When the news first broke about Senator Franken my heart pretty much sank, and then when later developments showed this news was going to get bigger, it got even worse.
I knew then that I felt he should resign, the end. I’ve maintained this stance, despite it being very unpopular from the start, based on the available evidence presented so far by at least eight women. I will not change this stance unless the evidence changes.
I don’t want any thank yous for it. I admit fully I’ve been a hardass about this since the beginning, and I admit fully my zero tolerance stance on this issue may even be a bit regressive. People have accused me of being a prude (I most definitely am not), of hating progressive Democrats (nope, wrong), of not caring about the political picture (well, true—I really don't care), and so on, but I’m not ever going to stop being a hardass about this. Here’s why.
It started in 2011. I’d just found the online atheism movement, and for the first time in awhile I felt like I belonged. At the time I’d curtailed my activities here, because of the actions and stances far too many took after Prop 8 passed (long story short, a bunch of now former Kossacks revealed themselves to be blithering racists---and they were also wrong).
Alas, it didn’t last for online atheism. At the same time Rebecca Watson got on an elevator with someone, who made what she felt was an inappropriate proposition. She publically talked about it, and explained why she was uncomfortable, and why she felt this was inappropriate. Mr. Richard Dawkins responded in a fashion that I can only describe as “lady, get the fuck over it.” But it didn’t end there. Watson got death and rape threats. And then other women began to report their experiences with other men who were (and in some cases, still are) big names in atheism and skepticism—experiences that include date rape. It got ugly—the flame war was one of the ugliest on the internet to that point. The atheism movement split. It’s often not remarked at how secular the Nazi-sympathizing alt-right actually is, well, many of them came out of the split in the atheism community.
One would think sci-fi and fantasy fandom would be better. It was not. Rebecca Watson opened up the floodgates.
Fandom conventions now have strict policies about sexual harassment. They didn’t always. And predators lurked and preyed. Some were big names---I’ve read stories about the greats like Niven and Asimov, stories that just made me sad.
Articles have floated up since about the time Rebecca Watson reported her incident with Richard Dawkins. Here’s one from 2014.
I was a nerdy kid who loved science. Still love science. We didn’t have cable and the internet didn’t quite yet exist so my mother subscribed to many science magazines to encourage me. It was here I learned about Dr. Geoff Marcy and his team of astronomers. They confirmed the first exoplanets orbiting the stars 51 Pegasi , 47 Ursae Majoris, and 70 Virginis—planets only inferred by the way they tug on the stars they orbit. Since then we’ve discovered thousands upon thousands of other worlds orbiting other stars, and some of those worlds have the potential to support life in a fashion that’d be familiar to us.
I’ve never ever been one to have heroes but Dr. Marcy came pretty damn close so in 2015 when sexual harassment (and worse) in the sciences and academia was in the news (although apparently, not here), it about broke my heart to read him included amongst those who harass and worse, the universities he worked for covered it up (UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University) because he was a rock star who bought in the bacon (in the form of lucrative grants and prestige—I mean he fucking discovered planets!). And then, I was angry. Very angry. It’s turned out since then, as that conversation has continued, that most of the sciences have severe sexual harassment problems.
One thing I learned from all these is that women network and warn each other as best as they can about men who are creepers. Dr. Marcy, it turns out, was well-known for being disgusting. This was known for decades—a huge open secret. Women (and some men too) in astronomy warned each other about his behavior. It struck me that this is profoundly unfair. Why didn’t they say something?
Watching this site and twitter and Facebook---most of the latter two timelines of mine are populated with Kossacks current and former---I understand why. Y’all (and I mean this as a very general “y’all” --if it doesn’t fit you, it's not about you!) don’t believe them.
It makes sense. Rumors have circulated about Kevin Spacey for years. No one believed them until the Weinstein Effect (as Wikipedia is classifying this for now) began to snowball. I’m still waiting on Bryan Singer to get his comeuppance—he is truly disgusting. Ed Buck, the big-name Democratic fundraiser I wrote about some weeks ago, well, his creepy drug-pushing cryptoracist behavior with young black men has been known for decades in Southern California. We all know about Woody Allen. Women at skepticism conferences would do their best to warn other women about Michael Shermer, one of the big names I referred to (he’s still quite popular. I, for one, put his books out of my house and sold them at a yard sale). A science fiction and fantasy author and her husband (both now dead) used to pimp out her daughter at conventions---when her daughter was a child---and people knew and did nothing. Or, they didn’t believe, or chose not to believe.
This conversation that’s blown up the political world---it began a long time ago. It didn’t just happen to hurt Democrats.
Did we all forget Eric Massa? He was a Democratic congressman from upstate New York, winning in 2008.
He was quite the liberal voice as I recall, and on this site from what little I remember—recall I’d departed for a time---he was pretty popular.
He also couldn’t keep his damn hands to himself.
This account, drawn from more than two dozen interviews and internal documents, shows that aides were accusing the 50-year-old married lawmaker of far more egregious behavior than previously known. Beginning in March 2009 and over the next several months, male staffers complained that their boss had touched them in a sexual manner, came up with reasons to have staffers travel alone with him on overnight trips, and expressed a desire to have sex with the men in the office.
But it wasn't until after a year of staff complaints -- when allegations about Massa's behavior threatened to become a public embarrassment -- that supervisors alerted congressional leaders to the problem. That led House leadership to demand the matter be referred to the ethics committee. Massa resigned a few weeks later when the media reported he was the subject of a harassment probe. He declined to comment for this story.
Once the harassment probe became public, he resigned (if you read further down the article, you can see some truly noxious hypocrisy from the other team, who likely ignored complaints from their own staffers being harassed in recent years when they obtained the majority.) I don’t remember if he was defended as vociferously as Franken has been. It’s recently come to light that Massa’s accusers were among those who were paid with taxpayer dollars in exchange for their silence. And look at what’s further down the WaPo article linked above:
"It speaks to the significant power differential that exists between members of Congress and the personnel they employ," Katz said. Even though a 1995 law prohibits Congress members from engaging in sexual harassment, she said, "staffers by and large are fearful of retaliation and career suicide if they file complaints or go outside of their offices to report sexual harassment."
This is no longer acceptable.
Ever since I learned some years ago that the Senate pool was clothing-optional and when the women Senators asked the men to put a bathing suit on—trunks, a speedo--something, and they were then told to get over it, I wondered just what would eventually come to light.
We’re at that moment now. At the time of this writing the news had not broken but the Washington Post and the New York Times are ready to name the names of Congressional harassers. My local paper, the Harrisburg Patriot-News, ran a big Sunday spread basically calling the Pennsylvania Capitol a den of sexual harassment but no names were named. Given the recent behavior of at least one state House member---you’ve all giggled over it this week so I need not elaborate---I’m beginning to wonder just who is going to be on that list and will I be surprised at all.
(btw, as far as I know, Mr. Massa is still married to his wife, and never did come out. Whatever arrangement they now have is not any of my business or yours, but I hope he’s now learned the value of consent.)
My stance is unchanged: Harassers---out! I don’t care what party they belong to, their sexual orientation, their gender, nothing. I don’t care about what political party this does or does not hurt. I no longer care about the “game” of politics (even though it seems the Franken resignation probably is part of it). Should the President resign? Fuck yes. Should Moore step aside? I actually think he belongs in prison. This really is not a Democrats versus Republicans thing for me, and this is not a “purity” thing for me either. This isn’t prudery---anyone who knows me knows I am very much NOT a prude, and I mock political "purity" on an almost daily basis. This is a doing what’s right thing.
it’s also telling how many have called out the Democratic women senators but not the men over this. Yeah, one day we’re going to have to have a site-wide discussion about that.
I will stand by what I feel is right, even when it hurts.