Franken: Accusers 3 and 4.

[dawg day]

249. First-- I don't think he should resign...

However, I think we can make that case without trashing the women.

I think one thing that is very disspiriting to all of us, and women in particular, is the realization (or reminder) that this kind of behavior-- the "minor" intrusions like "groping", are extremely common. Most women have experienced them repeatedly from many men that they never expected to behave that way-- nice guys, friends' husbands, co-workers.

It's not by any means ALL men who do this, but in my life I've encountered enough "nice guys" who did do this that I'm not that surprised (just disappointed) to hear that men I admire have behaved this way in the past, maybe just a few times, maybe many times. Many of us women have had to excuse the behavior of a boss or a graduate advisor or a friend who we admire and don't want to alienate-- we say, "Oh, he was drunk," or "Oh, it was just a joke."

And those might even be true excuses. They wouldn't be sufficient, but they might be true. Trouble is, we start being wary. Leaning away from the hug. Declining the meeting in his office. Making excuses not to be alone. Distrusting. And that limits our ability to live comfortably in this world, when we can't even trust the nice guys to keep their hands off our parts.

So knowing this, having experienced this 'micro-aggression' from men we like and previously trusted, well, it's not hard to imagine that something like this might have occurred. It's the sort of thing many of us just decided to ignore. You make your rationales-- well, he's been so helpful with my thesis. You know, his wife would be so upset, and she's taking care of his elderly mother... don't make a fuss.
Don't disrupt. It was no big deal.
And it WAS no big deal, just one more in a long series of offenses many women suffer on the way to old age. And if this is a "nice guy," well, why complain. What good will it do vs. what damage it will do.

That's the bargain many of us have made many times. Maybe it's a good bargain. Maybe men shouldn't be fired or forced to resign for a few gropes.
Then again, how are they ever going to decide not to do the groping if there's never any cost to it?

Male culture-- the toxic aspect of it-- is so pervasive, especially I think in my generation (boomer). When so many of the traditional markers of "male-dom", like legal domination and absolute control, are swept away, what do they have left? (A lot, but they might not believe that.) That might account for some of this shyt-- just the casual grab to prove you're a man, or to make your pals laugh, or to show that no matter how aligned politically you are with women, you're not a pssy.

I don't know if Franken did these things, but I can't deny that nice guys engage in such behavior. We've been denying or ignoring this for, well, forever, and I'm not sure it's fair to make him the posterboy for niceguy/badbehavior. But it's also not fair to assume that these women -- who are describing the sort of experience many women have had with "nice guys"-- are lying. They might be piling on, but that's what happens-- your memory is jogged and you remember something you made yourself forget... the friends you told urge you to come clean about it... you become angry again... you make a call to a reporter. None of that involves lying.

Point is, though, that the best way for nice guys to deal with this is to explain- probably painfully- why they did this even if they knew it was wrong, what combination of peer pressure and defiance and whatever led them to do it. This would be harder than an apology, yeah. It might even be harder than resignation. But given that this is SO pervasive that even good guys participate in it, I think it might be time for men to openly start to explore what imp of the perverse led them to do such things. Maybe then they'll be able to resist that imp the next time.