selective fastidiousness

[calimac]

My favorite example of this was demonstrated by the British Conservative politician the 5th Marquess of Salisbury, who in the Eden government in the 1950s was the firmest bulwark against permitting Princess Margaret to marry with Group-Captain Townsend. One wag - possibly it was Bernard Levin, I don't recall - commented, "Salisbury doesn't mind working for a divorced Prime Minister, but a Queen with a divorced brother-in-law is a step too far."

Now we find selective fastidiousness in the classical music world, and right at home, in the case of the San Francisco Symphony and its frequent guest conductor Charles Dutoit. And let me emphasize frequent. I don't know how often he's appeared at Davies, either with the home band or a visiting orchestra, but, though I attend less than a third of the programs there, two years ago I began a review with, "It's Charles Dutoit again. This is at least the sixth time I've heard him conduct in the last five years." I've heard him once more since then, and was expecting to do so again in April.

Well, a journalistic report has accused him of several incidents of sexual harassment. These range from 1985 to 2010, so they've been going on over quite a long time, and, though some of the victims were surprised, one singer reports that "a veteran soprano, now deceased, warn[ed] her to watch out for him."

Well, that was published yesterday. That very day, the San Francisco Symphony put out a press release announcing that it "has severed all ties" with him. He won't be appearing before SFS in April; he won't be appearing with his own orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, in January; if the wording of the press release is to be believed, he'll never be back again. Now that's prompt action. A "strong commitment to a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment in the workplace," it says.

What interests me is that everybody seems to have forgotten the most notorious incident in Dutoit's career. I know that the AP, which wrote the harassment report, has forgotten it, because all they say concerning this is to note that "in a long, distinguished career, he also has led highly regarded orchestras in Paris and Montreal."

So let me inform you, and them, that Charles Dutoit, newly-accused serial sexual harasser, is the same Charles Dutoit who resigned from the music directorship of the Montreal Symphony in 2002 after the musicians called him a "tyrant" who ruled by "verbal and psychological abuse," and that he treated them "with derision and condescension" and like "battered spouses." This was all very public at the time, thank you New York Times.

But it didn't seem to otherwise affect his career any. There's no indication he ever abused the SFS musicians like that, but there's no indication he ever mashed any of its women in his dressing room, either, so this isn't a case of the SFS being hit where it lives. So, SFS: Some forms of harassment we condemn immediately. Others don't seem to bother us so much.

Comments

[cmcmck]

A friend of ours sings with the Weiner Staatsoper and has stories to tell of Dutoit not to mention Levine

She's lesbian which makes them all the more interesting...........

[voidampersand]

I think public expectations have changed in the last year.

[calimac]

What remains selective, then, is the decision to respond only to new accusations. The offending events themselves are long in the past, mostly longer than the ones in Montreal. But Montreal shouldn't get a pass just because we already knew about it.

[voidampersand]

In the past complaints were ignored or hushed up, and no action was taken.

Now when complaints are made, they are taken seriously and action is taken. That's progress.

You're asking if an organization should take action against someone they associate with but who doesn't work for them, where no complaints are on file, and nobody is complaining now. I would say that ethically it is appropriate for them to wait. It is selective, because exercising judgment is always selective. People (usually men) who behaved outrageously will have complaints made against them in the court of public opinion. With the current public mood, organizations are compelled to take action. Then there are people whose behavior was borderline. Whether complaints are made against them will depend on whether there still are people who feel strongly offended. It is a reasonable approximation of justice.

I'm also thinking that "fastidiousness" is not the right term. The reason for disassociating with harassers is not to achieve excessive moral tidyness. It is to achieve a more just and fair society.

[calimac]

No, that is quite not what I'm asking, but as I expect anything further I say will continue to go right past you, I'm going to just drop it.

[voidampersand]

Because of the Weinstein scandal accusations of sexual harassment are being taken seriously.

“I never went to the police. I never went to company management. Like everyone else, I looked the other way,” said Sylvia McNair, now 61. “But it is time now to speak out.”

Finally.

Can we agree on that?

[calimac]

That went without saying, in any forum where I'd care to speak, before I began talking.

I'd like to see other accusations of non-sexual abuse of musicians taken with the same degree of seriousness, whatever degree an institution may deem appropriate.

[voidampersand]

Suzette Haden Elgin taught about "how to disagree without being disagreeable." It helps to be crystal clear about where we don't disagree. Especially if the discussion seems to be headed towards "how to be disagreeable without disagreeing."

You want institutions to have higher standards, to take all accusations of abusive behavior seriously. I can agree with that. But sexual harassment not the same as generally abusive behavior. It is worse. Dutoit is credibly accused of sexual assault, which is even worse. So I don't agree that all abuse should be taken with the same degree of seriousness. All of it is serious. Some of it is more serious.

[calimac]

Evidently it is so much worse that it calls for instant dismissal, on the same day that the charges are publicized, without any further inquiry, from a close and long-standing association with an institution with no connection to any of the events about which the charges have been made.

Whereas the other form of abuse is to be completely ignored, even forgotten about, by the same institution, twelve years after the charges are made and the resignation of the offender from the other institution where the events took place.

It is the vast difference between these standards which my post was intended to call into question. However more serious you may claim that sexual harassment is than other forms of abuse, I venture that the difference is not as great as that. And my frustration comes from fancying that this point was clear in the first place.

[voidampersand]

The Time article describes multiple credible accusations of sexual assault. Not just harassment. Not just abuse. Assault. Physically grabbing people and having his way with them.

The NYT article describes verbal abuse that is clearly inappropriate and unacceptable. But it also makes clear that Dutoit was highly regarded and that 50% of the orchestra still supported him.

These two things are not the same. They are not even close.

I'm fine with the idea that institutions should have higher standards. No one should have to put up with abuse. But it's only recently that institutions have been seriously acting to stop the most outrageous and harmful forms of abuse. They should be encouraged to keep at it and to do even better.

[calimac]

Verbal abuse can be extremely psychologically humiliating, especially when it comes from your "highly regarded" work supervisor and maestro. Verbal comments that aren't even abusive count as sexual harassment when they are of a sexual nature, and that's serious too. In this case, the abuse included initiating the process that would have led to the players' dismissal, only aborted by Dutoit's resignation. I do not believe that physical assault is always worse than verbal harassment.

In mitigation of the older charges, you write that "Dutoit was highly regarded and that 50% of the orchestra still supported him." By "highly regarded," I presume you mean artistically, but the singers who were sexually harassed said the same thing. Some continued to work with him, just taking precautions. One said, “There is nothing wrong with him as a musician, but he has been allowed to operate as a predator off the stage.” As for the "50% support," nobody took a poll at the time of the sexual assault incidents, but one of the major observations regarding sexual harassment is how acceptable it seemed to be until quite recently. I suspect if a poll had been taken at the time of the assaults the results would have been quite dismaying.

Getting conductors to stop acting like all-powerful martinets was the major mission of orchestral personnel policies in the post-WW2 years, and by 2002 Dutoit's behavior in Montreal was as anachronistic as his sexual behavior seems today.

I'm willing to allow for an argument that they're not entirely of the same magnitude, but the treatment of the two types of incident by the SFS were as different as they could possibly be. I do not believe the facts justify such an extreme variation, and attempts to excuse the Montreal behavior ("Dutoit was highly regarded and that 50% of the orchestra still supported him") are a studied dismissal of the genuine abuse suffered by these players, of a kind that would be considered intolerable if applied to sexual harassment, however purely verbal it might have been.

[voidampersand]

I'm not dismissing the abuse committed against the Montreal musicians. I've had to deal with abusive petty tyrants in my work and it's extremely stressful.

Women being sexually harassed or assaulted is all of that and worse. The imbalance of power between the conductor and the musician is there. Plus they have to deal with the imbalance of power between men and women, plus the lack of recourse, plus the additional stress that the abuse is sexual.

The treatment of the two reports by the Symphony was different primarily because the standards have changed dramatically within the last year (for the better). I have yet to hear of any institution that received credible reports of sexual harassment, no matter how old, and failed to act. (Except the Republican Party in the matter of the President.) Maybe if current standards applied in 2002 the Symphony would not have casually dismissed the Montreal controversy. But at that time sexual harassment was not taken seriously either.

I think you are taking a dramatic improvement in social justice as a negative because institutions were not consistent before compared to now. But if institutions were completely consistent over time, either they always did the right thing and no improvement is needed, which is a fantasy, or no improvement happens, which would be a shame. I'd rather have progress.

[calimac]

All I can do is repeat that however different they are, they aren't as different as this. You may not intend to dismiss the Montreal abuse, but in your eagerness to emphasize the sexual abuse, you write as if you are dismissing the other. Need to watch that.

Nor am I writing about how SFS handled or should have handled the Montreal abuse back in 2002. I'm fully aware things were different then. I'm talking about how they handle them now, or more precisely within the last few months. The Montreal abuse was a long time ago. The sexual abuse was also a long time ago (the most recent cited incident, 7 years; others a lot older). The only difference is, we only found out about the latter a couple days ago. That should not account for a difference in treatment.

Had SFS chosen to react to the new accusations with "This is sad: we'll look into it, but for now we're making no changes," it would make sense to ignore the other. But a summary complete dismissal without even mentioning it? That's selective fastidiousness, because if it were genuine outrage, at least some of that outrage would have spilled over to the other incidents.

When you amp the volume up to eleven, even pianissimo sounds ought to be heard clearly.

[voidampersand]

Think of it this way: Dutoit is not coming back. It turns out that a lot of generally abusive petty tyrants have also been harassing women. Maybe they're out of here for what you feel is the wrong reason, but they're out of here, which is the result you wanted.

[calimac]

No! I am not at all concerned here with the result. Had SFS's decision been less summary and more judicious I would have been equally content. (In fact, even more so, even if the result were the same.) I am concerned with the process.

I am not saying that this case is one of the right result for the wrong reason, but if it were, that would be a travesty of justice and I would be very upset by it.