That someone with political power was less than 100% faithful to their marriage partner should not be all that much of a surprise. Quite a lot of people aren’t faithful in that manner and politics does seem to make it worse. But the who and the who with in the wake of #MeToo does provide some amusement.
California congresswoman Katie Hill, a freshman Democrat and a rising star in the party, announced her resignation on Sunday amid allegations that she had a sexual relationship with a member of her congressional staff.
“It is with a broken heart that today I announce my resignation from Congress,” Hill, 32, wrote in a resignation letter. “This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I believe it is the best thing for my constituents, my community, and our country.”
Last week the House ethics committee opened an investigation into allegations that Hill had engaged in a sexual relationship with her legislative director, Graham Kelly, in possible violation of a House rule forged in response to the #MeToo era. Hill denied the claim in a letter to constituents but admitted to a relationship with a different, unnamed staffer on her congressional campaign that she called “inappropriate”.
House rules enacted at the height of the #MeToo movement in 2018 prohibit relationships between members of Congress and their employees. But the rules do not cover campaign aides.
No, no, no, no. #MeToo was all about how older, often white, but definitely guys would oppress the younger women in their working lives by demanding sex in return for career opportunities. Because, you know, men. Patriarchs and sex obsessed with it too, determined to use that power of male privilege to oppress women.
That the first to be caught by these new rules imposed by #MeToo is a woman isn’t how the script is meant to go. And that it does go that way nicely shows the vacuity of the original #MeToo movement.
Sure, sex is complicated, people manipulate to gain it, power and position are used to do so. People also offer it to gain something from those with the power to give benefit. But the idea that it’s just men who take part in this dance is clearly wrong, isn’t it?
Especially the idea that it’s that power of the patriarchy that allows men to do so.
Ah well, what we really know here is that this isn’t the lesson that will be taken from the episode. Because to do so would be to go against the grain of the underlying insistence, that it’s all men, the pigs, at fault.
No, we know all about sex, but don’t seem to know enough about politics. Except for rare “reform” candidates, most go to Washington not to help the poor nor repay the debt but to BOSS PEOPLE AROUND, on everything from abortion to single-use plastic. And the biggest reason you would want unearned rank over other people, this mostly among males, is to procure sex. Joe Biden, a candidate continually about nothing, is the archetype; decades of power achieved through backslapping enabled him to swim naked in front of female Secret Service agents and caress contributors’ daughters with impunity, the issue… Read more »