This Is Rich

[Content Note: Sexual harassment.]

Democratic San Diego Mayor Bob Filner has now been accused by eight women of sexually harassing and/or assaulting them, and his defense attorney Harvey Berger argues, in a letter to City Attorney Jan Goldsmith, that it's the city's fault:

Berger's letter stated, "The city has a legal obligation to provide sexual harassment training to all management level employees, and to provide such training to new managers within six (6) months of hire... The city failed to provide such training to Mayor Filner."

The letter said the mayor's training was canceled and never rescheduled.

"Therefore, if there is any liability at all, the city will almost certainly be liable," Berger wrote.

He then goes on to quote Bob Dylan.

"Many might argue that 'you don't need a weatherperson (sic) to tell you which way the wind blows,' and an adult male should not need sexual harassment training," the letter read. "I would point out that in his decades of public service for the people of San Diego as a U.S. Representative, Mayor Filner never received sexual harassment training."

Because OBVIOUSLY everyone should know that no straight man is capable of NOT SEXUALLY HARASSING AND ASSAULTING women if he isn't given a two-hour workshop which tells him that's a no-no.

I have written, somewhere between ten and one hundred biebillion times, variations on the following:

Implicit in feminism/womanism is not only the belief, but the expectation, that men are not brutish nor infantile—nor stupid, useless, inept, emotionally stunted, or any other negative stereotype feminists have been accused of promoting—but instead our equals just as much as we are theirs, capable not only of understanding feminism (and feminists), but of actively and rigorously engaging challenges to their socialization, too.

Feminists, of course, have the terrible reputation, but it isn't we who consider all men babies, dopes, dogs, and potential rapists. The holders of those views are the women and men who root for the patriarchy—which itself, after all, takes a rather unpleasantly dim view of most people.

If feminism has expectations of men to live up to, the patriarchy has expectations of men to live down to. And I can think of fewer better examples of that than: "I didn't know not to molest women because no one gave me a sexual harassment class."