What Is it With Guys?

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Andrew Cuomo was not only a well-established harasser of women; he was a well- established jerk and a bully. The two traits usually go together. 

What is it with guys? 

Not all guys, of course. Some of us are actually gentle souls, who value deep relationships with partners, wives, husbands, and lovers. Some of us don’t even abuse power.

But the saga of Cuomo, Weinstein, Cosby, et al, lays bare what women have known at least since King David: Guys who abuse power also tend to abuse sex. Abusing women has always been taken for granted as a perquisite of power forever.  And with impunity.

Well, no longer. If you behave like Cuomo, you can expect to get busted and you can expect your career to go up in smoke.

This is why we are living in such a revolutionary moment. More than almost any other achievement of the women’s movement, going back to second wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, the Me Too struggle has undone the ultimate male power perquisite.

The struggle is not over, of course. It will still require lots of individual acts of bravery on the part of women who will be accused by powerful men of making things up and who will be the subject of attempted retaliation. But this revolution is now irreversible. 

Men now know that they behave like Cuomo, they are taking a very big risk. Impunity is over.

And there also is some good spillover on the power front. In the case of former Boston WBUR talk show host Tom Ashbrook, who was fired in 2017, the complaints began with allegations of sexual harassment. An investigation exonerated Ashbrook of those charges, but terminated him for being a bully.

As all moms (and good dads) know, the process of raising good sons is a long-term process of civilizing them.  So with society. The work never ends.

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