Tuesday, January 09, 2018

"He's probably brought it on himself..."

That line is from a recent Tracey Ullman sketch on the BBC. It features a stinging role reversal: A man is robbed at knifepoint and female cops suggest he was at fault for the event because he dressed in a way that signaled he liked people taking his possessions. It made me laugh...and think.

Women, of course, face this kind of absurd reasoning whenever they contemplate filing complaints for sexual assault or sexual harassment. The male-dominated world is often slow to accept that women are innocent victims of assault or harassment, that they didn't do something to "deserve" what happened to them. Some women even buy this nonsense.

I hope that events of recent months will encourage women to speak up when they're victimized by harassment or assault. And I'm praying that we males will believe them!

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