You cannot pick up a newspaper these days, nor turn on the TV, without learning of another politician, entertainment personality or business leader being accused of some past sexual indiscretion or misconduct. It has truly reached epidemic proportions, for want of a better expression.
I will not add to the muck raking by mentioning names in this piece, but I am particularly amazed by the growing number of women coming forward in recent weeks to publically accuse noted politicians of some form of sexual misconduct. Quite honestly I think that, given the era we grew up in, there a very few males alive today with absolutely squeeky clean backgrounds. But that is no justification...For the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone with the slightest hint of any type of indiscretion in their past, would ever gamble with their reputation by entering the field of politics.
Equally mysterious to me is why anyone would condone an individual with a known questionable past as an elected official representing their interests. But perhaps there will be some good coming out of all this ignorance and resultant humiliation with long-term devestating ramifications for close associates and family members.
At some point the torrent of scandal will wane, if only because the current tempest is unsustainable. But it seems unlikely things will revert to the way they were before. Women aren’t merely angry, they are fed up. Younger women in particular evince a growing unwillingness to shake off a man’s bad behavior as “just the way things are.”
There’s scant research on generational differences in outlook regarding sexual misconduct, but a recent NBC/WSJ poll found younger women more likely than their older counterparts to say that they had ever experienced harassment at work. Similarly, a YouGov survey of British women found that younger women were much more likely than those over 55 to disapprove of behavior like wolf-whistling and even winking. So the tide is indeed shifting.
Psychosocial forces, including a sexism that appears to have existed from time immemorial, as well as the patriarchal society we still inhabit, play a major role in this longstanding sexual oppression of women. One question going forward is the degree to which the law will—or even should—catch up with the changing mores.
And here we could talk about the vital importance of modifying our educational system—from grade school on—so that it’s more likely to make male children and adolescents more sensitive to the opposite sex (and vice versa). Plus, better teach them the fellow feeling and empathy that so many of them lack, particularly when they hit puberty. And it’s every bit as imperative to train men in the workplace to develop greater sensitivity to issues regarding sexual molestation and harassment.
In both cases, if we’re to effectively counter males’ largely lust/hormone-inspired transgressions, it’s imperative that they learn how to emotionally identify with the abusive experiences inflicted on the opposite sex. So they can begin to experience—“first-hand,” as it were—the adverse effects of their carnally callous behavior.
Admittedly, I have offered nothing profound with this disertation...You will have to go further to the court of public opinion on Facebook and Twitter for that.
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