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Yes, Weinsteining Is Out of Hand
So this morning I was about to compose my brief, point-by-point summary of my Highly Unpopular Thesis (truly, I was), when the morning went horribly awry. My friend Arun Kapil posted a link on Facebook to this article: “Is ‘Weinsteining’ Getting Out of Hand?”
“Our current discourse on sexual harassment,” wrote Cathy Young,
not only conflates predation with “low-level lechery” but generally reduces women to sexual innocents who must be shielded not only from sexual advances but from bawdy jokes. This did not begin with Weinstein or the #MeToo movement; however, the current moral panic is making the situation worse.
I “liked” the post and wrote, “Yes, this is getting out of control and is clearly a form of hysteria.” Meant to leave it at that. But then Facebook told me that people had replied to my comment. And I discovered that I hold another Highly Unpopular view, it seems. Among the comments: “Keep your hands and comments to yourself. That is the lesson to be learned and if people lose their jobs over it, tough [redacted].”
Another: “Well, people need to be very thoughtful and very careful when they say or do something personal. WT[redacted] is so hard about that? If you are so clueless that can’t tell when a particular behavior is welcome or unwelcome, you shouldn’t be allowed in the sandbox.”
I wound up writing a post-length reply that of course I should have just published here in the first place. I’ll come back to my original Highly Unpopular Thesis tomorrow; today got spent defending this–apparently–Highly Unpopular view. I do think it’s an important issue, though.
***
I am now in a position to destroy many men’s lives, careers, and reputations by saying, “He harassed me.” Many men have, over the course of my academic and professional career, behaved in a way that I found charmingly flirtatious — but which, if I described it as unwelcome, or traumatic, would meet contemporary definitions of “harassment.” This category is now so broad and vague as to compass “the typical flirtation that characterizes the interaction of men and women and brings joy and amusement to so many of our lives–but as it happens, in this case, I didn’t like it.”
I could now, on a whim, destroy the career of an Oxford don I recall who one drunken evening danced with me when I was an undergraduate, patted my bum, and slurred, “I’ve been dying to do this to Berlinski all term!” That is in fact what happened. I was amused and flattered. I thought nothing of it. But if I truthfully recounted the details of this event now, merely changing the words “flattered and amused” to “traumatized and terrified,” I would destroy his life. Even if the charge couldn’t be proven, legally, the accusation is now the punishment in itself. Do you doubt this? That I have the power to destroy his life, and the lives of literally hundreds of men who have flirted me over the years — co-workers, employers, men who in some way held a position of power over me — by accurately describing a flirtation or moment of impropriety, one that in fact I either enjoyed or brushed off as harmless, merely by adding the words, “I was traumatized by it?”
The definition of harassment is now entirely subjective: The things men and women very naturally do — flirt, play, desire, tease — become harassment only by virtue of the words, “I was traumatized by it.” The onus properly to understand the interaction and its emotional subtleties seems always to fall entirely on the man: He should have understood that his behavior wasn’t welcome. Why is understanding the complex eternal dance between men and women entirely his responsibility? Perhaps she should have understood that his behavior wasn’t harmful? Perhaps she should have understood that it was sweet, or clumsy — or perhaps that he genuinely believed it to be welcome?
[Arun’s friend] asks, “WT[redacted] is so hard about [figuring out whether an advance is welcome]?” Seriously? WT[redacted] is so hard about figuring out whether someone is attracted to you? Everything is so hard about it! The difficulty of ascertaining whether one’s passions are reciprocated is the theme of 90 percent of human literature and every romantic comedy or pop song ever written. We’re talking about the most complex of human emotions, the most powerful of human drives, and you say, “WT[redacted] is so hard about that?” Google “Is she attracted to me?” to see how desperate men are to figure this out.
It is not a healthy situation when I have the power to ruin men’s lives simply by changing the way I feel about a memory. This is a sign of cultural hysteria. Anyone who imagines men and women will cease to be attracted to each other — and to behave as if they were — in the workplace, or any other place, is delusional.
I think Leon Wieseltier’s often a windbag, but I would have read any journal he edited with interest; I am sorry I won’t have the chance. From what I’ve read of the alleged facts of the accusations against him — and remember, these are not facts as a court of law would view it, we do not know for sure that this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — it sounds as if Leon was a flirt. ‘The only problem with that dress is that it’s not tight enough,” he reportedly said. Countless men — some of them in a “position of power” over me — men who perhaps could have offered me work, or had offered me work — have said similar things to me. I literally thought nothing of it. I was amused. The comment sounds like the normal banter of men and women the world around.
At times, we have learned, when he was drunk, Leon made passes at co-workers. Who hasn’t? Seriously, who — in the real world — hasn’t been drunk and made a pass at a co-worker? But somehow from this we are to conclude that “Leon delighted in making young women sexually uncomfortable.” (Per the Atlantic.) Actually, we know no such thing from the facts as described: We know only that he was a flirt who made passes at his co-workers. These crimes are so unforgivable that without benefit of a trial his career must be destroyed; the accusation is itself the punishment — agonizing public humiliation, the exposure to the world of his human sexual foibles. I’m sure this makes him “uncomfortable” too — in fact, almost certainly more “uncomfortable” than any woman has a right to be under the circumstances described in these salacious articles.
Per the Atlantic: “One night most of the staff went out. Leon cornered me by the bathroom and kissed me. I clapped my hand over my mouth and he said, ‘I’ve always known you’d do that.’”
So?
What do we have here: A man kissed a woman. He said, “I’ve always known you’d do that.” We know nothing else about this. It is only the grave prose surrounding this description that makes this sound sinister: “Decidedly not a joke” … “I felt terrible afterwards.” The only thing that transforms this story from “a drunken kiss at a party” to “a crime worthy of lifetime banishment from the public square” are the words, “I felt terrible afterwards.” But surely what she felt should be less important than what happened? — and what happened, apparently, is that he kissed her. We do not know why she felt terrible. We do not even ask whether he felt terrible: It feels terrible to be rejected; so I reckon he probably did feel terrible. But this perfectly normal thing, this thing that happens between men and women all the time, and always will, has been pathologized beyond all reason.
Weinstein, allegedly, raped women. There is a universe of difference between rape and Leon’s alleged crimes. He was prone to “passing along a mundane bit of office gossip, suggesting it was a great secret, and telling me that if I ever revealed it to anyone, he’d “tell people we’re [redacted].” This, apparently, is unpardonable. Gossiping and using the word “[redacted].” Casual, vulgar banter — typical of the way men and women in New York really speak to each other each and every day.
If saying such things is now an unpardonable crime, we will all go to the gallows. Or we will all cease to be human.
***
I’m really curious to know whether you agree. It’s just common sense, right? But some people seem to disagree with me strenuously. I mean, more than you guys disagree with me about Trump.
Do you guys agree with me about this?
Published in General
Well, this began with a post on Facebook, to which I replied. When I returned to it today I was even more horrified. The comments on it really terrified me. So much so that I actually felt morally obliged to respond to them. I am glad to see that most of you agree that what I said is, basically, common sense, but horrified to see that it is not — at all — viewed as common sense in the larger world. (This is one reason I am trying so hard to escape my “filter bubble.” I think the comments I saw were probably quite representative of views many women hold. It’s important for me to grasp that.)
I found the comments genuinely frightening — a casual “Burn the kulaks”–“Kill them all and let God sort them out”—“Rwanda RTLM” tone that bodes ill, even if it is meant lightheartedly. Comments about “men” as a category, and “men” *as a category* portrayed as the systematic victimizers of *all women.* Indifference to the idea of an innocent man being caught up in this — the dismissal of the idea of destroying an innocent man as “ruffling his feathers.” The idea that two wrongs make a right. The idea that there are no objective crimes here, just “what I say it is,” the idea that no man has a right to contribute to a discussion of what this crime might be even though he is the only one who will be accused of it. The idea that circumstances ranging from “a billboard featuring the word ‘jugs’” to the fear that one might be raped on one’s way home are a justification for “heads rolling,” irrespective of *whose* heads and *why* — just so long as heads roll. The idea that “no [expletive] proof” is needed. The idea that a man who asks if perhaps this climate is dangerous is displaying a lack of “solidarity and values,” even to the point of being something less than fully human. The *dehumanization* of men, the notion that men as a category are collectively responsible for crimes that have been committed by individual men. The inability even to doubt that this may not all be “very positive” … Perhaps I was taking some of these comments too literally or too seriously, but they unnerved me deeply.
Seeing this reinforced my fear that in this climate men are truly at risk of being accused of crimes they did not commit, or of transgressions no reasonable person would define as crimes in the first place, then tried in the court of public opinion by a baying Twitter mob, then overnight losing everything dear to them — their livelihoods, the careers and reputations built upon decades of dedication and labor, their friendships, perhaps their marriages and their families. The suggestion of the language above, in comment after comment, was that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette; it is all worth it if it serves the greater purpose of eradicating sexual harassment: The ends justify the means.
One woman: So what if innocent men are accused, because “It will never come anywhere near the depth and breadth of what women put up with on a daily basis.” Really? She’s apparently already decided that men are not entitled to participate in the definition of a crime for which they may well lose their livelihoods or even their freedom, she apparently already believes that a whole category of person is guilty of the sins of his fathers, or an inherently criminal element. Such dangerous territory. This is the kind of thinking that historically has led to circumstances just like the very event to which another woman on the thread enthusiastically appealed: the French Revolution and what she casually describes as “a few heads falling.”
Was it a joke? I am not sure, and I don’t wish to be humorless. But I am struck that anyone could defend this by appeal to the the reign of terror—to monstrous crimes and injustices committed in the name of equality and liberty and enabled by the passage of the Law of Suspects—which defined “suspects” in precisely the kind of over-broad language we are now casually coming to use when discussing “harassment.”
This over-broad language is a warning sign. It makes me deeply uneasy.
What on earth do women hope to gain from a climate in which men’s careers are destroyed by “secret lists,” by rumors on the Internet, by thrilled, breathless reporting denouncing one after another man as pigs — often reporting based only on the allegation that they did something otherwise quite normal, like kissing a woman or making a lewd joke, but followed by the fatal words: “I was traumatized by it”? Do they really think the men who might sexually attack us when we walk home at night — the sociopaths we all truly and legitimately fear — will be deterred by the downfall of Leon Wiesenthal? Career rapists aren’t now quietly contemplating Leon Wiesenthal’s oeuvre and downfall and thinking, “perhaps I should knock this rape business off.” Hardened criminals and sociopaths are deterred by jail cells, not hashtags.
What kind of culture will arise from a world in which the distinction between making a lewd joke or an awkward pass and raping a woman is viewed as trivial? How could a man, under the circumstances these women envision, see women as normal people, as friends? How could they feel in any way relaxed or easy in our presence? They will fear us. Of course they will. This will be a world where bewildered men measure their every word in the presence of women, with good reason, knowing they may be charged with a crime that comes with a terrifying penalty but has no definition — it is “what I say it is” — a crime that has something to do with the human and natural attraction almost all men feel for almost all women (and without which the human race would cease to exist) — and may be committed through word, deed, or even facial expression, but is ultimately entirely a matter of discerning what a woman feels or will feel— which is (as any woman who has ever known a man knows only too well) something most of them find damned near impossible. Over and over again, in findings that are robust across, sample, age, type of MRI and method of analysis, the research points in the same direction: Men are not, as a rule, as good at interpreting emotional cues as women are. They don’t understand what we feel.
Do so many women really want to live in this sexless, joyless world, one where men fear us, one where we pass around “secret lists” of the accused, one where Twitter mobs descend upon any man unfortunate enough to have his name leaked to the media — often by a rival or enemy who couldn’t give a damn about women, but who grasps that this tool is a lethal weapon – this followed inevitably by the loss of the man’s career, his research funding, his reputation — all for ill-defined crimes that seem to have no statute of limitations? Do we want a world in which women casually express authentic misandry, making jokes (I hope they’re jokes, anyway) about men’s “heads rolling” as payback for every injustice women have ever suffered? How would women benefit from this world?
And how do we imagine this climate will affect men whose erotic and romantic interest we do want? Do we truly want a world in which men never offer women a compliment on her appearance, never give them a kiss or a hug in the workplace–or anywhere, really, unless they’ve met on Tinder, because all of the usual places men and women meet, court, and woo each other seem to be subject to the same rules? Do we want a world with where men are subject to strenuous, arduous taboos against the display of their sexuality — taboos not wholly unlike those that have historically oppressed women, in fact — a culture where men are prized for their chastity, or the appearance thereof, in which the responsibility for chastity is entirely theirs — one where even looking directly into a woman’s eyes might be “creepy,” so you better keep your eyes downcast, lest you bring such shame upon your clan that it must kill you to restore the family’s honor. And really, this is just what we do: “We are deeply disappointed by the reports that Mister Absolutely Unacceptable in This Day and Age failed to live up to our company standards. We do not tolerate or condone harassment in any way, shape, or form. We are conducting a thorough internal review and have meanwhile suspended Mister Absolutely Unacceptable” — and you know full well Mister Absolutely Unacceptable will never get his job back, no matter what really happened, nor will he ever get another job.
In a world with such arduous taboos about male purity and chastity, surely, it would be safest for men to have as little to do with women as possible. That’s a world in which the Mike Pence rule would seem quite sensible: “Never be alone with a woman, period.” But such a world really isn’t good for women—as many women were quick to point out in the wake of the revelation that Pence refuses to be alone with women. Often professional success and advancement relies upon the personal, informal relationships we have with our colleagues and our supervisors. But how can we blame men, if we create this climate, for fearing us? For being reluctant to speak to us, one-on-one, over a drink or dinner? For not wishing to be alone in a car with us, for avoiding any circumstance in which they are alone with us and there are no witnesses?
Who could blame the man who does not enjoy the company of women under these circumstances? Surely we don’t want a world in which men will make no bawdy jokes when we are listening, where like their Victorian forebears, men wait until the ladies adjourn to do their sewing, or whatever it is women do, to relax and speak frankly among themselves. Do we want me to adopt a false personality in deference to our exquisite sensitivity and the frail nature of the fairer sex? Is this the equality that women have so long struggled to achieve?
It sounds to me like a plan to set the status of women in our society back by a century, and meanwhile make the lives of men fearful and anxious—and in some cases, destroyed. Of course we should prosecute, and imprison–rapists, who would argue with that? And prosecute men who have violated clearly-written and highly precise laws against sexual harassment, laws that any man, however dumb, can understand.
But this climate is hysterical, nonsensical, frightening. It’s of a piece with our larger power now to unleash Internet mobs on any poor soul. Our mobs are growing crazier and crazier.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this article — Is the First Amendment Obsolete? Tim Wu writes:
Have a read through the whole thing. He’s making points I can’t readily dismiss. The state is no longer the primary censor. We are. We are all, already, self-censoring for fear of these hysterical mobs.
I fear he may be right: The First Amendment may not be sufficient to protect freedom of expression in this weird, weird century. But I can’t imagine what would be. The Founders really couldn’t have envisioned this.
Claire,
Now listen, Claire, if I want to be hypnotized by you I damn well will be! Don’t argue with me!! If I say you are amazingly lovely it’s a fact and don’t you start up. As sure as the Bank of England (…hmmm why is it always the Bank of England?..maybe I should find out about this Bank of England and invest.) you are delightful!
Harrrrumphh!!
Regards,
Jim
In a culture that can’t seem to accept the obvious and distinct natures of male and female, it is not surprising that yin turns to yang, yang turns to yin, in a reversal of social polarity no less consequential or destructive than an EMP blast by a military enemy.
As James Lileks has described, Orwell got it wrong. He thought that Big Brother would be the government. It turns out that we have appointed ourselves as Big Brother. We carry the all-seeing cameras in our pockets and purses. We have appointed ourselves as the Ministries of Love, Peace, Plenty, and Truth, and we have made ourselves the “Room 101” torture chamber.
Yes, Claire. I agree with you about this.
But, boy, howdy, when I read this post I suddenly remembered, #MeToo.
You see, there was this college professor.
There I was, everyone’s least favorite Teaching Assistant and Freshman Comp teacher, and there he was, stalking me at every turn.
Somehow, we ended up after class, in the evenings, putting together brochures and course description booklets for the English Department, using Gestetner technology and a “Leroy Lettering Set.” I’m a Brit. We’re well known for giving about every name under the sun to a certain male appendage, but the line “Step into my office and I’ll show you my Leroy,” never sent my mind in that direction, or filled me with terror at the time.
Or so I thought. Now, I see that it must have. I guess I was just too dumb to realize it. Now I do.
After we finished our projects, usually in the early evening, he would force me to go and eat pizza with him in the Student Union. Thinking back on it, it must have been awful for me. Yes. Yes, it was. I remember now.
I wasn’t safe in the classroom either. Most mornings, I would arrive for my first class to find a little bunch of nasturtiums (he liked gardening, he once told me, while holding me hostage somewhere between the “pizza” and the “beer” courses), or perhaps a piece of chocolate on my desk. The students used to giggle a bit, but they got used to it. Honestly, it was mortifying. Just mortifying. I was traumatized. Still am. Have thought about nothing else, ever since. It gets worse every year. I’ll never recover.
And, honestly. Our first real “date.” I felt violated. We went cross-country skiing. With his children, for heaven’s sake. Can you imagine? Hard to think of anything more depraved, isn’t it?
Gosh, I wish I’d been woke at the time. Things could have been so different.
You know, it never once occurred to me that if I’d demurred, or objected, that things would not have ended right there. Yes, there was a “power” imbalance. Yes, there was a hierarchy. (Yes, we were something of a nine-days wonder, at one point.) But, if I’d felt uncomfortable or pressured, I could have said or done something to stop it. And I have every expectation that many of these women dredging up minor instances of flirtatious behavior and destroying decades-long careers and entire lives (like all the rest of you I’m not denying that the ugly stuff exists and must be dealt with), could have done the same. Sorry, ladies. In many cases, I’m just not buying it. And I long for the day (in about sixty years) that Heather Lind is a bit gaga and bemused, and she makes a casual “inappropriate” gesture without even realizing it, and her own name becomes a byword for depravity for ages to come.
But, to return to my point. What happened to that pest I was telling you about? He paid in full for his transgressions, believe me.
“Reader, I married him.”
Thirty-seven years ago.
It’s not new, and I think the founders were wise enough to know it.
The Athenians had a relatively pure democracy and as a result lived through self censorship. Many complained that even if they could afford nice things, they would still wear old, worn coats. Otherwise they would risk being considered wealthy and taxed more.
My favorite book of all time is “Courtesans and Fishcakes” (or is it Fishcakes and Courtesans, I always forget) and it describes in great detail how the Athenians lived in their pure democracy.
Traumatized, I am traumatized, I tell you. This is Absolutely Unacceptable in Our Day and Age and Deeply Disappointing and We do Not Tolerate or Condone Harassment in any Way, Shape, or Form it is time for Jim to Reflect Deeply on the Great Pain he has Caused and hire an emergency PR team, fire the emergency PR team, announce that he’s going into counselling, then come out of the closet. Jim, you know the drill.
Mob, you know your role. Oh, and someone send me the secret list of women who have shared their deeply traumatic Jim stories. We’ll drag this out for days and get totally crazy site traffic.
Yep.
Careful, the Jim-admiration counter culture might start right here.
LoLz.
Careful, Claire.
I met Jim for the first time, almost half-a-century ago, when we were both in high school.
Watch your step. Just saying.
She (Moderator)
PS: Is this the sort of comment you were hoping for? It’s absolutely true, you know.
PPS: I greatly admire your profuse and gratuitous use of initial capital letters. Very Swiftian.
Surprisingly civil, I thought, given that Gary’s view was received about as poorly as Claire’s (and, I’d argue, for the same good reasons). I was positively impressed by the Ricochet crowd.
Which brings me to my first and second observations regarding this post of Claire’s:
Clair, while I don’t know (nor care about) the details of the Wieseltier situation, I do agree with the thrust (trigger warning required?) of your piece: something is broken as regards social customs between the sexes. (My own most recent thoughts on that are on Ricochet here: The Weaker Sex.)
Secondly, your big mistake was putting your comments on the vast wasteland of Facebook. Ricochet exists for a good reason.
Ricochet exists for a good reason. Facebook, in contrast, does not.
Well, let’s say Facebook exists for a different reason.
So reminds me of a Billy Connolly joke.
He was in a hotel in Perth Australia up at 3 am from jet lag when the couple next door started getting intimate.
After awhile he hears the woman next door yelling ” oh yes, yes, yes, yes!”
Connolly starts to pound on the wall and yells ” stop asking her the (redacted) question!”
She,
Don’t rush to her aid (yes it was Swiftian). This is about her and her blasted incapacity to be complimented and nothing else. BTW, all I remember is you walking your dog and me walking mine and the weather was nice.
I could go into a harrowing story in which I was sexually harassed at age 9 by a prepubescent neighbor girl who must have thought I was “hot”. Unaware at the time of the meaning or existence of a concept like “hot” I found her behavior strange. She proceeded to show me a large full-page color photograph that she must have found in her father’s drawer. The women in the photo sans clothing seemed to me sort of “plump”. Well, she was plump in certain areas of her body and not in others. This too I found strange and decided that perhaps the neighbor girl should be avoided. All would have been OK except she left the photo at my house. My mother found this and demanded an explanation. I explained exactly what had happened and for some reason, she didn’t believe a word that I told her. This too seemed very strange.
Approximately 4 years later, after puberty had set in, I understood what this must have been all about. After this experience, it took me years to overcome the feeling that all women were basically crazy. Now, thanks to Claire, I am thrown back into this traumatic state.
I am now contacting my solicitor William H. Gingrich Attorney at Law (aka Whiplash Willie) and we will be discussing the possibility of filing for the emotional damages caused. (Never kid a kidder.) Willie looks a little seedy but he’s a tiger in court, I warn you.
I hope you are satisfied, Claire.
Regards,
Jim
Right? Shoot, even I think he’s totally hot.
If that’s out of line, sue me.
(Don’t really sue me)
A tour-de-force, Jim! If this is even remotely true, the story of your dear mother and the discovery of what was probably the Playboy centerfold from about 1963, has made my day.
Fixed his wagon.
I strongly agree with creating the class of felony called sexual extortion for this type of a case. I think a woman would be more likely to file a complaint for sexual extortion in a case like this than she would be to report it as rape. Juries would also be more likely to convict. If the woman consents to sex in order to get some benefit, it is more difficult for her to even think of it as rape, even though it is an extremely nasty event. Knowing that such a category as sexual extortion was defined in law would help her to resist the attempt in the first place. She could report the event without feeling compromised, leaving the jerk with a felony charge and nothing to show for it.
For whatever it’s worth, lawyers call this type of case “quid pro quo harassment” and the other type “hostile work environment harassment.” These are almost always civil cases. I’m not so hot on the idea of turning them into criminal cases, much less felonies. Currently, you don’t get into the realm of criminal law unless you have a rape or an assault.
A number of years back Slate summed it up as “Don’t worry about Big Brother; worry about Little Brother.”
Have to disagree with you here though; why would you ever be drunk around your coworkers? I don’t know; maybe the world of journalism is different, but my experience in both the retail and white collar sector has been your coworkers are not your friends. If you are the least bit indiscreet, it will come back to haunt you in one way or another with regards to a promotion, a different disagreement with a coworker, something.
Easy rule of thumb, really — never get drunk around anyone except your closest friends with an agreed “no cameras” policy. Prevents one from getting in all kinds of troubles.
Filter bubble. I was exposed today on Facebook to views that are widespread — but not widespread among people I normally speak to. Staying on sites where you mingle only with people who basically share your view of life leads to the “But no one I know voted for Nixon” phenomenon.
Besides, I need periodically to confirm to myself that the left drives me bananas. Remember, my whole sense of political identity has been ripped out from under me. I’m aching to find a tribe I fit in with. (That sad, pathetic instinct runs so deep among humankind.) So I read a lot of left-wing stuff these days, and find myself nodding in agreement about way more than usual: “Hey! You finally get it that Ivan means to kill us! Maybe we could be friends?”
Then I read something like this and remember … no, wait, they’re berserk.
Yep, it is. Journalists practically drink for a living — how else do you think we get people to tell us all that stuff?
Lawyers aren’t known for their teetotalling — but it’s still frowned upon to be noticeably sloshed. I guess not in journalism circles.
Adding to this:
I’m The Boss – The Employer. My own behavior must be even more carefully guarded than that of my employees. Having once had a female employee who gladly would have thrust a shiv into my back if given half the chance (long story there), I had to make doubly sure to never allow the chance.
And for those of us raised in the wake of the First Sexual Harassment Hysteria started by Anita Hill, we learned that lesson far better than you suppose. Too many now avoid contact with women at all. Why risk a moment’s social awkwardness in a fumbling request for date, when that could ruin your entire life? Why risk physical contact at all?
As @marcin linked to her post, so I link to my own:
http://ricochet.com/463284/the-real-fallout-from-weinstein/
Amy,
I’m not sure we know the half of it.
Regards,
Jim
You’re working in family law, though, often in termination-of-custody cases with CPS. It makes sense you’d see the dregs of human behavior, extremes of human maleficence and manipulation.
There are other milieus where men and women still have each other’s backs. Wrongful accusations are awful, not matter how rare. Punishments that don’t fit the crime are likewise awful, as is a desire to delegitimize statutes of limitations. But human nature hasn’t completely changed. I have a lot of sympathy for men in today’s environment. But I’m not sure making it out to be worse than it is helps, either, and I wonder sometimes whether conservatives do that with this issue.
Especially when I consider that relations between the sexes seem to be at their best when both sexes look out for one another, cooperating to keep predatory behavior at bay, whether the predation takes advantage of people’s reluctance to believe the worst or their eagerness to believe the worst, and also cooperating with one another to help the opposite sex learns the ropes. How many of us could honestly say they’ve never seen young men and women cooperating with one another, to help their friends of the opposite sex to not get burned?
After allowance is made for a healthy conservative pessimism, I doubt it’s helpful to teach youth that things are worse than they are. Some predators prey by false accusation, others choose targets less likely to bring even true accusations of what truly ought to be considered malfeasance. And most of us aren’t either kind of predator. Most of us have an interest in guarding against both kinds of predation.
Smart move. Women only get you trouble, especially in business. Best to keep interaction to a minimal and only business level.
Re: comment 87
Almost all of us have an interest in guarding against both kinds of predation. And step one is to not kid ourselves into believing both kinds of predation aren’t equally damaging, directly or indirectly, to the respect and friendship between men and women.
We did a good job on this issue. :)