Guest post: It’s not about the lying
Originally a comment by iknklast on It’s the lying.
Of course, that idea of lying is what makes this interesting. Democrats have gone down for lying, and Clinton’s impeachment centered a lot around his lying. But the interesting thing is that the Dems were, for the most part, dealing with consensual sexual acts between consenting adults (even accepting the possibility that Lewinsky couldn’t be consensual because of disparate power, but with that caveat, most women can’t be truly said to be consenting, since men in general have disparate power over women in general).
The Repubs, on the other hand, who seem to get away with it, are not consensual. Anita Hill did not consent to being sexually harassed by Clarence Thomas. The girls that Roy Moore messed with were not adults, and therefore unable to give consent to an adult male. Kavanaugh also was not dealing in consensual sex, either in his teenage exploits or the more recently alleged college exploits.
So it really is about the lying to most people, and that is the problem. I don’t hold with lying, but I also believe that a person’s consensual adult sexual life is their own business, and should not be part and parcel of the election/impeachment process.
But rape? No, Kavanaugh is not about the lying, it is about the rape. Rape – a crime. But not just a crime, a crime against another human being, a human being with less power, a human being who is denied their own bodily autonomy by the choice of another human being to rape. A crime which deprives human beings of their peace of mind, their happiness, their confidence. And even if rape itself did not occur (no penetration), it is still a crime – sexual assault. And it is targeting a specific group, a group historically oppressed and disenfranchised, a group that in general has less power and less ability to affect change. And those excusing it should ask themselves – would they excuse such a thing if it happened to them? Would they feel it was just juvenile antics? Would they be willing to sit in their living room for the rest of their life watching the news talk about the person who had perpetrated this act on them, and realizing that this man was now in one of the most desired jobs in the entire country, making decisions that affect the life of the victim (and everyone else) and nothing being done about it – except, of course, mocking and shaming the ones who bravely came forward? We all know the answer to that – if they were the victim, they would scream from the rafters until the perp was shamed and censured. They would not stand for it. But if it’s a woman?
The problem often is couched as lying, and in the case of Gary Hart and Bill Clinton, I think that’s reasonable. In the case of consensual sex, I think it’s reasonable to say it’s about the lying. But in a case of sexual assault, it is not reasonable. That tells women that they don’t matter, it’s okay what a guy does to them as long as he doesn’t lie about it. (And a lot of people have suggested that it would have been okay if he would just admit it and say he’s learned from experience, he’s sorry, and he won’t do it again – note: THIS DOES NOT MAKE IT OKAY).
Yes, this was a bloody good comment and an excellent point. I could (and occasionally do) argue all day that consent between two adults can be a complicated business when there’s a power differential and – as Inklast says – when isn’t there?
But abuse of one sort of power isn’t the same thing as abuse of another sort of power, such as holding someone down, turning up the music, getting your friends to stand guard, spiking drinks or joining a queue.
We’re (barely) clinging to the surface of a dying world where mainstream international politics now routinely compare really fucking bad things like abuse of privilege to gain access to women’s bodies or otherwise abuse them to even more unbelievably horrible bad things like premeditated rape IN ORDER TO MAKE THINGS LIKE PREMEDITATED RAPE NOT SEEM SO BAD.
It’s become one of the many, everyday tools of statecraft. I mean, politics has always been about throwing people, classes of people and generations of classes of people under various busses but there’s definitely something new here. Gaslighting is routinely pitched so perfectly that it is immediately incorporated into global public discourse and the many, many people who point it out are dismissed as cranks by governments and as possible cranks even by sympathetic media.
I’m not proud of everything I did when I was a bairn. For example, I had sex with a number of people who were very drunk. While I’m satisfied that consent was mutual and enthusiastic, I definitely wouldn’t do that now. Fuck spontaneity, it’s not like horniness is actually a rare commodity, is it? Opportunities for sex are hardly once-in-a-lifetime and if they were, that would seem an excellent reason to not do it. I think often of those drunken encounters and wish I’d behaved better.
I can’t imagine that any of those people ever think about me or that I made the slightest impact on their lives. But I have to recognise the possibility that I took advantage of people, that I might have hurt them, and – above all – that the consequences of my actions were consequences FOR OTHER PEOPLE, not for me.
It’s not something I can just walk away from and the idea of this crazy concept of reflection as a cynical, almost unconscious tool casually used by already privileged people to continue to screw people – figuratively and literally – boils my absolute fucking piss.
I’m somehow both rambling and ranting at this point, I know. But this deliberate, cynical and moreover effective manipulation of world events at the expense of people upon which the world has already shat rips my purple trousers.
I don’t think this said what I meant it to. I meant that reflection should cause us not to cynically use reflection as a tool to get our own way in the future and to silence the complaints of people we’ve been shitty to.
Stewart, I’m honored. I have now had one of your memes attached to one of my guest posts. What a treat.
latsot @ 2 – that was how I understood it.
iknklast – my pleasure!