By Kareem Rahman
It seems like every time a new sexual harassment scandal is uncovered, one political party or the other takes the news as an opportunity to hop up on their high-horse and claim “they are what’s wrong with this Country.” Not the sexual predator themselves, but the sexual predator’s political affiliation. How stupid is it to think that only Democrats or only Republicans can be sexual predators? Almost as stupid as thinking that there are none in your political party.
If you take a close look at the recent explosion of sexual harassment allegations being alleged, you will find that they all have a common theme. Power. One person has power over another. The power to make a person’s life better or worse. The power to make it hard or easy for a person in an industry or field. The power to directly effect a person’s livelihood. Having your livelihood negatively affected can be a scary thing to most. The person who has the power to negatively effect a person’s livelihood is banking on that fear. “If you ever say something to anyone about this, I’ll make sure that you never work in this industry again!” Knowing the power they hold, makes it easy for a person in a management or executive position to say this. Wanting to continue to make the money they do, or even hope to advance in this field, makes a person accept this behavior and say nothing at all…………..until years and years later.
It takes a person years to finally say anything about the sexual harassment they’ve been the victim of in the past because they most likely are waiting until they feel like they’re in a position to do so without having their livelihood affected. Maybe a person has a new job, moved on the a different industry, or have become a boss themselves. It’s only at this time that a person has the courage to come forward about the sexual harassment or assault allegations. None of this have anything to do with a person’s political party or views. This is simply about power, and a feeling that things or people are owed to you simply because of this power. Power doesn’t always have to mean the rich Wall Street guy. Power can be a shift manager down at your local fast food restaurant. He has the power to directly affect a person’s livelihood by assigning them more or fewer hours, and maybe even firing a person. You’ve heard stories of cops raping prostitutes. They’ll threaten them afterward. Who in their right mind is going to believe a prostitute over a cop? And in most cases they are right. Society has placed some kind of moral authority on some, and placed some type of garbage image on others that make getting away with things like this very easy.
There will be more allegations of sexual harassment moving forward. There will be Republicans accused and there will be Democrats accused. Each time a claim comes forward, one side will raise hell and claim that the other side is disgusting. A few days later a claim will come out against a person of the other party, and that same person or people will be as quiet as a church mouse. While all of this hypocrisy and blaming is taking place, nobody is trying to figure out a way to make this sexual harassment stop in the workplace. It won’t stop either. As long as people can have the power to basically have someone’s life in their hands, and that person has some credibility, things will not change. And as long as society continues to automatically take the side of a person simply because of their financial standing or status, those in positions of power will ever have to worry about there being consequences for their actions. If there are no consequences for an action, what’s to stop a person from continuing to do what they do? Republican or Democrat.
