The pit and the pendulum of sexual harassment

January 14, 2018

Every revolution has a counterrevolution. We push a pendulum away from us and it comes back to us with equal force. That’s just physics.

And, as it turns out, politics. A pair of Catherines – actress Deneuve and writer Millet – have joined with 100 Frenchwomen to sign a letter in Le Monde stating that #MeToo has gone too far. They want men to be treated fairly. They don’t want women to appear as wimps. And, most of all, they don’t want sexual freedom curtailed. The “freedom to bother” – as in a man bothering a woman – is “indispensable to sexual freedom.” ...

Alabama says, ‘No Moore’

December 13, 2017

Texas Congressman Blake Farenthold is alleged to have harassed his former communications director, Lauren Greene, in part by talking to her about a female lobbyist who had propositioned him for a threesome.

Have you seen Farenthold? It’s hard to believe any woman would proposition him at all, let alone for a threesome. But if she did, she wouldn’t have to look far for a third party. There’s enough of Farenthold to make two guys.

That might seem a low blow, but you know what, it’s a new day. And one of those signs of that new day is that Senate hopeful and mall exile Roy Moore lost to Doug Jones in Alabama’s special election Tuesday. ...

Is sexual harassment lookist?

December 7, 2017

In Larry David’s extremely awkward “Saturday Night Live” appearance a few weeks back, he worried that the recent rash of sexual predators was all Jewish – which is not true, but anyway, what I thought he was going to say was that they were all unattractive. (This was before Matt Lauer and Peter Martins, ballet master in chief of New York City Ballet, were added to the list of sexual harassers.) ...

No end in sight for sexual harassment

November 30, 2017

In his Sunday New York Times’ piece “The Unexamined Male Libido,” writer Stephen Marche offers this revelatory thought: “Men arrive at this moment of reckoning (about sexual harassment) woefully unprepared. Most are shocked by the reality of women’s lived experience.”

Translation: Men live with women. Men sleep with women. Men father women’s children. But they don’t know them. ...

The Don of denial

November 21, 2017

As heads roll in the sexual harassment version of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities,” the accused-in-chief is taking a not so surprisingly compassionate approach to fellow accused: If they deny, you must comply.

Alabama Senate hopeful and mall exile Roy Moore says he didn’t do it, so, hey, vote for Roy Moore, President Donald J. Trumpet says. ...

The tide turns on harassment

November 17, 2017

Is there any man left in America who hasn’t groped, assaulted or raped some girl/boy/woman?

From Capitol Hill to Hollywood, they’re dropping like proverbial flies. The latest to drop – Democratic Sen. Al Franken, who apologized – awkwardly to say the least – for groping a woman in 2006.

Question: What is the difference between a Democratic assaulter and a Republican? No, it’s not a setup for a joke. ...

Sayfullo Saipov and the literature of rejection

November 5, 2017

Say who?

Sayfullo Saipov. He now joins the long list of terrorists, mass murderers, assassins and dictators who are part of what I call “the literature of rejection.”

The terrorist who mowed down 20 on a Manhattan bike path, killing eight and injuring 12 on Halloween, is yet another man – it’s virtually always a man – with a disproportionate rage at rejection. ...