“Women often internalize that sense of responsibility for men’s needs. Stormy Daniels felt so responsible for coming to a stranger’s hotel room in 2006 that she felt obliged to provide the sex he wanted and she didn’t. She told Anderson Cooper, ‘I had it coming for making a bad decision for going to someone’s room alone and I just heard the voice in my head, “well, you put yourself in a bad situation and bad things happen, so you deserve this.”’ (It’s worth noting that she classified having sex with Donald Trump as ‘bad things happen’ and the sense in that she deserved it was a punitive one.) His desires must be met. Hers didn’t count.”
How do I not remember hearing about that when she did the interview…?
“But the follow-up story to the #MeToo upheaval has too often been: how do the consequences of men hideously mistreating women affect men’s comfort? Are men okay with what’s happening? There have been too many stories about men feeling less comfortable, too few about how women might be feeling more secure in offices where harassing coworkers may have been removed or are at least a bit less sure about their right to grope and harass. Men themselves insist on their comfort as a right.”
Yeah, I’ve been getting some of that from my own advisor, who keeps complaining about how professors can’t have meetings with their students with the office door closed and he’s not allowed to make any remarks about female colleagues’ appearance, even if it’s just that they look professional. One of these days I need to tell him that it’s fine to make a comment on a woman’s appearance if and only if he would make the exact same comment to a man and no one would find it odd or “gay.”
Loki is the Philosopher King 