I’ve always heard that its damn near sacrilege to speak ill of the old, but fuck Rep. John Conyers and Harvey Weinstein and Russell Simmons and Matt Lauer. I’m so tired of hearing how bad they feel, or how poorly they are doing in the wake of allegations that they violated women.
I don’t care if they get treatment or are seeking spiritual counseling. I don’t care that they are leaving the jobs that allegedly allowed them to use their positions of power to prey on women. I don’t care that some of them are willing to admit, now, after being called out by the brave women—who most times wish to remain anonymous out of fear, shame and embarrassment—that they have a problem.
So I really don’t care that Conyers, 88, has been hospitalized in the Detroit area, suffering from stress. It just so happens that his hospitalization comes on the heels of the appearance on NBC’s Today show of one of the women who accused the congressman of sexual harassment.
I’m sure many of the women he reportedly sexually harassed suffered intensely stressful moments. I’m sure they endured sleepless nights and full-on crying sessions in a therapist’s office. I’m getting tired of learning how the men who have stalked, cornered and forced themselves on women are holding up after the women found the courage to speak to their trauma.
“I just spoke with Monica Conyers on the phone, and we want you to know that the congressman is resting comfortably in an area hospital. He’s doing OK, as well as he can be expected for a gentleman that’s approaching 90 years of age,” political consultant Sam Riddle said, according to WDIV Click on Detroit. “The congressman’s health is not what it should be, and lot of that is directly attributable to this media assault.”
Media assault? Is that the assault that began after Conyers’ reported continual sexual harassment?
“It was sexual harassment, violating my body, propositioning me, inviting me to hotels with the guys discussing business and then propositioning me for sex,” Marion Brown told Today. “He just violated my body, he has touched me in different ways, and it was very uncomfortable and very unprofessional.”
So Conyers isn’t having a good time of it, but here’s to hoping he gets better, because I think some of the other women he reportedly harassed have something to say.
Read more at WDIV Click on Detroit.
DISCUSSION
I was sexually assaulted (kissed without my consent) by the CEO within a month of starting a job (2 jobs ago). Unfortunately, I was not in the position to quit because I was helping pay my dad’s medical bills as he was slowly dying from multiple organ failure. So I worked there for almost two years and it damn near killed me.
Not only was I assaulted on the job, I was regularly sexually harassed by multiple men in varying positions, from the CFO, to the warehouse guys, and the already mentioned sleazeball CEO. I was also being underpaid, by about $15,000 less than my male peer in the same position (and whose messes I had to clean up all the damn time). I had triple the workload of my fellow project coordinators, and was working close to 60 hours regularly. This place was a toxic mess, and I started drinking on the job. Don’t worry, alcoholism wasn’t frowned upon at all at this place. In fact, drug use and drinking on the clock was pretty much an open practice. It’s how everyone coped with being underpaid, verbally abused, overworked. Alcohol was supplied by the CEO to give the impression that this is a chill workplace, when really, it helped him make the women working there more “pliable”.
Then, my dad died, and I felt completely shattered. Guess how much time off I got to bury my dad and grieve for him? 2 whole days, one of which I had to call in because I was in no position to do anything except cry. After this, I started getting angry and standing up for myself, but I was still grieving, and drinking myself into a black out became a daily occurrence. One day, I drank so much that I woke up in the shower at 3 in the morning with a massive head injury and a serious concussion. I went into work with my bangs over my face to hide what happened, because I still had a punch list meeting at 7 AM with an angry client (another regular occurrence, because this place treated its clients like shit and ripped them off all the time). I think I quit without having a back up job maybe 2 weeks after this, because I could see that I was not going to make it out of this job without some serious scars if I didn’t leave soon.
This was almost 3 years ago, and I still get nervous around my current male co-workers (who have never been anything but respectful, decent human beings to me), and have a panic attack any time I need to ask my boss for time off or for help or approach him with a question. After I quit that job, I worked menial jobs and fell behind on bills, and was working 3 jobs at one point just to make ends meet. I was depressed, suicidal and felt worthless for so long, that I am only just starting to recover. My experience isn’t unique. If anything, I am sure I’m pretty lucky to be where I am today, and other women are still in worse positions. So I can’t really muster up any fucking sympathy for men like Franken or Conyers. I don’t care about your pain because you didn’t give two shits about the humanity of the women you sexually harassed/groped/assaulted. You didn’t care about the pain that they would have to deal with. You can deal with the consequences of the decisions you chose to make as grown ass men, because your victims have been dealing with them in silence in pain and suffering for years.