Good morning AB, Bray, yon commenters. As always, thank you AB for doing this thread every Sunday so reliably. Thank you Bray for weekly thoughtful written wisdom. Thank you yon commenters for taking the time to flesh out the thread topic so helpfully.
Got a topic this week that is personal, yes, but very germane to this past week’s events.
For today we discuss the many “gropings” mine own self has endured through the years, many from people who will surprise.
Let us begin with the Vice-President of my union, a small independent union of salaried workers at the old Western Electric plant in Baltimore Maryland. He and I were in charge of writing the union newsletter, yes at the young age of 25 I was writing newsletter and, heh, fighting off the men.
So the Union VP….sheesh, he was like 50 years older than me and one day he boom, just reaches around and grabs me….well all the hell over….quite shocking. I jumped a mile and shouted “Cut it out” and….he did. I wonder what the hell he was thinking. I never gave any indication whatsoever I was interested in him. We did spend some time alone in the union office preparing that newsletter (Heh, I set Western Electric, then a division of mighty AT&T, on its ear with my piece “How to get promoted at Western Electric”…a snarky sarcastic piece). I guess he figured I was meat for his hands or something.
But it gets better!
MY FATHER-IN-LAW!!!!!
He was Director of Public Works for Anne Arundel county and I was married to his son for some three years when, upon dropping me off at my and his son’s house, he suddenly begins to put his hand up my skirt! I pushed him away and again, he stopped.
What the freaking hell was HE thinking?
I told his son about it and other friends of mine complained that Edward Presnell was a creep, let’s not be coy about identities. Well his son eventually left me for another woman so that’s that.
We move on to my boss at Western Electric, name was Joseph Sufcinsky, a known lover of the ladies and he became my boss in my position as a Quality Control Inspector. I was assigned the office job, working right next to ole Joe. One day I had a question about a report and he slides over to my side of the office and as I’m showing him the printout, you guess it, up goes his hand right up my skirt! Again I push him off but folks this was right out in the middle of a busy shop with people all around. I was married to the cop at this time.
What the hell was HE thinking?
I put this up on Facebook and some people asked if I was embarrassed now let me ask you all this…WHY THE HELL SHOULD I BE EMBARRASSED??? I’m not the one going around sticking my hand up people’s skirts!
My point is, there is something about powerful men that think that women are objects to feel up as they desire and you wonder why I was such a damn Women’s Libber. Bear in mind that in all three cases narrated above, all of the men stopped right away when I protested. I wonder about women sometime cause these men in my experience were quite brave and forward and I ponder that women before me responded to their advances. My boss at Western Electric for sure was always with some female in the shop so somebody responded to his roaming hands.
I bet plenty of women out there have experienced this sort of thing and frankly people I’m kind of glad the whole mess of it is being exposed via Clinton and now Trump, who I suspect probably had some roaming hands but I don’t think he had to force anybody.
I’d also point out that there were plenty of men in my life who hands roamed all over me AND IT WAS OKAY WITH ME! This point being made is that it should be a damn choice, my body is not a package of meat for you to run your unwelcome hands all over.
And women out there….MAKE A DAMN SCENE WHEN THIS HAPPENS. Embarrass the asshole.
The men whose advances I welcomed were dates, boyfriends, husbands….it’s not like I didn’t like it. But some stranger, my freaking father-in-law, my boss? There was no indication by me that I welcomed such a thing yet they felt it their right.
So I end my tale of unwelcome male hands just to show that it DOES happen.
The best way to end this is for women to embarrass the jerk and stop being embarrassed themselves, as if it were THEIR fault, that they were somehow sluts or something to be thought so little of by important men in their surround.
Then there is the priest.
Nah….maybe later.
Bill and Hillary Clinton have had their roving hands, like a octopus, in the back pockets of donors to the Foundation. That is economic sexual assault.