Mamamia Team Monday 4 July 2011 11:31am

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Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his wife Brigitte Guillemette

Feminists are using sex and sexual abuse claims to remove powerful men from power.

Or so says media commentator Bob Ellis who has copped a hiding on the ABC’s Drum opinion website this morning after his piece which listed a litany of cases where powerful men had been brought undone. But by what; their penises or nasty, plotting women?

It’s a question that has been given ample opportunity to be debated as the news screams headlines about the ‘imminent collapse’ of the sexual assault case against former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, accused of having non-consensual sex with a hotel maid.

Bob Ellis wrote:

“It is all very unjust; and a question arises from it: Is feminism killing the Left, and why does it seem so keen to do so?

Why are deeds long common at office Christmas parties used by women to ruin good men’s careers? Why are left-wing harassers smashed, and right-wing harassers like Bill O’Reilly unharmed by it?

The Strauss-Kahn Moment has arrived, and the question must be asked: has wowser-feminism gone too far?”

The article itself was inflammatory and possibly designed to do nothing but troll for a bite, and we here at MM debated even running a response. And then Rick and Lana got into the following argument on Skype which kind of indicated it was something worth talking about.

Here it is, word for word:

Rick: I literally just said to someone on Twitter, the guy’s a stirrer and should be starved of oxygen. He’s a pro troll…

Lana: I think in all his gross generalisations he makes some not-ridiculous points

Rick: That’s a really dangerous path to go down…

Lana: But exactly what I said at the time of the DSK case [Lana writes: At the time the DSK case was in the news I thought that it was not all cut and dried, that perhaps there was more to the case than Dominic Strauss Kahn forcing himself on some poor defenseless hotel maid, after all he's stayed in many a hotel before and he is clearly not an unintelligent man even if he does not know when to pull up his pants]

Rick: “But, in the new world, Strauss-Kahn and Mark McInnes, who was faced a $37 million law suit, for unconsensual groping, are ruined for what, in my day, occurred in drive-in theatres every night.”
Bob Ellis makes a living saying essentially that men are just doing what they have always done. But that’s precisely the problem. In a world where men make all the rules … what they have always done is not always right or proper.
The case against DSK is not over yet. It’s probs a trumped up charge given recent revelations but I think it not right to draw a bow from there to all cases of ‘hard done by men’.

Lana: And sometimes women use these rules to remove men from power.  I’m not so interested in what Bob Ellis does for a living. I am interested in how women can bring men down by using sex.

Rick: I don’t disagree with the two examples of DSK and Kristy Fraser Kirk. But they are two cases. To then go and paint a larger picture of some feminist plot to take down men in power everywhere does genuine cases of sexual abuse, harm or harrassment a world of disservice and is entirely irresponsible and anti-progress.

Lana: Exactly why I said there are some points that he makes that are not ridiculous

Rick: This isn’t a case of women are bad and men are bad or gays are bad or some group of people are terrible. The bottom line is some people are dicks and some people are not.

What do you think? Is there some feminist conspiracy going on across the world and across centuries to ‘bring down powerful men’? Or are, as Rick says, some people (male and female) just dicks?