By: Aliana Brodmann E. von Richthofen, Dec. 2017
Not since the McCarthy era has one segment of society been hunted on the kind of threadbare allegations with the unconscionable sort of zealousness today’s men of influence are.
Ever since Harvey Weinstein, pursued by tons of women for greater fame and fortune, or even just a bit of limelight, was exposed as a lecher by a sobbing hypocrite with a well-orchestrated PR agenda, and others too jumped on this bandwagon for their 15 minutes of notoriety with the waning producer, the leftist media had their new scapegoats.
Growing numbers, now defining themselves as the “ hashtag # me too group” seized their moment, sobbing publicly 20,30 and even forty years after having been “improperly touched,” “invaded by uninvited tongues,” often repeatedly (?) and in parts of the body impossible to reach with these women’s least bit of resistance. Of course they didn’t resist.
About the fourteen–year old young man and Kevin Spacey I’m truly puzzled. Where were his parents anyway? And had they not told him to stay out of stranger’s bedrooms, including hotel rooms? No one should suffer sexual abuse for having unwittingly slipped beyond established boundaries, but honestly: if going into bedrooms, hotel rooms, or other private zones and engaging in what can only be perceived as flirtatious or otherwise inviting behavior, means that you are not interested, what on earth must one do to show that one is interested? And did he get out or stay as not to jeopardize possible later “benefits”?
That goes for all of these women too who claim “sexual harassment” after having presented themselves as free for the taking. I’m not sure if anyone actually claimed they had been raped, and even if they did, what their definition of rape was, and what had gone on before the alleged rape, “improper touching,” “grabbing” or “tongue thrusting”?
Because that matters. Dating, mating and everything between is a well-known dance, which most humans consciously or subconsciously perform to engage the other. And according to behaviorists, it is actually the female that usually initiates these dances. As they did in most of these publicized cases. By their own accounts.
By the way: where are all the usually opinionated psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, behaviorists etc., that usually opine so ardently on all things usual or aberrant?
Shouldn’t they be reminding us that human encounters consist of behaviorally established interactions that involve bodily movement, posture, eye expression, subtle and not so subtle verbal language, intonation and a whole lot of other direct and subliminal messages we send one another continuously and which we have always relied on in communication?
The circumstances in all these well-publicized cases were clearly initiated by women out to impress these men. The self-proclaimed “sexual harassment victims” courted them, visited them in their private quarters dollied up to the max and dripping with charm, no doubt. They may have miscalculated the outcome and didn’t enjoy the consequences. But that’s their mess-up and not unprovoked sexual harassment. And if the consequences were undesirable it would have behooved them to set matters straight right then and there. But did they? Of course not. They were insincere pursuing those men for calculated benefits and didn’t say: “no” because if they would have, these damsels might have lost the chance at what they had come to pursue. That’s not abuse or sexual harassment.
That’s the two it takes to tango – tangoing.
But most importantly, there are serious transgressions happening, criminal acts of sexual abuse that impact and often destroy lives. And if we start muddying the waters between unlawful behavior and phony baloney, we lessen the seriousness of real crimes. We fail those who have fallen- or will fall victim to sociopaths that harass children in their school. We also fail those who are trying to work for a living without being harassed because of their race, religion, gender, appearance. And those retaliated against for having addressed improprieties that the powers-that-be want swept under the rug.
The stories of these real victims rip out your heart and soul if you have one but they are hardly ever reported on.
The Boston Globe, one of the worst offenders of omission, has been informed of many such cases, some evil enough to have pushed victims to suicide. Instead this paper literally snowballs the “hashtag # me too” bandwagon. On 11.27.2017 its front page editorial read: Costs are high if the low-paid complain, subtitle: Women face big hurdles, including job loss, if they report sexual harassers,” a misleading article just to milk the sexual harassment cow from another ill-conceived angle.
Fact is: Anyone who reports the truth in a hostile workplace, no matter about what, gets fired and blackballed. I doubt Globe reporters don’t know that. The fallout from the pervasiveness of workplace crimes produce hundreds if not thousands of unemployed people, the majority of them women, many of them minority women and often single mothers, unable to feed their families. But these crimes that really impact individuals, that really humiliate and destroy entire families, aren’t reported on.
Mainstream editors will tell you that they report on what the public wants to know. Aside from the fact that that’s not journalism, they are lying because I’m the public and I’m not interested in phony sex stories that are circulated by fame and fortune seekers with the help of the Gloria Allreds of this world who would never represent a woman or man who was truly done wrong.
Maybe the editors who keep stirring muck are the actual perverts and should be held accountable for producing a sensationalistic scandal that isn’t, instead of doing their job and reporting on the scandal that is.