QotD

“The fact that both parties are willing to defend on partisan grounds rapists and sexual offenders based on their political views, in my mind is exhibit A that this indeed is a rape culture. And rape culture always has been bipartisan.”–person on a message board, discussing an article about Bill Clinton’s history of sexual harassment and assault.

Additional reading (which is not the article being discussed by the person quoted above):
“Most of all, as a [male] citizen I’ve come to see that the scandal was never about infidelity or perjury — or at least, it shouldn’t have been. It was about power in the workplace and its use. The policy case that Democrats needed Clinton in office was weak, and the message that driving him from office would have sent would have been profound and welcome. That this view was not commonplace at the time shows that we did not, as a society, give the most important part of the story the weight it deserved. “–Bill Clinton Should Have Resigned, Matthew Yglesias

i\I’ve added “male” to this sentence because in 1998, when I was in law school, small groups of women were quietly calling what happened to Monica Lewinsky what it was: vicious sexual harassment of the sort we should expect when we went to the Hill (I went to law school in DC) or at Big Law. I recall becoming quite angry at a (male) friend who laid most of the blame on the women (Lewinsky, Tripp, Jones and Mrs Clinton), reserving the rest for Republicans who were blowing things out of proportion.

Yglesias is right: Bill Clinton should have resigned; his party should have demanded it. Yglesias is right, as well, that in re-evaluating the situation, we can’t change the past but we should be clear about it. That means recognizing that those of us who saw Bill Clinton for what he was at the time were ignored, shouted down, dismissed as man-haters or of so little consequence in power structures, no-one cared.

But this is a change I never thought I’d see in my lifetime: the recognition of this constant noise and pressure and threat which comes from casual sexism and everyday misogyny. The understanding that yes, every woman is treated this way; that many of us are seriously damaged by it but that all of us are harmed by it. The realization that it is your job not to let it continue.