Lady Links 2.10

Um. So. This is late. Because last week I maybe kinda forgot a little? *cough* thank god I’m cute.

I feel like this isn’t timely since this is what everyone was talking about last week and not so much now. But it’s not like these issues have gone away.

So this little thing with Woody Allen happened and polarized the world, basically. His daughter, Dylan, came forth after his appreciation at the Golden Globes and reminded everyone about that time he was accused of molesting her when she was a child. Then this guy who sort of knew Woody Allen professionally made a reply to Dylan’s accusations and I won’t even link to it because it’s disgusting. The author very carefully used words and phrases and reasoning that people ALWAYS use to silence victims. Girls are lying liars who lie! Dare not question the Artist! He’s the victim here! (I paraphrase for the snark.) But good things have been written in Dylan’s defense as well. This is an excellent piece which I would quote for you but all the best parts are the entire thing and I think that might just be plagiarism. And there’s this one: Are Children Supposed to Document Their Abuse? Because. I mean. Really. The title speaks volumes. But it goes on to point out that, if indeed, people in America are considered innocent until proven guilty, and if indeed, we will never know what really happened – why are we demonizing the child here and making the potential abuser out to be a saint. If we truly cannot prove who is lying then lay the fuck off Dylan. Because when you disregard her abuse, you simultaneously disregard the abuse of every other victim in the world, too. When you demonize her, you simultaneously demonize every other victim in the world, too. So don’t do that. Just don’t.

And then there’s Phillip Seymour Hoffman. And I know he’s not a woman. But it’s not like addiction doesn’t ever strike women. And what it is about is changing the way we think about things which is one of the fundamental aspects of the Lady Links. So we’re talking about this today. We heard this news while visiting a tiny mountain town to celebrate my birthday. To be honest I’m still kind of in denial about it. But then Jared Padalecki tweeted out that Hoffman’s death wasn’t a tragedy and we discussed this. And I don’t know why, maybe it was the wine, or the sugar high combined with the higher altitude, or maybe I just really like the sound of my own voice more than being reasonable and compassionate (I do tend to process things slowly in my mind, but my mouth never gets the message to hold off), but at the time it seemed like a good thing to agree with, although I felt like it was a shitty way to have put it. But as I was driving home that night – even before I’d read the opinions about this on Tumblr – I realized how stupid that is. And as much as I tried to make excuses for my own stupid agreement with the comment, I just could not figure out how addiction isn’t a tragedy. Lord knows I’ve seen it enough in my life. And some people can recover, but they struggle every single day with it. Russell Brand once wrote a really great piece about this. But some people don’t ever conquer addiction. My grandma had lung cancer twice and wasn’t ever able to put the cigarettes down. And I don’t honestly know if that even compares to hard drugs – I just know that it’s a fucking tragedy when addiction rules your life. And it’s a fucking tragedy when the entire world blames a person for their own struggles. Because the thing is that no one sets out to lose control of their life. No one consciously chooses to struggle with addiction every single day for the rest of their lives. Whatever led them to that point is a tragedy and it is heartless and inconsiderate and unacceptable to not try to understand that. Again, Brand speaks up and poses this question, “Would Hoffman have died … if we weren’t invited to believe that people who suffer from addiction deserve to suffer?”