"We Are All Abusers Now'

Apologies to Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt, Speech in Parlimanet 1887, “We are all socialists now.”

            Let’s get one thing straight: I abhor abusers.  I’ve known women abused by fathers, uncles, neighbors, and others.  I’ve known all too many students abused by teachers, and I was brought up Roman Catholic so I have a clear picture of those ills as well.  Abuse or harassment, honestly defined, is a major offense, often against the law and always against morality.  (Full disclosure: as a preteen I was abused by two older male cousins.  I finally told my mother, who told their mother, and the abuse stopped.  I don’t recall any jail time, and indeed in later life each became a police officer.)

            That being said, I am disturbed at the turn the harassment and abuse conversation has taken, as it has broadened into a self-righteous condemnation of anyone who does not meet the speaker’s self-proclaimed rules, a condemnation that threatens far more than the power abusers whose depredations have set this revolution in motion.

            Let me give a few examples.  I listened to a highly respected liberal Boston talk show, in which the term “zero tolerance” was used repeatedly.  Up to now, “zero tolerance” has tended to be a weapon of the powerful against their victims.  “Zero tolerance” gave us three strikes laws, brutal penalties for crack cocaine, and the largest prison population in the world. It also gave us epidemic school expulsions and suspensions, often aimed at students of color, and even extending to the pre-school grades.  It allows politicians to use the “soft on crime” label for just about anyone, and the disgusting “lock her up” chants (for a woman who was never proven to have done anything, despite the best efforts of Republican forces from Ken Starr to the present moment).  Now it’s a new weapon to be used indiscriminately to ruin the careers of anyone who ever crossed an imaginary line that was just drawn this year.

            To take a few cases of what may not be tolerated: “kissing someone without their permission.”  Kissing them on what part of the face?  Under what conditions?  Is anyone but me old enough to remember Sammy Davis Jr. kissing Archie Bunker on “All in the Family”? Surprise kisses are the stuff of song, screen, and youthful memories.  Yes, some surprise kisses are just acts of domination, but certainly not all.  And while the “permission” movement has a massive amount of validity on its side when it comes to overt sexual acts, kissing is not just about sex.  Who steps back and says “May I kiss you?” as a Victorian would ask for a dance?  I have been kissed by innumerable women, sometimes on the lips, including by the elderly, lesbians, and parents of students at the schools I headed, as well as by complete strangers from other cultures on first meeting.  Moreover, I have been clasped to the often impressive bosoms of women without my permission.  Should I file complaints?  Or does the writ only run in one direction?

            Take another current phrase “I felt uncomfortable.”  This is often used as a show-stopper, along with “inappropriate.”  So anyone who declares something to be inappropriate or expresses their discomfort can stop the discussion immediately.  A very useful tool, which unfortunately can be used by anyone – e.g. “It’s inappropriate to discuss gun control at this time out of sensitivity to the victims’ families.” This is of course part of the whole “trigger warning” movement, which leads to such anomalies as discussions of campus rape where the word “rape” cannot be used. 

            The over-reaction has also extended to parts of the body heretofore not included.  Remember how parents trying to teach their children that no one should be allowed to touch them in certain places use “the underwear rule” or “the bathing suit rule.”  Now the bathing  suit rule seems to extend the full length of a Victorian swimming costume.  The shoulder, the back, the knee, all are off limits, at least between adult men and women, and for all I know between gay men and other men.  And of course if the knee is included, everything below the knee must also be included, since many people pat someone on the knee soothingly, but few do so on the ankle.  I believe that leaves the arm, as long as one isn’t getting above the bicep – or maybe the elbow. 

            Let me end with another example from the aforementioned radio show.  The topic later shifted from the specific issue to the general need to condemn evil.  One speaker, a protestant minister whose main passion, according to her blog site, is combating homophobia, declared her abhorrence for the Pope’s failure to use the term “Rohynga” while in Myanmar.  According to this speaker, who, by the way, was opposed by one or two of the others on the show, you have to go where evil is being done and condemn it there.  You can’t condemn it from a different forum, in the media, but on the spot.  This example of self-created moral law, to which everyone must conform, or be damned to the speaker’s own private hell, captures where the “me too” movement seems to be taking us.