HOT POTATOES

When I heard the first breaking news about Scott Brown, I thought, “This will be a fascinating story for Tim and the boys of The Studio, survivors of sexual abuse.  It certainly shows that a man can have a miserable sexually-confused childhood and still succeed.  Good for him.  Then I began listening to the reaction of the media.

So far I note these reactions:

1. Surface sympathy.
2. Hints that Brown is telling this to sell his book, which is meant to get him re-elected.  (doesn’t matter what is said if you get name familiarity)
3.   Denial and skepticism  (how bad was it really?)
4.   Instructions for parents  (no matter that it was parents -- esp. fathers and step-fathers -- who inflicted the abuse)
5. Speculations on how this will affect the election
6. Hints about why he didn’t tell his wife and mother everything
7. Fantasies about intimacy with him
8. The feeling that they’d really rather be in a riot in an Arab country right about now.  It might be safer.  
9. The search is on for evidence that indicts Brown -- though he was a child at the time of the abuse

What they’ve found so far is that he posed nude for Cosmopolitan and that in his joking acceptance speech when he took office he said his daughters were “available,” probably meaning for dating but then picking up a second meaning as being pimped.  They are quite glamorous girls.  The real assumption is that “romance” is a path to money and prestige.  Very Jane Austen.

We’re having another Alfred Kinsey moment:  you’ll remember that Kinsey’s studies revealed that almost everyone masturbates (male or female) and many more men than anyone thought were having male-on-male experiences for a host of reasons.  What this information does -- and no one could deny his case histories and data -- is re-set all our “norming” mechanisms.  The norm appears to be Sarah Palin.  Welcome to “frat boy” world.  Looks are everything.  Sex is just a suck-up strategy.  Nothing is too gross or licentious.

Recently the labs who work with genetic analysis for medical and forensic purposes -- looking for mutant genes and possibly inheritable causes of disease -- began to realize they were seeing something they had never considered.   Their investigations of family shared genes showed that some of these perfectly respectable people were the products of incest.   Laws require that cases of incest be reported to the police.   What was the moral and legal obligation of the lab?  The incidents were in the past, but they were indubitable.  Some had consequences, genetic vulnerabilities, maybe the ones the scientists had been asked to find.  Who’s going to confront the family?

It was a little like those studies of animal genomes that reveal supposedly “paired for life” big birds were in fact, slipping around on the side.  And the disconcerting news that the fathers of many new chimps were not the big alpha male who dominated his group, but in fact some quiet but sly “beta” competitor who managed a quickie while the big boy was asleep.  Scientific studies reveal that in many species about ten per cent of males are sexually interested only in other males.  (I don’t know of any evidence about animals -- other than humans -- who sexually use juveniles.)  We used to think that animals were more virtuous than humans.

The prevalence of stories about transgressive sexual violence against juvenile or otherwise weakly defended individuals (females, handicapped, aged, mentally handicapped, the very poor) now amounts to a sea change.  Not just in war zones and the ghetto, but everywhere.  The newspaper is full of the stories.  But we are no longer very shocked.

I have left Rousseau.  I now think that human beings are naturally opportunistic, dominating, secretive, and predatory.  If this is our biological “norm,” then I think it is not the destructive who are deviant exceptions but rather the peaceful, the trustworthy, the honest, and productive.  

In our modern “enlightened,” commodity-based and sex-intensive society the nuclear family that was once thought to be protective -- well, it IS when it works! -- is now shattered by consecutive marriages (step-parents), drugs and alcohol, unwanted conception and pregnancies, constant modeling of violence, and economic chaos.  We accept what hadn’t seemed normal to us.  

On the other hand, beating children used to seem normal -- still does to some people -- but I can’t remember any adults in my childhood who were as  philosophically opposed as now to any physical contact, any harsh punishment, or intense scoldings.  In some circles we’re almost phobic.  And yet, the beatings continue.

Tim has been running a video project he calls “Show Me Your Life,” asking street kids to video-document how they survive, and some children faraway have done that, using handheld devices (possibly stolen) and cafe wireless hotspots.  He expected harsh images, but today he says he got a vid that made him look away.  This dimension of our times may be what the constant stream of dystopian movies and books are getting at, simply extending today's indicators.

So Massachusetts' Scott Brown is showing us his life, and can we handle it?  Hard to be more transparent than posing nude.  Admirable as his body is, this will not help to defend him against stigma.  Many people consider nudity a clear sign of sexual “availability” and still think that’s immoral.  Other cases are coming forward.  The Utah Brown 5, siblings who are classical musicians, have accused their father of abusing the three girls of the group.  There’s a story of a Mexican nanny who oppressed one of the girls she was hired to take care of.  These last are more typical since girls are the victims.  But the illusion that boys can resist and escape abuse makes them MORE vulnerable rather than less.  

In the Seventies I lived in a neighborhood overseen by an old Irish woman who sat on her front porch watching.  She stopped me one day to ask what I had seen and heard next door to me.  She said she had reason to believe that the boy over there was raping his sister.  I HAD heard scuffling and protests.  I had seen nothing that would be useful evidence.  Later it turned out that our neighborhood watcher was right.  I was ashamed, but should I have spied on purpose?

Later I had a job in a nursing home where I discovered one of the male nursing assistants was scaring a patient by throwing things around in her room and threatening to hit her.  I turned him in and he was fired.  Then so was I.  When teaching I suspected a boy in one of my classes was being molested.  I turned the case in and was fired.  We’d rather not know.  We’d rather pretend these things never happen.  Because if people like Scott Brown come along and TELL us, then we’ll have to do something about it.  Won’t we?  Or will we shrug?