Trump. No, Trump.
As an older person, I can remember when powerful men could come on to women sexually and have a newspaper not just not condemn it, but justify such behavior. I’m talking of course about America’s most influential feminist Gloria Steinem’s March 22 1998 Op-ed, in America’s most influential newspaper the New York Times, discussing President Bill Clinton.
Steinem said that grabbing breast’s in the Oval office of a women seeking employment, or taking down one’s pants and asking for oral sex with an employee in a hotel room, is okay if the man obeys the women’s request to stop at that point. She noted that neither is sexual harassment.
It remains true, that the places males are supposed to touch a female to initiate a romantic/sexual relationship, are also the ones that females object to being touched, if such an overture is unwanted. Now though, even a kiss if it turns out to be unwanted, and even when it is not by your boss in the workplace, is called sexual assault. To subvert Shakespeare’s words, using the same word for a kiss and rape does not make (it so) them the same. As that song from “Casablanca” proclaimed, a kiss is just a kiss. Or to paraphrase Shakespeare, you can call poison ivy a rose but that won’t keep it from making you itch.
Am I trying to excuse my own family’s discretions? Well there is this. Once after sharing a few drinks in a bar, my cousin attempted lip to lip contact with a woman that turned out to be unwanted. Maybe I will remind him of the violent encounter, when tomorrow the two celebrate their thirty seventh anniversary.
Still, the topic of males thinking they have the right to touch females needs to be addressed. I was reminded of this with the recent death of former WJM television producer, Mary Richards. After her television career, Richards went on to play guitar for the Rolling Stones. As a Stone, she was subjected to being violently sexually molested by gangs of teenage boys practically every day. She noted that these experience were more terrifying than trench warfare. In relating an incident where she was seized by two boys and woke up in a garbage can practically naked, get this, she blamed the incident on what she was wearing. What I’m saying is, what happened to the good old days?
Sincerely,
Trump. No, Trump
Dear Chump, No, Chump:
Yes, those were good times. However, I think you are mistaking the fictional lead character in the Mary Tyler Moore television show with the Rolling’s Stones guitarist Keith Richards. Don’t feel bad, I’ve made the same mistake myself. It was Keith who had those experiences which he related “nearly killed me”, with teenaged girls being the culprits. In the garbage can incident, he related that he was “silly enough” to be wearing a chain which the girls grabbed on to, in order to capture him. Fortunately, after this story was related on the program “Fresh Air”, the subject of sexism was immediately addressed. Specifically, the anti-female aspects of Stones lyrics.
As we know, when men make sexual advances it is about power and hatred of women, but only of course if the overtures are unwanted. So clearly these girls hated Keith, as do all adult women who make unwanted sexual overtures to male celebrities.
But let’s give credit to Mr. Richards, as with other male star’s bodies (actually any men they choose), girls have been given carte blanc to touch them in whatever way they choose. To Keith’s credit, he apparently acted in the socially accepted manner. He refused to defend himself. Bystander’s also took the moral stand and refused to rescue him, emotionally or otherwise.
Since he is man, the perhaps thousands of sexual molestation’s he experienced are an example of male power. Keith after all is a part of a legendary rock and roll band, which gives females the right to control his body. As his band mate Mick Jagger would say, he was under their thumb, but take it easy baby.
