Me Me Me Me Me Me Meeeeee

For many of you who have been keeping up with this blog's rants 'n' raves, you will know my position on the many recent revelations of acts of sexual and gender-based violence committed by powerful men: there needs to be a public accounting of them and these need to be held accountable. Full stop. With that in mind, today's blog is not about having a few yuks. I genuinely want to have a serious discussion here.

I remain deeply disappointed by the Democratic Party's decision to force out Al Franken. What he did was mostly, in my view, juvenile behavior, which still merits closer investigation and, based on the results of that investigation, consequences commensurate with harm caused by his acts. I see what he did as being categorically different from the acts purportedly committed by many of the other men whose actions have come to light: preying on teenage girls (and boys, as the case might be), grabbing them and then bragging about it, forcing them to witness and/or perform in sexual acts, etc.

My point is this: if we don't differentiate between the various categories of sexual and gender-based violence then we are falling into a trap that only benefits the powerful perpetrators. We will have framed the public discussion in such a way that any accuser must be pure as the driven snow if she or he is to be considered at all credible. Because if those without or with less power have committed so much as a single act, no matter how insignificant or not, that might be interpreted as less than 100% ethical, moral, legal, etc. then the powerful will be able to point out these imperfections and delegitimize both the message and the messenger.

And that situation only benefits those who have committed much more serious, damaging acts of sexual and gender-based violence, because they will be able to silence the voices that could and should be heard. It also cuts off any sort of meaningful public discussion. Put differently, anytime you hear someone insisting on "zero tolerance" for an act, they are intentionally setting the bar so high for remedying the public problem (sexual and gender-based violence in this case) so that they can cripple any serious effort to address it. Public policy in response to social issues cannot be restricted only to black and white solutions. These social issues - and their drivers - are much too complex.

Bottom line: don't the survivors of sexual and gender-based violence deserve better than having our politicians focused solely on scoring political points and grandstanding? Me thinks so.

Here's the toon: