#metoo

Yeah, this is decades late. The delay is part of my journey, and I'm not proud of not standing up for others and myself earlier and more vocally. 

So #metoo has made it really clear that women are universally subject to inappropriate sexual behavior and abuse and violence involving sex.  And more than a few men have chimed in as well, because inappropriate sexual behavior can occur to a man as well. If you grab my ass or my crotch, and I don't want you to, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman: get your fucking hands off my junk is a perfectly acceptable response.  And yes, that’s coming from a position of privilege, I know.  

There's a different variation on this that's not overtly sexual harassment (but may involve sexual contact), and that is the abuse and violence that is perceived as "consensual" or "appropriate", involves denying control to the abused individual, and is at the heart of the issue. Hazing as "bonding" is one example; any relationship where there's a power disparity that requires the less powerful party to consent (or not) to something against their interest is another. 

I've had a colleague exploit their relationship to my organization's leadership to behave unprofessionally and un-collegially to me, and to refuse to accept my authority as a technology professional. I've had said colleague threaten me in veiled and coded language, and usurped my authority to direct work on technology for their business-- not because it made their work any easier (it didn't) but because they could.  And they were explicit: no one will listen to you, because I have the power to tell the story to a person who can take away your livelihood.

I was told by others that I couldn't complain about this because "that's just how it goes." 

It hurt when it happened, and it still hurts now. #metoo.

It also sounds a lot like what the women who were abused by Harvey Weinstein reported, only without the sex. Sounds even more like what business associates of Weinstein report as the cost of doing business with Weinstein. And yeah, it happens to everyone -- we all have to suck it up.

No. We don't. 

It's all abuse. And we countenance it by saying that it's what successful people do, as the price of business, as the cost of social acceptance. But it's not: it's our culture's inherent, implicit, and explicit respect for people who have the will and ability to take agency and control from others. Writ large, it's slavery. Writ small, it's cage fighting. in between, it's what has led tens of millions of people to write #metoo. 

I know, tl:dr and tmi.  Guess what: it’s time to accept that we need to cauterize the suppurating wound that’s eating away at our culture and civil society.  

Postscript: I first wrote this in 2017. I should have left my job at HHS and ACL at that time, because the abuse I experienced continued until I was forced to retire in 2023. My mental health spiraled downward, leading to a major depression disorder and anxiety episode that I’ve been treated for from 2020 until now. Because of the events that took place at ACL, the consequent interference in professional opportunities I sought, and the traumas I experienced I’m unlikely to ever work again as a technology professional, and my personal life has been permanently affected by the workplace abuse.  

I lost years of my professional life, and between millions and hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential income because of workplace abuse. I will never get that back.

As a nation and as a culture, the casual acceptance of abuse and the disempowerment and theft of agency, of the usurpation of the rule of law through accepting the impunity of action of wealthy and powerful people, most often white men, has continued to erode our democratic and egalitarian institutions. And while those institutions and the government they supported were imperfect, the idea that they were improvable, that we could work together to make life better for everyone, but importantly for the people who had the least and the most to overcome was always there. 

The idea that we, together, can make a better world remains. But we need to acknowledge the threat that abuse and loss of agency represents to all of us and that in a better future, the causes and effects of #metoo are radically reduce, and those who abuse and act with impunity face the full weight of justice. 

Independence Day

Because: reasons I never published this when I wrote it 19 years ago.  

It’s timelier now than it was then.  Enjoy. 

It’s Independence Day, 2007.  In the year since the last Independence Day, our nation has experienced:

The “inadvertent” suspension of habeas corpus in order to justify our judicial and military response to terrorism;

The conviction on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, of a senior appointed official of the Bush Administration, and the subsequent commutation of his sentence by President Bush;

A seemingly endless series of “terror alerts” which seem less intended to protect our physical well being than to distract, disturb, and disorient us;

The continued occupation of Iraq, at the cost of billions of dollars a day, three American soldier’s lives, many more traumatic injuries to American soldiers, and countless Iraqi lives taken and ruined, not to mention the incalculable loss of goodwill to America and Americans throughout the world; and

A series of Supreme Court decisions that have collectively reduced the rights of individual Americans to seek remedies for and protection from unjust actions by employers, schools, and religious organizations while strengthening the rights of corporations, churches, and the government to limit the freedoms our founders argued and fought – not once, but three times – for.

This is far from a comprehensive list of how Americans have seen our individual and collective independence and freedom eroded over the last year.  And many people have spoken far more eloquently than I can on the individual issues that threaten to tear apart the fabric of our Republic.  That this Administration and its supporters believe themselves to be beyond the rule of law is the single overarching threat to our Republic.  

The failure to abide the rule of law by the Executive Branch has been growing as a threat at least since President Nixon was pardoned for his actions in the Watergate scandal, leaving any number of illegal actions (the bombing of Cambodia, the U.S. role in the Chilean coup d’etat) that were never investigated or prosecuted in the interest of “national healing”.  It reappeared as the Iran-Contra scandals, the Savings and Loan crisis, the investigation of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the perjury trap encountered by President Clinton as a result of his consensual sexual relationship with Monica Lewinski.  

This is not the first time in American history where failure to abide the rule of law was seen as a threat to the Republic.  Abraham Lincoln wrote and spoke of the threat in his Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois.  In a speech that was meant to address the issue of the perpetuation of the political institutions of the United States, much of what Lincoln spoke concerned his fear of the growing presence of mob rule.

“I know the American people are much attached to their government; I know they would suffer much for its sake; I know they would endure evils long and patiently before they would ever think of exchanging it for another, - yet, notwithstanding all of this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property are held by no better tenure than the caprice mob, the alienation of their affection from the government is a natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.”

I’d argue that this is exactly the sentiment that allowed the Republican Party to convince a majority of Americans to vote for them.  By both advocating “law and order” for the masses and openly disregarding the laws – and their fiduciary responsibility to the country – the Republican Party has brought the nation to the edge of dissolution for a second time.

Addendum, 19 years later.  

I hate being correct.  All of this and worse continued during the remainder of the Bush/Cheney Administration, and with the seditious intent of the not-so-shadowy right-wing conspiracy, visible as the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and Leonard Leo’s alt-project, Teneo. 

That’s before the shitshow confluence of grifters, reality TV personalities, celebrities, and ignoramuses and bullies that make up the Executive Branch as constituted in both Trump Administrations arrived.  

The solutions for the problems remain the same. The effort and amount of time required to correct the damage caused will be far greater than had we started the work to fix the systemic issues and address the critical, immediate issues in say 2010.