12/19(Sat) Men's Rights Movement/ Harvey Weinstein Accuser(Host:Michael)

[Michael-liu]

Session 1 (Men's Rights Movement)

The men's rights movement (MRM) is a branch of men's movement. The MRM in particular consists of a variety of groups and individuals who focus on general social issues and specific government services which adversely impact, or in some cases structurally discriminate against, men and boys. Common topics debated within the men's rights movement include the alleged favor given to women in family law including but not limited to matters such as child custody, alimony and marital property distribution.

Please watch the video, otherwise you will have no idea what to discuss

1. What do you think is the point of this beautiful feminist's speech? How can her point apply to people with different political opinion.

2. What part of this speech do you agree or disagree with?

3. Some scholars argue that the men's right movement or parts of it is a backlash against feminism. What do you think?

Session 2 (A Chinese accuser of Harvey Weinstein)


1. When a woman accuser of sexual misconduct goes public to tell her story and the man denies the accusation, do you usually believe the woman or the man? Why? (Let's not consider she has evidence or not) Have you ever witnessed or experienced any sexual misconduct in your workplace?

2. There was a Japanese female journalist who went public to accuse a high-level media man ,who had good connections with Japanese Prime Minister, of sexual attack. Also, a Korean female secretary of former Mayor of Seoul went on national TV to accuse her boss. Why there has never been any woman in Taiwan (also in China) ever going public to accuse a powerful man of sexual misconduct? (even after #MeToo movement) Chinese women are not brave enough? Chinese men behave themselves better? Because of our social culture or justice system?

3. Why is this Chinese woman brave enough to have this accusation TV interview?because she was raised and educated in western society? or because of the #MeToo movement? or maybe she received money for doing this interview? or other possible reasons?

[Luis Ko]

honestly i took exception to her and to what she said without understanding at the very beginning. however, after listening carefully to her whole speech, not hearing, i also read the transcript, i know i have to drop my ego to admit i was totally wrong about them. i finally understand she is indeed a beautiful lady, and understand what she is trying to convey after i finished listening to her. guess what i did above shows the point of her speech.

applause for this beautiful lady. to be clear she is not a feminist anymore. she is simply a wise and beautiful young lady.

[Michael-liu]

honestly i took exception to her and to what she said without understanding at the very beginning. however, after listening carefully to her whole speech, i also read the transcript, i know i have to drop my ego to admit i was totally wrong about them. i finally understand she is indeed a beautiful lady, and understand what she is trying to convey after i finished listening to her. guess what i did above shows the point of her speech.

I learned an idiom from your comment

take exception to something
=>
to be angry or upset because of something

[Michael-liu]

Attendees:

Ramesh, David, Julian, Howard, Julia, Leon, Luis, Jiahau, Morris, Gloria, Steve, Wendy

Hi, Julian, you are right. The total number of Harvey Weinstein accusers is 87, not 300 plus as someone claimed.

Below is a video about a beautiful model who cooperated with the police and secretly tape recorded her conversation with Harvey. You will know how this sexual predator pressured his victim to his hotel room.

[Luis Ko]

What happened is happened, but wrong things need to be changed. Don't get me wrong. There's no doubt victims need to be cared and perpetrators need to be punished, severely punished in my opinion. The thing is, if it would be disclosed sooner rather than later when this kind of ugly things happened then, there wouldn't have been so many victims. I know it sounds cruel to those victims but, lesson has to be learned, if I may say so.

right, it's easy for me to say that since it's none of my business. I'm just a mean person.

By the way, after Ramesh's explanation of #me too during our table discussion, guess that's also what the movement wanted to teach us. If not, then it's useless, I would say.

[Michael-liu]

What happened is happened, but wrong things need to be changed. Don't get me wrong. There's no doubt victims need to be cared and perpetrators need to be punished, severely punished in my opinion. The thing is, if it would be disclosed sooner rather than later when this kind of ugly things happened then, there wouldn't have been so many victims. I know it sounds cruel to those victims but, lesson has to be learned, if I may say so.

[Michael-liu]

Yes, totally agree with the notion that if the first or two victims could come forward much sooner, then there wouldn't be as many as 87 victims in Harvey Weinstein case.

The thing is, think about this, for such a powerful man like him in movie industry, wow...it requries unbelievablely tremendous moral courage for an actress to put her whole career on the line and take the risk of the whole world not believing in her and accuse him.

So, maybe your point is exactly the main point of this #metoo movement, which is to encourage women to come forward right at the moment the sexual attack happened so that there won't be me2, me3, me4, me5, me6....etc. But our society needs to provide a more sympathetic and more friendly environment for these women victims to have courage to do that.

BTW, Luis, although sexual "predator" is more commonly used in media, when you said sexual "perpetrator" must be also fine. I didn't know this word until I looked up dictionary now. I apologized I corrected you during the discussion. It made me sound condescending.