Kirsten Gillibrand has written a book in which she reveals some of the appalling comments that some of her male colleagues in the US Senate have made to her. In response, Senator Ron Johnson makes the kind of comment one often hears in such situations by people who are skeptical of the claims but don’t want to outright say so.
In his four years in the Senate, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has never witnessed the type of sexism detailed in Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-N.Y.) new book. Moreover, he thinks Gillibrand should name the male Senate colleagues who she said sexually harassed her, so they can appropriately “explain themselves.”
…In the Tuesday interview, Johnson sought to set the record straight. “It was not me” and “and I’ve never seen that kind of behavior in the United States Senate,” he said.
“It’s actually a pretty collegial place. Pretty professional. I have never seen that type of behavior. That’s all I can say. That’s been my experience,” he added.
That may well be his experience but it is irrelevant and counts for nothing. If you are not the person at the receiving end of that type of behavior, or share the kinds of characteristics that cause the problem, then your lack of observations to that effect have no value.
It is like me saying that I have never actually seen young black men being unfairly targeted by police. It is a true statement but so what? The times that I have been in the presence of both a young black man and a policemen have been extremely few while a young black man is a young black man all the time. My chance of actually seeing this kind of behavior is vanishingly small, even if it a routine occurrence in his life.
So if you are not in that same situation, and Johnson being a male is clearly not in the same situation as Gillibrand, then the only observations that are of value are positive ones that confirm the story because negative ones don’t mean anything. When you voice them without pointing out that fact, you are tacitly expressing skepticism.
Time for the senator(s) to start wearing body cameras too!
Moreover, he thinks Gillibrand should name the male Senate colleagues who she said sexually harassed her, so they can appropriately “explain themselves.”
Oh, god, no. Few things are quite as painful to observe as someone mansplainin’.
A friend of mine was a poli sci major in collage and sat in on many session of the Senate (and the House) over the course of his studies. “Professional” isn’t a word I would use given his description of what went on there. “Collegial” might work if by that you mean “frat house”. According to him it was nothing to see senators hard at work flipping through the latest issue of Playboy or sitting around telling jokes (dirty or otherwise, usually sexist and racist regardless). This would go on even while it was in session. This was in the mid- to late-1990’s but I doubt anything has really changed except they text the jokes and use I-Pads to look up porn.
Well, if it’s legitimate sexism, doesn’t her body have a way of shutting it out or something like that?
“The times that I have been in the presence of both a young black man and a policemen have been extremely few while a young black man is a young black man all the time. My chance of actually seeing this kind of behavior is vanishingly small, even if it a routine occurrence in his life.”
There is another thing to consider, which is that the chance that such actions will occur when in mixed company are far less likely than if the person is alone. To our subject, isn’t it noted that creeps will leave women alone when they are with some other man ? Should senators follow the lead of police officers and start wearing cameras?
#notallsenators
The other thing is that if you are not on the receiving end of the behavior, it can be very easy to miss it if you have not made a deliberate effort to sensitize yourself. An anecdote:
I’m a bit of a loud-talker. It’s just who I am, and I don’t feel there is anything inherently wrong with it. But I start to realize that it would tend to exclude quieter talkers from meetings — which in and of itself didn’t even bother me that much, but then I realized that, for simple matters of biology (testosterone causing a deepening of the voice) it was disproportionately excluding women from conversation. So I made a deliberate effort to notice when quieter speakers were attempt to talk, and to very rapidly back off in order to give them space.
One I started doing this, I started noticing male colleague talking over female colleagues all the time — usually without any conscious intention, as far as I could tell. It was a total “red pill” moment. All this time, this behavior had been directly in front of my nose. But because it didn’t directly affect me, and because nobody was doing it with obvious malice, I just didn’t tend to notice. Add to that a bit of inattentional blindness: These were for the most part technical conversations, so I was focused on the technical aspects, not the social and power dynamics of who was speaking. It really was as freaky as those infamous videos where you count the ball being passed among the players in white jerseys, and don’t notice the moonwalking bear or the guy in the gorilla suit walking directly through the frame. It was that level of, “Holy shit, how is it physically possible that I didn’t notice that?” And yet…
jamesweet,
I now exactly what you mean. I too tend to talk too much and have made a very conscious effort to shut up and try and notice and include those who are trying to speak but getting sidelined. Being an observer rather than a talker has its own fascinations.