Women have alleged that President George H.W. Bush has groped their behinds, and are calling him a sexual harasser. To me, that seems a little extreme. In my day, we wouldn’t use labels like “harasser” or “assaulter,” we’d just call him a “sick old perv.”
Just because older men still feel entitled to touch women’s bodies, I don’t think that necessarily makes them “harassers,” it just makes them “every single man I’ve had to deal with throughout the entirety of my life.”
Things were so much simpler when I was a young woman. For example, when I was in the workforce in the 1970s, my male coworkers and superiors constantly disrespected me, touched me inappropriately, asked about my personal life, and forced me to take meetings at strip clubs. You know – they were just a bunch of jerks. But nowadays women insist on calling that “vile, predatory behavior hell-bent on making women’s lives miserable.”
Honestly, I just don’t see the difference.
What I really don’t understand is the emphasis on language. Who cares if they’re called “harassers” or “rapists”? In my day, we just called men like that the “everyday demons who ruined my life” and then I’d go home to my husband who yelled at me for not having his favorite socks clean. What was so wrong with that?
Millennials today are so sensitive. If a man has sex with you if you haven’t consented, all of a sudden that’s “rape.” If a man calls you “sugar” then corners you and grabs your breasts at a work party, that’s “assault.” And if a former President of the United States makes a horrible joke about loving to touch women’s asses and then does so without permission, that’s “harassment” now? I don’t know, but that seems so complicated. Can we just call it what it is? Men being gross men.
I guess if you want to call someone who chronically touches women’s bodies without permission a “harasser,” that’s fine. But I’ll call them what I’ve always called them: dirty old pervs who I wouldn’t dare go near. I just feel so bad for their wives.
