OPINION:
The attempt to redress and reform one of the great blots on American society, the use of authority in relationships to intimidate subordinates into granting sexual favors, seems to be reaching a crisis point, though the human condition probably guarantees that we will never run out of victims.
The careful society, however, remembers that all reform movements run the risk of producing unintended consequences. The result of the temperance movement early in the previous century, pushed along by well-intended religious folk eager to eliminate the health and home-destroying evil of demon rum, ended with Prohibition and the birth of organized crime. The reform of public vulgarity that leads to reproof of private behavior is a reform past due, but it, too, can get out of hand.
The modern reform movement is dealing with one of the most powerful forces of human nature, the attraction of one very human person for another with the ultimate aim of sensory satisfaction — “sex appeal,” in the argot of the street.
Human emotion is complicated. In a time less eager to “let it all hang out,” the manipulation of human nature was clothed in casual euphemism, such as “the casting couch” or the exercise of “womanly wiles.” The fact that commonplace language was used to describe such exercises meant there was acceptance of them as “business as usual.” Boys will be boys, and all that.
When women began entering the workplace a hundred years ago it was inevitable that the mutual attraction of men and women would complicate that workplace. Men and women when thrown together are always attracted to each other. It’s in the stars, and in the DNA, too. We wouldn’t have men and women without it. It’s when that attraction is exploited by the male of the species to advance selfish carnal aims that the divinely ordained natural attraction is wickedly abused. Not all abuse is the work of the male. The female arts of seduction are usually irresistible, and Adam has been a bit of a sap on occasion since he first espied his mate strolling through Eden.
A woman’s reluctance to blow the whistle on abuse is understandable, and the right of the abuser to due process inevitably poses a conflict. The notion that “women don’t lie about sexual harassment” may sometimes, or even often be true, but such an argument would never stand up in a court of law nor even in the court of public opinion. Innocent names and reputations can be besmirched since there is no final court of verification of the charges, or absolution in the case of slander.
Demanding that an accuser, nearly always the woman, make accusations in public seems grossly unfair, but it’s unfair to deprive a defendant of his (or her) rights, too. Life is unfair, in John F. Kennedy’s famous formulation, and a good society will always do what it can to resolve the pain of those who suffer in the fairness gap. A presumption of truth is the consolation of a woman accusing an errant man, but a presumption without evidence can never be binding.
Most of the accusations of sexual conduct that have consumed public attention over these past few weeks — lurid charges against the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Al Franken, Roy Moore, Matt Lauer and other stars of stage, screen, radio, politics and journalism — have been credible because they are clothed in the presumption of truth.
Some accusations border on the trivial in a robust culture. A half-remembered wink, a pat, a squeeze or nudge from a decade or two in the past hardly rises to the level of harassment. Accusers must beware lest they so damage the presumption of truth that a backlash of opinion will render the valid to be invalid. When everyone is guilty, to reprise a caution from the past, no one is guilty.
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