I'm not taking a position with this one, but something occurred to me today. Men harassing women is an old problem. My wife has suffered it many, many times.
All before I knew her or some guys would have been picking their teeth up off the floor.
Ahem.
I saw an article today by an older feminist who suggested that we might be defining harassment too broadly. Personally, I'm kind of torn about whether or not Al Franken being coarse and Roy Moore having a thing for legal teens is such a big deal. I couldn't be friends with either of them, just based on that, but do we need to ruin them? Kevin Spacey and Brian Ross, yes. Franken and Moore? Meh.
I wonder if the difference in defining it is because a few decades back, young women were looking for husbands whereas today, they're looking for careers. Is it all about accepting the downsides that go with trying to achieve a goal?
Some of the accusations seem to be more "criminalize not having the exact same home-brew manners," and don't get me started on the incredible lack of evidence before folks are deemed guilty!
ReplyDeleteWith Moore, I thought at least one girl was only fourteen.
ReplyDeleteFor Moore, two of the accusers*, if I remember correctly. None of the ones with evidence he had a relationship with them.
ReplyDeleteThe one I'm sure claimed to have a relationship with him at 14 is the one who claimed that he asked for her number, picked her up twice (at a location actually very far from her house) and attempted a third meet up... in 12 days, because she'd flipped custody from her mother to her father's house, due to behavior issues.
When a 40 year old accusation can be shown to have holes in it, it's kinda special.
*who showed up decades later, didn't show up during any prior huge amounts of attention focused on him, and half of the accusers' stories are able to be dismissed decades later
I'd suggest that the Moore thing, at least politically, is being approached the wrong way. When I was a freshman in college, I caught endless flack from the guys for wanting to date a high school senior - a 1 year difference! There's no way Moore's compadres didn't know he was trolling for teens.
ReplyDeleteHe was a Democrat at the time.
Where the heck were that party's handlers and advisors? What did they think and why didn't they hassle him into stopping it?
As for the veracity of the 40-year-old claims, who cares? It wasn't rape, even if true. The guy was in the grips of what amounts to a porn fetish. I feel like he was warped and pretty sick, drawn to teens like filings to a magnet. It's creepy, but I don't get how it's applicable or even all that interesting.
Mind you, I'm not saying dating 14-year-olds is OK. It's just that it was so long ago and he clearly hasn't done it for a long, long time. It was a crime at the time, but we have a statute of limitations for a reason. I'm not all that eager to be forced to go back in my life and have to publicly defend things I did 40 years ago. Give it a rest.
ReplyDeleteEh, still pointing out that the claims of dating illegal girls is unsupported, at best.
ReplyDeleteSince he married one of the teens he dated, and has apparently been loyal since that time, they really should have stuck with the "he dated 16 year olds" angle instead of trying to make it trendy.
The creepy angle might have worked.