Stop Asking Powerful Women To Fix Bad Men
Moms are supposed to solve the problems other people create, no matter how much they suffer themselves or how little power they have relative to the men they’re expected to bring to heel. Naturally, that includes our national mom, Hillary Clinton, the woman we hope can fix everything and soothe our fears, even as we hurl sexist invective at her and insist she’s too old to understand anything.
Clinton, too, was asked to account for her relationship with Democratic Party donor Harvey Weinstein. During the 2016 campaign, she was accused of feminist hypocrisy because in 1975, while employed by a legal aid clinic, she defended a child rapist in court. For 30 years, she’s been held personally responsible for everything her husband has done or been accused of, including cheating on her in the most publicly humiliating way imaginable and allegedly assaulting three women. During a presidential debate, Donald Trump repeated a line frequently heard in both right- and left-wing circles, that Clinton not only stood by her man but “viciously attacked” the women who accused him of sexual assault. Politifact rated this claim “mostly false,” noting that, although Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign “deployed tough tactics to defend against stories of consensual sex,” Hillary was “largely silent” when it came to allegations of sexual violence. No matter. She was “just as responsible” as the alleged rapist, according to conservative commentator Tomi Lahren and seemingly half of Twitter.
And now, when the Oval Office is occupied by an admitted sexual predator accused of misconduct against 19 women, the burning question of the day is, “Why didn’t Hillary Clinton, who is not currently running for office and seems unlikely to ever again, fire an employee accused of sexual harassment 10 years ago?”
When Clinton answered the question at length in a Facebook post last week, she was pilloried again for her decisions, which include (1) listening to the victim, believing her and taking immediate measures to separate her from her harasser; (2) enacting non-firing but non-trivial consequences upon said harasser; (3) believing in second chances; and (4) having a different opinion in 2018 than she had in 2008.
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For decades, these men traded not only on their power, privilege, money and networks of loyal friends, but also on cultural stereotypes of women as liars and gold diggers, to silence their accusers and bolster their own reputations. They felt emboldened to continue their abuse, safe in the belief that their voices would always be trusted over those of girls and women.
Although Clinton is the subject of so much ire in part because she has more power than nearly any other woman in the world, the reality remains that most women are not in a position to single-handedly fix the problems that men have created. Not Meryl Streep or Kate Winslet or Greta Gerwig, in an industry where last year only 1 percent of the top-grossing films “employed 10 or more women in key behind-the-scenes roles,” according to the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film. Not even Clinton herself, who despite winning nearly 3 million more votes overall, could not overcome Trump’s appeal to rural voters in crucial states and Russian interference in the election. And certainly not women like Tondalao Hall, who deserve community support, not punishment for a man’s actions.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-harding-hillary-clinton-harassment_us_5a7491c3e4b01ce33eb25aec?lcn
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I'd do so for so many high purposes, but I'd also be happy to do it just to spit in their faces.
once again.
