The accounts of sexual harassment, assault, and other mistreatment of women have become an avalanche. They expose the hypocrisy of various “family values” conservatives, but they also expose the hypocrisy of various “politically correct” liberals in the progressive media, academia, and politics.
The man responsible for Fox News, his leading “traditionalist” talk show host, and the Republican senatorial candidate from Alabama are among the conservatives brought down by their sexual misconduct. Then there are the conservative politicians, businessmen, and even clergymen who have been caught violating their own professed principles.
Also revealed to be violating their own professed principles are a large number of prominent “progressives,” men who have been claiming to be feminists, supporters of women’s rights, and defenders of all politically-correct sensitivities.
The problem is not just with progressives in Hollywood and the entertainment industry, or in liberal executives in the high-tech industries. A large number of complaints have emerged about journalists, particularly editors of specifically left-leaning publications: The New Republic, Mother Jones, Vox, NPR, The Rolling Stone.
Academia has long been notorious for professors on the make sexually exploiting graduate assistants and even young students. This continues, even in the current external culture of “safe places,” feminist theory, and sensitivity to cultural oppression. Read this post from fellow Patheos blogger Beth Allison Barr on how sexual harassment is rampant at academic conferences. She cites a study that found that 60% of women in the sciences have been sexually harassed at conferences.
It is now coming out that a major center for sexual harassment is in Congress! An interview with over 50 female staffers, lawmakers, and other Congressional employees found that virtually every one of them had either experienced sexual harassment or known of colleagues who had been mistreated. Women on Capitol Hill even circulate among themselves an un-written “creep list” of the worst offenders. UPDATE: Consider, for example, the case of Minnesota Sen. Al Franken.)
I suspect that “creep list” includes politicians from both parties. (Just wait until that comes out! I think constituents would like to know if they have elected a “creep.” There is a cause: Release the Creep List!)
And there is reason to believe that the day of reckoning may be coming for the most prominent offender of them all, someone whom feminist activists, liberal politicians, and progressives in general defended, covered for, and blamed-the-victims for: Bill Clinton.
Read Caitlin Flanagan’s article in the liberal-leaning Atlantic: Reckoning With Bill Clinton’s Sex Crimes. She compares the accounts of President Clinton’s accusers with those who accused Harvey Weinstein, then recounts the way that her fellow liberals, including Gloria Steinem, dismissed what those women said Clinton had done to them.
Perhaps when the dust settles all the hypocrites and the culture that spawned them will recover a sense of propriety, self-control, and–most importantly–sexual morality. At least the first use of the Law–as a curb to external vice so as to allow sinners to live in societies.
Illustration, “How to Hypocrisy,” free image from www.graphicsbuzz.com
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