ArLyne's Diamonds

A running commentary of ideas

Saturday, September 29, 2018

Talking about "IT" #MeToo


Talking about “IT”

#Metoo – I, along with almost all teenage girls and young women was sexually harassed, bullied and abused when I was younger.   We learned how to fend off the groping hands of these bullies.  We rarely, if ever talked about it.

I had an incident that I shared with no one because I felt foolish – as though my naivety had contributed to what happened to me – many many years ago.

I recalled it recently because of the #MeToo movement.  I couldn’t tell you the date, but I could tell you the place and the approximate year.  Although it was quite distasteful when it happened, I have no trauma, no scars, no PTSD due to it. 

So, these hearings are like a double-edged sword.  The fact that Dr. Ford can’t quite put detailed facts of time and place doesn’t tell me she is lying.  The fact that she waited to come forward until now doesn’t in and of itself make her a liar either.

On the other hand – even if she identified the right person – why try to ruin his life now after all these years?  This has become a political weapon and I don’t like it or respect it.

When I write about #MeToo:  The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – this situation falls either into the bad or the ugly.  If true, the bad.  If untrue, the ugly.

Maybe it happened – but just maybe it was someone else, not Judge Kavanaugh.  How many years have passed – how do you actually PROVE guilt or innocent.  That’s why there needs to be a statute of limitations on these accusations.  That’s why there has to be due process – even in a judicial hearing – maybe especially in a judicial hearing.

This is a nightmare for all concerned.  It could have been handled privately when Diane Feinstein first learned about it.  Why was this ugly circus necessary?

The GOOD:   We are putting a stop to those complicit by turning a blind eye.  No more will teenage sports-minded young girls be subjected to abuse because the adults in their world wouldn’t act in their behalf when they complained.

The BAD:      We are destroying people’s reputations – destroying them professionally because we are talking about behaviors that might have been socially acceptable (although wrong) in the era in which they happened (open marriage, co-ed dorms, anything goes during the sexual revolution of the seventies).  We are making accusations about things that happened – or didn’t happen – so many years ago that we can’t get to “truth.”

The UGLY: Accusing someone of sexual abuse/bullying etc., is being used as a political weapon to destroy people.    It doesn’t have to be true.  It merely needs to be asserted to ruin someone forever.


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