Empathy for women, now!

I've long been an advocate for the cessation of discrimination against, and the abuse of, women in our society.  Progress has been made, but there remains a long way to go.  In the past several days, FaceBook has seen numerous posts of "Me, Too" from women, about having been harassed and/or assaulted (including rape).  The sad fact is that most women will be harassed or assaulted at some time in their lives - likely, repeatedly.  The awful part of this is that most of the crimes against women are not reported.  Why not?  Unfortunately, our culture seems all too inclined to blame assault victims for being assaulted!!  And all too inclined to allow the perpetrators to get away with it, either being let off scot-free or given a very mild slap on the wrist.  And all too inclined to provide little or no support for the victims, in terms of helping them seek justice or in terms of providing care for what many women experience as PTSD as a result of these attacks. "Well, the way she was dressed, she was asking for it!"  "Well she should have known better to be in that place at night!"  "It was just boys being boys!"  Bullshit!!  There is no excuse for harassment and rape, and the blame rests solely on the perpetrator, never the victims.  If we want to stop these crimes, we must teach our boys not to commit violence of any sort against women.  "No!" means no, damn it!

It may surprise some that many such incidents also occur to men.  I was molested (raped) by a neighbor when I was a boy.  I was so humiliated and shamed by it, I didn't tell anyone (except for my very best friend at the time), for decades - certainly not my parents!  This pedophile got away with it, as it seems many do.  Rape is not a sexual act - rather, it uses the apparatus of sex as a weapon to degrade and humiliate the victims in what is an act of violence, rather than sex.  Pedophiles - a subset of sexual assaulters - often commit assaults on either boys or girls.  And it often succeeds in silencing its victims, as it did with me. 

My wife tells me that most rapists have committed their crime many, many times, and almost certainly will never stop hunting for new victims unless they're incarcerated ... or die.  The actual frequency of rape is not known, owing to the underreporting issue, but I'm pretty certain it's much higher than the actual numbers will show.  I know of no other rapes by the man who did it to me, but it seems unlikely to have been an isolated event in his life.  His name is Paul Newton, and he lived on our block in my home town in the Chicago suburbs, 3 houses south.  I'm sure it's well beyond the statute of limitations, but I hope some other victim had the strength and courage to report him.  But probably not. 

Another disgusting incident of a different nature occurred when I was working at the National Severe Storms Laboratory.  A very famous and honored meteorologist was invited to be a consulting senior scientist there by the Lab Director, Dr. Jeff Kimpel, and it turns out he was sexually harassing women who worked in the lab.  After I was made aware of his disgusting behavior, I was going to report him, but one of his victims there begged me not to do it.  She felt that reporting him would only make things worse for her!!  Reluctantly, I did as she asked, and never reported the evil bastard.  She was probably right about the outcome, and that makes me very sad when I think about how many women have gone through this, and been powerless to obtain justice.  From everything I've heard during my time there, at that time, the overall treatment of women at NSSL was pretty poor, with an atmosphere of "Boys will be boys" at high levels in the management, despite all the safeguards that had been put into effect.

Fortunately, I've been able to overcome the shame of my molestation and now realize I wasn't to blame in any way.  If there can be said to be a "benefit" to being molested, it's that I've experienced what many women have experienced, so I have a sense of what they must go through.  The "Me, too!" campaign on FaceBook is allowing many people to come forward and say they, too, have been through harassment/assault.  Stories are optional.  Our society has looked the other way for far too long and the time has come to seek justice and provide consistent support for the victims.  It's time to take a stand against the injustices we've inflicted on victims for too long.  If you've never been a victim, just try to imagine how awful it would be.  Then use that understanding to get up and speak out against crimes of sexual violence - against women and men, girls and boys!

Me, too!!