'It was a different time': excusing/minimising bad behaviour in the past

[story]

But you know stuff like that didn't seem okay to me at the time. We all thought the Bill Wyman/Mandy Smith stuff was gross, as were older blokes coming onto girls in school uniform.

I've just looked it up and I'm about two years younger than Smith.

Us kids were pretty neglected in the family and things were pretty fucked up so maybe our thresholds were awry and askew. And living close to the West End and going out to the clubs and gigs from an early age I guess our thresholds were a bit fuzzied and blurred by that too.

We were hanging out with and dating drug addicts, squat punks, jailbirds, in our early teens.

 

[8ball]

If I were writing that book, I think I'd struggle to open up with anything other than the systematic sexual abuse of his daughters front and centre.

I immediately thought maybe smacking children comes under this, as in it's a bad thing good people might have done in the past where they won't now, but not entirely sure even there.

We seem to be mixing up things we agree are/were kind of dodge with some clear execrable criminal acts in this thread.

 

[story]

If I were writing that book, I think I'd struggle to open up with anything other than the systematic sexual abuse of his daughters front and centre.

Not disagreeing. Certainly when the book was published all that was very much front and centre in the reviews etc.

I don’t know anything about publishing but maybe the context of publishing and literary culture at the time played a part?

 

[Sue]

Us kids were pretty neglected in the family and things were pretty fucked up so maybe our thresholds were awry and askew. And living close to the West End and going out to the clubs and gigs from an early age I guess our thresholds were a bit fuzzied and blurred by that too.

We were hanging out with and dating drug addicts, squat punks, jailbirds, in our early teens.

Yeah, that wasn't really a thing in small-town Scotland...

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Not disagreeing. Cwrtainly when the book was published all that was very much front and centre on the reviews etc.

I don’t know anything about publishing but maybe the context of publishing and literary culture at the time played a part?

I guess we have two layers here. First, Gill's actions themselves in the context of his life and times, and second the way those actions were revealed to the world in a book half a century after his death. I think for sure a book with those revelations being published today, 30-odd years later, wouldn't open up quite like that passage OU has posted.

 

[story]

I was clubbing at that time and about the same age as Mandy was then. There were a lot of us who were way be,ow legal age in the clubs then. Boys and girls, although more girls.

As I remember it, we were aware that Bill Wyman was a wrong ‘un mainly because he’d pursued it through to marriage. There were loads of older bloke younger girl couples then. My 13 year old sister dated a man of 27. My Dad knew about it, met him, he came to the house. I went on some of their dates as chaperone. Our even younger sister was clubbing with us when she was 12 and 13 and blokes would come on to her all the time. It only got weird and dangerous when she was invited to different clubs, like Annabelle’s, by blokes who had cars. That’s when I intervened and went in to fetch her out. She was furious and I got it in the neck from some of our mates for being a moany old git. I was still under age myself.

It feels to me like a very different world. But then, a lot of us were living away from home at 16, working and paying bills and that.

I‘m glad it’s changed. I’m not saying any of it was okay. And I struggle to explain why some of it seemed okay at the time while some of it was obviously wrong at the time. The thresholds have moved.

It’s not different times so much as different cultures.

As I remember it, in our circles anyway, so long as the dating was going on where we could see it we could keep each other safe, and intervene and advise/take the piss accordingly. Kids travelled in packs through that scene. Including going back to their place and sleeping in the chair while they got off with each other and so forth. No internet, no mobiles, slack parenting. (some of this led to sexual adventures that were fun, mutually consensual, and probably would take a lot more forethought these days)


And then there was a club in Mayfair, downstairs from a funk and soul club, where all the underage kids ended up together, it wasn’t cool enough for the older people. It was really fucking wild but lots of fun, lots of lifelong friendships came from there. The Face got wind of us and did a story about us and the following week all the top notch VIP clubbers turned up . Funny as fuck cos even though they were presumably in their 20s they all looked dead old and doddery and try-hard against our joyous youthful wild abandon. We‘d been going to ”their” clubs and getting in for free cos it was cool to have youngsters there, and then secretly we had our own club they never came to, just for ourselves.

fuck knows how they got away with all that underage drinking etc. Backhanding the cops maybe?











eta
Awr, this has really taken me back. Remembering the way we’d end up sleeping all in the same bed, several boys and girls all tangled up, top to tail or spooning, wrangling the skimpy blankets off of each other, mattrsss on the floor or on pallets you’d helped bring back from somewhere, piling coats on the bed cos it was so cold as the speed wears off, sometimes the sneaky fumbled sex going on and the polite ignoring of that, or if it got more energetic going into the other room (or, y’know…), getting the giggles when her head got stuck in the corner, flat Coke and B&H for breakfast, no more speed, poncing up the money for going out the next night.

 

[[62]]

I think there was a kind of genuine banter between friends (i.e. not bullying excused as such) based around race or sexuality that used to be acceptable 30 or more years ago but wouldn't be now. A lot of it was based around being comfortable with racial and sexual difference at a time when a lot of people really were not and did not attempt to disguise it.

 

[TopCat]

it's only in the 1960s and 1970s that this behaviour was ever considered anything other than appalling, and then only by nonces, paedophiles and their apologists

Their apologists included the police in the 70’s. The response I got from the police reporting rape at eight years old won’t ever leave me.

 

[Cloo]

I cut people a certain amount of slack, but only a certain amount and there's also an issue of context - whether it's your dotty old aunt talking about 'this lovely half caste girl who works at the shop' at a family dinner out, if, say, you are the representative of an organisation or institution and aren't able to hold yourself back from asking insensitive questions of guests of colour at an event.

 

[8ball]

I think there was a kind of genuine banter between friends (i.e. not bullying excused as such) based around race or sexuality that used to be acceptable 30 or more years ago but wouldn't be now. A lot of it was based around being comfortable with racial and sexual difference at a time when a lot of people really were not and did not attempt to disguise it.

I think there still is, but people are a bit careful about being overheard and miscontrued.

 

[moochedit]

Another example here:

The Stars of Romeo & Juliet Are Suing Paramount, 55 Years After Film's Release

Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting were only 15 and 16 when they appeared nude on-screen in the 1968 Shakespeare adaptation.

movieweb.com

 

[Orang Utan]

How much older? I remember my Mum talking about my Dad picking her up from school in his car, but she was 16 and he was 18 (and was a mechanic so could cobble a jalopy together).

What you say sounds a bit different to that, though.

Usually only a few years older, but still illegal and dodgy as fuck. There was one girl who had a ‘boyfriend’ (hardly the appropriate word though, perhaps ‘abuser’ is more accurate) in his 30s who we considered to be a ‘dirty old man’ but it was always framed in a jokey manner rather than seen as a cause of concern.

 

[story]

I think there was a kind of genuine banter between friends (i.e. not bullying excused as such) based around race or sexuality that used to be acceptable 30 or more years ago but wouldn't be now. A lot of it was based around being comfortable with racial and sexual difference at a time when a lot of people really were not and did not attempt to disguise it.

Yeah, I’d agree with this. We used to take the piss using discriminatory language in a way I’d never consider doing now, and would consider beyond the pale if I heard it. A bit like calling your best mate a cunt I suppose. And while we’d do it to each other we’d never do it in front of anyone who we’d not accept such language from.

Like, the way we talked to each other on building sites. I’d never ever talk to people like that elsewhere.



I fully accept that this will have been horrible and upsetting to those on the receiving end. It all supported the prevailing -isms of the day.

But the thing is, we weren’t homophonic or sexist or racist, we were the ones pushing down those systems, we were genuinely inclusive and multicultural. That was one of the central defining characteristics of our youth culture. Maybe, by using them we were taking the piss out of the words themselves? We were certainly too young to think it through.

 

[Orang Utan]

They should take the statue off the BBC building. Not all art by paedophile should be destroyed but art celebrating paedophilia by paedophile certainly should.

We’ve got a Gill in Leeds - a stone frieze of Jesus chucking a wobbly at the usurers in the temple. Haven’t seen it for years as it’s indoors but I think it’s still there

 

[littlebabyjesus]

There's a very beautiful Gill sculpture near the entrance at the V&A. I think it should stay there. Probably more controversially, I have no problem with the BBC one. As a sculpture it doesn't do much for me, but I don't see what is gained by pulling it down.

 

[story]

It does read to me as downplaying it tbh. She seems more concerned with the gap between his public piety and his private life than the consequences of and damage caused by that private life. Maybe others read it differently, but to me, she appears to be placing adultery next to child abuse as moral equivalents.

I read it as saying “for some the adultery is bad enough, but for others that seems okay-ish….but look, there’s more… it goes up to eleven… where is your eleven”


How do you write about this without it turning into a a kind of misery porn exposé? With someone like Savile it’s all about the aberration, there is nothing else there. For someone like Gill there’s more going on. And then we’re back to “Do we throw the whole lot out or somehow find a way to contextualise both the art and the abuse?”

 

[maomao]

We’ve got a Gill in Leeds - a stone frieze of Jesus chucking a wobbly at the usurers in the temple. Haven’t seen it for years as it’s indoors but I think it’s still there

No naked kids but there's a dog in that one.

 

[story]

We seem to be mixing up things we agree are/were kind of dodge with some clear execrable criminal acts in this thread.

But if we’re talk about the culture rather than the times, then we need to include the slightly dodge as well as the execrable.

Same as recognising that cat-calling is part of the system that ends up with Couzens and Carrick

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I read it as saying “for some the adultery is bad enough, but for others that seems okay-ish….but look, there’s more… it goes up to eleven… where is your eleven”

Ok, maybe it could be meant like that. In that case, I'd have fucking your own children below fucking a dog on that list though.

There's a sentence I didn't think I'd write today.

 

[8ball]

Usually only a few years older, but still illegal and dodgy as fuck. There was one girl who had a ‘boyfriend’ (hardly the appropriate word though, perhaps ‘abuser’ is more accurate) in his 30s who we considered to be a ‘dirty old man’ but it was always framed in a jokey manner rather than seen as a cause of concern.

Your post made this come to mind..

 

[Orang Utan]

That’s not saying he was a sexual anarchist, it’s saying it was sexual anarchy. That’s a different thing.

It doesn’t read to me like any kind of justification. To me that reads like saying “even if we accept that some of this might fall within some definition of normal it’s not acceptable”.



I remember the outrage and shock that accompanied the revelations at the time.

Maybe not justifying it but it does read as downplaying it

 

[Orang Utan]

Maybe I’m wrong but I I assumed there was more in-depth analysis elswhere in the book, and that it would be more da,ning I thought that was the intro.

That’s page 2 of the introduction. Perhaps I should have continued reading but I’m not sure I want to

 

[story]

I guess we have two layers here. First, Gill's actions themselves in the context of his life and times, and second the way those actions were revealed to the world in a book half a century after his death. I think for sure a book with those revelations being published today, 30-odd years later, wouldn't open up quite like that passage OU has posted.

Yes. If this was being revealed now as new information it would eclipse everything else. His art would almost be a footnote, something to justify/explain the public revelation.

 

[maomao]

have no problem with the BBC one. As a sculpture it doesn't do much for me, but I don't see what is gained by pulling it down.

It's a sculpture of an old man fondling a naked child who is grasping a rather phallic flute. By a paedophile. I think the fact that the artist raped children forever stains it. And I think it being on the iconic entrance to an organisation that spent decades deliberately protecting celebrity paedophiles makes it ten times worse. It should be ground into dust.

 

[story]

Their apologists included the police in the 70’s. The response I got from the police reporting rape at eight years old won’t ever leave me.

The police are still apologists

 

[story]

Ok, maybe it could be meant like that. In that case, I'd have fucking your own children below fucking a dog on that list though.

There's a sentence I didn't think I'd write today.

Agree with this. That was the only part of that passage that gave me the wtf’s

 

[Orang Utan]

I think some of this behaviour was indeed ‘frowned upon’ but that’s all it was. Frowning is just a superficial, often performative, expression of disapproval that goes no further than that. That wasn’t enough. What we need to try and understand was why people were willing to overlook this despite them knowing that it was ‘frowned upon’ or why they minimised it by trivialising it with humour

 

[Orang Utan]

The police are still apologists

And enablers and culprits

 

[8ball]

I think some of this behaviour was indeed ‘frowned upon’ but that’s all it was.

When I said "frowned upon", I'd hoped everyone would pick up on an element of deliberate understatement.

 

[story]

Maybe not justifying it but it does read as downplaying it

I get what you’re saying.

And I’m not disagreeing, but…

Personally, reading that, I feel like I’m being prepared for something really shocking later on. It doesn’t feel like downplaying, it feels like someone saying “Okay, I’ve got something to tell you….”