Last night, while watching a DVD (yes, I'm old-school...can't figure out how to "live-stream" or whatever), the usual official warning came on. You know, the FBI's seal and the statement "Piracy is not a victimless crime"...
It got me to thinking about the phrase "victimless crime". There is no such thing. I mean, if there's no victim, there's no crime, right? If there's a victim, there is a crime, sometimes a horrendous crime, sometimes a more minor one.
Which brings me to the attitude of many voters having put into office a Groper-in-Chief. "No one was hurt, right?" Millions of voters believed that what they thought he'd do as President outweighed his behavior toward women, toward minorities, toward the disabled, toward war heroes.
True story: When I was in my 40's, having attained a BA in English and Communications and a Master's in Public Administration and had several decades of career in the non-profit sector, I was looking for a change of scenery. So I enrolled in the Horticulture program at Warrensburg's Central Missouri State, the only such program within driving distance of my home in Kansas City. At first, it was great. I got a graduate assistantship and my job was caring for the University's greenhouse. I had many years of experience in home gardening and looked forward to learning the ways of the greenhouse (which is a different kettle of fish from taking care of plants in the garden).
The Horticulture program had a single professor and was a sub-set of the Agriculture department. I loved and learned a lot in Soil Science, I learned a lot in Plant Identification. I struggled through Calculus, all the while wondering what Calculus had to do with Horticulture. It was a totally different world from my previous BA in studying literature, being steeped in science and math. But I prevailed and got good grades. I also had a summer internship at Powell Display Gardens in King. All in all, a great experience.
Except, of course, for that Horticulture prof being a groper. I was a, ahem, "mature" student so I thought I could keep it inside, fend him off and deal with it. Until I found out that he was doing the same to younger, more impressionable women who were, in many cases, fresh off the farm and unable to deal with it. I found that I was not alone in keeping it from my significant other, for fear he would take matters into his own hands. I found out that he was teaching young male students how to grope and not get caught.
Another "mature" student and I started talking to present and past female students and found that he was doing it a lot. Had been for years. To dozens of female students. All from his position of authority over us. So we gathered ourselves together and a group of four of us (the rest, fearing retaliation, couldn't go) went to the Dean and lodged a complaint. Oddly, he'd never been reported before, or so they said. The Dean made all the right noises and promised to look into it.
Which she did. The prof was "counseled" to not do it again and I was removed from all the classes I had under him. I guess I was allowed to continue my work in the greenhouse (the one place where he and I were frequently alone) because the thought was I was on my own there. No witnesses. I was enrolled in alternate classes like "Agriculture in Third World Countries", a subject which wasn't required for my Hort degree and which I had no interest in.
(I will say I learned a lot and it was interesting from the standpoint that the seminar-style class had a total of 6 students, I being the only female. There was a student from Kenya and one from Afghanistan who argued that Afghanistan shouldn't be considered a third-world country just because they ignore half their population in terms of education and productivity, but that's another day.)
The upshot of all of this was, I couldn't avoid being in a class with the groper without drastically altering my educational experience. I left the University when it became clear that nothing was going to be done to him and that I was going to be penalized for having reported him
I've said all this to say that groping isn't a victimless crime. I regret to this day that I didn't go into Horticulture as a profession. His seemingly innocuous groping altered the course of my career life.
I awakened on Nov. 9, 2016 to the news that our voting population (well, at least the Electoral College) had voted for a Groper-in-Chief, KNOWING that he was a groper and potentially an assaulter of teenage girls.
I have no words to describe how that made me feel. It brought up all those moments with my groper again and all the feelings of helplessness and outrage that come with groping. Not only did he grope, he made lewd jokes during class, made comments about female students' endowments, and trained young males that, not only is it okay (who is hurt by groping, huh?) but how to get away with it.
Victimless crime, indeed.
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