WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO WITH ALL THE MEN?

 AM I CRAZY OR have you noticed that there is a lot less attention paid to #MeToo these days. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that not everything that needs to be said is said, or needs to be done is done. The depth of damage going back millenia has left women so far behind that catching up is unimaginable. And yet we have to try.

As with many social movements, #MeToo has hurt a lot of people that it is supposed to help. An example would be the so-called sexual liberation of the sixties and the seventies. It was fun, but a lot  was just more pressure, and coercion, of women to give it up for free. I remember sitting at the bar in Maxwell's Plum in NYC. A guy sitting next to me was trying to pick me up but I wasn't interested in him. After a few polite rebuffs on my part he became angry. Accused me of being frigid, and worse, a Lesbian. What other reason could there be for not wanting to leave instantly and fuck him (not sure if dinner was on offer.)? This was not liberation at its finest, and I venture to say it wouln't have happened before. Or now.

A male psychiatrist told me, when I expressed my distress at being "admired" constantly on the street, that I should think of myself as a work of art.

What are we supposed to do with the men who have been called out, or those that haven't? Are we to deny them any afterlife? Do we count any good stories, movies, legislation they wrote as tainted? Is there a possibility of partial recovery? Is a legacy destroyed?

I'm not talking about true evil like Epstein and Weinstein, but more nuanced evildoers, like possibly Cuomo--although maybe he is really bad, too. I don't have the facts.

But what about Al Franken? 

A major disaster of #MeToo, for example, was losing a good senator. 

His comments about the hypocrisy of the GOP certainly rings true. 

As we wait for the other millions of shoes to drop.

Isn't it likely that most men have incidents that would clearly mark them for public castigation if only we knew?

Someone gave me a book of Woody Allen stories. They are funny. Can I never admit to enjoying a Polanski movie? 

Remember when many vocal feminists were up in arms because Hillary stuck with Bill after Monica?

What are we to do with all the men?

Most of them have simply not been caught. Are those, guilty but unaccused, to be treated as it they are blameless? The good guys? If by some stretch of the imagination we allow that maybe they have not offended, are they, we, not gulty of collusion for not calling them out? More urgent, for not calling out the system that fostered and protected the undermining of women at every turn?

TRUTHINESS--SUCH A GOOD WORD

 

I am sure that among the many legacies of Stephen Colbert, a decent amount of attention will be paid to 

TRUTHINESS,

a brilliant coinage that I take to mean something that has some of the trappings of truth, but isn't. It works perfectly to describe most utterings from politicians. For the most part, when I hear a speech or an interview, say on NPR, of an elcted official, what I hear is truthiness. 

Most politicians have learned several things about speaking to the public.

One, to say the same thing over and over, using different words, althought they often use the same words, too.

Two, not to answer question directly or at all. They just carry on saying whatever they were saying, not even alluding to the actual question.

Three, never to answer a yes-or-no question with a yes of no.

Four, most common, to blame someone else.

These characteistics also apply to official corproate spokespeople, after a disaster, like an oil spill or deaths in a mine. Particularly when said corporations are clearly at fault. The Exxon oil spill comes to mind. To hear them (Exxon) talk, the problem was in the government cleanup response. Nothing to do with lack of safeguards that every knowledgable person knew would lead to exactly this disaster. But cost cutting and profit maximization won out over considerations of safety and environmental damage.

But I digress. 

TRUTHINESS

Why am I carrying on about truthiness? Because of Trump.

You understand, truthiness is based on a resemblance to truth, a certain plausibility.

But all that was lost during Trump. There was no relation to truth, however tenuous.

There was no acknowledgment of facts, however glancing.

There was no respect for the listener, however slight. 

The Ameirican people could have no expectation of honesty, and the Trump people, it seemed, had no expectation that they would be believed. Americans gave no hint that they expected their leaders to purvey anything at all related to the truth. 

MIGHT MAKES RIGHT

is the thing, the only thing. With Trump as Commander-in-Chief, anything goes, and anything went. 

So how could the concept, not of truth, but even TRUTHINESS survive?

It couldn't. Now, with a better president, perhaps it could be revived. With it we could poke fun at the blatherers and nothing-sayers, and the hemmers and hawers, in the good-natured ways of the past.

But what to do with the previous administration's four years of utterings? I call it 

TRUMPINESS.

CLUMSY REFLEXES

Someone commented on my good reflexes the other day. And you know what? It's true. I have great reflexes, better than ever, and they seem to be improving with age. 

I attribute it to my increased fitness regimen, which, not to bore you I will describe very briefly: 5 core barre classes a week, one 20 lap swim, and 3 sessions of live-ball tennis.

This is up from 2 or 3 classes. So now.

I still knock things over, and drop them, but because I am so fast, I usually catch them before they fall over or crash on the floor. Truly an improvement.