One important reason to care about allegations of abuse is that not only are they usually true, but they are usually repeated.
This may be most obvious in the cases of Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, but it is not limited to them.
I found this article interesting:
In the past, I remember that sometimes when people were tweeting about Bill Murray -- generally praise for how funny he was or some of the cool things he did -- I would see a lone voice here and there mentioning that he abused his wife.
It was such an aberration I assumed it was from long ago, perhaps in the '80s or '90s; it was only in reading this article that I saw the date 2009.
However, at some point it seemed to gain traction, and that's when I heard about Lucy Liu and Seth Green. Then you find out about Geena Davis, and it's like, "What an ass!" It feels like a new revelation, but it goes back years.
If I do a keyword search I can find posts from two days ago mad that Al Franken had to resign for one "prank". In fact, there were nine accusers, and they can't all be written off as "pranks".
I want to point out three factors that play a role, and I am going to use Franken to illustrate.
1. Legacy
We have a long history of allowing all kinds of abuse along a hierarchy that we haven't really stopped doing it yet, even if you can get more people to admit that it's not good. Habit is strong and it will not be overcome without conscious effort.
In 2019, Franken said "Two years ago, I would have sworn that I’d never done anything to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but it's clear that I must have been doing something. As I've said before, I feel terrible that anyone came away from an interaction with me feeling bad."
I suspect that has more to do with a historical acceptance of treating women as less.
2. Lack of confidence
In that hierarchy there is a built in deference to power (which will come up a lot), and one of the ways it manifests is this fear of losing a "genius"; that if we stopped supporting them we would lose wonderful music or movies or political genius. It is important to know that is a crock. In fact, there are talented, capable people all over, and with more nurturing we could have even more.
The people who are mad about Franken's resignation -- which was a choice he made to avoid dealing with the ethics committee (with pressure from Chuck Schumer to avoid censure) -- are mad because we couldn't afford to lose his leadership. They still think that even though Franken's successor Tina Smith is generally acknowledged as having performed well. They can't point to anything that was lost by losing him, but they are sure that it was bad.
Given that, it is not surprising at all that there is more blame for Kristen Gillibrand than for Schumer.
3. Love
We may also feel affection for a predator. Other people could produce the art we respond to, but they are the ones who have already done so. Perhaps we feel compassion. Certainly there are people who have faced their own hurt and may turn that others (though you cannot always assume that).
Franken himself has referred to regrets and depression, and I am sure that is sincere, while still noting that his regrets are about the effect on him, only paying the merest lip service to actually having been harmful to anyone.
But I won't knock compassion, and I don't have to. Just as the answer to lies is truth, the solution to harm is healing. We can want that for the perpetrators of the harm, we just need to prioritize the healing of those harmed.
The answer to all of that is going to be compassion, but it has to be informed compassion that disperses rather than consolidating power.
Yes, there will be more.
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