Am I the only one who sees the current pageant of accusations of sexual misconduct as a witch hunt?
If you are looking to me as a beacon of sexual purity, you're looking in the wrong place. I'm sure I've expressed unwanted sexual interest many times in my life. You never know until you show that you are interested, and showing interest puts your neck on the line and opens you up for rejection (or worse). I've never forced or coerced sexual favors from anyone. I take "no" for an answer. If it's not mutually voluntary, I'm not interested. I've also been the victim of sexual assault-- but somehow I don't use that experience to beat everyone else over the head, or kick them in the crotch. So, I'm sure just about everyone has something in their past they could point to which places them on one side or the other of the issue, or maybe even both sides. Especially if you stretch the definitions as much as some people want to stretch them.
Honestly, it feels a little satisfying that so many of the accused hold themselves up as our moral betters-- either oh-so "progressive" on social issues, or so deeply moral in traditional religious ways, that we should just bow down to their obvious superiority and let them tell us how we should be living. Their troubles seem somewhat deserved. Yes, it's schadenfreude.
I have no clue whether the accusations are truthful. No doubt some are, since, as I've realized, everyone has probably done something someone else would find offensive, and a great many people have probably crossed the line into doing sexual things that are coercion or even initiated force. And initiated force or coercion are never something anyone has a right to do.
But why is the act of making accusations suddenly so trendy? Maybe it's just a snowball effect, or jumping on the bandwagon. The more who accuse, the easier it is to come forward with your own accusations.
To me, it has become such an avalanche that it lessens the impact of each individual accusation, and maybe that's the reason behind it anyway. Get it all out of the way, then forget it and move on to the next crisis-- letting those "betters", or the new ones who replace them, continue telling the rest of us how we should be living; which liberties we need to give up for the common good. What rights don't matter anymore, or no longer fit in the 21st Century. Because we can't be trusted, or so those who've shown themselves to be untrustworthy declare.
And then they'll go back to behaving as they always have. Because they are entitled. We just can't relate to the pressures they face. Right?
(I'll bet I even committed some sexual offense by choosing to illustrate this post with a witch I find sexually appealing.)