Lizzo accused of sexual harassment and fat-shaming
Lizzo accused of sexual harassment and fat-shaming
Three former dancers allege the singer contributed to creating a hostile work environment.
Three former dancers allege the singer contributed to creating a hostile work environment.
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I'm keeping an open mind on this one because some of these allegations is a bit constructive/interpretive:
Ms Davis alleges the two questioned whether she was "struggling with something as she seemed less committed to her role on the dance cast", the case details.
"In professional dance, a dancer's weight gain is often seen as that dancer getting lazy or worse off as a performer. Lizzo's and Ms. Scott's questions about Ms. Davis's commitment to the tour were thinly veiled concerns about Ms Davis's weight gain," the documents allege.
So what actually happened is she was asked if something was wrong because they thought she was less committed.
Her argument here is that reading between the lines they really meant "you are too fat".
But what if reading between the lines they actually meant "you keep phoning it in during rehearsals"?
Yes, that one could be misinterpretation. But there are also more problematic behaviours listed in the lawsuit:
The legal action, filed in Los Angeles on Tuesday, includes allegations the dancers were "forced to endure sexually denigrating behaviour" and were "pressured into participating in disturbing sex shows" between 2021 and 2023.
Among the claims against Lizzo - whose real name is Melissa Viviane Jefferson - are that she "pressured Ms Davis to touch the breasts" of a performer in a nightclub in Amsterdam, and Ms Davis - after resisting - eventually acquiesced "fearing it may harm her future on the team" if she didn't do so.
The case also alleges that staff working for BGBT scolded dancers for "unacceptable and disrespectful" behaviour while working on the tour, without specifying what that behaviour was.
The dancers allege that "only the dance cast - comprised of full-figured women of colour - were ever spoken to in this manner, giving [the dancers] the impression that these comments were charged with racial and fat-phobic animus".
Additionally, it alleges the dance team's captain, Shirlene Quigley, pushed her Christian beliefs on performers and derided those who engaged in premarital sex.
She is also accused of openly discussing one of the former dancers' virginity, and posting about it on social media.
"pressured Ms Davis to touch the breasts" of a performer in a nightclub in Amsterdam, and Ms Davis - after resisting - eventually acquiesced "fearing it may harm her future on the team" if she didn't do so.
So that could be bad, or it could be "go on girl, touch em!" and she interpreted refusal to be deleterious to her career without direct evidence.
The dancers allege that "only the dance cast - comprised of full-figured women of colour - were ever spoken to in this manner, giving [the dancers] the impression that these comments were charged with racial and fat-phobic animus".
That confuses me. It'd make more sense if the dance cast had women of full-figure and not full-figure, and women both of and not of color if only the former of each were being denigrated. But it could also be that the dance cast misbehaved and was scolded in entirety and this is an assumption.
Additionally, it alleges the dance team's captain, Shirlene Quigley, pushed her Christian beliefs on performers and derided those who engaged in premarital sex.
She is also accused of openly discussing one of the former dancers' virginity, and posting about it on social media.
2nd line is about Quigley as well? That sounds weird since Lizzo isn't exactly a Christian virture bastion and her videos and songs can be quite sex-positive. But even if so, that's tangentially only a problem with Lizzo for employing her.
These accusations seem oddly non-specific for sexual harassment.
Regarding the nightclub … the easiest way I’ve found to sort my feelings out on this was to imagine how hard I’d cringe if this skit was in my corporate-sponsored sexual harassment training. The answer is something around the level of crawl-in-a-hole-and-die rather than endure this skit, and I’m pretty sure “Director So and So is planning a company party and suggested a strip club. How would you respond?” was an actual scenario in one of the many I’ve had to sit through.
True, they do sound more serious, I agree. But the problem with the example I quoted is it makes me wonder what the standard is for these other allegations, in terms of the relationship between what was actually said and what was inferred.
If someone's the kind of person who assumes having their commitment questioned must be veiled fat shaming, then they might be doing the same kind of leaps with these other things.
For example, being scolded for disrespectful behaviour, might genuinely be because the clique of dancers were the only ones engaging in the behaviour.
It just makes me a little hesitant. Perhaps the suit makes it clearer.
People also need to remember that we should believe accusers long enough to find out whether their accusations are accurate. So we should believe it is possible and look for more details instead of dismissing them outright.
So we shouldn't throw out everything just because a few of them are phrased like sour grapes or remind us of people that infer the wrong things. Let's wait for more context before vilifying the dancers or Lizzo.
I agree. Hey thanks for this explanation:
we should believe accusers long enough to find out whether their accusations are accurate
I always want to keep an open mind until we get more detail, and I bear in mind with rape that it's an underreported crime and statistically the vast majority of accusations that go before the courts have merit (not sure about stats around pressuring people to do sex acts or fat shaming).
The exhortation to "believe" outright always troubled me but thanks to your comment I see what it means is that people to be in a mindframe where they can believe as in finding out - it's not an exhortation to prejudice (in the literal sense of the word).
It is hard to get a catchy slogan with a little bit of nuance to catch on so they tend to end up as absolutes.
Fat-shaming is so commonplace especially in ballet and dancing in general and this is quite a common way to put it - using the allegory of "motivation" even when they refer to shape, so I would argue that this is a justified way of "reading between the lines".
"Believe all women!"
"Believe all victims!"
"...unless the abuser is a person that I like then I must rush to defend them because the victims are lying and we need to see all the evidence"
It's like the classic SA apologists but repackaged.
Except I'm not defending anyone, I'm not a Lizzo fan, and I've never used the slogan "believe all women" in my life.
In fact someone upthread basically had to explain to me what it means just now.
It’s like the classic SA apologists
Are you really likening me to a sexual abuse apologist because I said I was waiting for more information to make a judgment on allegations about some stranger on the other side of the world?
I know it's an emotive topic, but yikes, cool your jets.
I'm keeping an open mind
HOW DARE YOU, BIGOT!
This isn't the first time we see you posting in bad faith. You were previously temporarily banned as well. This has been escalated to a perma ban. Good bye.
Hey, I want to start out saying that I thank you and deeply respect you for your work on this platform. I have taken several minutes to explore this persons account on lemmy.ml and they replied that this response was supposed to be sarcastic. That was also my initial interpretation as this reply would not make very much sense literally as bigoted/bad faith people don't generally (in my limited experience, admins/mods have much more) call open minded people bigoted in direct response to others directly saying they are "keeping an open mind". I did not go back far enough in their history or didn't notice what could have caused the temp ban before. I find the person argumentative sure, but not acting in bad faith per-say nor are their stated views in many comments indicative of this. Could you, if you have the time/energy reconsider this ban and/or reply with evidence of this past bad faith that resulted in temp-ban? Thank you
Looking at the modlog:
21 days ago in response to a question thread:
Who cares? source
Gaywallet called it out:
Please help me to understand how this can be interpreted as anything but rude and dismissive source
They never responded. No action was taken.
11 days ago :
Right. Us stupid white people didn’t realize bad words existed! source
I called this out:
Your comment is in bad faith. Take a step back to consider how you interact with people. source
They responded with:
Your comment is racist and makes no fucking sense. Take a moment to construct an actual argument instead of just throwing around some bullshit terminology you read on the Internet. Or don't reply to me again
Source: modlog (because it was deleted)
This resulted in a 4 day site-wide ban.
Today, well, whatever this is - I see it as rage bait and just generally not a good way to start a conversation. It's also worth mentioning that the username does not inspire good faith to begin with but that's fairly minor. Do you still think that this should be reconsidered?
No, thank you. I very much appreciate this transparency and expertise. I just wasn't sure, based on what I had seen in some 10 minutes of skimming. Thanks again for your noble volunteering!
No problem. I understand wanting to know more and I really appreciate the way you asked without being demanding or assuming bad intent.
Hoo boo I'm sure you feel like a big boi doing that
Yeah, you're sure showing me by replying to an admin after spamming this thread with bad faith comments. Consider other ways to interact with people. You're banned.