I’ve written here before about my experiences with sexual harassment and assault. Most recently I told my #MeToo story. With the accusations against Senator Franken, I was reminded of the following story.
About 15 years ago I was working in HR for a now defunct large financial institution. I was a team lead and it was my job to provide guidance and to train new team members. We had just hired a new person. He was gorgeous: tall, handsome, a former minor league ball player. He was sitting at my desk while I was showing him how we processed paperwork. I was staring at my computer screen when I reached out with my left hand to grab my pen. It turns out my hand missed the desk and landed in his lap. I didn’t realize what I had done right away and spent several seconds moving my hand around before I realized where it was. I snatched my hand away and apologized profusely. I have no doubt that my face was red and covered with a look of horror. He laughed it off and accepted my apology then teased me often about my inability to keep my hands to myself. After this incident, I was always careful to remain a respectful distance from my trainees.
I tell this story because I have no doubt that he could easily make it sound like I did this on purpose and that I’m an abuser. People aren’t perfect. Sometimes hands land where they aren’t supposed to be, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Whether or not that is the case with Al Franken, I can’t say. But this is my problem with the automatically-believe-everything-you-hear school of thought. If we can’t take the time to be thoughtful and objective, then we aren’t any better than the knee-jerk assholes on the right who believe everything their Fox News, Infowars, Limbaugh, Hannity, rightwing smear machine feeds to them on an hourly basis.
The difference between us isn’t just a matter of who’s right and who’s left. It’s about thinking versus going with the gut, it’s measured versus reactionary, and it’s understanding that there are shades of grey versus the land of black and white. It’s okay to pause to see if the accusations have merit, and we owe it to accusers to take their story seriously, unless evidence suggests otherwise. But if we start eating our own because we’re afraid that Republicans will accuse us of hypocrisy (newsflash, they will no matter what we do), then we are just as guilty of destroying our party for the sake of our image as they are for propping up sex offenders for the sake of their party power.