If you are moving pols around a mental chessboard based on whom you like or loathe, you're missing the point. A maniacal- and transactional- focus on degrees of punishment for celebrity offenders does as much to reduce day-to-day sexual assault and harassment of women- especially the ones who aren't famous or get creeped by men who are- as the death penalty does stopping murders.
Trying to sort out why Franken should stay and Trump shouldn't makes women victims anew. That's because you are weighing the credibility of accusers based on what little- if anything- you know of their claims from abbreviated media reports. You weren't there forty years ago, or last week. You can't know enough to set yourself up as judge and jury.
It also means you are willing to grade men who prey on women on the curve.
Whether or not they remember doing it, whether they claim a free pass because it was a long time ago and it was OK then (which ought to clue you in that it isn't OK now, and wasn't then, either), there are really only two questions to ask:
1. In the course of meeting thousands of nameless people in their public rounds, why do public figures need to grope comparative or complete strangers, or try to fuck them?
2. As two British philosophers recently wrote,
When someone tells you something and you have no reason to disbelieve them – no reason to think that they have made a mistake or are being malicious or have some other reason to lie to you – you take them at their word. If you didn’t, you’d be in serious trouble. Forget asking passers-by the way to the bus station, or asking the guard when the train leaves, or asking your colleague where the meeting is: they can’t prove to you that they’re telling you the truth, so why should you believe them? The short answer is that they have no reason to lie to you. We should have the same attitude when a woman tells us she has been abused or harassed – especially a woman we know and whose word we would normally take on trust, or a woman who has very little, if anything, to gain and quite a lot to lose by putting it out in the open. Don’t ask her for proof; instead ask yourself whether you have a credible reason for thinking that she is lying to you. If you can’t think of one – and you almost certainly won’t be able to – believe her.
This article by Sydney Brownstone sums up my views better than I can:
I Don't Care About Democrats Setting a Good Example
I don't care about shaming "Republicans into being better people." I don't care about "unilateral disarmament" when it comes to sexual harassment and sexual assault. I don't care about "asymmetrical warfare." I don't care about high morality, or norm preservation, or any other term people are using to explain the rationale to get rid of Democrats who sexually humiliate their colleagues and constituents.
When it comes to sexual assault and sexual harassment, there is only one thing I care about: Putting an end to it. That is it. Plain and simple. Nothing more, nothing less.
If liberals consider that goal some sort of performative morality without any political calculus, they clearly do not understand my interests, and I don't want to belong to their political party.
If you know there's a sexual harasser in your party and you don't do something about him, more sexual harassment will continue. If you're cool with that because of political calculus or whatever else, you're not just as bad as the Republicans. You're worse.
Liberals who take this position are not only endorsing sexual harassment. They're also using other broad liberal principles (women's rights!) taken up by the party to justify the hypocrisy. It's the ultimate form of betrayal from the people who are supposed to have our backs.
Here's an example. What's worse: Telling a total stranger you've been sexually assaulted or harassed, then having them ignore you or shut you down, or telling a family member and receiving the same treatment?
Dan mentioned Ed Murray in his post this morning, and I think he was right to do so. One of the most mind-bogglingly re-traumatizing things about Ed Murray and his supporters' treatment of the allegations against him was that they were simultaneously claiming to be on our side. The side of women, of queer people, of survivors of assault who saw Trump elected and immediately relived their own worst nightmares. We had trusted these politicians to represent our interests, to give a shit about us. And they stabbed us in the back.
Getting the party that proclaims to represent our interests to actually be held accountable to them is a necessary first step. Without it, Democrats lose credibility, they lose trust, and they are vulnerable to the same cries of hypocrisy that Republicans are currently receiving. The Federalist and Breitbart are already having a field day. How are liberal women supposed to want to vote for a party that keeps its predators close?
So, to women, and to all male or non binary survivors of assault or sexual harassment: You don't owe anyone anything. If Democrats call caring about you a political loss, the party is lost. "No scumbags" should be a given, not something endlessly debated. The party that abides by this rule doesn't deserve cookies for having basic decency. There is so much more work to be done. Next.
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