This is a free, unsponsored, looong post for those who've seen some of my Twitter comments and wondered which side I'm on. In this post I share some memories of the cultural context in which some alleged crimes occurred, by way of explaining why, no, they don't sound all that bad to baby-boomers, and, yes, their being stirred up does sound like a potential hazard for the next generation. I think it's a good sign that these things do sound like crimes to the young. I think most of them sound like something less than rape or child abuse--but yes, it's good to see evidence that young women aren't expected to accept membership in a "Touchable Caste" (Mary Daly's phrase) as automatically part of being junior employees.
Feminist activist organizations? Should men send them money as proof of good will? Hahaha, they'd love that wouldn't they? Meh. I was actually on the payroll of one of those organizations, for a while, with the official job title of "Feminist Activist." Did I agree with the other women in that organization about everything, even in 1988? Of course not; most were real left-wingnuts and a majority were also lesbians. Did I agree with them about the need for a rape crisis hotline and shelter system in Washington? Well, duh...at the time, that was sort of like agreeing that Washington is located at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers.
Below is the first feminist organization link that turned up in this morning's e-mail. I expect to receive more. I won't post all of the links here, but will probably post them on Twitter. For reference: I recommend thorough research on any of these organizations you want to support. The fact that women are "Feminist Activists" and/or lesbians does not automatically mean that they're wingnuts, or that your funding can't be specifically directed to those of their goals that you also endorse.
I do recommend that conservatives, men, and happily married women network with those "shrill, strident, man-hating" feminists who become leaders by default in so many of these groups. Dialogue with "the opposition" (on things like abortion, which I know some readers believe is close to murder) works when it begins with good will and Christian compassion. Hear them out when they vent about their abusive step-relatives, ex-husbands, etc.; try not to treat it as a moral issue that the men in your family are, or the women in your family say you are, different from those jerks. Let'em know that what you're supporting is sensible education of the public, about things like "Women have the right to walk down the street or ride on the subway without being harassed" and "Patting junior employees is obnoxious unless, and until, you really are close enough that they feel equally free to pat you," and fair payment for work done, and equal (not privileged) access to scholarships, and so on. Do support those things. Why should Soros and his ilk be the only ones to coast on all that gynergy? Why not steer the organizations toward things that can actually be good for all women?
http://www.aware.org.sg/research-advocacy/lets-unite-to-end-violence-against-women/
Here's the problem I'm seeing: Picture a whole room filled with--to make this bearable, let's picture them as papers. Creditors seized the furniture and dumped all the files out on the floor, and what we're now sorting out are letters in which different women have described the gender-related ( #metoo ) incidents of their past.
In one corner we have letters about outright rape. These are scenes of life-threatening violence. Attackers broke into women's homes. Some of them were motivated by hate for the women's fathers or husbands, whom they had murdered. Or they were stepfathers, stepbrothers, in-laws, family friends, teachers or school/church/camp employees, who felt entitled to teach young women the lesson that young women should expect violence and live their whole lives in fear of violence from men. Or they were school or neighborhood bullies who dragged women back behind the dumpster outside a low-security store. In many countries the majority of rapes are war crimes. In others they're committed by employers and supervisors who contract for cheap foreign labor through international job/training/volunteer organizations. These women are physically unable to resist or escape, or believe they are; the rapes may be committed by gangs; weapons may have been held against the woman's head or throat. Some of these letters have had to be written by the next of kin, because the women were murdered during or after the rapes. (There's a common pattern in which rapists are actually impotent, so instead of completing a rape they maim or kill the victim.) A handful of these letters come from men.
In another corner we have letters about real child abuse. Although some of these are vintage-porn-style stories about teenagers who struggle with mixed feelings about having been seduced, some of them are too disgusting to imagine. They're as violent as the stories about rape except that the rapists don't even have the nerve to approach young women, so they pick on small children.
When I think of child abuse, I think of a teenager whom social workers and foster parents were really trying very hard, in the late 1980s, to train to think of her experience as "abuse" rather than "seduction." She looked like a full-grown woman, had felt like one while having sex with an emotionally abusive older man, and would have liked to have society recognize her "right" to have sex with other full-grown men who might have been more fun to know. She wasn't raped; I find it hard to agree with those who said she was even abused. Even some social workers, at the time, were making the claim that what this swingin' chick needed was a free supply of birth control pills. But the problem with the predatory older man was that after having seduced the teenaged girl he moved on to her eight-year-old brother...obviously having been close to someone like that would leave anyone, of any age, feeling defiled.
The pile of letters in the corners for rape and child abuse are horribly high, but as we sort other letters into other corners those piles quickly rise even higher.
"Date rape"? "I liked this guy, I suggested that we park in a well-known 'lovers' lane,' I was really enjoying the kissing and petting in his car, but I'd been taught that petting was supposed to stop short of orgasm so I stopped, and it really grossed me out that he (sob) soiled my coattail..." I have a very hard time with the idea of this experience being described as rape. When I was growing up the consensus of opinion was that this gal was asking for what she got, and this guy had behaved as well as could be expected, under the circumstances. I still think the woman's emotions represent a hormone reaction known as frustration. I'm glad to see young people agreeing that that's no longer the case, that it wasn't just the status difference or the betrayal of his marriage that made Bill Clinton's getting Monica Lewinsky's clothes dirty so unacceptable. But in 1979 there was no such consensus.
Because, Young Readers...your parents understandably don't like to talk about this with you, but in the 1979s we were still "enjoying" (well, some of us claimed to be enjoying) a so-called sexual revolution. AIDS had not become an epidemic; treatments for other STD's seemed safe, cheap, and easy; and some people may honestly have believed that if everybody just had as much sexual pleasure as possible, we wouldn't feel that nasty old frustration that caused people to dislike each other. A few people were starting to say "Make love not babies," but the bumper sticker you saw on every road trip was "Make love not war." Some "sex educators" were waxing enthusiastic about the idea that children ought to be exposed to the sight of adult sexual activity, encouraged to act out what they'd seen at home, and "gently initiated" into having sex with, oh well maybe not parents or siblings, arguably not their own teachers or doctors, but anyone else who was interested, at any age after the first hormone-related mess appeared on a bed sheet.
P.J. O'Rourke summed it up in one of those vintage books this site has recently reviewed, I forget which one: "The sexual revolution is over. The microbes won." Nevertheless, Live Journal had a flourishing "Polyamory" page for a long time; a lot of people wanted to try "expressing their sexuality" in relationships they imagined might be more egalitarian than marriage. And in 1979, if Jane Doe was enjoying the petting but wanted to stop before John Roe did, even the affluent educated class would have agreed that Jane Doe really needed to break through those nasty old inhibitions--in the parked car, or at John's house, or, if necessary, with the help of a professional "sex therapist" who could help her reprogram her emotions through hypnosis (and probably at least heavy petting with the "therapist").
For the working class it was different.
In 1979 I was one of the "preppy" teenaged girls who were not trying to snare husbands through what they claimed was less than promiscuous premarital sex. I really was a virgin--no dates, and minimal kissing, because I knew where that sort of thing normally led. Some of my school friends really were virgins too. Others were actively husband-hunting--and, high school boys being what they are, nearly all of those early bloomers were rushing into the open arms of older guys, whether that meant a 19-year-old girl and a 21-year-old guy (like my parents when they met), or a 14-year-old girl and a 38-year-old guy (such as my husband and I would have been if we'd met when I was 14).
In fact my virginity and affected asexuality were a point of controversy I was blessed to be able to avoid by having a baby face to hide behind. I was and still am smaller than most White American women my age. I was one of those kids whose name everybody learns, in high school, after a conversation that begins with things like "What are you looking for here, little kid?" or "Hey, look at that one--which grade school did that one escape from?" People felt sorry for me, being in high school while looking and apparently feeling like "a child," which was not a complimentary term; but at least they didn't grab at me. I was grateful. At the same time I was aware that the controversy ran deeper than whether or not I was young enough to have a right to edge away when an older kid said something raunchy, or old enough to need some sort of counselling to appreciate that that crass invitation was at least meant to be flattering.
I think it may help some readers to consider the data, anecdote by anecdote, and see if they don't reach the same conclusion I do.
It was also that...(reset the generic names) Jane Smith successfully lobbied for the right to be too "modest" to wear those awful gym uniforms, for which the whole class admired her, and she didn't date or admit to any interest in sex. (Her father was a successful businessman nominated for public office.) Mary Jones, and Suzie Brown, and Jennifer Miller were popular girls who treated all the popular boys like cousins, even to the point of using "cool, liberated" (raunchy) words in mixed company. (Their parents were also rich.) Sally Doe, the preppiest and most virginal of us all, wasn't rich; she was the daughter of The Vietnam War Widow and had a scholarship to maintain. They were going to college. They were going to have high-salary jobs, if only for a year or two until they found someone to marry and decided to stay home and have babies.
Whereas Monica Roe, who scribbled things like "Please rape me" on her schoolbooks in grade eight (yes, she was 14), found an older man, got pregnant, and got married, in that order, in grade nine. I don't remember the man's age, although I was probably told. I don't know how long the marriage lasted. Mr. Roe was a businessman, but not so successful. Monica was not classified as a "college-bound student."
And Paula Smith, who gigglingly confided at the bus stop that her relationship with an older man was "getting awfully close," such that she told him they'd better think about marriage during a scene like what Leigh Corfman described with Roy Moore...I don't know exactly how old he was, either. Probably not all of 30, but definitely more than 19, which was Paula's age. I was 16. Paula was in my class because she'd started strategically underachieving in order to repeat classes and stay in school, to extend the time she could afford to stay home with her disabled mother, who drew a Supplemental Security Income pension. She was as nice a girl as any of us and I'm glad that she and her older guy are still married.
And Leigh Doe, who was no friend of mine, at all, until she saw how the baby-face gene was offset by my brother's height, shamelessly threw herself at my brother when he was twelve...Her parents had some money, but she wasn't very bright and nobody expected her to get into college, which she didn't. Her first marriage began and ended during my first year in college. I was glad my brother politely ignored her.
And Lolita and Juanita Hotlips, ages 13 and 16, got parental permission to double-date for safety. Safety? Hah. Lolita was the one who was willing to demonstrate her sexual reactions to her whole class at school. Both of them became single mothers on that one double date. I wasn't close enough to either of them to hang out at their house before that, but after the babies were born my mother took me out to pay a sympathy call on them, to adore the two dear little babies and go home with a healthy feeling of "This is so not what I want to do."
And then there was Joe Doe the bus driver. I never heard anyone call him "Mr. Doe." Most high school students were Mr. This or Ms. That to younger students, but he was just good ol' Joe. He was one of those thickset, pale-colored White guys whose hair fades and thins early, so in the 1970s I saw him as an old man; but he was an early baby-boomer. On the last day of the year, when everybody was revelling in all the mischief we hadn't wanted to get into during the term, it was traditional that the nervier high school girls would step forward for a hug and grope with good ol' Joe. He never tried to urge anyone to step forward, never touched a girl who didn't, but he spent quite a few minutes caressing the girls who'd accepted membership in the Touchable Caste. I remember noticing that those were the least-likely-to-succeed contingent; older counterparts to the sisters Hotlips. I remember, too, that when I was his mother's home health aide, out on a farm in the back of beyond where only a disabled geriatric patient would have noticed if Joe Doe had molested me, Joe Doe couldn't have behaved better if I'd been his sister.
I remember 1979 as the year feminists succeeded in injecting a note of "right to say no" into all the chatter about how sexuality is central to everyone's life from, if not before, the moment of birth. Not only was it possible for men to move too fast, it was possible for women just not to want to have sex, even if those women were "liberated" enough to enjoy sex at other times? Wow, what a concept.
Our school received a series of dismal little movies designed for teenagers to view and debate about, on days when it was too old to put on gym uniforms. One of the short movies I remember best featured a girl, age unspecified, who was having a bad day (a PMSsy day?) and missed the school bus. An older man, his age also unspecified, pulled over to offer her a lift to school. She accepted. On the way to her school the guy said something to the effect that she was cute, and would she want to go out with him some time, while touching her arm. She growled something like "Don't touch me, you dirty old maaan!" He snarled a really ugly reply about what ought to happen to her while physically shoving her toward the door. He told an interviewer--his psychotherapist? a mutual friend? a cop?--that he'd lost his temper because "she made me feel dirty." Everyone knew: yes, this was the sort of thing a girl should expect.
Question for discussion: "Does it make a difference that he felt angry because she made him feel dirty?"
Question for discussion: "Was he right to assume that she wanted a date simply because she accepted a lift?"
(Writer later to be known as Priscilla King, well trained in 1979: "She should have known he would think that. She should have called a cab!"
Jennifer Miller: "All right for you Baby Face. I don't trust cab drivers!"
Juvenile PK: (lowers head in embarrassment, not only about her baby face, but about an unfair advantage: the owner of the local taxicab service is her cousin, so she can count on not only respect but credit whenever she calls a cab in 1979. The Millers moved in from a smaller town and aren't part of the extended family that is my home town. It is deeply embarrassing to Southern Preppies to catch ourselves enjoying unfair advantages--I'll come back to this.)
Consensus: both characters had been rude and tacky, but since "nothing really happened" worse than the girl having to walk and being late at school, this was just a story about etiquette, not about violence...certainly not cultural contempt for women. Nor, although the guy was obviously beyond school age and he obviously knew the girl wasn't, was there any question about child abuse. No questions like "Is it worse because he was older?" were asked.
"Child abuse" was, in fact, a fighting word, and used as such by a local sports columnist chiding our team for losing a game to a school we usually clobbered. No baby-boomer of high school age was going to dodge anything, short of the Vietnam War and thank goodness that was over, by self-identifying as a child.
And when, exactly, did this change? I'm not sure. I think the Prozac craze in the 1980s--and yes, I do mean a craze, a witch hunt in which innocent men went to jail and were tortured for things it was later proved they couldn't possibly have done--gave some advantage to those advocating for children's right to affirm that "My Body Is My Own."
Item: In college, after having politely verbalized to everybody (the church college was small enough that "everybody" did hear this kind of thing) that I really, really didn't like being patted as a dominance display by anyone who was older, I still got an unwelcome pat from a woman who might or might not have been all of 30 years old. I slapped her hand down. What embarrassed me, later, was that I succumbed to bad temper so far as to make an unfair reference to her given name--"Hands off me, Leslie!" Since "nothing really happened" I wasn't "really," officially, punished for doing this, but neither was she officially punished for fouling up paperwork I needed for scholarship purposes, and other school employees set out to talk me into going directly to university to finish my bachelor's degree.
Item: After most of our college freshman class graduated and several were hired as junior professors, a boy I'd dated in college needed one more term to complete a double B.S., and was also willing to take a freshman math class--so he was simultaneously a senior student and a junior teacher. He and I were still friends and still had friendly, casual, go-to-the-same-free-church-sponsored-things-together "dates." On one of those "dates" he didn't rush to my side, and seemed tense all evening, after a long conversation with a freshman I recognized because my sister had pointed it out as a cute boy. He introduced this freshman as a girl. Apparently their relationship got quite close under the cover that the gender-confused freshman was "just one of his students" and he was "still dating a young woman who used to be in his class." At some point the truth came out, and he married the freshman right after "her" 18th birthday. "If he's 'gay,' isn't it better to find out now?" was what people said to me. "One of his own students" was still considered the main stain on his character. Nobody mentioned the freshman's having been 17, and although I heard a lot of meant-to-be-sympathetic vulgarities about how the wedding night was likely to go, no official confirmation that "she" had XX chromosomes--if she had--was required either. (Who knows how many men legally married younger males in dresses, in those days.)
Item: A school employee one of my sisters admitted to liking came to our house "to go out for some counselling with her." He told me he was 42. I remember feeling panicky about having to be the "uncool," unsympathetic wet blanket. "Sorry, but I can't let you go out alone with him on a Saturday night unless your mother says it's all right."
Subsequent conversation: "She said you told her to ask me...NO, she should NOT ever be alone with an older man! Mercy!"
"If she gets across the Kentucky border, she's old enough to marry the guy in Kentucky."
"I know! I hope she doesn't know that, though! Is that what you'd want for her?"
I remember thinking that, no, early marriage was not something I wanted for the sisters, but what I wanted for them was none of anybody's business; my task, as I saw it, was to detach from any aspirations I might have cherished on their behalf. I hadn't intended to go to college, myself. I'd intended to be a writer. I'd been pushed off to college because, having passed the G.E.D. test on a dare, I was supposed to have outgrown the hometown high school where I wanted to finish at least grade eleven in the normal way; gone back to Washington because I hadn't found a good job at home. I still wanted to finish growing up, on a farm, as a writer, rather than to be the yuppie entrepreneur I'd become. Far be it from me to shove anyone else "upstairs" if she preferred "downstairs."
Item: In the mid-eighties, Virginia enacted legislation that any "sexual contact" between someone whose eighteenth birthday had already occurred, and someone still waiting for that birthday, would henceforward be subject to prosecution as rape if the kid complained. I remember a nightmare vision of being groped by a hormone-raddled 19-year-old boy who could then complain that I'd raped him. All consideration of a full-time teaching job evaporated out of my mind on that day. (When I did teach, even in my thirties, I limited my prospects in that career by never tutoring or supervising a male student. I did other jobs that offered some possibilities for inappropriate behavior, and felt confident about being able to behave properly while alone with men, as such--but not with that "teacher" hat on.)
Item: In the late eighties, my adoptive brother dragged in a pathetic loser-guy who made a tentative pass at me. I wanted to be seen out on lots of dates with different men; at the time that seemed like the best way to survive the humiliation of being dumped for someone who looked gender-confused. This one, however, was a hopeless case, squatting in an attic apartment he'd broken into and eating at soup kitchens. So after being rejected by me, loser-guy made a tentative pass at my sister. I'm glad to say she rejected him too. I remember his loser qualities being the main factor in these rejections. I don't remember age being a factor, although he was 28 and she was 14 and, if she had been tasteless enough to encourage him, I was prepared to say she wasn't allowed to date older men.
But...is this data adding up yet? Society's protectiveness of teenaged girls, in the 1970s and 1980s, was a very spotty thing and also an elitist thing. If you were "college-bound," rich and/or pretty and/or talented enough to have "good prospects," you were encouraged to save sex until you were old enough to have access to a wider gene pool and potentially more desirable men. If you weren't those things, when you were big enough to flop into bed with a full-grown man, you were old enough. I'm sure a lot of girls did regret their early sexual activity. So did the guys who "got caught" and had to marry them and support their babies. But not only was that "sexual revolution" and "make love not war" garbage in the air; a lot of people's grandparents, or even parents, had married early, made the best of it, and told them there was nothing wrong with early marriage--to prevent the "sin" of premarital sex, and give their elders the maximum possible number of grandchildren.
When I thought about it that way, all the evidence seemed to support the generalization: when I was growing up, "the gentry" married late and clung to the idea of preserving sexual "innocence"; "the lower classes" didn't.
During last year's presidential election, Scott Adams played on that sense of fairness-at-all-costs to support (to the extent he supported) Donald Trump. Trump has an abrasively blue-collar Noo Yawk accent and manner. How many of the people who dislike Trump are East Coast or West Coast snobs who just don't like working-class Yankees?
Hmm. I've seen Washingtonians flock to listen to sermons or lectures by people with heavy Noo Yawk accents, e.g. Ron Halvorsen. I've seen other Washingtonians snub those people, too. Maybe some of the city-wide distaste Trump always seemed to arouse was based in prejudice...
I saw something similar going on during Ben Carson's campaign, which I did support. People profoundly admire Ben Carson (they at least have to respect Donald Trump's talent)...but, for a lot of people in the political-blogs-and-columns community, that admiration is still balanced against a feeling of "Is he ever different from me." I noticed that feeling some time ago, thought it through, dealt with it. Dr. Carson is obviously different from me in age, gender, color, regional background, and (oh, this is a hard one to confront!) brainpower. For me that's less important than his being like me in religion and temperament. I find it easier to read his actual books and say that, yes, he does represent my opinions about several things, than many even of his supporters seem to do. I suspect some of his supporters were still stuck in the "He's old and Black and Northern and a Seventh-Day Adventist, as well...so we must be fair!" mode.
I felt it when the Internet picked up on the Alabama Senate campaign. Someone asked me to review and write up a short summary of Roy Moore's life and work. I can't say I was overwhelmed. I felt something more like "He's a 'conservative' Southern Protestant but is he ever different from the ones I know...almost like a hostile outsider doing some sort of parody of us." But, no, he doesn't seem to be that; Judge Moore of Gadsden may not be the most popular man even in Gadsden, but he is a bona-fide "conservative" Southern Protestant after his fashion. We must be fair.
So, the worst thing his enemies can dredge up against Judge Moore is not more information about why they dislike him (apart from party politics), but this claim that he behaved like a "nice guy" of his age and class...in 1979? I'm sorry that this is a trigger for some people who really were abused children, but to me, if that's the worst thing anybody has to say about Roy Moore, he must be a better human being than I would've guessed.
I expect today's e-mail to contain a few campaign messages staffers send out on behalf of good ol' Roy--come off it, I've never met him and likely never will--and if I really were on first-name terms with Judge So-Not-Roy-Rogers, what I'd say to him would be: When in Washington, at least try to modulate toward the behavior of a Real Virginia Gentleman, as distinct from a Deep South Redneck, which stereotype deeply annoys and embarrasses Virginians. And, although there are valid arguments for other courses of action, the one that I'd recommend as most like a Real Virginia Gentleman would be to plead age (I know, baby-boomers are about as likely to admit being "old" now as to admit being "children" in 1979), choose a younger conservative with a clean record who can testify that as his or her role model you behaved perfectly, and ask your supporters to elect him as your protege and political heir. I'm sure that both Roy Rogers and Robert E. Lee would approve if you chose that option, dear Roy...
But of course the story didn't end with the accusations against Judge Moore. Maybe it got out of hand with the "Our candidate? What price your candidate?" mudslinging.
I personally happened to like both Bill Cosby and Garrison Keillor. I personally happened to think that what Cosby allegedly did (though I'm not convinced that he did it) was vile, and what Keillor admittedly did was, at worst, clumsy. But look at all the other accusations. Who'll be next? Denzel Washington's call for welfare families to take some responsibility is likely to activate a lot of inner demons. Lots of people hate Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Sarah Palin--it is not physically impossible for an older woman to make a young woman feel "harassed"; Tallulah Bankhead comes to mind. Any celebrity with grey hair...it's sad but true that these people have fans who'd be delighted to "go down on history" if the celebrities were still interested in sex, and, for that reason, other people who'll believe that they made that demand of people who were not such fanatical fans...
Look at those accusations. Can you imagine telling your lawyer, "I want to sue X for damages because, although nobody else saw it at the time and I've not mentioned it to anybody for 20 or 50 years, long ago he sideswiped my car, which is affecting its resale value as an antique..."?
Well, I wouldn't try it with mine; if your lawyer would humor you by discussing such a case, at your expense, you might want to look for another lawyer.
Look at the accused. John Conyers, whom this web site called out years ago as a misguided geriatric Congressman who ought to retire, is actually in a hospital...
If these men were still young and hormone-raddled, still sprawling around the office telling 17-year-old interns to "Come over here and show me a little dedication to this job," still cruising and pub-crawling, conceivably even braying "I'm rich and good-looking and I can do anything I want to do because nobody will believe you said no to me," I'd join the chorus. If they were dangerous, I'd be singing "Take the keys and lock'em up" as loudly as their worst enemies are.
However many drugs he used or passed around in the 1970s, or didn't, poor old Cosby doesn't look much better in recent photos than poor old Timothy Leary did. Admit it: if he'd pinched your daughter, the source of trauma for her is likely to be that she'd step back and he might fall down!
John Conyers is flat on his back in bed--talk about kicking somebody's grandfather when he's down. This web site has had its fair share of fun with Congressman Conyers, his age, and his apparent fragility, years ago when his misinformed remarks justified it, but there are limits to everything. Sue a geriatric patient in a hospital bed, now, over something he allegedly did away back when he was young and cute? Sounds like one of the best arguments I've ever heard in favor of spanking. John Conyers has been uttering the public thoughts of a deeply misguided man for a long time, and his private thoughts may have been as badly messed up as his public ones for all I know, but get real! Whom is he likely to harm, now?
Or maybe the real problem is that baby-boomers didn't take the bait when the rising generation tried to upset us with self-mutilation, obnoxious song lyrics, and other parent-provoking efforts, so the only way the young can feel satisfied that they've raised my generation's blood pressure is by demonstrating that they really think they hate us. I don't know, I really don't. All this garbage I've been hearing about how "Oh, now you're fifty, you can forget about getting paid for your work, just fake a simple disability and go on SSI"? All this suicidal collective insanity about cutting out pension funds to which our older veterans are entitled by contract? Do these things directly connect? I don't know, but they couldn't look much more connected if one evil person had been behind all of them.
This web site has called on women to cultivate a little reverse chivalry toward their husbands as they grow old together; today it calls on young people, male and female, to cultivate a little reverse chivalry toward those only now accused of things they allegedly did forty years ago. At least leave the hospitalized patients out of this muck-flinging spree.
I see Judge Moore's resurgence in the polls as evidence that people are paying attention to the actual charges against these old, most likely postsexual, certainly calmed-down men...and that, young sisters (and brothers), is what's really dangerous.
Consider Genesis 39, please, whether you are Christian or Jewish or not, as the human-interest story it is. Joseph is a child. Some scholars believe, and I tend to find it plausible, that the age given as "seventeen years old" in the KJV may originally have referred to "seventeen seasons" or eight or nine years old, which would explain Joseph's physical flight from temptation and the abusive woman's charge of his "mocking" rather than raping her. How does (this section of) Joseph's story end? Helpless enslaved child, subject to death by torture as the normal penalty for a crime he probably can't even imagine committing, thrown into prison by a real child molester...not because the ancient Egyptians had a policy of "When it's her word against his word in a sex offense case, take her word" but because, like other feudal societies, they had a policy of "When it's a rich person's word against a slave's word, in any case, take the richie's word."
These United States may not have made as much progress beyond that level as we might hope...but some progress has been made. Women, and young men who have been sexually abused, are entitled to a fair hearing without being permanently smeared with the "You wish" or "If you hadn't been doing something wrong, s/he wouldn't have bothered you" nasties--while, in many cases, the abusers walked. This is new, young people. It was not part of the culture in which I grew up, or your parents did. It is by no means permanent. A backlash against the sheer nastiness of some of these accusations could do you and your children a great deal of harm.
Is it actually the case that no young people are being raped or molested nowadays? I wish it were, but local news shows that it's not. If anything, present-time sex predators are hiding behind the clamor about alleged long-past misbehavior. The people who really need to be locked up with metal keys, which are then immediately recycled, are not the 70-year-old celebrities.
And are these present-time predators capable of planning to exploit a backlash against groundless, politically motivated accusers to discredit all accusers?
If they are, Gentle Readers, don't let them do it. By all means let's denounce sexual predators and support young people's right to assert that their bodies are their own. By all means let's ban all present-time patting, first-naming, and other obnoxious displays of dominance through bogus intimacy, from the modern workplace, and fire those who currently insist on the "It's not sexual contact, I touched/spoke to him/her just the way I'd touch/speak to my child or my dog..." whine. But let's drop the ancient history, and for pity's sake leave people's dying grandparents in peace.
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