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Steve Coleman & #MeToo Moment in Jazz


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But by her own admission, she already "had a habit of being comfortable in abusive situations" before she met Coleman. Troubled before, troubled after.

Seeing that she's a mom now, I really do hope that her healing is going deeper than venting on Facebook. If it doesn't....those cycles will repeat. Sex doesn't fix it, parenthood for damn sure doesn't fix it. At some point, if you know you keep doing something, repeatedly making the same bad choices, it's on you to stop making those choices. If you didn't know then, you know now. Getting to the point of healthy - to be able to do that is not easy, and once you become able to,  it's likely a lifetime of vigilance to stay healthy.

Adults need to do a better job of teaching boys how to not act, but also of teaching girls what to not accept. None of this is easy because...adults are too often still adolescents themselves and it's hard to educate about traps when you're already ensnared in them yourself.  Again, not sure what good Facebook is going to do to anybody except create even more outward diversions for people to let into their own already diverted minds, but that's just me.

 

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I'm sorry but I still don't buy it. A 52 year old man presented by a 17/18 yo female offering whatever from whatever experience or perspective, that man should be thinking "this isn't right" no matter how much she"s pushing it or he's wanting it.

There's posts perilously close to victim blaming and prurience amongst other things in this thread which make for uncomfortable reading. As I said upthread, let's stop dancing on pinheads

Edited by mjazzg
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12 minutes ago, mjazzg said:

There's posts perilously close to victim blaming and prurience amongst other things in this thread which make for uncomfortable reading. As I said upthread, let's stop dancing on oinheads

That's inevitable if some people are not 100% convinced that she is a victim and he is guilty of everything.

You know there are shades of gray in life, and as I said up above no one knows the full truth. Some judge him very harshly by his actions and that is fine. But not everybody is going to be so harsh, or so certain where all blame lies.

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7 minutes ago, mjazzg said:

There's posts perilously close to victim blaming and prurience amongst other things in this thread which make for uncomfortable reading. As I said upthread, let's stop dancing on oinheads

I don't think it's "blaming the victim" to point out that somebody admits to already being comfortable in abusive situations...it needs to be pointed out, not to "blame" her, but to contribute to the conversation that, yes, she to made a bad choice, was probably/obviously already making bad choices, and is hopefully working on figuring out why that was so that, again, hopefully, she learns how to stop doing that, not for the least of reasons being that she's got a kid now, and that shit gets passed on if left to its own devices.

They both need help, and truthfully, the younger a person is, the more hope there is for them. But that's only if they confront their own pathologies. No matter who is to blame for creating them, it's on you to fix yourself. Not all by yourself, obviously, but to direct yourself into a healing path. You have to own your outcome, and barring any externally imposed violence or other uncontrollable denial, there are no excuses for not doing so.

Besides, retroactive blaming - of anybody - is easy. Being proactive and empowering young people to know there value as much if not more than anybody else does, lest it be taken from them when nobody's looking, that's hard.

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3 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

That's inevitable if some people are not 100% convinced that she is a victim and he is guilty of everything.

You know there are shades of gray in life, and as I said up above no one knows the full truth. Some judge him very harshly by his actions and that is fine. But not everybody is going to be so harsh, or so certain where all blame lies.

I'll respond by repeating the part of my post you didn't quite...

I'm sorry but I still don't buy it. A 52 year old man presented by a 17/18 yo female offering whatever from whatever experience or perspective, that man should be thinking "this isn't right" no matter how much she"s pushing it or he's wanting it.

I don't see any overly harsh judgement there. Yes, there's shades of grey but there's also lines that really should bring  a clear thinking adult to a halt as when presented with certain circumstances, as those above. 

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33 minutes ago, mjazzg said:

I'll respond by repeating the part of my post you didn't quite...

I'm sorry but I still don't buy it. A 52 year old man presented by a 17/18 yo female offering whatever from whatever experience or perspective, that man should be thinking "this isn't right" no matter how much she"s pushing it or he's wanting it.

I don't see any overly harsh judgement there. Yes, there's shades of grey but there's also lines that really should bring  a clear thinking adult to a halt as when presented with certain circumstances, as those above. 

Yeah, about that "clear thinking adult" thing...you have a whole lot of those over where you live?

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26 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Yeah, about that "clear thinking adult" thing...you have a whole lot of those over where you live?

Some, yeah. Enough I'd hazard a guess who would see the Coleman scenario and say' 'no way, not me'.

That Coleman isn't amongst that number doesn't really let him off the hook. He's intelligent, can think clearly as well as the next person. 

Edited by mjazzg
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7 hours ago, mjazzg said:

I'll respond by repeating the part of my post you didn't quite...

I'm sorry but I still don't buy it. A 52 year old man presented by a 17/18 yo female offering whatever from whatever experience or perspective, that man should be thinking "this isn't right" no matter how much she"s pushing it or he's wanting it.

I don't see any overly harsh judgement there. Yes, there's shades of grey but there's also lines that really should bring  a clear thinking adult to a halt as when presented with certain circumstances, as those above. 

On 5/31/2021 at 8:09 AM, erwbol said:

This 'always believe a woman' nonsense has gone way too far anyway. As if women can't have a sociopathic streak.

Studies bear out that in these situations women are telling the truth around 95% of the time and are much more likely to understate rather than overstate the issues.  The cost of speaking out (as shown by the retaliatory lawsuit here) is often tremendous. My wife has worked extensively with victims (and I have some, and have presented a talk on the subject) and experience bears out the studies.  She was a 17 year old kid.  He was an empowered 52 year old (apparently married btw)man.  She didn't "offer", he demanded.  She made poor choices.  As stated, she needs help, but he's despicable. I've never been a fan of him or the whole M-base thing, so don't feel the sense of loss some others here do.

Edited by felser
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"Kid" hardly seems accurate.  "Youth", maybe. "Troubled youth" seems more like it, but "kid"...these were two emotionally maladjusted people of different ages. Past that...do we really need to " take sides" here? There's a good actor here? Seriously?

If we're gonna try to get real, let's get real about all of it. There's a lot more dynamics at play here than 17/18 vs. 52 and ain't any of the pretty. The age thing in isolation might be the least ugly of it, and it's ugly enough.

Name a way that America is ugly, it's here. Name a way that the species plays down to itself, it's here. Name a reason why life without hype apparently doesn't know what to do with itself, it's here.

Except when proven otherwise (it happens), people make me sick. 

 

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11 hours ago, JSngry said:

"Kid" hardly seems accurate.  "Youth", maybe. "Troubled youth" seems more like it, but "kid"...these were two emotionally maladjusted people of different ages. Past that...do we really need to " take sides" here? There's a good actor here? Seriously?

If we're gonna try to get real, let's get real about all of it. There's a lot more dynamics at play here than 17/18 vs. 52 and ain't any of the pretty. The age thing in isolation might be the least ugly of it, and it's ugly enough.

Name a way that America is ugly, it's here. Name a way that the species plays down to itself, it's here. Name a reason why life without hype apparently doesn't know what to do with itself, it's here.

Except when proven otherwise (it happens), people make me sick. 

 

I agree with your concluding take on human nature, which deeply informs my faith, and I'm fine with "troubled youth" being the operative term for her.   But what you call "taking sides" is to me an assignment of relative, not absolute, culpability (they both have it in absolute terms, there's no "good guy" here per se), but while they both bear blame, it is not equal blame, or anything close to it, in my eyes.  I probably have a different line of sight on this than almost anyone else here, and don't really expect many here to understand mine (getting to the truth of abuse is in many ways painfully counterintuitive based on the surface appearance), though some others arrive at the same conclusions as me (and others don't).  But certainly a meaningful discussion going on here about this, and I'm thankful for that.

Edited by felser
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A lot of defense here for bad behavior by a cheating, almost old man. If you're tempted, keep it in your own pants & maybe grow up. Take it home to your wife.

I'm a little surprised by the defense of his behavior by a bunch of also old men. Hopefully you'd all show a little sense & restraint.

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7 hours ago, felser said:

Studies bear out that in these situations women are telling the truth around 95% of the time and are much more likely to understate rather than overstate the issues.

Perhaps, but the phrase "There's been a study" does not in itself inspire confidence anymore in the social sciences, or should I write "sciences"?

Edited by erwbol
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4 hours ago, jlhoots said:

A lot of defense here for bad behavior by a cheating, almost old man. If you're tempted, keep it in your own pants & maybe grow up. Take it home to your wife.

I'm a little surprised by the defense of his behavior by a bunch of also old men. Hopefully you'd all show a little sense & restraint.

 

7 hours ago, felser said:

Studies bear out that in these situations women are telling the truth around 95% of the time and are much more likely to understate rather than overstate the issues.  The cost of speaking out (as shown by the retaliatory lawsuit here) is often tremendous. My wife has worked extensively with victims (and I have some, and have presented a talk on the subject) and experience bears out the studies.  She was a 17 year old kid.  He was an empowered 52 year old (apparently married btw)man.  She didn't "offer", he demanded.  She made poor choices.  As stated, she needs help, but he's despicable. I've never been a fan of him or the whole M-base thing, so don't feel the sense of loss some others here do.

And that's it in a nutshell. 

The rest is irrelevant obfuscation at best and something a lot more pathetic at worst. 

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One person's "blindly cancel" is another's "take a principled stand". Whatever it'll be their choice.  He'll be able to self-release like so many other artists do these days and he was in the vanguard of when issuing digital music vert early on from his then website. Hardly the end of his recording career.

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17 hours ago, mjazzg said:

I'm sorry but I still don't buy it. A 52 year old man presented by a 17/18 yo female offering whatever from whatever experience or perspective, that man should be thinking "this isn't right" no matter how much she"s pushing it or he's wanting it.

There's posts perilously close to victim blaming and prurience amongst other things in this thread which make for uncomfortable reading. As I said upthread, let's stop dancing on pinheads

I'm not victim blaming because there is no victim here. She could have walked away at any time long before they started having sex, back when he showed her photos of her he took while she slept, back when he told her hanging out "in my case and in the case of other young women, meant having sex with whoever you were hanging out with." And she could have walked away at any time afterwards. But she chose to keep coming back.

"I felt I HAD to do this because I was getting to be in the best musical environment I could possibly be in, and I didn't wanna lose that. ... There was many times where I played into his game. Where I said what he wanted to hear. Where I initiated conversation with him, and when I tried to keep in contact when he had told me to leave him alone. I simply felt that if I lost contact with him, I would lose contact with music, with my purpose in life, and with my work."

Women like this want to absolve themselves of all responsibility and blame all of their bad decisions on The Toxic Males.

Also, note that according to her own narrative she had turned 18 by the time he convinced her to "be intimate with him." 

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19 hours ago, Niko said:

ok, you guys have won, I am speecheless... what do people mean when they say the jazz world is toxic and unwelcoming for women... hmm... and now she even dares to diminish his income by complaining about the sex-for-tutelage arrangement she willingly entered... and the judge refuses to let her pay for the financial damage because due to a new law she is entitled to having an opinion on what happened... such an unfair world for men in their best age

Perhaps the jazz world is is toxic and unwelcoming for women because everyone assumes they're all whores who got where they are on their knees. Grand used her pussy to gain entrance into the jazz world and then complains because her hard work, ability, and talent aren't taken seriously. She complains about the "systematic abuse of women all across the board" but does she ever stop to to consider that she's part of the problem? She writes "I'm letting it happen to other younger women, I'm letting people get away with things they shouldn't be getting away with." Yes, and why is that? Because when the next young woman approaches Coleman, he's going to expect the same thing from her that Grand willingly gave to him. If Grand had refused him, maybe he wouldn't expect it so readily. Grand teaches men not to respect women. Nobody respects a whore.

"The strangest thing is that he's told many people about my ability and my talent; but to me, he would say that I would've never gotten to where I was if it wasn't for him and for his attraction for me. It was like all the hard work I put in didn't matter to him."

"I was trying to keep a professional vibe while in public. I felt that people knowing that we were sleeping together would mean that they would not value me or respect my abilities..."

"What hurt me and discouraged me the most was  the fact that it seemed my hard work or ability did not matter when it came down to being a professional musician." 

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Sorry, but in my eyes, the only "whore" in this situation is Steve Coleman. The dude saw a cute young girl (alright - legally a woman) and all he could think about was getting in her pants, not her potential as a saxophone player.

Having said that, I do have a problem with her purposefully trying to ruin his life by exposing their relationship - a relationship that she willfully entered into and kept going for a long time (almost 6 years) by threatening to go public if he broke it off. She followed through on that threat and got away with it due to a law that was created to help protect women from unwanted sexual contact or caught in abusive relationships. This was neither. Her ability to use this law to punish Steve Coleman has exposed a problem with that law.

When several women were able to finally speak out about sexual predators like Bill Cosby & Harvey Weinstein and get their day in court, I cheered them on. I don't feel like cheering this woman on.

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