I spent the weekend trying to forget it was happening. I exercised and saw Berthold Brecht's Gallileo and read a novel and thought about Billy Collins poetry and then, as a go-to-channel when his football game was at commercial, we saw that there's another one.
Deep breath.
He flipped back to football as I scrolled through Twitter (how 21st century of me, right?) for the details. College boys delighting in a naked penis thrust in a young girl's face. Ugh, on behalf of decent men everywhere.
Sigh.
I spent a moment hoping that the women are telling the truth, though I have no reason to disbelieve them. Dr. Ford's career as a psychometrician focuses on resilience after trauma. She surfs, pitting herself against the ocean, surviving where others might drown. I'm unable to believe that's all coincidence.
At the next commercial, we read that there's a third one. And that Michael Avenatti is representing her. We remember that everything he alleged about the Cohen/Daniels/Trump bucket of slime was proven to be true. My doubts are evaporating.
What's the opposite of guilt by association? Is there such a thing as truthful by association?
Senator Patty Murray shook her head in disgust, wondering if the younger reporter remembered what the Senate did to Anita Hill. No wonder she kept quiet. Still shaking her head, she hoped that another generation would not learn that same lesson.
#MeToo, only a feel good moment? #MeToo, a catalyst for real social change.
A girl can dream.
It is not a girl's fault when she is assaulted-- saying that first BUT teach your daughters and granddaughters about the reality of the world as it is. Don't avoid the embarrassing issues and start young. I know we want them to stay innocent but innocent isn't safe with how reality can be.
ReplyDeleteI got such warnings and didn't go to drinking parties. Even my husband, who did, said he never went to them with girls there. Sometimes we put ourselves in dangerous situations and drinking parties with both sexes (common denominator in the accusations so far, unless it changes with the third coming via the current king of sleaze merchants). I know people want to think the world is like a garden of Eden, when it's more like a potential garden of snakes, and that's the sad reality, where parents can't count on priests or teachers to be safe around their children. So teach them young. Sad as it is to say, I feel sorry for young girls and boys who don't have the benefit of such tough love. And worse, the predator can be in their own family.
I'm to the point right now where opening my papers in the morning feels more like going to a tabloid with every salacious detail that they can possibly print there. How many pictures of Stormy in a low cut dress can they fit in with a soon to be probably best seller made so by voyeurs eager to hear whatever details she can spill about a one night stand that she took to get a job. Ugh.
You know as a kid, I never went to a single drinking party such as is being described with homes where the parents left and the partying begins or at a college with drunkenness the 'in' to popularity??? Come to think of it, I still have never been to a party like that or had friends who took advantage of the trust of a parent (or did the parents set it up? They did where we lived before we moved to the farm and one reason we wanted our kids out of that community with a lot of money and too many of those kinds of parties being busted by a neighbor calling the cops-- sometimes the parents got arrested for supplying the liquor. These were the homes of the elites of that city. Not saying things like that don't happen out here but it's not as regular at least as it was there-- and that was 40 years ago).
I left parties like that. My kids did, too. Friends of Dr Ford’s generation, between ours, had private school rich kid privileged upbringing I can get away with anything parties, and went on to teach at the ritzy private hs my kids attended.
DeleteGetting into and out of the situation is one thing. Talking about it afterwards is another. We all make mistakes. What we bring into the equation speaks to our character. What we do afterwards, apologizing or denying or accepting responsibility or making amends, is the loudest voice of all.
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What has gotten me and what I wrote about in my issues blog is-- the prep and fancy college path seems fraught with alcohol and cheap attitudes toward sex. My own experience has only been with public school and a city college. I know my daughter said if you go to a frat party-- don't drink. That gets me too because aren't they supposed to be the best of the best??? And some surely are but in our nearby university town, when they have the fraternity days, with the dads coming, it's drunk partying all the way. What the heck has gone wrong? I don't know about Kavanaugh but it sure paints a picture of a culture that was not very admirable and they end up running our nation or in high courts! grrrrr
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