N and I are among the last of the dinosaur marriages and we watched as the world of women’s rights took its most dramatic turn since suffrage. For a while, N’s role was ridiculed by some women – we thought they were all nuts. A big part of the change involved sex and abuse. We talked about these things and their impact often over the years. Lately, I have been remembering a lot of this while I watch Cain struggle – he was born two years after us.
Important adjustments were made in our time. Men cannot demand sex, not even from a wife in a dinosaur marriage. Women cannot “ask for” rape and no is no. We found ways to get women to report rape and prosecute it without losing their friends, families or spouses. With evidence, his-word-against-hers stopped working. It’s hard to believe that any of this was ever even the least bit controversial but it was and then we pretty quickly got over it.
The hardest part came in the workplace under the heading of sexual harassment. Boys chase girls – or so they think – and girls go where they are most likely to be chased. It’s often hard to read the signals and with a little kool-aid it can get progressively harder. The new objective in this area was to find a way to protect women from the unwanted attentions of more powerful men who sometimes demanded sexual favors of various degrees in exchange for job safety or advancement. That important objective is forever complicated by those girls who are anxious to execute such transactions as well as the cheaters and extortionists.
At work, we joked about ordinary mortals such as ourselves who were taught that girls should play hard-to-get and boys should show their commitment with persistence. “Why won’t that idiot harass me a little?” In truth, we all knew the rules and signals well enough. Girls will help out the male dummies – or not; we always knew that was a clue. The over persistent were always jerks; 99% of them are harmless and everybody knew it. Men were quickly retrained and there was no more touching without an invitation – girls were and still are allowed; they use it as one of the clues for the clueless. In the beginning, there was plenty of controversy, some severe penalties and some opportunism and extortion. But we adjusted and life went on.
One group that never really went down the politically correct road was black men and women. The attack by Anita Hill on Clarence Thomas was an aberration and coming 10 years after the alleged offence was ultimately ignored. I’m convinced that almost everyone believed Hill – that Thomas made passes and lewd remarks – but we didn’t care and we didn’t think she cared at the time it happened.
We don’t know the complete Cain story; at least not yet. But it sounds as though he was one of those guys who asked every woman he met to have sex with him – even women that worked in his organization. Two other things appear to be true: one, that he got more persistent as the drinking increased and the night wore on and two, that his offers were sometimes accepted. We have not yet heard a single suggestion of improper action or consequences beyond boorish persistence. The guy sounds like an offensive but harmless jerk. We’ve all known our share of guys like him. He almost certainly offended people and made it easy for women to complain.
We are lucky. Herman Cain is an empty suit on so many levels that we just don’t have to care about the details of these particular sins. Just his handling of the reports is so incompetent as to disqualify him from the office that he is not really running for anyway.
We made important changes in my lifetime and now I think it’s time for another adjustment or two. Let’s stay out of the private lives of our public servants and other consenting adults while we also do what we can to reduce abuse and extortion in harassment lawsuits.
Oops. As of 2:30 Monday it looks as though Cain was touching which of course goes beyond being a jerk. As I said, we're lucky we don't have to decide whether it's all true. [If it is true, how could such a guy even think about getting this much into the spotlight?] I stand by my reform thoughts.
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