If He Takes ‘No’ for an Answer, Nothing Happened
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And allowing young white women to behave this way without accountability is infantilizing a whole generation of women.
So now I’m going to say something that is going blow progressive heads off but grown ups know it’s true:
We are infantilizing these young women by taking the responsibility and accountability for their social discourse out of their hands. And if any of these gals were flirting with an attractive older man, well Cuomo can’t say that without looking like a schmuck but we all know young women do that, don’t we?
There is no case here but he has to suck it up because if there is another side to this he cannot say so. But really, even if there was another side, it was still on him because he is old enough and has been at this too long not to know that sometimes young women do this sort of thing.
As I told my partner, when you are doing that professor gig again always leave the office door open and never be left alone with a student or an intern, and send your assistant home when there’s no one else in the office. That is what is necessary to insure that this sort of nonsense does not happen. Grown men know that: when you are dealing with much younger women it is the authority figure’s responsibility to pre-empt this situation. Period.
Andrew Cuomo is simply old enough to have known better but that don’t make him a predator. And being young and pretty and full of your own ambitions don’t make your story palatable.
If there’s proof that he’s anything more than a gruff, perhaps overly expressive guy of a certain age I will reconsider, but barring that, this is a steaming pile of ridiculous nonsense ginned up by very privileged girls accustomed to sucking up the oxygen in every room. These gals who can’t just say ‘that makes me uncomfortable, please stop’ without whining over nothing does grievous harm to women who were actually harmed by real harassment and actual assault.
But they see this as their opportunity to rise in the ‘progressive’ political sphere. That in and of itself is just so unfortunate for us all.
His apology was weak and he needs to do better, but so do these young gals who seriously don’t know what real peril looks like.