Posted on 12/14/2017 8:11:10 PM PST by TBP
The #MeToo moment has now morphed into a moral panic that poses as much danger to women as it does to men.
#Metoo, of course. Women are not going nuts for no reason. Were fed up with feeling prickles down our spine as we walk alone on dimly lit streets. Fed up with thinking, If he feels entitled to send me that message, what might he feel entitled to do to if he knew where I lived? Fed up with strangers who smack their lips and murmur obscenities at us. Fed up with thinking, No, I dont want to go to his hotel room to discuss closing the contract. Ill have to tell him my husbands waiting for me to call. My husband? Oh, yes, hes pathologically jealous, bless his heart, and a bit of a gun nut My husband is perfect in every way but onehe doesnt existbut he has served me so well over the years that Im willing to overlook his ontological defects. I shouldnt need him, but I do.
Ive been fortunate. My encounters with law enforcement have been contrary to reputation: The police have taken me seriously, once arresting a stalker when he failed to heed a warning to cease and desist. But too many women have been murdered because they could not persuade the police to take them seriously. That stalker doubtless believes he was unjustly accused and his life destroyed by a hysterical woman. Hes full of it. Ill bet he did the same thing to many women before me. Sexual predation tends to be a lifelong pattern.
Among us, it seems, lives a class of men who call to mind Caligula and Elagabalus not only in their depravity, but in their grotesque sense of impunity. Our debauched emperors, whether enthroned in Hollywood, media front offices, or the halls of Congress, truly imagined their victims had no choice but to shut up, take it, and stay silent forever. Many of these men are so physically disgusting, toothe thought of them forcing themselves on young women fills me with heaving disgust. Enough already.
All true; yet something is troubling me. Recently I saw a frienda manpilloried on Facebook for asking if #metoo is going too far. No, said his female interlocutors. Women have endured far too many years of harassment, humiliation, and injustice. Well tell you when its gone too far. But Im part of that we, and I say it is going too far. Mass hysteria has set in. It has become a classic moral panic, one that is ultimately as dangerous to women as to men.
If you are reading this, it means I have found an outlet that has not just fired an editor for sexual harassment. This article circulated from publication to publication, like old-fashioned samizdat, and was rejected repeatedly with a sotto voce, Dont tell anyone. I agree with you. But no. Friends have urged me not to publish it under my own name, vividly describing the mob that will tear me from limb to limb and leave the dingoes to pick over my flesh. It says something, doesnt it, that Ive been more hesitant to speak about this than Ive been of getting on the wrong side of the mafia, al-Qaeda, or the Kremlin?
But speak I must. It now takes only one accusation to destroy a mans life. Just one for him to be tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion, overnight costing him his livelihood and social respectability. We are on a frenzied extrajudicial warlock hunt that does not pause to parse the difference between rape and stupidity. The punishment for sexual harassment is so grave that clearly this crimelike any other serious crimerequires an unambiguous definition. We have nothing of the sort.
In recent weeks, one after another prominent voice, many of them political voices, have been silenced by sexual harassment charges. Not one of these cases has yet been adjudicated in a court of law. Leon Wieseltier, David Corn, Mark Halperin, Michael Oreskes, Al Franken, Ken Baker, Rick Najera, Andy Signore, Jeff Hoover, Matt Lauer, even Garrison Keillorall have received the professional death sentence. Some of the charges sound deadly serious. But othersas reported anywaymake no sense. I cant say whether the charges against these men are true; I wasnt under the bed. But even if true, some have been accused of offenses that arent offensive, or offenses that are only mildly soand do not warrant total professional and personal destruction.
The things men and women naturally doflirt, play, lewdly joke, desire, seduce, teasenow become harassment only by virtue of the words that follow the description of the act, one of the generic form: I froze. I was terrified. It doesnt matter how the man felt about it. The onus to understand the interaction and its emotional subtleties falls entirely on him. But why? Perhaps she should have understood his behavior to be harmlessclumsy, sweet but misdirected, maladroit, or tackybut lacking in malice sufficient to cost him such arduous punishment?
In recent weeks, Ive acquired new powers. I have cast my mind over the ways I could use them. I could now, on a whim, destroy the career of an Oxford don who at a drunken Christmas party danced with me, grabbed a handful of my bum, and slurred, Ive been dying to do this to Berlinski all term! That is precisely what happened. I am telling the truth. I will be believedas I should be.
But here is the thing. I did not freeze, nor was I terrified. I was amused and flattered and thought little of it. I knew full well hed been dying to do that. Our tutorialswhich took place one-on-one, with no chaperoneswere livelier intellectually for that sublimated undercurrent. He was an Oxford don and so had power over me, sensu stricto. I was a 20-year-old undergraduate. But I also had power over himpower sufficient to cause a venerable don to make a perfect fool of himself at a Christmas party. Unsurprisingly, I loved having that power. But now I have too much power. I have the power to destroy someone whose tutorials were invaluable to me and shaped my entire intellectual life much for the better. This is a power I do not want and should not have.
Over the course of my academic and professional career, many men who in some way held a position of power over me have made lewd jokes in my presence, or reminisced drunkenly of past lovers, or confessed sexual fantasies. They have hugged me, flirted with me, on occasion propositioned me. For the most part, this male attention has amused me and given me reason to look forward to otherwise dreary days at work. I dread the day I lose my power over men, which I have used to coax them to confide to me on the record secrets they would never have vouchsafed to a male journalist. I did not feel demeaned by the realization that some men esteemed my cleavage more than my talent; I felt damned lucky to have enough talent to exploit my cleavage.
But what if I now feel differently? What ifperhaps moved by the testimony of the many women who have come forward in recent weeksI were to realize that the ambient sexual culture I meekly accepted as amusing was in fact repulsive and loathsome? What if I now realize it did me great emotional damage, harm so profound that only now do I recognize it?
Apparently, some women feel precisely this way. Natalie Portman, for example, has re-examined her life in light of the recent news:
When I heard everything coming out, I was like, wow, Im so lucky that I havent had this. And then, on reflection, I was like, okay, definitely never been assaulted, definitely not, but Ive had discrimination or harassment on almost everything Ive ever worked on in some way, she said during Sundays candid talk at Vulture Festival L.A. The more she reexamined her experiences, other incidents come into sharp relief. I went from thinking I dont have a story to thinking, Oh wait, I have 100 stories. And I think a lot of people are having these reckonings with themselves, of things that we just took for granted as like, this is part of the process.
If I were suddenly to feel as Ms. Portman now feels, I could destroy them alljust by naming names and truthfully describing a flirtation or moment of impropriety. All of the interchanges Im replaying in my mind would meet the highly elastic contemporary definition of harassment, a category vague enough to compass all the typical flirtation that brings joy and amusement to so many of our lives, all the vulgar humor that says, Were among friends, we may speak frankly. It becomes harassment only by virtue of three words: I felt demeaned.
Do not mistake me for a rape apologist. Harvey Weinstein stands credibly accused of rape. He must face a real trial and grave punishment if convicted, not therapy and counselling. Tariq Ramadan, likewise. No civilized society tolerates rape. Many of the men whose professional reputations have recently been destroyed sure sound like they had it coming. The law will decide whether the accused are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but I dont require such arduous proof: Im already convinced that Roy Moore is a sexual predator and so is Bill Clinton. Neither my certainty nor anyone elses should be allowed to displace the law. I may be convinced, but I might also be mistaken.
These reservations aside, I am gratified that at last we all agree that a rapistor a serial groper of random womens genitalsshould be behind bars, not the Resolute Desk. It was outrageous and unjust that we ever thought otherwise.
Revolutions against real injustice have a tendency, however, to descend into paroxysms of vengeance that descend upon guilty and innocent alike. Were getting too close. Hysteria is in the air. The over-broad definition of sexual harassment is a well-known warning sign. The over-broad language of the Law of Suspects portended the descent of the French Revolution into the Terror. This revolution risks going the way revolutions so often do, and the consequences will not just be awful for men. They will be awful for women.
Harvey Weinstein must burn, we all agree. But there is a universe of difference between the charges against Weinstein and those that cost Michael Oreskes his career at NPR. It is hard to tell from the press accounts, but initial reports suggested he was fired because his accusersboth anonymoussay he kissed them. Twenty years ago. In another place of business. Since then, other reports have surfaced of what NPR calls subtler transgressions.
They are subtle to the point of near-invisibility. It seems Michael Oreskes liked to kiss women. Now, it is an embarrassing faux-pas to kiss a woman who does not wish to be kissed, but it happens all the time. Kissing a woman is an early stage of courtship. It is one way that men ask the question, Would you like more? Courtship is not a phenomenon so minor to our behavioral repertoire that we can readily expunge it from the workplace. It is central to human life. Men and women are attracted to each other; the human race could not perpetuate itself otherwise; and anyone who imagines they will cease to be attracted to each otheror act as if they were notin the workplace, or any other place, is delusional. Anyone who imagines it is easy for a man to figure out whether a woman might like to be kissed is insane. The difficulty of ascertaining whether ones passions are reciprocated is the theme of 90 percent of human literature and every romantic comedy or pop song ever written.
Romance involves the most complex of human emotions, desire the most powerful of human drives. It is so easy to read the signals wrong. Every honest man will tell you that at times he has misread these signals, and so will every honest woman. The insistence that an unwanted kiss is always about power, not courtship, simply isnt a serious theory of the casenot when the punishment for this crime is so grave. Men, too, are entitled to the benefit of the doubt, and even to a presumption of innocence.
We now have, in effect, a crime that comes with a swift and draconian penalty, but no proper definition. It seems to be sexual behavior or behavior that might be sexual, committed through word, deed, or even facial expression; followed by a negative description of the womans emotions. Obviously this is inadequate. Human beings, male and female, are subject to human failings, including the tendency to lie, to be vengeful, to abuse power, or simply to misunderstand one another. It is hard to define sexual harassment precisely, because all of these human frailties are often involved. But we must nonetheless reason out together a definition that makes sense. Mass hysteria and making demons of men will get us nowhere we should want to go.
Finding a consensus is tricky because our social standards are rapidly changing. We appear now to be converging upon new rules for interaction between men and womenfor example, Never kiss a woman without explicitly asking her consent beforehand. Such a rule is now the law on college campuses in some states. Whether we think the rule good or ridiculous, we can certainly agree that it is new. Those in doubt can may consult pre-2017 television and cinema, where men routinely kiss women without asking permission. Grandfathering or statutes of limitations cant possibly be irrelevant to this, and only this, category of wrongdoing. This is not how we view any other crime. It has only recently become mandatory for Americans to purchase health insurance. Would we condemn a man for failing to purchase health insurance in 1985?
Several cases recently in the headlines are simply baffling. They do not involve the workplaceor vast discrepancies in powerat all. Perhaps there is more to the story, but from what Ive read, the improprieties committed by the UKs (now former) Defense Secretary Michael Fallon amount to this: He kissed a journalistnot his employee, and not someone over whom he had power, but another adult in another professionfifteen years ago. What transmogrified Fallons kiss to a crime that cost him his career were these words, and only these words: I felt humiliated, ashamed. Had the object of his affection said, I felt flattered, there would be no offense.
Fallon apparently also touched another woman on the knee. Fifteen years ago. The latter incident has been reported thus:
I calmly and politely explained to him that, if he did it again, I would punch him in the face. He withdrew his hand and that was the end of the matter. Julia said she did not feel like she was a victim of a sexual assault, and found the incident nothing more than mildly amusing.
The facts as described are nothing like sexual assault. Any woman alive could tell similar stories. Many of us find such incidents, precisely as Julia said, mildly amusing.
There is apparently a list of women prepared to make similar accusations against Fallon. Secret lists are inherently sinister tools. The words I have here in my hand a list are never a salubrious portent.
Mother Jones editor David Corn, it seems, offered unwanted backrubs. So what? From the prose in Politico youd think he ravished Tess of the dUrbervilles. The accused, we are to understand, came up behind [his accuser] and put his hands and arms around [her] body in a way that felt sexual and domineering. He gave her a hug, in other words; but it felt to her sexual and domineering. There is no reliable way to know if a hug will feel sexual and domineering to a woman or whether she will find this disagreeable, let alone how she will feel about it twenty years from now. So the lesson to men is clear: Never hug women at work, period. But this is insane. The project of eradicating physical affection from the workplace is cruel to men and women alike, and if it is successful, we will all go nuts.
Nor does it make sense to hold all men to the same standards. Some of the accused have made entire careers out of their lewdness and exhibitionism. After revering them for decades for precisely those qualities, we are overnight scandalized to learn they are lewd and exhibitionistic. Take Louis CK. Theres an almost preternatural emotional obtuseness at work here: Did no one notice that in his stand-up routines he speaks incessantly of suicide, masturbation, self-loathing, masturbation, self-hatred, masturbationand this is all he ever speaks of? If were determined to worship a comedian whose work clearly emerges from a profoundly exhibitionistic instinct and self-loathing of the deepest sort, how can we be so astonished to discover its not just an act? I grew up around performing artists, so perhaps my view is jaundiced. But yeah, I could have told you: Stay out of his hotel room.
My point isnt that its no big deal to whack off in front of your lady friends. Its disgusting. What Louis CK did is not as banal as offering a woman a backrub or touching her knee. But its exactly what youd expect from him if youd ever watched his routines. If the man has a delusional view of the appeal to women of watching a self-loathing man whack off, shouldnt it be relevant to our moral assessment that we, the American public, are the ones who nourished this delusion with applause, laughter, money, and massive crowds at Madison Square Garden screaming his name? How can we suddenly be so censorious upon discovering that he took his onstage act to its logical extension in his hotel room? What makes the reaction to this all the weirder is that the women in question were comedians. Didnt they see the potential? This is gold! Its going to bring the house down. Sure, tell the whole world and humiliate the hell out of himobviously he had that coming. But outraged and shocked? Grim faces and utter solemnity? Seriously?
The comedians, by their own account, screamed and laughedand only later revealed they were outraged. They say that they shrieked with laughter because they were traumatized. But if you cant understand why someone like Louis CK might have genuinely understood their laughter as consent, your emotional acumen is deficient. He says he asked first, and that they said yes, and thats why he thought it was okay. Plausible? Of course. Really true? Who knows. But either way, I wouldnt be surprised if now he hangs himself, because obviously, it isnt all just an act. I expect everyone to be shocked, shocked, when he does.
In any case, none of us gets to watch Louis CK againor Kevin Spacey, for that matter. Theyre literally going to airbrush Spacey out of All The Money, like water commissar Nikolai Yezhov in that photo of the Moscow Canal. Comrade Spacey has been vaporized. Hes an unperson. Long live Comrade Ogilvy. Isnt anyone a bit spooked by this?
Nor for the life of me can I make sense of the allegations against Leon Wieseltier. The only problem with that dress is that its not tight enough, he is reported to have said to a woman who worked for him. A lewd comment, to be sure. The daily banter of men and women the world around is full of lewd comments. At times, we have learned from The Atlantic, Wieseltier drank too much and made passes at his co-workers. Thats not a wildly rare occurrence.
Above all, this is Leon Wieseltiera man legendary for babbling on publicly about his sexual appetites. He has always been known as a megalomaniacal asshole. Didnt this occur to anyone at the Emerson Collective before they hired him? If they were surprised to learn that Leon was an asshole, they must have missed this Vanity Fair profile, written in 1995. He seems to have become a better man since then. At least he no longer spends the day snorting coke off of his interns rear ends.
Even if every allegation against him is true, do they warrant his total professional destruction? Wieseltiers a windbag, but I would still have read any journal he edited with interest. Im sorry I wont have the chance.
We just cant hold people like Louis CK and Leon Wieseltier to the same standards of probity and decorum we wouldin a highly imaginary alternate universehold the President or a Senator from Alabama. Americans love these people precisely because theyre outrageous, lewd, and willing publicly to violate sexual and social norms. Why wouldnt you expect Louis CK, in a hotel room, to be Louis CK, only more so? What do people imagine John Belushi was like in his hotel room? He was like John Belushi, only more so. Thats why he was found dead in his hotel room, having taken being John Belushi to its logical conclusion.
For that matter, isnt anyone else a bit spooked by the ritual tenor of the confessions that always follow? The most profound mystery of the Moscow Trials was the eagerness of the victims to confess. What prompted them to say things like this?
I once more repeat that I admit that I am guilty of treason to the socialist fatherland, the most heinous of possible crimes, of the organization of kulak uprisings as will be clear to everybody, that there were many specific things which I could not have known, and which I actually did not know, but that this does not relieve me of responsibility. I am kneeling before the country, before the Party, before the whole people. The monstrousness of my crimes is immeasurable especially in the new stage of the struggle of the U.S.S.R. May this trial be the last severe lesson, and may the great might of the U.S.S.R. become clear to all.
Torture, of course, forced many of these confessions. But something more profound was at work. As Lavrentiy Beria said, Show me the man and Ill show you the crime. Every man, in his soul, feels guilty. The confessions we are seeing now have been dredged from the same place in mens souls.
They are all confessing in the same dazed, rote, mechanical way. Its always the same statement: I have come to realize that it does not matter that, at the time, I may have perceived my words as playful. It does not matter that, at the time, I may have felt that we were flirting. It does not matter that, at the time, I may have felt what I said was okay. The only thing that matters is how I made these three women feel, said Representative Steve Lebsock. Now that is a remarkable thing to say. Why doesnt it matter what he thought what was happening? Why would we accept as remotely rational the idea that the only thing that matters is how the women felt? The confession continues in the same vein: It is hard for me to express how shocked I am to realize the depth of the pain I have caused and my journey now is to come to terms with my demons and Ive brought on a team of therapists and I will be entering counselling and reflecting carefully on issues of gender inequality, power, and privilege in our society and
For Gods sake, why are these men all humiliating themselves? Its not like confessing will bring forgiveness. They must all know, like Bukharin, that no matter what they say, the ritual of confession will be followed by the ritual of liquidation. If they said, Youve all lost your fucking minds, stop sniffing my underwear and leave me the fuck alone, theyd meet exactly the same fate. Why didnt Bukharin say, To hell with you. You may kill me, but you will not make me grovel? I used to wonder, but now I see. Am I the only one who finds these canned, rote, mechanical, brainwashed apologies deeply creepy? Isnt anyone else put in mind of the Cultural Revolutions Struggle Sessions, where the accused were dragged before crowds to condemn themselves and plead for forgiveness? This very form of ritual public humiliation, aimed at eliminating all traces of reactionary thinking, now awaits anyone accused of providing an unwanted backrub.
We are a culture historically disposed to moral panics and sexual hysterias. Not long ago we firmly convinced ourselves that our children were being ritually raped by Satanists. In recent years, especially, we have become prone to replacing complex thought with shallow slogans. We live in times of extremism, and black-and-white thinking. We should have the self-awareness to suspect that the events of recent weeks may not be an aspect of our growing enlightenment, but rather our growing enamorment with extremism.
We should certainly realize by now that a moral panic mixed with an internet mob is a menace. When the mob descends on a target of prominence, its as good as a death sentence, socially and professionally. None of us lead lives so faultless that we cannot be targeted this way. Show me the man, and Ill show you the crime.
Your computer can be hacked. Do you want to live in the kind of paranoid society where everyone wondersWhos next? To whom is it safe to speak freely? What would this joke sound like in a deposition? Do you think only the men who have done something truly foul are at risk? Dont kid yourself. Once this starts, it doesnt stop. The Perp Walk awaits us all.
Given the events of recent weeks, we can be certain of this: From now on, men with any instinct for self-preservation will cease to speak of anything personal, anything sexual, in our presence. They will make no bawdy jokes when we are listening. They will adopt in our presence great deference to our exquisite sensitivity and frailty. Many women seem positively joyful at this prospect. The Revolution has at last been achieved! But how could this be the world we want? Isnt this the world we escaped?
Who could blame a man who does not enjoy the company of women under these circumstances, who would just rather not have women in the workplace at all? This is a world in which the Mike Pence ruleNever be alone with a womanseems eminently sensible. Such a world is not good for women, howeveras many women were quick to point out when we learned of the Mike Pence rule. Our success and advancement relies upon the personal and informal relationships we have with our colleagues and supervisors. But who, in this climate, could blame a venerable Oxford don for refusing to take the risk of teaching a young woman, one-on-one, with no witnesses? Mine was the first generation of women allowed the privilege of unchaperoned tutorials with Balliols dons. Will mine also be the last? Like so many revolutions, the sexual revolution risks coming full circle, returning us right where we startedfainting at bawdy jokes, demanding the return of ancient standards of chivalry, so delicate and virginal that a mans hand on our knee causes us trauma. Women have long been victims, but now we are in so many respects victims no longer. We have more status, prestige, power, and personal freedom than ever before. Why would we want to speak and act as though we were overwhelmingly victims, as we actually used to be?
Women, Im begging you: Think this through. We are fostering a climate in which men legitimately fear us, where their entire professional and personal lives can be casually destroyed by secret lists compiled by accusers they cannot confront, by rumors on the internet, by thrilled, breathless reporting denouncing one after another of them as a pig, often based only on the allegation that they did something all-too-human and none-too-criminal like making a lewd joke. Why would we even want men to be subject to such strenuous, arduous taboos against the display of their sexuality? These taboos, note carefully, resemble in non-trivial ways those that have long oppressed women. In a world with such arduous taboos about male purity and chastity, surely, it is rational for men to have as little to do with women as possible. Whats in this for us?
From the Salem Witch trials to the present, moral panics have followed the same pattern. Stanley Cohens Folk Devils and Moral Panics remains the classic study. To read it is to appreciate that we are seeing something familiar here. The media has identified a folk devil, which it presents in a stereotyped way, exaggerating the scale of the problem. The moral entrepreneurs, as Cohen terms themeditors, politicians, key arbiters of respectabilityhave begun competing to out-do each other in decrying the folk devil. The folk devil symbolizes a real problem. But so vilified has the scapegoat become, in popular imagination, that rational discussion of the real problem is no longer possible.
Cohen argued that moral panics must be understood in their wider socio-historic context. We may understand them, he proposed, as a boundary crisis: At a time of rapid change, they express the publics uncertainly about the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. The widespread anxiety about unsettling change is resolved by making of certain figures scapegoatsfolk devils. They symbolize a larger social unease.
Why this moral panic, and why now? Im not sure, to be honest. I can hazard a few speculations. Weve in the past thirty years experienced a massive restructuring of gender roles. When Hanna Rosin wrote her 2010 Atlantic essay, The End of Men, she was not exaggerating. What if, she asked, the modern, postindustrial economy is simply more congenial to women than to men? What if? Because it seems very much that it is. The postindustrial economy is indifferent to mens size and strength, she wrote. The attributes that are most valuable todaysocial intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focusare, at a minimum, not predominantly male. Americas future, Rosin argued, belongs to women. Once you open your eyes to this possibility, the evidence is all around you. And it is.
Let us put this in the crudest of Freudian terms. Women have castrated men en masse. Perhaps this panic is happening now because our emotions about this achievement are ambivalent. Perhaps our ambivalence is so taboo that we cannot admit it to ourselves, no less discuss it rationally. Is it possible that we are acting out a desire that has surfaced from the hadopelagic zone of our collective unconsciousa longing to have the old brutes back? That is what Freud would suggest: We are imagining brutes all around us as a form of wish-fulfillment, a tidy achievement that simultaneously allows us to express our ambivalence by shrieking at them in horror.
The problem with Freudian interpretations, as Popper observed, is that theyre unfalsifiable. Theyre not science. But theyre tempting. Certainly, something weird is going on here. It is taking place in the aftermath of the most extraordinary period of liberation and achievement women have ever enjoyed. No, of course we dont want the old brutes back. But perhaps we miss something about that world. Wouldnt it be comforting, for example, at a time like this, to believe what women used to believethat responsible men were in charge of the ship of state, and especially our nuclear weapons?
Moral panics have a context. They emerge at times of general anxiety. Scholars of the Salem witch trials point to Indian attacks, the political reverberations from the English Civil War, crop failures, and smallpox outbreaks. Residents of colonial Massachusetts filtered these apprehensions through the prism of their Calvinist theology. If their moral panic was prompted by the anxieties of their era and adapted to the theology of their times, why should we be any different?
Im not sure what, precisely, is now driving us over the edge. But Id suggest looking at the obvious. The President of the United States is Donald J. Trump. Our country is not what we thought it was. Were a fading superpower in a world of enemies. The people now running the United States cannot remotely persuade us, even for five minutes, that they know what theyre doing and are capable of keeping us safe. Who among us doesnt feel profound anxiety about this? Daddy-the-President turns out to be a hapless dotard. Women who had hopefully imagined rough men standing ready to do violence on our behalf so we could sleep peacefully in our beds at night have discovered insteadpsychologically speakingthat Daddy is dead.
Thats enough to make anyone go berserk. Perhaps this realization is powering some of the hysteria were now seeing about sexual harassment. Rapid social and technological change, a lunatic at the helm, no one knows what tomorrow will bringwere primed for a moral panic par excellence. That it has something to do with men and male beastliness is an adaptation to the theology of our era: American culture has been obsessed with genderthe rarer and odder the betterfor at least the past decade. Whats more, we really do have an unreconstructed slob in the Oval Office, one who is genuinely offensive to women. Some of the anger directed at these poor groveling schmucks is surelyreallymeant for him.
No woman in her right mind would say, I want the old world back. We know what that meant for women. Nor would we even consciously think it. But perhaps, instead, we are fantasizing that the old world has come back, rather than confronting something a great deal more frightening: Its never coming back. We are the grown-ups now. We are in charge.
Maybe it doesnt matter where the sources of the present moral panic lie. But could we at least get enough of a grip to realize that it is a moral panicand knock it off? Women, Im begging you: Please.
tl;dr
Be sure to run this through a spell checker. Oh, sorry. Thanks TBP.
Well, sort of mandatory. But not really.
A strong dose of TDS in this one there is.....
This is an apology for David "Creepy" Corn.
Re: Roy Moore and Bill Clinton
Roy Moore was a victim of paid liars and a very cruel “October Surprise”. There is likely Democrat voting fraud involved as well.
Bill Clinton raped a woman and later besmirched the reputation of numerous women, lied in such a way that he lost his license to practice law, had to paid the victim heaps of money, and was fined by the court, as well.
This is an eloquent and knowledgeable woman. This piece is well written, even if full of internal conflicts.
Mz. Berlinski seems to be completely comfortable with using people, especially men, to achieve her ambitions. She spells this out here with her obvious fear that the system she so uses to her advantage might be closing down.
The social hysteria she so rightfully fears and condemns will not end until Trump is destroyed. She does not understand that the stain of BJ Clinton has deflected the current feminist dirge with every repeat of the lie that the second Presidential impeachment in history was only about gratification, one way, between consenting adults.
It is not hard to figure out that this has only just begun. The pyre will be stacked high with the careers of many more men, guilty or not, before the mortal sin of the Left in closing their eyes to Clinton’s abuses can be washed clean enough to remove Trump. By then the ripping of the fabric of society will be as complete as this author envisions. And more.
For too many it will be worth all the carnage. Those of us who are as well educated as this woman but who understand with sounder context, untwisted by bitterness, will know who are our Caligulas and Eliogabalus’. She need look no further than the closest mirror.
The NappyOne
My apologies, she did make this very point later in the article.
Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea MAxima Culpa.
This for context.
She is right, though, that we’ve lost all sense of proportion.
I did in fact read the entire thing. There are several points well made however, to lay the current trend at the feet of our President Trump is a clue into her inability to support her entire argument. Sad, she completely ruined it imho with such a leap into idiocy.
Almost all of the men accused have been liberal 'elites' so it's a little hard to come to their defense... (AND YES, there's a good chance Bill O'Reilly was a democrat all along).
But this movement is out of hand - it's become the 'Salem witch trials' without the 'trial' part.
Good people have to speak out against it - even if it means saving the butts of liberal elites...
Agree completely. There were several paragraphs that I gave her fist pumps for. The moral outrage has a mob mentality feel to it that lacks thought for consequences. We are a society where men and women still have to live together and get along with each other like adults in spite of our differences and the accusations ought to have a threshold below which, they are ignored. I am all for bringing some common sense in to halt the stampede.
Nice job all the way up to the point of her saying she believed Roy Moore’s accuser without a mention of the contrary evidence. I wondered then if she was suckering me. Hmm. That stopped me in my tracks and I did a word search for “Trump”.
Sure enough, she had to shoehorn Trump into it. She couldn’t suspend her TDS and her liberal bias, even for one article, to hit a home run. Instead, it ended in a foul ball. What a shame.
Thanks for the link:
WASHINGTON
“Andrea Ramsey, a Democratic candidate for Congress, will drop out of the race after the Kansas City Star asked her about accusations in a 2005 lawsuit that she sexually harassed and retaliated against a male subordinate who said he had rejected her advances.”
Andrea Ramsey, a Democratic candidate for Congress, will drop out of the race after the Kansas City Star asked her about accusations in a 2005 lawsuit that she sexually harassed and retaliated against a male subordinate who said he had rejected her advances.
I don’t know if she did it or didn’t do it and obviously I don’t agree with her politics, but she’s right about this:
“We are in a national moment where rough justice stands in place of careful analysis, nuance and due process.”
http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article189931704.html
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