From Pine View Farm

Plus ca Change? 0

Betsy Biesenbach reviews the year in sexism and offers a disturbing prediction. A snippet (emphasis added):

With all the allegations that are coming out against powerful men, it almost seems there will be no men running anything when this is over. But of course there will. No matter how powerful a few women become, men are still in charge and will be for the foreseeable future. The next step in this movement will undoubtedly be a backlash against the women who have come forward, and the end result will be that we are silenced once again.

In the meantime, how many men are afraid for their reputations and their careers? Ironically, women who have resisted unwanted advances have always been just as afraid for theirs. It’s a taste of what women feel every day — with the additional knowledge that their very persons aren’t safe.

In a tangentially related piece, Marty Klein, at Psychology Today Blogs, explores why some persons are so uptight about anything sexual, even when it’s not actually sexual. Here’s a bit:

Like kids in a candy store or at a scary movie, people obsessed with erotic imagery are simply not emotionally equipped to ignore what they see. These people deserve sympathy, but they don’t get mine because they deal with their upset in such an aggressive way. They want to cleanse the public sphere of sexuality—and they imagine the public sphere as practically the whole world. It includes Greek statues in City Hall, radio ads for birth control, string bikinis on the beach, vanity license plates, lube in the drugstore—the list is almost endless.

I argue that the piece is related because it sheds some light on why, when confronted with news of sexual misconduct and harassment, some folks don’t want to hear or believe them. Follow the link to determine whether you think I have a point.

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