Appreciate The Humanity In Each Other

editorial-logo3This week my political attention, like much of the Nation, has been turned to the Supreme Court mess that has been playing out in Washington and across this Country. As I watched, glued to the television, I often shifted hats, so to speak, viewing from the perspective of being a news person, a political junkie, a citizen, a woman and a wife and mother. I watched as stories were told, accusations were made and the call for a pound of flesh went out from many of my gender. I watched, but I never understood the anger that rose from this process toward Kavanaugh. Am I a fan? Not really. Nor am I a protractor. On the issue of the newest Supreme Court Justice I am fairly neutral. What appalled me was not the confirmation, nor the accusation, but the willingness of a group of people to accept that accusation as fact without facts to support it.

Let’s be clear. I am no feminist. I am a female that truly believes that gender isn’t an issue. The same women who burned their bras and rallied for equal rights are not the same women that believe that it is “okay” if the pendulum has to swing in the other direction to get some sort of reaction for sexual misconduct. First, if it is not “okay” for the pendulum to swing against women, it is not “okay” for the pendulum to swing against men. Those are equal rights. You cannot cry for equality one minute and be willing to throw the other gender under the bus the next minute. Life just doesn’t work that way and those that worked so hard for so long to insure equality would surely be appalled at their hard work and dedication being the stick with which we beat our husbands, brothers, fathers, grandfathers, uncles and sons. My mother’s generation still wore skirts to school. It was she and her sisters that beat their heads against the glass ceiling until it cracked and finally broke. By the time I entered the work force there were no jobs that women didn’t or couldn’t hold. The pay gap was minimal if it existed at all and women have sat in the highest seats and made the toughest decisions for decades. Is there sexual harassment? Is there rape? Oh yes. But there are also consequences for those actions if they are substantiated and brought to light. And they should have to be substantiated because a charge like rape is a deal breaker. It speaks of foul character of the rapist and is taboo even among prisoners. Rape is not subjective. It is a heinous act. But just like murder must be proven by evidence, so must rape. It is unthinkable what a false charge from a faulty memory can and will do to a man. What it will do to his wife and his children. To accuse is to forever mar and that is just not “okay” without justification and evidence that back up the accusation. I have never been a fan of the Me Too movement and I still am not. We have made men the villains in our society. We have taken away the process and gone straight to judgment and our fathers, husbands, uncles, brothers, grandfathers and sons are paying for it and will continue to pay until women wise up and expect something from our sisters.

Not every woman is just in her quest for justice. Some will use any tool, be it a casting couch or a false accusation, to get what she wants. We all know her. She sat is school next to you. She is your co worker and sometimes she is your friend. But you know better than to trust her and you don’t believe anything she says. Just because she puts Me Too on her Facebook page or makes a 40 year old accusation doesn’t mean that she is telling the truth. Does the man she is about to destroy not at least get the benefit of hearing the evidence of his crime?

At the end of the day, I can take off the news hat and the political junkie. I can even take off the wife hat but the one that remains is the mother. It infuriates me to think that my “sisters”, most of which would not know a glass ceiling if it fell on their head, are willing to sell the rights of my son, a young man who they know nothing about, for the right to once again cry victim. There was a time that we were victims but that time is not now and crimes against women and men are punishable through our legal system. I watched as a group of women, some crying, sang we will overcome in front of Collins office as she waited to give her decision on the Supreme Court nominee. Over come what? We have already overcome decades ago. If there is a crime, then there is evidence and it is that evidence that will convict those that commit a crime. To ruin the names, lives and reputations of men on supposition is, frankly, appalling. Perhaps it is the men in our society that should be singing we shall overcome. After all, it clearly appears to be them that are on trial and their crime is their gender. Does it sound familiar to anyone? Ladies, does it? I feel for women in places where they truly have no voice and their bodies are not their own. That is not the United States of America and I do not want to see the men in my life in the cross hairs of a movement that has no real direction. I fear for the men in our country and wonder just what is in store in the next fifty years. Let’s hope that the swinging pendulum doesn’t end up beating us all in the head or maybe that is the only thing that will knock some sense into us. Then we can start a new movement, men and women, brothers and sisters, to just appreciate the humanity in each other.