I’m not trying to pick on a gender when I say, “nice guys, powerful guys, smart guys” and now, as of breaking news today, “funny guys.” I’m just looking at statistics when I say guys. I know cancer is not limited to one gender. And there’s nothing funny about it.
We’ve been dying of this multi-leveled disease for a long time. This cancer at its core is the sexual abuse/violence/intimidation—but the secrecy and cover-ups, the aiding and abetting, the conscious and semi-conscious denial, this is where the cancer metastasizes. We let it.
In I Punched Myself in the Eye, I tell the story about a $20-foot massage spa in our neighborhood that John and I frequent. Or I should say, we frequented. It was a good, clean, safe place and a darn good value. We thought. Recently the spa was shut down due to several complaints of sexual misconduct by the owner/massage therapist—a therapist John and I both have used without a problem. Soon after the news broke, I had two separate conversations at two different locations with two different women who—as far as I know—don’t know each other. The had both been customers of the accused. They, too, had heard the news, and both poo-pooed the allegations. They both said to me they didn’t believe it because it hadn’t happened to them personally. And that he seems like a nice guy. They said the same, exact thing:
“Didn’t happen to me.”
“Nice guy.”
That we tend to disbelieve (and/or blame) the accuser still shocks me.* And what shocks me more, still, is that we protect the perpetrator, literally (statue of limitations, much?) and figuratively. I see it all over my newsfeed, especially with the constant drip floodgates of sexual allegations across entertainment and politics and, well, everywhere… On social media and in the flesh, I witness personal friends and acquaintances complain about these tiresome, annoying allegations, still pointing the finger in the wrong direction at the “band-wagon-jump-oners.”
The other day I read the Gay Talese quote about Kevin Spacey and his accuser. https://www.salon.com/2017/11/08/gay-talese-to-kevin-spacey-accuser-suck-it-up-once-in-a-while/ Talese felt “sad” for Spacey, that the poor guy has had his career screwed up because of something so insignificant that happened so many years ago. He may as well have waved his hand and said, “Phhhft, who among us has not sexually assaulted someone?”
It’s not my cup of tea to go political on social media, so this is not a political post. The last presidential election was difficult and complicated for many. Many people have said they voted not for a personality, but for policy, “the bigger picture.” I understand. I think. I think I am looking at the big picture here, too.
Here’s a policy: Can we start believing our children, our friends and family and neighbors, can we start protecting the truly vulnerable ones?
I don’t know if it was Maya or Oprah or Dr. Phil who said it first or best, but I believe we teach people how to treat us. We also teach others how to treat others. Our Tweets matter, our minimizing and poo-pooing matters. Our denial really matters. We give a wink at bad behavior, we look away, we fire one guy and hire one for the highest position in the land. We call it “boys will be boys” or “ten minutes of indiscretion ten years ago.” Last I heard, an actual life can literally end in a real moment. Lives can be ruined in ten minutes.
This post isn’t exactly a rhetorical question, but it’s also not an invitation for hostile debate. Thanks for listening. Let’s talk about a cure for cancer.
There is a cure. We already have the research.
*In an article written by Sandra Newman for Quartz, she begins by playing the devil’s advoctate:
“…What if a woman has consensual sex, and then regrets it the next day? What if a woman gets dumped by her boyfriend and decides to accuse him of rape as revenge? What if she’s just doing it for attention? Are false accusations reaching epidemic levels in today’s hard-drinking hookup culture, where the lines of consent have been blurred? Critics argue that reports of rape should be treated with more caution, since men’s lives are so often ruined by women’s malicious lies.
But my research—including academic studies, journalistic accounts, and cases recorded in the US National Registry of Exonerations—suggests that every part of this narrative is wrong. What’s more, it’s wrong in ways that help real rapists escape justice, while perversely making it more likely that we will miss the signs of false reports.”