The Tsunami

I hate to say that anything at all is encouraging about Donald Trump's campaign for president (if that's what it is, and I suppose that's what comes of having someone gaslight you for however many months he's been at this, you eventually have no idea which end is up) it must be that the tsunami of women coming forward with their sexual assault, etc stories seems to have no end. It's not so much a tsunami anymore, as the oceans rising with global warming. It can't be denied, it can't be ignored. And it's EVERYONE. It's basically everyone who was born with a vagina, or even people who look like they might have been born with a vagina. At first I felt validated, that my little (I thought it was little) experience of a boss telling me that he couldn't stop looking at my ass--and we worked in the same ROOM, so that was there, all the time--was borne out by so many other stories--so MANY other stories--but now I'm just sort of depressed. It really makes me wonder what men are really like. I sleep next to one, I love one, I am the daughter of one...do they ALL do that? I know that's not the case, I honestly do. My life has somehow worked out that I spent a lot of time with men, from really, the youngest age. When I was small, my father was in the Army. Soldiers don't faze me. They are my baseline normal, to me for years every man went to work in a uniform, and I thought for a long time that kernel corn (say it out loud) was a person. Then, some time later, after he retired, he was a carpenter and then he supervised a group of carpenters and I sat with them, listened to them talk and got taken around on jobs. (I will grant you I was the boss's daughter, so there may have been some self-censoring going on, but I also have ears like a lynx). When I was in college, I was the only girl in my boyfriend's boy-gang, for want of a better word. We ate together, drank together, had pizza together--and college boys, especially drunk ones, don't have very good filters, and while there were things said, it was never at the level of what we're hearing now. After the horrible job, I worked at an engineering company--the one with the looser company culture, for want of a better word. Between 50 and 75 people worked there, the majority of them men (this was the 80s, STEM wasn't a term and there was one woman engineer) and there was one man that I can think of who was a sexual predator, plus the vice president who liked to look at breasts, but other than that--to use a very antiquated term, they were gentlemen. They were normal men, and there was the normal amount of, um, hormonal activity let us say, but other than that one man, everyone knew what no meant. At least at work. Fast forward many, many years. It has come to pass, for various reasons, that I spend a decent amount of time at an auto repair shop. Again, men, men, men, men. Men working there, primarily male customers, and again, I have ears like a lynx. In the time I've been associated with the place, there have probably been at least 20 mechanics (mechanics tend to be a little nomadic). I have heard jokes, most of them aimed at the fact that I was there at all, but even though that was in bad taste (and it was one joke, repeated ad infinitum--and no, I don't want to explain this better) it was not a dirty joke per se and it was not even aimed specifically at me as a woman. I know that that's clear as mud. And out of those 20 men, one turned out to be, in fact, a sexual predator. He molested his step-daughter and went to prison for it. And the ranks closed against him. His name is barely mentioned. He became and remains a pariah. Now, there are pin-up calendars in the garage part, but no customers are supposed to be there anyway, and the rule that every woman is treated with courtesy and kindness is strictly enforced. Again--I have ears like a lynx. My point? That's a whole lot of men. A WHOLE lot of men, across every economic and educational section. And that isn't even adding in the men I eavesdropped on in restaurants, on trains, on buses (ears like a lynx again) and not only in English, but in German. And I know that they don't all act that way, even when they think no one is listening or looking. I KNOW that, and I also know how upset a man can get when someone impugns a woman he's with--and I also know that that isn't knee-jerk, she's my woman stuff, it's honest distress that someone would say that. So I know it's not true. But. There is the one man in the office. When he heard I was pregnant, he kissed me to congratulate me and stuck his tongue in my mouth. There's the wore me down boss. All the men I mentioned in the earlier post plus a few who I remembered since then who had really been consigned to the ash heap of memory. So it's GOOD that they're being talked about, that women are talking about this, that they are finally saying that it happened to them, to ALL of them. To all of us. But what is happening, I think, I guess, is this--the bad men, which sounds like something a five-year-old would say--are going around being bad men and for whatever reason, everyone else is turning a blind eye. The good men aren't saying anything for reasons I can only guess at, but not wanting to get punched in the face might top the list. Women aren't saying anything, and if they do...sadly, no one believes them, not even the good men, possibly because the good men ARE good and don't want to believe that someone could do the things that are being reported. Please tell me that's it. Please don't make me believe that the bad men do it and the good men want to but don't have the balls? Because that's the other reason, the only other reason I can think of. I don't like that one much, honestly. This is, as I have said, a bad time. To go back to the ocean analogies, it's like when there's a storm and all sorts of stuff gets washed up on the beach--specifically, in this case, pieces of old wrecks. But I firmly believe that when things get dragged out of the dark, they can start to heal. Again, I will say--my fervent hope for what comes of all of this is that this will cause such a national dialogue, such a debate, that not the women who have been assaulted, but the assaulters, will be driven underground. That the mere notion that you've considered treating a woman that way will inspire such contempt that you would never consider doing it. That you would become a pariah. I am 61 years old and I have never seen anything like this. I have never seen so many women speaking openly about this. I have never seen such a turn from victim blaming. And if this brings a change, then maybe being gaslighted by Trump for more than a year was worth it.