My two cents...not that you asked but it's been weighing on me pretty heavily and this blog has ultimately always been a place to unburden my ruminations. If it helps someone along the way, great, but it's really just therapy for me.
The Cornell 7. The LSU football player, the men who rape or sexually assault women every single day and get away with it. How are we still here? How have we not moved the needle one damn bit? Did the metoo movement do anything? If you are looking for answers, you came to the wrong place. Looking for solutions, also probably won't find any here. I've got thoughts. I've got anger. And it's probably going to be a windy road to get to the end of this post because I really am all over the place.
Let's get the political out of the way first. This country (world?) doesn't give a shit about women. Hillary and Kamala showed us what the majority thinks. Two highly qualified women versus a misogynistic, blowhard (and that's the nicest description I can come up-- I left out how fucking stupid and incompetent he is, how gross he is, and I don't mean physically (though he is that too), I am talking about the mocking the disabled, speaking ill of the dead, the pedophilia, the incestual thoughts, the racism, the ego (clearly trying to cover the fact that he KNOWS how inept and inferior he is to everyone) ...ok enough...we all know who/what he is (well except MAGA, but does anyone take any of their opinions seriously?))
Really digressed there...so back to it. The Epstein Files. They represent so much more than just how rich, powerful men (I'd say women too but Maxwell is in prison, even if it's not the one she belongs in) can get away with the horrible things they did to girls and women. And not just sexual crimes, we will probably never know the full depth of the depravity of all of the crimes.
It would be bad enough if it was just the Epstein Files, but it isn't just rich men that get away with this shit. Just google (or better yet duckduckgo it, because google fucking sucks!) how many "boys" (it's always "boys" when they want to explain why the men raping women aren't held accountable-- we don't want to ruin these "boys' futures) are not held accountable for the sexual crimes they commit. Brock Turner always comes to my mind first.
But let's get back to the politics. Clarence Thomas was probably the first man I can remember getting away with something that should have ended his career and there he sits on his high horse, committing crime after crime, as if no one could see it coming, someone lacking morals and decency being given a seat on the highest court, who could have seen it coming that he would accept bribes?
You probably want me to mention Bill Clinton and think I won't because he's a Democrat. But here's the difference-- Monica was a consenting adult, so it doesn't quite fit in here. Don't get me wrong, I think what he did was gross, but illegal? No. Now if he is in the Epstein Files, I expect him to be held accountable, along with the rest of the creeps. I can't speak to the other accusations against him, I didn't follow politics then like I do now and frankly I don't have the bandwidth to head down that rabbit hole today. It should go without saying that any credible accusations deserve to be investigated and my opinion on punishment is the same regardless of political affiliation.
But let's talk about this administration--- we've got plenty of sexual predators to chose from, don't we? Starting at the top. It's not my opinion that Donald Trump is a rapist, it is a legal fact. A judge has said as much during the civil trial. And it you don't like that then perhaps HIS own words stating that he can grab 'em by the pussy should've been enough for you to understand that he doesn't believe in consent and newsflash... that means in his eyes rape is ok. I don't have to reach very far to make a case that DJT is a sexual predator, I need only use his own words. If, however, you think he's "innocent" and a "victim"... I wish you all the luck in providing any evidence to justify those beliefs without sounding gullible and foolish.
Then we've got Kavanaugh, we'd know for sure that he was a sexual predator but those investigations were quashed. We've got Hegseth... I don't know why I started down this path..it's not where I intended to go, so let's just stop here with my original intent...when your elected leaders are these men... what example are you setting for boys and men? Or for our justice system? Where does the blame begin, end... who knows....
Long before we elected a rapist to the highest office, men have been getting away consequence free from assaulting and raping women and children. So it really isn't fair to blame him, as much as I would like to. He isn't the cause, he's just a highly visible example.
The direction I really wanted to take with this blog is how do we stop this.
First how do we stop our boys from growing up and being these men?
And second how do we force the justice system to start punishing them?
I remember growing up my mom having the talk with me about how horrible boys and men could be. I only remember the basics: don't ever get into a car, no matter what, even if they have a gun, it would be better to be shot than to have whatever they planned to do happen and that I might end up wishing I was dead. Sounds terrifying, and that's probably why that's about all I can remember. I know she didn't say it would only be strangers, but that I shouldn't even trust older boys at school...and I did heed her advice when a bunch of older guys attempted to give me a ride home one day when I was walking from the library (we lived in a very rural area and it was a couple miles, with big hills from home). I can still remember thinking "I know all of them, it'll be fine" and then immediately remembering her words and declining the offer. I will never know whether they were the good guys I thought they were or if in a pack, they would act like dogs in a pack and turn into guys I wouldn't recognize.
What she didn't do was really define what was and wasn't assault. I've written before about the "assault" (UGH, I hate that it still feels wrong to call it that) that happened to be at our local pool. As I hung on the edge of the pool, a boy came up behind me and before I even knew what happened had stuck his finger under my bathing suit and into my vagina. It never even crossed my mind to tell an adult about it. I was humiliated, unharmed and caught completely off guard. Compared to what other girls and women have experienced this is nothing and yet...it is something that parents should be making sure their boys don't do...which brings me to...
What did I do to raise my son to not be like this? I can not recall any conversations about consent. What age do you even start this conversation. The boy who did this to me was maybe 11 or 12. So my talk with my son should have happened in the early naughts. What was I thinking? Was I naive enough to think men were being held accountable? Has the narrative just always focused on what girls should be doing to protect themselves that I never thought about what kind of talk I should be having with my son? I know it's only recently that we have really started trying to reframe this to stop telling girls what to do and instead focusing on the telling the boys what not to do or even better yet having a full discussion by telling boys what to do when they see their friends doing this.
It seems easy to blame the men who do nothing but have we really explained to them what we expect? It's easy to say we shouldn't HAVE to... but if any of us end up in any dangerous or emergency situation if we have a PLAN it always works out better. That's why we teach about stop,drop and roll and why we have fire drills and now school shooting drills. If you rehearse things, when it happens you aren't taken off guard. Maybe we should be teaching boys and girls in school how to react and what steps to take if you witness someone being drugged, or sexually assaulted. It certainly happens with MUCH more frequency than any of the other events we are preparing them for.
Another thing worth considering (and this is me thinking while writing) say there were guys on that snapchat that saw that message and DID call campus police-- would things have turned out differently? I don't trust the universities to do the right thing. Hell, even if 911 was called, woudl the outcome have been different? The problem isn't just with the horrible bastards doing the raping and drugging... it's with the men (and women) turning a blind eye to it or pretending that the consequences received fit the crime. The fact that Cornell has come out with the defense that it wasn't "just essays" shows how completely fucked up our society is. In what world is anything other than getting the real police involved and launching a full investigation acceptable for this situation?
This goes back to mirroring what happens in politics...Jim Jordan ignored abuse allegations and where is he today? In Congress. He shouldn't be there and that he is speaks volumes as to how much we value integrity and morals. The people that our failing these victims need to be held accountable for their roles in letting assailants go free. Make the laws tougher on the universities that hide this stuff, end fraternities that ignore this stuff. End college football teams that allow rapists to continue playing.
Allow me to digress to churches. The fact that the Catholic church still has members also speaks volumes to how we feel about sex crimes. How does anyone still give money to this church knowing it's going to keep victims silent and to keep priests free from consequences? How do you sit in a pew and let these people tell you what God thinks and that YOU are a sinner?
1 in 3 women (probably not even accurate, because so many women never talk about their assaults). ONE IN THREE. And millennia later men still get away with it. It's not enough that that aren't prosecuted but now we elect them as president... it's getting worse, not better. When will women stand together and say no more? When will the good men join us? There are more of us than there are of these vile predators, we owe it to our children to end this cycle.
(and I can't stop thinking of my relative who is raising the next Brock Turner... teaching him to practice lying in from of a mirror before lying to the person's face---who the fuck does that? I will tell you who... these frat boys.... )
