Gosh, that sounds good. Can't see me selling it to Ruth, though!

Hold that thought, Jules. I need to check the date for availability.

Same here, Jules. I hate to prejudge, but it looks pretty certain that at least some of the allegations are factual.

What was that book about the classical music industry that Martin recommended a while back?
Authored by a female flautist, I think.
It seems from that that hopping into bed to secure a classical gig was the way things worked for female musicians (or male if the perpetrator, like allegedly James Levine, is gay) back then, and probably still does.

I'm not saying it's OK, it isn't. I think it's awful.
But to single any individual out like this seems somehow unfair when it's an industry-wide malaise.
It's also avoiding the underlying issues which need to be addressed.

This article closer to home just shows the scale of the problem.

www.kentonline.co.uk/medway/news/cathedral-paedophile-is-jailed-210396/

Let me start by saying that it makes nothing that went on "OK" but it certainly was a different era, and people's perceptions were a lot different.  I know what I was like in the seventies, and I know that a lot of what I thought was fine back then I'd hesitate to even mention these days. 

One obvious example is from the fifties. Ronald Searle's St Trinians cartoons, and the films that followed, portrayed sexy schoolgirls as a "normal" part of everyday life, and quite acceptable as a subject for humour.  Even the 2007 & 2009 St Trinians remakes traded on the stereotype.  People wouldn't be in a hurry to admit that they found schoolgirls sexy these days, not if they wanted to avoid the sex-offender's register at best or a public lynching at worst. 

In the sixties and seventies though...  Acts bordering on rape were "funny" as was manhandling women in any way, shape or form. Grabbing bits of a woman's anatomy for comedic purposes was cool. 

I hate to bring his name up, because I always disliked him intensely, but you only have to look at The Benny Hill Show to see what was deemed acceptable for a prime-time audience in those days, or listen to the (and I use the word in its loosest sense) comedy of Bernard Manning, Jim Davidson, and the like.  Oddly enough, given how Victorian America's outlook was, and still is in many places, Benny Hill was the top British export for American TV at one stage.  They absolutely loved him.

As I said at the outset, none of this makes what went on "right" but the way these things were perceived at the time made them seem acceptable throughout society at the time.  Ignorance truly was bliss in many cases.  It's only using the past as a lens that we can see things for what they actually were.

Problem is, a lot of the cases in the spotlight at the moment are not about 'wandering hands' 40 years ago, they are about what is happening now, today, as the last incident I linked to very sadly showed.

Thankfully I was never much of a Benny Hill fan, but what kind of imbecilic intellect would take from it that it is ok to treat women that way in real life. I believe that the vast majority of sexual predators know very well what they are doing is wrong but are only too happy to abuse their power and positions of trust; it's nothing to do with changing standards over the years IMO.

Fascinating!

Excellent article, thanks.

By the way, I've seen Marin Alsop twice and she's good.