Guys, ask your wife/girlfriend if she has ever been groped... It's not something we talk about...

[Oldem]

79. When the negative responses began showing up,

I took a deep breath, sat back, and now I've waited a few days. I never seriously considered deleting my post, and I won't do it now. Much has gone through my mind in those two days. After the surprise at the angry responses settled down, I had to admit to myself that the post was written in haste. The real question was whether or not I believed what I'd written. I did, and I do. To all who are agrieved, I try to understand. You have made valid points. On the other hand, you assume you know my wife of thirty years better than I do, a sort of stereotyping that goes something like this: "I'm a woman; she's a woman; therefore, I know how she'll act." Everything you've said may be true of her, but I question your ability to judge her actions simply by virtue of being of the same gender. I met my wife when we were both middle aged. You may be right that as a child or as a young woman working for a powerful but unscrupulous man, she may not have reacted as she would now, or at any time during the past thirty years.

I'll tell you a story. I taught AP English students. One of them, a girl of seventeen, slapped her AP Science teacher when he prodded her in the buttock with an electrified rod. Her back was to him, he did what he did, and she whirled around and let him have it. AP teacher and teenage girl. It doesn't always turn out as you might suppose and it has clearly turned out for some of our members. My heart hurts for those women--and all women--who encounter anything like what has been described here. Highly emotional experiences like these make civil discourse hard. Being attacked as I have been makes civil discourse hard. But I try, because the failure of civil discourse is one of our biggest problems in this super-charged, divisive, political culture.