitentiary. Though he would have a chance at parole, he would, regardless, be forever labeled a sex offender and be forced to register as such. The judge, Laurence J. Rittenband, also recommended to federal authorities that Polanski be deported immediately and barred from re-entry to the United States upon release, whether that be from parole or in 2019, when his sentence was up. In the end, Polanski would serve twenty of those forty-one years, being granted parole in 1998. He would be deported from the United States, returning to Paris, France, where he fell into obscurity, to spend the rest of his days in disgrace. Today, Polanski is probably best remembered as the first major public figure to be “So have I’d”, the term applied to those whom the movement exposes for their predatory behavior.
For their part, Samantha Gailey and her family felt vindicated by the verdict. It didn’t undo the horrendous wrong perpetrated against her. But at least she received some modicum of justice.
…
Above: Angela Davis (left) and Florynce Kennedy (right), Black American feminists who helped critique and improve upon the “largely white focused” limitations of Second-Wave feminism.
This discussion of the start of the “So Have I” movement must also be grounded within the greater context of the wider trends in feminism around this time. The so-called “Second-Wave” of feminism, which peaked in the 1960s with Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique was, for the first time, beginning to be critiqued, especially in academia.
While Second-Wave feminism advocated strongly for women’s right to work outside the home, and control their own reproductive destiny, many, especially in the African-American community and Civil Rights movement, felt that these goals rang hollow to the lived experiences of Black women. Due to centuries of poverty, many Black women were forced to work both inside and outside the home, for example. While abortion rights certainly did empower black women and white women alike, Angela Davis rightly pointed out that African-American also suffered under forced sterilization programs, which were not being widely discussed in conversations about reproductive rights and justice. Throughout the late 70s and into the 1980s, black feminism developed in parallel with mainstream (largely white) feminism. Alice Walker, author of the classic novel, The Color Purple and other works, coined the term “Womanism” which emphasized the degree of the oppression Black women faced when compared to White women, and appealed for greater inclusivity in broader liberation movements.
Even among non-black feminists, Second-Wave feminism was seen as having several issues by many within the movement. For one thing, Second-Wave feminism was seen as being very limited in what it was actually advocating for. Betty Friedan, for instance, infamously left lesbian rights out of her political agenda. Ideas of class and race caused clashes and continued to divide activists and advocates who should, truthfully, have been on the same side against the largely white, largely male dominated shape of society at large. If the patriarchy and indeed, de facto white supremacy were ever to be dismantled, you couldn’t have, for example, white, upper-middle class lesbians calling black, working class lesbians “counter revolutionary” for practicing the butch/femme dynamic, something most of the former group scorned due to its perceived “mimicking” of the male dominated, heterosexual lifestyle. Indeed, this conflict between various groups of feminists and LGBT+ activists was just a part of a much bigger divide in the movement, the so-called “Feminist Sex Wars”.
Also called “the porn wars”, the Feminist Sex Wars were really a series of collective debates within the feminist movement regarding a number of issues broadly relating to sexuality and sexual activity. These differences of opinion deeply polarized the movement, and arguably, led to it losing momentum in the latter half of the 1970s and first half of the 1980s.
On one side, you had arguably the “traditional”, Second-Wave feminists. This group opposed such things as pornography, erotica, prostitution, (some) lesbian sexual practices, and were generally uncomfortable with the role of transgender women in the lesbian community, sadomasochism, fetishism, and other sexual matters. They found most of these things “exploitative” and wanted them either banned, or at the very least, strictly regulated.
On the other, you had so-called “sex positive” feminist groups. These groups felt that women should embrace their own sexual identities and power. They embraced sexual minority groups, celebrated “sexual liberation”, and endorsed the value of what they called “coalition building”. Over time, this notion of coalition building would be rebranded “intersectionality” and would become one of the key concepts in the coming Third-Wave of feminism. Sex-positive feminists typically argue for decriminalization of prostitution (to help protect sex workers with regulations and government oversight), and are supportive of porn and erotica, so long as the women involved in producing it are not exploited.
As pornography and erotica exploded in popularity throughout the 1970s and into the 80s, riding the coattails of “sexual liberation” from the 60s, there was a strong backlash against them in some sectors of society, some of which bordered on the intensity of a “moral panic”. Preachers, from Sunday pulpit-dwellers to the uber-wealthy Televangelists of the New South, both decried the sudden openness about sex as “the Devil’s work” and pointed to declining church attendance and increased crime as evidence of the “moral decay” of America. Even with the fall of Jerry Falwell and his American Conservative Party, there was still a strong desire in the country for someone (indeed, a strong, white man) to step up and say “enough is enough” to all the sex fiends and the hippies. Former Vice President Ronald Reagan, preparing to launch his second campaign for President, was taking copious notes.
In an effort to provide a united front against possible conservative backlash, which threatened to undo the modest gains achieved during the Kennedy, Romney, and Bush years, the feminist movement and other allied movements needed to get on the same page about these and other issues. Would they, in time to stop a possible rollback?
Only time would tell.
Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: Northern Ireland. No, really, this time.
…
TL;DR - As promised, here's the much more SFW version of this chapter, which will just hit the highlights:…
- In early 1977, acclaimed film director Roman Polanski is arrested and charged with several heinous crimes.
- Thanks to vocal support from Marilyn Monroe, Shirley Temple Black, and other actresses, public opinion turns decidedly against Polanski, resulting in his conviction and imprisonment.
- This, arguably, marks the start of the "So Have I" movement, TTL's (much earlier) equivalent of #MeToo.
- Though it will take several years for the culture in Hollywood and across America to really shift, this huge, very public exposure and take-down of an influential public figure is a monumental occasion nevertheless.
- Second-Wave feminism has passed its peak of influence on the movement. Early forerunners of Third-Wave feminism are beginning to speak out, demanding intersectionality and combined struggled across racial, social, and class lines.
- Simultaneously, the "Culture Wars" of TTL are finally beginning to heat up. With the so-called "excesses" of the 60s much more muted ITTL, and without Watergate or a similar scandal to really inflame and polarize the American public, it's taken us longer to reach this point. But I do believe that it has to happen at some point.
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Amazing as always. Wonder how Conservatives reacted to Senator Temple Black's allegations. That's something you can touch on later, I'm sure.
inb4 the losing side of the Sex Wars and those televangelists end up working together in the name of "decency"; sadly, not only did it actually happen from time to time, but Margaret Atwood, that put that unholy alliance in the backstory of her most famous novel, recently made some very TERF-y statements reminiscent of second wave drivel. I can't help but think if this rise in transphobic sentiment among usually progressive authors might've been favoured and enabled by how media tends to highlight the most... obnoxious, out there trans people, for lack of a better word, and by how even the medical establishment seems to conflate gender and sex (in some countries, as far as I know, transgender people have to be coached into acting the way they're "expected" to act, correct me if I'm wrong); it's something that might be avoided, if the advancement of LGBT rights is not nuked by the rise of AIDS and the shite response to it.
Thank you
Generally, most conservatives (even if they'd be caught dead before calling themselves "radical feminists") are shocked and appalled about Senator Temple Black's horror stories. It will begin to shift opinion on the right as conservatives take her claims seriously. They see her as "one of them", after all.Thank you very much! Glad you've enjoyed them.
It feels really good to be working on the TL again.This chapter was awesome. It was nice to read Polanski paying for what he did and Gailey getting the justice she deserved. I would have loved to have seen Polanski's face when the verdict came in Cocky, perverted SOB, and that interview he gave I hope the prosecutor introduced that into evidence. I'm really glad this TTL's version of Me Too movement has started it will take awhile but hopefully things will start to get better from here. I really hope the culture wars hurt the conservatives more than help them in this timeline. Third wave feminism definitely sounds like it starting off good.Content Warning: This chapter deals with issues of rape and sexual assault. If you are not in a good place to read about such topics right now, I suggest maybe setting this update aside for now and coming back later. I will provide a TL;DR version of this chapter at its conclusion, if you would prefer to just get the highlights and continue on with the story. Thank you.
...Above: Roman Polanski, mobbed by reporters following the opening statements in the sexual assault case against him, The People v. Roman Polanski (left); An intersectional protest, a key fixture of what would come to be called “Third-Wave feminism” (right).
Chapter 124: Don’t Look Back - The Fall of Roman Polanski; The Feminist Sex Wars
“Don't look back, ooh, a new day is breakin'
It's been too long since I felt this way
I don't mind, ooh, where I get taken
The road is callin', today is the day
I can see, it took so long just to realize
I'm much too strong not to compromise
Now I see what I am is holding me down
I'll turn it around
Oh, yes, I will
I finally see the dawn arrivin'
I see beyond the road I'm drivin'” - “Don’t Look Back”, Boston
“Possibility is not a luxury; it is as crucial as bread.” - Judith Butler
“Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. - Marilyn Monroe
On March 10th, 1977, French-Polish film director Roman Polanski, only a few years removed from his divorce to wife Sharon Tate, was staying at the Mulholland area home of his friend, actor Jack Nicholson, in Los Angeles. Polanski was a well-known and successful director at the time. Despite his divorce and the acrimony which surrounded it, he managed to snag a number of Academy Award nominations, including 11 for 1974’s neo-noir Chinatown, which starred Nicholson. Some of his other major films included 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby and a 1971 adaptation of Macbeth. By ‘77, however, Polanski had fallen into a slump. He hadn’t successfully completed a film since 1974. His friends were beginning to worry about him. Hence why Nicholson invited him to stay with him and Nicholson’s live-in girlfriend at the time, Anjelica Huston. Nicholson was out of town on a Colorado skiing trip on March 10th, 1977. Huston had stayed behind, but had gone out shopping for the day and thus was largely absent.
The director had, evidently, invited a 13-year-old girl named Samantha Jane Gailey over to Nicholson and Huston’s house. According to later testimony, Polanski had asked Gailey’s mother, a television actress and model, if he could photograph her daughter as part of his work for the French edition of Vogue. Polanski, amidst his film slump, had been invited to help edit the magazine. Gailey’s mother agreed to the private photoshoot, though Gailey herself later admitted to feeling “very uncomfortable” after the first session, in which Polanski photographed her topless, at the director’s request. The girl claimed that she was reluctant to commit to a second session, but agreed when her mother told her that it could be helpful to both of their careers.
“We started with photos of me drinking champagne.” Gailey would later testify, referring to the second shoot. “Then it got a little scary. I felt sick to my stomach. I realized that he [Polanski] had other intentions. I knew I was somewhere I should not be. Alone with someone I shouldn’t be. I just didn’t know how to get myself out of there.”
Polanski asked her to lay on his bed. She said she didn’t want to be alone in his bedroom anymore. She said “no” several times as he made his way toward her. But she did not know what else to do. “We were alone and I didn't know what else would happen if I made a scene. So I was just scared, and after giving some resistance, I figured well, I guess I'll get to go home after this.” Gailey would later recall.
Polanski encouraged her to drink the champagne used in the photoshoot; he also gave her a Quaalude, a hypnotic sedative. Then, despite Gailey’s protests, he proceeded to perform oral, vaginal, and even anal sex on her, each time after being told “no” and asked to stop.
At some point, Gailey later recalled, Anjelica Huston returned home from shopping and apparently grew suspicious of Polanski’s “behind closed doors” activities. She banged on the door and demanded to be let inside. Polanski lied, however, telling her that he and his young victim were simply “finishing up their photoshoot”. Huston eventually relented. Her decision not to immediately phone the police was later heavily scrutinized, as was Nicholson’s decision to leave Polanski alone in his house for an extended period of time. In any event, Gailey returned home that night, horrified by what had happened to her. She informed her mother, who then alerted the police. Polanski was arrested that night and taken in for questioning.
Above: Polanski’s friends, couple Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston. Both were later criticized for failing to prevent the rape of Samantha Gailey by Polanski. They would both apologize to Gailey and her family in the days following the trial.
Polanski did not deny that he “had sex” with Gailey. Instead, he pivoted toward claiming the encounter was “consensual”. He admitted to giving her drugs and alcohol, but denied that she was “unresponsive” and “incapable of resisting”. He encouraged the officers to shrug the “interaction” off, claiming that he was a foreigner in an unfamiliar country, unaccustomed to local morals concerning sex. He blamed both the victim and her mother, claiming quote, “Miss Gailey was not only physically mature, but willing”. He even called upon his personal psychiatrist, who vouched that Polanski was quote, “Neither a pedophile, nor a sexual deviant of any kind.” Nevertheless, the police, and the victim, were not swayed.
The director was charged with “unlawful sexual intercourse with a female under the age of 18”, “rape by use of drugs”, “perversion”, “sodomy”, perpetrating quote “a lewd and lascivious act upon a minor under the age of 14”, and “furnishing a controlled substance to a minor”. These were serious charges, each of them felonies. If convicted, the director was looking at serious prison time, possibly spending the rest of his life behind bars. Polanski and his lawyers attempted to secure a plea deal, the director being willing to plead down to a lesser charge, such as “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor”.
When this deal was offered to Gailey, her family, and her attorneys however, they balked. Though she knew it would be taking a tremendous risk, given the terrible treatment which often befalls those who make accusations of sexual assault, especially against an influential public figure, Gailey decided to go public with her allegations against Polanski. She gave a tell-all interview to the Los Angeles Times, which ran the story on its front-page the following day. The city and indeed, the nation was outraged. As she and her lawyers predicted, however, the story quickly descended into a back and forth case of “he said”, “she said”. Gailey and her family pressed forward with all six charges. Polanski and his team, however, felt confident that by the time that the case finally came to trial, the heat would die down, and he’d walk away a free man.
Polanski was apparently so confident of an acquittal, that he even gave a controversial interview with English novelist Martin Amis, in which he claimed, quote: “If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But … fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls!”
What Polanski and his attorneys did not count on, however, was a very public statement of solidarity and support for Samantha Gailey from one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history: Marilyn Monroe.
Above: Fifty-two years old by 1978, Marilyn Monroe’s acting career may have been winding down, but her career as a public advocate for feminism was only just beginning. (Art generated using Midjourney AI)
Monroe, who was horrified by young Miss Gailey’s story when she read the article in the Times, decided to publish an op-ed of her own in the weeks leading up to the trial. In the editorial, entitled, “The True Story of a Hollywood Sex Symbol”, Monroe recounted not only her own personal experiences of being sexually assaulted as a young girl at home, and after her move to Hollywood (including a terrifying incident from the so-called “party circuit” of the late 1940s, where three men tried to hold her to a bed and rape her), but also the her perspective on the culture of Los Angeles and the film industry in particular. “The City of Angels”’ reputation for sin and darkness was, Monroe argued, a long-held open secret. But for decades, the nation chose to do nothing about it. Instead, it turned its head away, buried it in the sand. In exchange for this neglect, Hollywood entertained America, kept it distracted from the issues of the day, be they social and cultural or otherwise. She said she empathized tremendously with Gailey as, “she knew what it was like” to be pressured to “trade sex for fame”. To “sell your soul” in exchange for a chance at the big time. Beyond penning this article, Monroe also personally paid for all of the Gailey family’s legal fees throughout the subsequent trial against Polanski.
As if Monroe’s account weren’t damning enough for outraging the public and turning opinion decidedly against Polanski and predators like him, she then brought out an unexpected ally in this fight: California Senator Shirley Temple Black. Monroe would later explain how she called upon the Senator personally, visiting her in Washington to ask her to publish a story of her own, and to call for a harsh sentence for Polanski.
By 1978, Senator Temple Black had virtually done it all. Indeed, to many, she’d become somewhat emblematic of the American dream. During the depths of the Great Depression, she was the most popular child star in the country, helping people smile and giving them hope through those dark days. More recently, she’d become a darling of conservatives across the country thanks to her right of center politics and support for the Republican cause in Washington. To both conservatives and apolitical, middle America, the idea of anyone wanting to hurt sweet Shirley Temple was almost unthinkable. And yet, that was the very claim that the Senator would make in her tell-all autobiography, Child Star, published just before Polanski’s trial. Temple Black wrote about her own anguish at feeling that her films were part of a general trend of “overtly sexualizing children, and in particular, young girls” in Hollywood. She wrote of creeps who would visit the cinema just to watch her films and “get off” to the idea of the sweet, innocent girl (in the words of one British film critic), “shaking her well-developed rump”. She was eight years old in the film that review was written about.
More damning were Temple Black’s stories about Arthur Freed, a producer at MGM, who once called Temple into his office when she was 12 years old. He then proceeded to expose himself to her. Temple laughed nervously, which apparently threw Freed into a rage which resulted in him throwing her out of his office. Later, when she was 17, she was made a victim again when David O. Selznik, another producer, attempted to sexually assault her. She managed to escape that situation, but it was not the last time that the future Senator would have to deal with piggish creeps in Hollywood. Even after being elected to public office, Temple Black still struggled to be treated with the same degree of respect and esteem as her male colleagues.
Though it was not immediately apparent at the time, Monroe and Temple’s accounts of their harrowing experiences would not only enrage a large swath of the American public, it would also help launch a movement that would, in time, challenge the very foundations of sexism, misogyny, and sexual abuse of women in the United States and abroad.
This movement, eventually dubbed the “So Have I” movement (as in, “So and so has had enough and so have I”) would result in the calling out and exposing of all sorts of toxic, predatory behavior by men, not just in Hollywood and the entertainment industry, but in all aspects of American life. Business. Politics. Sports. The real cultural shift would start throughout the 1980s and 90s, but to many historians studying the “So Have I” movement and its roots, 1978, the Polanski Trial, and Marilyn Monroe and Shirley Temple Black’s damning publications were definitely a critical starting point.
Thanks in large part to public outrage against Polanski and predators like him, when Polanski was eventually found guilty on all six charges against him, the judge overseeing his case decided to make an example of him. Polanski was sentenced to a total of forty-one years in a state penitentiary. Though he would have a chance at parole, he would, regardless, be forever labeled a sex offender and be forced to register as such. The judge, Laurence J. Rittenband, also recommended to federal authorities that Polanski be deported immediately and barred from re-entry to the United States upon release, whether that be from parole or in 2019, when his sentence was up. In the end, Polanski would serve twenty of those forty-one years, being granted parole in 1998. He would be deported from the United States, returning to Paris, France, where he fell into obscurity, to spend the rest of his days in disgrace. Today, Polanski is probably best remembered as the first major public figure to be “So have I’d”, the term applied to those whom the movement exposes for their predatory behavior.
For their part, Samantha Gailey and her family felt vindicated by the verdict. It didn’t undo the horrendous wrong perpetrated against her. But at least she received some modicum of justice.
…Above: Angela Davis (left) and Florynce Kennedy (right), Black American feminists who helped critique and improve upon the “largely white focused” limitations of Second-Wave feminism.
This discussion of the start of the “So Have I” movement must also be grounded within the greater context of the wider trends in feminism around this time. The so-called “Second-Wave” of feminism, which peaked in the 1960s with Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique was, for the first time, beginning to be critiqued, especially in academia.
While Second-Wave feminism advocated strongly for women’s right to work outside the home, and control their own reproductive destiny, many, especially in the African-American community and Civil Rights movement, felt that these goals rang hollow to the lived experiences of Black women. Due to centuries of poverty, many Black women were forced to work both inside and outside the home, for example. While abortion rights certainly did empower black women and white women alike, Angela Davis rightly pointed out that African-American also suffered under forced sterilization programs, which were not being widely discussed in conversations about reproductive rights and justice. Throughout the late 70s and into the 1980s, black feminism developed in parallel with mainstream (largely white) feminism. Alice Walker, author of the classic novel, The Color Purple and other works, coined the term “Womanism” which emphasized the degree of the oppression Black women faced when compared to White women, and appealed for greater inclusivity in broader liberation movements.
Even among non-black feminists, Second-Wave feminism was seen as having several issues by many within the movement. For one thing, Second-Wave feminism was seen as being very limited in what it was actually advocating for. Betty Friedan, for instance, infamously left lesbian rights out of her political agenda. Ideas of class and race caused clashes and continued to divide activists and advocates who should, truthfully, have been on the same side against the largely white, largely male dominated shape of society at large. If the patriarchy and indeed, de facto white supremacy were ever to be dismantled, you couldn’t have, for example, white, upper-middle class lesbians calling black, working class lesbians “counter revolutionary” for practicing the butch/femme dynamic, something most of the former group scorned due to its perceived “mimicking” of the male dominated, heterosexual lifestyle. Indeed, this conflict between various groups of feminists and LGBT+ activists was just a part of a much bigger divide in the movement, the so-called “Feminist Sex Wars”.
Also called “the porn wars”, the Feminist Sex Wars were really a series of collective debates within the feminist movement regarding a number of issues broadly relating to sexuality and sexual activity. These differences of opinion deeply polarized the movement, and arguably, led to it losing momentum in the latter half of the 1970s and first half of the 1980s.
On one side, you had arguably the “traditional”, Second-Wave feminists. This group opposed such things as pornography, erotica, prostitution, (some) lesbian sexual practices, and were generally uncomfortable with the role of transgender women in the lesbian community, sadomasochism, fetishism, and other sexual matters. They found most of these things “exploitative” and wanted them either banned, or at the very least, strictly regulated.
On the other, you had so-called “sex positive” feminist groups. These groups felt that women should embrace their own sexual identities and power. They embraced sexual minority groups, celebrated “sexual liberation”, and endorsed the value of what they called “coalition building”. Over time, this notion of coalition building would be rebranded “intersectionality” and would become one of the key concepts in the coming Third-Wave of feminism. Sex-positive feminists typically argue for decriminalization of prostitution (to help protect sex workers with regulations and government oversight), and are supportive of porn and erotica, so long as the women involved in producing it are not exploited.
As pornography and erotica exploded in popularity throughout the 1970s and into the 80s, riding the coattails of “sexual liberation” from the 60s, there was a strong backlash against them in some sectors of society, some of which bordered on the intensity of a “moral panic”. Preachers, from Sunday pulpit-dwellers to the uber-wealthy Televangelists of the New South, both decried the sudden openness about sex as “the Devil’s work” and pointed to declining church attendance and increased crime as evidence of the “moral decay” of America. Even with the fall of Jerry Falwell and his American Conservative Party, there was still a strong desire in the country for someone (indeed, a strong, white man) to step up and say “enough is enough” to all the sex fiends and the hippies. Former Vice President Ronald Reagan, preparing to launch his second campaign for President, was taking copious notes.
In an effort to provide a united front against possible conservative backlash, which threatened to undo the modest gains achieved during the Kennedy, Romney, and Bush years, the feminist movement and other allied movements needed to get on the same page about these and other issues. Would they, in time to stop a possible rollback?
Only time would tell.
Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: Northern Ireland. No, really, this time.TL;DR - As promised, here's the much more SFW version of this chapter, which will just hit the highlights:
…
Hope you enjoyed. As ever, thank you for reading!
Lasseter I bring up because he would have entered animation in I BELIEVE the 80s; if a Me Too occurred earlier than the company might have wanted to take steps and thus called him out on it before he graduated to really fucked up shit. Even if he was only avoiding it because they put the fear of god in him, it could become second nature for him to not do it and he could come to realize on his own that kinda shit was never acceptable.
Jon Burge was an infamous cop who tortured 200 black men into giving false confessions; thing is, he was enabled by the rampant racism in the Chicago PD at the time. If his superiors had disciplined him early on before making it clear they wouldn't tolerate it it's entirely possible that he wouldn't have gone down the path of being a serial torturer.
If you catch bad behaviour early enough it's easier to get someone to change their ways. Cosby had been doing rape since the 60s and even then his acts required more malice.
Something must’ve went seriously wrong during his childhood, if I had to assume…
I heard that Atwood was attacked by some Terfs because she acknowledged that transgender women are women; she's been called a "handmaid"
Fantastic stuff. Good to see some wrongs be righted. I do wonder, considering Shirley Temple's stand for the So-Have-I movement and the split between Second-Wave Feminism and Third-Wave-Feminism, that the conservative movement might be more moderate towards women's rights. Perhaps they absorb the second-wave feminism as an embrace of capitalism and traditional values.