Zero Tolerance--Calculated Response

I agree with the call for no tolerance of unwanted sexual attention…but…

Here follow some of my own experiences:

When I was a pre- and early teen my stepmother frequently squeezed my buttocks in a playful fashion. I thought nothing of it. But sitting at the fireplace on Christmas Eve when I was twelve she wrapped my arm around her neck and placed my hand on her breast, patting my hand and pressing it to her, while asking me to please not run away. (Probably my sister had told her of my contemplations.) I sensed that she meant to be seductive but I couldn’t wait to get away.

When I was fifteen and sixteen my family doctor “checked” my legs as part of each visit, remarking on how well formed they were thanks to my running track. He would have me drop my pants and he then kneeled on the floor and with both hands felt each leg from the ankle to the thigh. In the process his head came into contact with my penis and I tried to back it away to no avail. I was horrified because I thought he would be mortified to know that my penis had touched his head.

I had no idea what was going on, but on one of my last visits after carefully examining my penis he asked me my opinion of homosexuality. I said I had no problem with it but that I was not a homosexual. He complimented me that I would make a good doctor.

Through those years I went to the barber every two weeks or so to keep my butch haircut short enough to satisfy my father. Whenever I used the white porcelain arm of the barber’s chair he leaned up against it, causing my knuckles to be trapped against his soft crotch. I had no inkling it might be intentional, and waited for him to move so I could remove my hand and prevent him the embarrassment of discovering that my hand had touched him there.

I remember two instances of truly prosecutable sexual offenses. When I was ten the owner of a bicycle shop pulled my young female companion into his lap right in front of me and manipulated her vagina through her clothes. When I urged her to leave with me, the proprietor said no, she didn’t want to go, did she? We did manage to get out of there without further injury. That same year a gang of bullies chased me and a girl into the woods, pulled my pants off and forced the girl to put her mouth on my penis. I later had fantasies of killing those bullies. Nothing ever came of those two assaults; I was too young and naïve to realize they should have been treated as a police matter. But I am not confident the police would have done much about it.

In my twenties after some playful banter with a pretty young woman she lunged at me, and, kissing me, stuck her tongue forcefully into my mouth. I was taken aback and to this day have no idea if that was an invitation or a rebuke.

In the presence of my wife around that same time a female friend plunked herself in my lap and wriggled around, then teased me for not “getting it up.”

Between marriages at age thirty-three I went to a clinic for a non-specific urethritis. The female physician’s assistant spent far too much time manipulating and examining my penis but I endured it because—who knew? Maybe it was necessary.

It was the ocean in which we swam, the air we breathed. Things were very sexy and no clear lines had been established between the appropriate and the inappropriate—or perhaps they were, but were not publicized. Aside from forced oral-genital contact or the vaginal manipulation of a child none of the things I witnessed or experienced would have generated much reaction, and aside from my discomfort, did not truly injure me.

I am just a regular, average man. It occurs to me that if all this stuff happened to me it must have happened to almost everyone—of both genders. I imagine we could wipe out almost the whole of Congress, CEOs, anyone we choose if we set the net fine enough.

I too was a participant in the times in which I thought I lived. I remember unjustifiably “copping a feel” of the breasts of two young women, once of one and many times of another. I had no idea I was causing harm—it was playful to me and my victims were people I knew well and cared about. That was very long ago and way back then when I awoke to the true gravity of my indiscretion I forever stopped the behavior that I have long regretted.

I certainly never went so far, though, as to grab (or even touch) anyone nonconsensually by the pussy.

In my thirties I took a woman to dinner and we kissed by her car in the parking lot. She started crying and brought up her boyfriend and I, incredulous that she had just kissed me under those circumstances, stupidly asked her, “Do you love your boyfriend?” 

There had been nothing about the kiss that felt at all one-sided--she had even removed her glasses beforehand--and I could only ascribe her tears to her confusion. A mutual friend, one very dear to me, later told me that the woman claimed I had forced myself on her. I don’t know. Maybe something about it felt that way to her, but I can’t help wondering if she was deflecting her own guilt.

And there were people who reacted badly to my simply saying I liked her, or who flirted very specifically with me but objected to my own, purely verbal, response.

I do wholeheartedly support a policy of no tolerance. But, because of the ambiguity of my own experience, I cannot support a policy of total, nuclear response to every level of unwanted sexual advance. 

All it took to shake me out of my 60’s mindset was to be told, very seriously, “No, that is not okay.” I can’t help but think that if someone had spelled that out for Al Franken he would not be in the pickle he is in today. I am, on the other hand, quite certain that Harvey Weinstein and many others would not have changed their behavior, and that is because the feelings of others do not exist for them.

But I am a little alarmed that we are presently firing individuals or calling for their resignation without regard for the nature of their offense or even, in some cases, a full investigation. The issue strikes me as weaponized on the one side and a proclamation of “Look how good we are!” on the other, when a more reasonable approach would be to quietly take the perpetrator aside and deliver an emphatic NO.

The times they are a’changin’, and the changes need to have been spelled out before we can justify an all-out universally vigorous prosecution. The call for “training” in Congress and elsewhere indicates that there is a general awareness of an adjustment of standards.

Zero tolerance, calculated response. Okay?