Friday, November 11, 2011

Sexual harassment is and always was rampant in our world

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/11/11/a-flood-of-harassment-horror-stories-after-the-herman-cain-allegations.html

I am in my 70s now, and no longer have to fight off harassers. But as a girl in my late teens and early 20s, I was sexually harassed by middle-aged men who ought to have known better. I babysat for a dentist and his wife, until one night as he was driving me home, the dentist started to grope me. I dashed out of his car and turned down his wife every time she called me to babysit again. She asked me if something was wrong--had something happened that made me not want to babysit her kids again? She probably suspected her husband, because he would often make comments in front of her when they were on their way out the door during my babysitting at their home, saying, "Can I just stay home with the babysitter?" But I didn't want to tell her and just said, no, I was busy doing other things in my life. I felt sorry for her being married to such a disgusting boor.

At work in an insurance company during those same years, I was harassed by one of the agents who used to ask me for a "kiss" and make out-of-line remarks -- YUK! As a young girl unprepared for this kind of situation, I didn't know what to do, and endured his behavior for years. Finally, I reported it to the boss, and the agent was reprimanded, but came to me privately, accusing me of ruining his life. He plaintively cried, "What are you trying to do to me?" There was no sense of responsibility for what he was trying to do to me. Or to his wife. I quit that job, rather than have to now face his criticism of me. He was their top producing agent, so there was no way the company was going to get rid of him.

I have also been propositioned by a priest (which doesn't seem so preposterous anymore, now that revelations have come out about covered-up sexual predators in the Catholic Church).

I have come to believe there is far too much testosterone in our world today. I want to see women take over the running of things. The recent excellent PBS show on Women and War and Peace is one everyone should watch. It warmed my heart to see so many women everywhere now demonstrating for Peace in our world. Way back in the early 1980s, I was a member of a group called Women's Strike for Peace, and went to Washington, D.C. to talk with many Congressional senators and representatives, urging them to back proposals calling for an end to nuclear weapons. As we earnestly told of our concerns regarding nuclear war, we women were treated with disdain and ridicule by several of these men, one of whom patronizingly told us, "Just let us men take care of things, ladies; you can go back to your kitchens and bake some cookies, and leave the country's business in our hands." That's the kind of put-downs women of my generation came to expect from the men around us. Pathetic. And it's still going on in a world that has been run into the ground by power-mad men and their raging testosterone (note how the disgusting Herman Cain, in the most recent Republican debate, deprecatingly referred to Nancy Pelosi as "Princess Nancy"). It's definitely time for a change! We need more women in power positions in our governments, who can make decisions for peace instead of war.

Read the following and get a picture of how many women there are in our world who have had to endure sexual harassment:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/11/11/a-flood-of-harassment-horror-stories-after-the-herman-cain-allegations.html

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