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A few words about "harmless fun." It is actually very worth our time to linger on the meaning and history of those words. When the words "harmeless fun" are tossed around in reference to sexual aggression, they represent a test: Will women accept their place and play along?
If women complain about indignity or assault, if they demand respect or equal treatment, they fail the test. If women don't accept the ubiquity of a party penis, if they deny the dick as the price of admission, if they see it as anything other than "harmless fun," they fail.
Those who speak of sexual humiliation and assault as "harmless fun" created that language to gaslight women into believing their compliance is a sign of good character. Their acceptance of the game speaks highly of them. Brush it off, you'll do fine. Speak up, you're the enemy.
It's a bill of goods that women have been sold for generations. It' a language created by those who wish to maintain their status and their reputations. The words "harmless fun" are what allow Kavanaugh to claim, under oath, "I've always treated women with dignity and respect."
These words intentionally minimize the gravity of the humiliation, deflect from the underlying purpose of waving a dick around: to claim control, to taunt, to make clear who is in charge. They serve the same purpose as "locker room talk" - if you take issue, YOU'RE the problem.
"Harmless fun" is the language of old men. It feels so dated, so old, so impotent. It's the language of men who came up in the 80s when it was cool to hate gays and mock feminists. It's the language of men who lived through the culture wars of the 90s trashing multiculturalism.
Today, the defense feels so transparent, so feeble, so desperate. It's a decades-old defense that's eroded by change and time and progress. We've seen the crumbling of this defense in Lindsay Graham's red face, in Kavanaugh's grotesque sneers, in the NYTimes flaccid headline.
We're living in a world controlled by sad old men reliving glory days before an audience that's tired of their stories. They're doing whatever they can to make sure we're stuck listening to their jokes about "harmless fun." They think we still find them funny. Nobody's laughing.
