Glad to see my old journal entry on Cosby’s Sleep Fetish is helping to connect people. Jane, I hope you can get in touch with Dr. Fehrer, and you find success in your legal efforts. ~Dr. Suzy

Hi Fritz,
Thank you for putting my name out there, the Washington Post contacted me. I am actually in a lawsuit in Nevada with other victims of Cosby.
Would you testify if needed?
Hope you are doing well, if this reaches you let me know.
Jane

Thanks, Abe! I haven’t seriously followed the Shia LeBeouf controversy. Since the woman that allegedly raped him hasn’t been arrested and I’m not even sure what she did to “rape” him – stick a prop (supplied by LeBeouf’s artistic collaborators) up his exposed butthole? – I’m not inclined to “weigh in.” I do agree with the author of the Guardian piece that there are many kinds of rape, not just one kind of “real rape,” and none of them are acceptable behavior in a peaceful, sex-positive society. And yes, women can be rapists of men as well as other women, especially when using a prop on a tied-up individual. But I don’t agree that “we owe a duty to all rape survivors to believe” anyone without a little proof.

I very much enjoyed your article on Cosby. But it was your aside regarding false allegations of abuse that resonated in a tangential way with recent claims by Shia LeBeouf. I’m not saying he wasn’t necessarily raped. My understanding of the law where it happened is that if no consent was stated then it qualifies as rape. But I can’t feel any empathy for him for what took place. That may be a reflection of male bias on my part, or maybe my writers’ bias (the man’s a plagiarist).

While I can accept the reality of psychic numbing that is embedded in people over time through social pressures and the power dynamics of abusive relationships that render some unable to resist unwanted sexual attention, I find his passivity in the circumstances impossible to relate to (though I suspect Lee Strasberg has a lot to answer for.)

An article appeared recently in the Australian version of The Guardian Online that took the view

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/01/after-shia-lebeoufs-art-gallery-trauma-we-should-affirm-that-all-rapes-are-real-and-all-are-breaches-of-trust

The writer concluded that “we owe a duty to all rape survivors to believe him”.

I’m just wondering whether you’ve been tempted to weigh in on the LeBeouf saga? I suspect you’d have an interesting take on it.

I have no idea of where Jane is now or if she has a different, married name.

Cosby is the epitome of Patriarchy esp in reference to Mary Daly’s work on the subject. He needs/needed those women to be unconscious so he could have the ultimate power over them.

I wondered at the outset of yesterday’s Counterpunch piece if you’d think as I guessed that such a thing had happened to him, but you didn’t say so. Maybe because your patients have this for a fetish, but since this is abuse, as he surely might have known, isn’t there usually some childhood basis?

Good to find your antipathy kin to mine, which derives mainly (since I didn’t watch the show or keep up with him) from his moralizing to and about black children. The vapid arrogant kneejerkiness of it was stunning. Ralph Ellison had much more sympathetically and helpfully expressed concerns (written not blown hot air) that black children mightn’t find something to practice and become good at. But now I believe these musings were precipitated by watching some kids playing basketball, and I cannot remember if that counted. I better check later, but I think he was mulling a different kind of discipline and yield. I should have checked before writing you but am seizing the moment before this day seizes me.

Thank you again, and good luck in all,
Lynn

Thanks Chelsea. And you’re right, Counterpunch reposted the piece today: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/05/bill-cosbys-sleep-fetish/

Nice piece Bo! Someone on FB just told me about it and I was about to post a link to it here, but thanks for getting the job done for me :) Interesting how we came up with the same theory at pretty much the same time. I wonder if anyone else has. I do disagree with calling it “necrophilia,” which is a fetish for dead bodies. Somnophilia fetishizes a sleeping person, not a dead person! Nevertheless, it’s great to see you and others getting the word out about “Sleeping Beauty Syndrome,” educating people about this common but rarely discussed and difficult-to-handle fetish and encouraging communication. Kudos for that and please stay in touch!

I had a very similar take on this. Looks like we wrote our posts on the same day lol… great minds think alike… and all that ;)

http://www.alternativelifecoach.com/is-bill-cosby-a-prisoner-to-his-necrophilia-or-sleeping-beauty-syndrome-somnophilia-fetish/