Ultimately my solution for all abuse is going to be caring about the truth. It resolves false accusations as well as real abuse, and is a good overall part of caring about people and the world in general.
I will spend some more time on that.
For now, there is that problem of apathy: I'm not reading all that, I don't even know who this is, this does not affect me.
As is my custom, I am going to go about it in a roundabout way.
James Dewees is not a predator, but Jimmy Urine is.
James Dewees played with My Chemical Romance. Their singer Gerard Way is married to Lindsey Way, bass player in Mindless Self Indulgence, which is fronted by Jimmy Urine. Urine's wife Chantal Claret is good friends with Lindsey. MSI and MCR have toured together, but also MSI toured with Claret's earlier band, which is how they met.
Full disclosure: I sponsored the MSI Kickstarter, and have reviewed MSI, Chantal Claret, and a solo album of Urine's.
When I saw there were accusations I read them and found them credible.
The first thing I remembered was an MSI member reminiscing about how Jimmy made a beeline for Chantal when their tour together was starting out, making sure to introduce the bands which he did not usually do. It sounded like a cute story then, but it occurred to me to check the age difference.
Jimmy Urine is 13 years older than Chantal Claret. He was 12 years older than the 15 year old at the center of the sexual assault case.
They were also both adults when they got married, but it looks different now.
The other thing that came to mind was another friend of Jimmy Urine's, James Gunn.
(James appears to have been a very popular name from 1966 through 1976.)
Gunn was fired from Guardians of the Galaxy when old offensive tweets were dug up making jokes about molestation and pedophilia.
At the time I remember reading about a "To Catch a Predator" party that Gunn threw. Urine and Claret attended.
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/james-gunn%E2%80%99s-how-to-catch-a-predator-party.1464580/
Just to be clear, I still do not have any reason to believe that Gunn was being anything other than "provocative". It reminded me of things I had heard about "Tarts and Vicars" parties or "bad taste" parties.
As I was thinking about the assault, I wondered how Urine's friends and band members felt about this. Did they have any idea that his "jokes" were real? Did they feel differently about it?
Maybe they didn't think about it that much. It's not that long ago that dating a high school girl was coded in movies as kind of a loser but sympathetic. There are Pineapple Express (2008), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010). In 1993 I think Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused is supposed to be cooler than them, but I am not sure.
Here's the thing; in 2004 it came out that former Oregon governor Neil Goldschmidt had abused a teenage girl. They called it an affair initially, of course. Not only did people push back on that, but they started talking about the victim and the effect it had on her life, and it was damaging to her. It is bad for development. It is trauma.
It is still touted by skeevy old guys to get them young before they're ruined, developing minds of their own and self-respect and things like that.
Now my feelings are just more being fed up that anyone finds humor in making fun of terrible situations.
It may be worth nothing that the people who dug through James Gunn's old tweet were pretty awful people, but the fuel never should have been there in the first place.
Children really do get molested and abused. There is no humor in that.
I think it takes a remarkable amount of privilege to be able to dress up as exploited people for fun. There have to be better ways of using that privilege.
It is surprisingly easy to get to the point where nothing moves you anymore.
That is a good reason to care as well.
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