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March 7, 2024
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"psychological safety" ? !!
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The Ministry of Truth in action.
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Woketardism at its best! The woman in charge is probably adverse to seamen.
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Best to know more of the story:
apnews.com/article/times-square-kiss-photo-veterans-affairs-memo-b24d5dba6930be867e9ac1be6dff16e5
McDonough on Tuesday tweeted out a copy of the image, which appeared in Life magazine, adding, “Let me be clear: This image is not banned from VA facilities — and we will keep it in VA facilities.”
However:
The photo was taken on Aug. 14, 1945, known as V-J Day, the day Japan surrendered to the United States, as people spilled into the New York City streets from restaurants, bars and movie theaters, celebrating the news. George Mendonsa spotted Greta Friedman, spun her around and planted a kiss. The two had never met.
...
Friedman told the Library of Congress in 2005 that “it wasn’t a romantic event. It was just an event of thank God the war is over kind of thing.” She added in an oral history of the photo: “It wasn’t my choice to be kissed. The guy just came over and kissed or grabbed.”
So, speaking just for myself, that kinda destroys the photo in my eyes, iconic or not. It would be like finding out that the iconic photo of the iron workers eating lunch on a beam when building a skyscraper was actually a photo of models on a set with a matte in the background.
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Well… that changes things quite a bit, in my perception!
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Good for them if they were both okay with it… it still sets a pretty bad example of what‘s acceptable, if it’s presented without some context, wouldn‘t you agree?
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That‘s why I mentioned context… was this acceptable behavior in 1945 in general? I highly doubt it. Was it something deemed okay by more people than usual in this special instance - yeah likely! Did it still have the potential to traumatize someone in 1945? Almost certainly if you ask me. Hence there should be some additional context mentioned when that image is shown. Don‘t think that would hurt anyone or take away its symbolic meaning completely.
Who knows, perhaps they already do that in most instances anyway! But I haven‘t been aware of it so far…
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I do not think we can judge this picture though the present puritanical prism, that seems to be dominant right now.
The picture was taken at the end of a nasty brutal war, and the euphoria of just being still alive probably contributed to this being a moment of joy to be alive, rather than a rape scene. I believe the woman in the shot was not at all angry about what happened.
Who was the joyless, brainless burocrate who came up with this?
“To foster a more trauma-informed environment that promotes the psychological safety of our employees and the veterans we serve, photographs depicting the ‘V-J Day in Times Square’ should be removed from all Veterans Health Administration facilities.”
Really the obsession with images and statues from the past is quite disturbing. I really find it hard to believe this picture might give sombody "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder". I quess a lot of these veterans have endured far worse during those senseless wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. But we must not challenge that, and it is just easier to get upset about an old photograph, rather than challenge the present.
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No one's rewriting history -- context is being added. The context I knew about was the following:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Zimmer_Friedman
V-J Day in Times Square became iconic and was viewed popularly as a romantic photograph taken during the 1945 victory celebrations. As she adapted to that interpretation of what she acknowledged as not consensual, Friedman expressed mixed feelings about it decades later.[7][8] In 2005, during an interview at the Library of Congress Friedman stated, "it wasn't my choice to be kissed. The guy just came over and kissed or grabbed."[9] and "I was grabbed by a sailor and it wasn't that much of a kiss, it was more of a jubilant act that he didn't have to go back, I found out later, he was so happy that he did not have to go back to the Pacific where they already had been through the war. And the reason he grabbed someone dressed like a nurse was that he just felt very grateful to nurses who took care of the wounded."[9]
Then, as you noted, her granddaughter had the following to add:
Caroline Branin, Friedman’s granddaughter, told The Daily Mail, “As my grandmother told it to me, she was at work and she went downstairs at lunchtime to see what was happening. George grabbed her and kissed her. It was a split second thing and the photographer just happened to be there. She never felt violated or anything like that … She was always very proud of the image and she thought it was two young people celebrating in the street.”
So, what we have here are different accounts. Where the reality lies, unfortunately, is anyone's guess, unless someone can find more interviews from Greta Friedman. Regardless, it is more than a little easy to imagine one of the ubiquitous You Tube "pranksters" staging a similar event, and we all know how that would go. If one of these "pranks" were to go viral, and make the woman in the prank famous (in a good way), one can see how her opinion about what happened would change over time. But this absolutely does not excuse the "prank".
That said, yes, it was a photo of the times. But we need to be cognizant of what those times were -- a time where women were sexual objects and second class (still so today, albeit less so). A jubilant soldier enjoying that "privilege" which was "normal" at the time absolutely ruins the photo for me. I mean, think about it -- if you were at a football match with your wife, your team won, and some guy did that to your wife, someone took the photo, would you feel good about it? For sure, some would. But I'm pretty sure you'll agree that, for others, words, if not fists, would be exchanged on the spot. And then, if the photo became famous and, in turn, made your wife famous, it's not hard to see how that, even though she didn't like what happened at the time, would come to see it in a positive light.
So, no, no history is being rewritten. Context -- necessary context -- is being added.
How about instead simply say that "grabbing her by her pussy" isn't appropriate today, or ever, in the context of the photo.
More like the stress of war doesn't entitle the victor (or anyone, really) to grab a woman he doesn't know without her consent and kiss her.
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Snowflakes with DEI and Woke obsessions have a very blindered view and there is no reasoning with them!
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Bit of a lame snark, don't you think, given that you quoted americanmilitarynews.com which, in turn, quoted The Daily Wire, founded by Ben Shapiro. I mean:
www.allsides.com/news-source/daily-wire
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_WireI'll take Wikipedia every time, thank you very much, in the same way I know you'll take The Daily Wire. But, lest I'm not being clear, our choices are far from equal with regards to credibility.
The "I know you are but what am I?" quip from the right has long passed it's expiration date.
Thanks for that! I read the whole thing, and everything I wrote stands. Interesting that she didn't want to reenact the "kiss", and gracious for her to realize what the photo symbolized, despite the reality of the circumstances of the photo.
Really, now? Would love to be there if some gay guy did that to you. Alternatively, if the guy were cis and had his wife with him, would love to see how he reacts when you go for your turn.
Isn't a quote from a convicted rapist enough?
Anyway, the point is that what the sailor did was sexual assault. As sexual assault goes, however, it didn't bother the victim all that much, having grown up in a culture where such behavior was not merely tolerated, but "normal". Still, it is more than a little telling that in the full transcript that you linked that she had no desire to reenact the moment.
What I can't quite wrap my mind around is thinking that grabbing a woman you don't know and kissing her, no matter how good you're feeling, is acceptable. Sure, we can pass the photo off as "he didn't mean anything by it" -- which he undoubtedly didn't -- but that doesn't mean that such behavior, which women have been subjected to over and over and over is acceptable, every bit as much as you would recoil at the thought of a gay man doing the same to you despite "not meaning anything by it". Then again, we know how Anita Hill's testimony on Clarence Thomas (yes, the same SCOTUS judge who takes bribes from billionaires) amounted to squat, so I absolutely understand that you would think that's just fine and then wonder what in hell people are talking about when they say "male privilege". Oh, yeah -- just thought of something -- had that sailor been Black, then he'd have definitely seen quite some hard time for having sexually assaulted a White woman. Or do you deny that, too?
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No, not Stokholm syndrome. As I explained to you earlier, had the sailor been Black, we all know how things would have gone down. Anyway, based on her interview, it seems that things were just as I explained in posts above. The kiss was not welcome, but, then again, given the circumstances (celebrating the end of WWII, and that these kinds of "kisses" were happening all around), it was what it was. No big deal. But, again, not welcome:
Patricia Redmond
And how did you find out that it was George Mendonsa who kissed you?Greta Zimmer Friedman
Well, we met in Times Square in 1980.Patricia Redmond
But who invited you to Times Square then?Greta Zimmer Friedman
LIFE Magazine.Patricia Redmond
Okay. And?Greta Zimmer Friedman
And we sort of -- I didn't want to reenact the kiss. First of all, my -- well, no, my husband did not come with me, but his wife was there.Patricia Redmond
Mr. Mendonsa's wife?Greta Zimmer Friedman
Yes.Patricia Redmond
Well, she was there the first time.Greta Zimmer Friedman
Well, I didn't know. Well, it wasn't -- it wasn't my choice to be kissed. The guy just came over and kissed or grabbed.Patricia Redmond
This was back in 1945.Greta Zimmer Friedman
Yes.Patricia Redmond
Okay. So now we're in 1980, and we do a reenactment of the kiss.Greta Zimmer Friedman
Yes. I told him I didn't want to redo that pose.Um, no, it is far from a lie. DT did, in fact say that. You like transcripts, right? Here ya go:
www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37595321
Trump: "Yeah that's her with the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything."
Bush: "Whatever you want."
Trump: "Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."
Oh, there's more, by the way:
“I’ll tell you the funniest is that I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed,” Trump told Stern.
“No men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in, because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it. … ‘Is everyone OK?’ You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody OK?’ And you see these incredible-looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that.”
Former Miss New Hampshire Bridget Sullivan told BuzzFeed News in May that it was “shocking” Trump would come backstage to wish the contestants good luck when many of them weren’t dressed.
“The time that he walked through the dressing rooms was really shocking. We were all naked,” Sullivan said.
But Trump’s campaign denied that ever happened.
As for Trump being a convicted rapist, yes, he absolutely is:
apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a4b98bb3947d42af9ec83d7db
and:
apnews.com/article/trump-rape-trial-columnist-carroll-4974ef026f3da61bc6f1b7ddda3ad10e
Trump’s lawyers had asked Kaplan to reduce the jury award to less than $1 million or order a new trial on damages. In their arguments, the lawyers said the jury’s $2 million in compensatory damages granted for Carroll’s sexual assault claim was excessive because the jury concluded that Trump had not raped Carroll at Bergdorf Goodman’s Manhattan store in the spring of 1996.
Kaplan wrote that the jury’s unanimous verdict was almost entirely in favor of Carroll, except that the jury concluded she had failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law.”
The judge said the section requires vaginal penetration by a penis while forcible penetration without consent of the vagina or other bodily orifices by fingers or anything else is labeled “sexual abuse” rather than “rape.”
He said the definition of rape was “far narrower” than how rape is defined in common modern parlance, in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes and elsewhere.
The judge said the verdict did not mean that Carroll “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed ... the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
So, long story short, what happened to Greta was, in fact, sexual assault. It was something simply accepted by women at the time, just as so many Japanese women simply accepted that they'd be groped on the subway (only recently has anything been done about it). Was the sailor acting maliciously? No, of course not. He was simply expressing his joy and making full use of his "male privilege" thinking he was doing nothing wrong (but, again, had a gay man did that to him, or even a large and hideously ugly woman, well, that would have been completely different, right?).
Now, Greta's cool with the photo, so I'm cool with the photo -- it's not like I want to see it "banned". But if someone, or some agency, chooses not to show it because it displays sexual assault, I can understand that.
But just as men and women live in entirely different worlds sharing the same physical space, so do people like me and people like you. Indeed, one can make quite the case that we all live in different worlds. It's just that in my world, the "woke" world, as "you're type" likes to call it, doesn't think it's cool to just grab a woman you don't know and kiss her, no matter how happy you are, nor do we "woke" people think it's OK to "grab'em by the pussy", and we "woke" people certainly don't think rape (even if it is "just" a forced finger job) to be OK.
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