As alleged sexual assailant Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s story explodes worldwide and Maria Shriver finally leaves Arnold Schwarzenegger – after she finds out he was sleeping with the maid – I’m sensing a distressing pattern.
It has nothing to do with the ever-lengthening catalogue of men behaving badly – nothing new there – and everything to do with the weasely way women, including mothers, wives, even self-described feminists, have been excusing them.
They always have their reasons. Frankly, I’m sick of them all.
Before I continue, I want to be clear. Men who abuse their power for sexual gain are themselves responsible for their actions and should be made accountable, preferably through the justice system. Nothing that follows is meant to suggest otherwise.
But still – women have to step up.
Let’s start with Strauss-Kahn, facing various charges relating to an alleged attack on a maid in a hotel room.
Strauss-Kahn has a long history of pressing up a little closely to just about all the attractive women he comes in contact with. French journalist Tristane Banon describes a situation in which Strauss-Kahn forced himself on her, undoing her bra and trying to unzip her pants. She fought him off and got away.
The then 22-year-old Banon went to her mother, Anne Mansouret, for advice as to what to do about Strauss-Kahn. Should she press charges? No, her mother insisted. Why? Because it would be politically inconvenient. For whom? The Socialist Party of which Strauss-Kahn is a member – until this recent episode, he had leadership aspirations – and for Mansoure, who was a regional councillor under the Socialist banner.
Seriously. Mansouret chose the fortunes of her political party over her own daughter’s well-being, to say nothing of the countless women who remained vulnerable to Strauss-Kahn’s predatory bent. Women fighting violence against women have always articulated the importance of making perpetrators legally responsible. It’s not only about sending a message to the assailant or even sending a message out to anyone else considering such behaviour. Keeping chronic attackers off the street protects other women – pure and simple.
But when it comes to priorities, women seem to be right at the bottom of the list.
When a series of harassment rumours came out involving Arnold Schwarzenegger, his wife Maria Shriver shrugged them off. During the California’s 2003 recall election to replace Gary Davis, Shriver defended her husband against the over a dozen women who claimed they’d been groped by him, saying she’d believe her husband before she’d believe them.
Plainly, her background as a Kennedy – she’s the daughter of Eunice Kennedy and Sargent Shriver – gave her just the training she needed. Hanging around all those priapic, privileged politicos taught her that the boys’ political careers always mattered more than the experience of the women they treated like so much used tissue.
I’m guessing Shriver walked out on Arnie less because he abused his power with the household help and more because she felt personally hurt. Either way, knowledge of Arnie’s extra-marital affair with the maid sent her out the door, but the previous complaints of myriad women didn’t matter a damn.
And let’s not forget good old boy Bill Clinton. The stand-by-your-man attitude that wife Hilary has put up in response to hubby Bill’s philandering is pathetic enough. But it’s no match for the countless so-called feminists who shrugged off the sexual connection between the president and his intern Monica Lewinsky. Those feminists knew full well that Clinton’s behaviour constituted an obnoxious abuse of power.
But like the Socialist Mansoure, they worried more about the fate of Clinton’s liberal administration than with the importance of dealing with the actual issue. It was too risky, they said, to make a big deal out of it. The right wing could win if they did. So in the end, the consciousness-raising that could have gone with calling the president of the United States a sexual harasser never happened.
Time for a change.
Time to stop letting the Strauss-Kahns, the Silvio Berlusconis (don’t get me started), the Clintons and the Kennedy emulators set our sexual agendas. Abuse is abuse. Start calling it what it is and stop assuming it’s just a small thing and that everything else matters more.
Nobody would give a damn about sexual abuse if women hadn’t bravely come forward to describe their own experience. And no one would have done a thing about had there not been women there to support them.
Time for women to start supporting other women and stop giving these creepy guys a free pass.
