Men are pigs

Even Democrats. Can we at least agree on that much?

That’s what I told my oldest daughter when I had “the talk” with her at age 13.  She had recently entered middle school and would soon be the recipient of the attentions of teenage boys, if she wasn’t already, and having been one of those myself, I thought I owed her the sum total of my wisdom on the subject, which was then, and is now, that men are pigs.  I may have qualified it a little, telling her that some boys may not be pigs yet, but given enough time, they would become, like other men and boys, pigs until proven otherwise.  I think I told my daughter that I had been a pig, at least until her mother got ahold of me, and that I was still capable of piggish behavior unless I restrained myself.  But the main thing to remember for the rest of your life, I said, was that men are pigs.  Not some men, all men, at least until proven otherwise. 

Our governor in the state of New York, Andrew Cuomo, is a pig.  He is also an asshole by many accounts, including those of at least two men I personally know who have worked for him.  He’s obnoxious, he’s a bully, he enjoys making people who work for him afraid, he yells at underlings, he holds grudges, he is unpleasant to be around if you are in an inferior position to him, and now we know – surprise, surprise – that when it comes to women, he’s a pig. 

Governor Cuomo has been accused recently by three women, two of whom worked for him, of behavior which can be described as at best boorish, and at worst, a form of workplace sexual harassment.  In the third instance, at a wedding, he placed his hands on a young woman’s back and then her face and asked if he could kiss her.  In other words, he acted like a pig.

Men aren’t born this way, and of course, not all men behave like Cuomo.  It’s passed down by fathers, by teachers, by sports figures, in movies and books, in school hallways and bars and fraternities and on neighborhood stoops, and by the time it’s absorbed, it’s too late.  They learn that coming on to a girl too strongly is okay, that pushing her to have sex and pushing again and again is okay, that drunken fumbling and awkward attempts at sexual humor are okay, that commenting on girls’ bodies or even making fun of them is okay.  They learn a lot of stuff that’s not okay at all because they see others doing it and getting away with it.  It’s probably what happened to Cuomo as a boy, and it certainly happened to me. 

When men get power, it’s even worse, as we’ve seen with other powerful men who have been accused of sexual harassment in the workplace like Les Moonves, the former CEO of CBS; Matt Lauer, the host of the Today Show; Charlie Rose, the host of his own talk show on Bloomberg and of CBS This Morning; and Mark Halperin, a frequent guest on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and host of his own political show on Showtime.  The behavior all of these men were accused of by multiple women – in some cases, dozens of women – ranged from sexual harassment to sexual assault to rape.  They all had reputations as workplace tyrants as well.  None have been charged with crimes, some have been sued by the women they harassed, but they’re all pigs, every one of them. 

The case that most resembles Governor Cuomo’s was that of Al Franken, who beginning in 2017 faced allegations from multiple women of groping and unwanted kissing on the mouth.  Franken was investigated by the Senate ethics committee, but before the committee could complete its investigation or hold hearings, more than two dozen of his fellow Democratic senators called for his resignation, and in January of 2018, he resigned from the Senate.  Both before and while he was a senator, Franken acted like a pig.

There has been a lot of agonizing among Democrats since Franken’s resignation from the senate, principally because not a single Republican ever called for the resignation of Donald Trump, who faced allegations by more than 25 women ranging from sexual harassment to sexual assault to rape.  Why should we hold Democrats to standards Republicans just laugh at, went the thinking after Franken was gone.  After all, Franken was never accused of anything more than the kind of boorish behavior Cuomo is accused of.

Which brings me to the point of this column.  We have, as Democrats, a pig problem, principally because there are men in the Democratic Party, and men are pigs.  We’re going to have to figure out a way to deal with men when they act like pigs.  Not when they commit crimes, like Trump and Moonves and others have been accused of committing, but when they grab women’s buttocks and make inappropriate suggestive comments about their bodies or sex lives, or engage in behavior like planting unwanted kisses on women’s cheeks or lips.  In other words, when men act like pigs.

If Democrats decide they want to throw men out of their jobs and effectively out of the Democratic party because they act like pigs, okay.  That’s a standard we can certainly set.  But if Democrats decide that men who act boorishly and inappropriately – like pigs – should be dealt with in some other way, then we should start coming up with what that standard will be.  Unless we turn the Democratic Party into an all-female party, men who act like Cuomo aren’t going away, because like it or not, men are pigs.