Photo credit: Shealah Craighead
Uncharacteristically, I’ve hesitated to jump into one of the hottest controversies roiling the worlds of politics and popular entertainment at this moment in history. I fear anything I might say will be drowned out by some deplorable males who are doing everything possible to destroy the reputation of my gender. Millions of bad apples can spoil it for everyone. I’m talking, of course, about the ugly controversy over that man vs. woman thing. Or, as the woman closest to me throughout my adult life keeps asking these days, “What’s wrong with your kind anyway?”
So let me make something perfectly clear from the outset. Men who beat up women or force themselves on them sexually are creeps. I haven’t actually known very many of these creeps in my life, but one thing the current debate has made clear is that a whole lot of women have. We’ve also learned violent creeps exist at all levels of society. They’re not just dumpy, lowlife brutes in so-called “wife-beater” sleeveless T-shirts drinking canned beer. Some are Rhodes Scholar Harvard grads with respectable White House jobs. Of course, the White House itself is no longer so respectable since the president was caught openly boasting about being a sexual predator and more than a dozen women confirmed it.
The Perils of Sexual Pressure
The power dynamic now being recognized between those in powerful positions and vulnerable folks in subservient jobs is shifting perceptions. Sexual pressure in relationships isn’t always explicit. It really does go without saying when an individual’s livelihood depends upon pleasing someone with power.
There’s also been a lot of dishonest exaggeration from males who claim they’re suddenly thrust into some frightening new world where they no longer know how to behave around women without being accused of sexual harassment. Adults learn to make it through life without offending everyone else around them, male or female. Welcome to the modern world where most workplaces are open to all genders, races and social backgrounds. Figure out how to act.
|
|
By the way, discouraging offensive behavior does not preclude workplace romance. Real-life relationships seldom result from crude, offensive interactions. Some workplaces try to discourage office relationships, but it seldom works, and it’s not usually any of their business, anyway. Offices are rich habitats where people often spend more time together than anywhere else. The best relationships are still rooted in mutual attraction, respect and kindness. The worst ones, well, let’s not even get into the full range of disturbing human possibilities. Many of us still have bad dreams from the film Fatal Attraction.
The Absence of Respect
But let’s get back to mutual attraction, respect and kindness. The complete absence of those three key elements of any healthy relationship are what’s driving the current uproar over the way far too many women are treated by far too many men. More broadly, the absence of feelings, respect and kindness toward the diverse variety of people, communities and cultures that make America great is the most glaring failure of our current national leadership.
In Donald Trump’s America, real respect and kindness have disappeared even as we’re encouraged to show respect for, say, “some very fine people” who joined a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., and the beleaguered men who are being hounded by accusations of domestic violence against their wives. “People’s lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation,” Trump said on Twitter this weekend. “There is no recovery for someone falsely accused—life and career are gone.” We haven’t actually heard about any man’s life ending as the result of being falsely accused of domestic abuse, but we do know that wives’ jaws can be shattered and their eyes blackened even more than their husbands’ reputations.
I actually may have defended the idea of violating political correctness even before the concept was invented as a battle cry of the right. In response to complaints that immediately arose when I began writing a column, I replied: “There are some people one would wish to offend.” I had in mind neo-Nazis and Klansmen. Now it turns out neo-Nazis and Klansmen have a president who supports their right to offend other races, religions and genders.
The example Trump sets with his profane attacks on women and dark-skinned people are directly linked. Those bombastic vulgarities are designed to appeal to people who are angry, sickened and frightened by the changes they see in the world around them. Thankfully, neither he nor they can really do anything to stop those changes. They’re finally moving us closer to the equal rights and opportunities we’ve always claimed as our guiding, national principles.
So women will continue to have access to every job—one day, soon, even president of the United States. Black and brown people will continue to demand equal protection and treatment under the law. And decent people everywhere, including more decent males than you realized ever existed, will embrace it.
