The news that Rep. Trent Franks, an anti-abortion "family values" warrior, was resigning because of sexual harassment didn't strike me as too shocking: holier-than-thou sorts are often bearers of disappointing personal morals because their pecksniffery is solely for other folks. But, peculiar as the actual details are, when I read that he had actually awkwardly approached female staffers about being a gestational surrogate to increase his family, it was like hearing a puzzle piece snap into place.
He didn't do anything creepy and lewd. Gosh! He just wanted to see if there was anyone close to hand who had reproductive organs they weren't using at the moment. Since having babies was what they were for. Not in a weird, lusting in his heart way. Just in a using a woman's body according to Biblical precedent sort of way.
Now, to get a little technical, as Franks is staunchly pro-life, in vitro is obviously not an option for his family, because not all embryos implant successfully. This leaves traditional surrogacy, in which the surrogate provides the egg and the patriarch provides the rest. This intrauterine insemination is a bit cheaper than in vitro, and can be done without sexual, um, congress. (Although, you know! It could be done the old-fashioned way, too.) But the whole upshot is that his message to some female employees was "You are female and I would like to put my sperm in you because this is what females are for, and it would be doing me a big old favor." Not too different from how horny men just want to borrow their workplace subordinates' reproductive organs for a bit after all, is it?
And it is just as coercive. After all, it's just doing a favor. People donate kidneys and bone marrow to people they work with don't they? Except this is about making a child. That creates bonds. In a power imbalance situation like employer/employee, that can create bondage.
It's hard for me to fathom not seeing this as a wholly inappropriate thing to bring up with one's staffers, but what I know of Franks' worldview oddly put the "how" of his awkwardness into perspective. But it is really, deeply inappropriate.
2 comments:
Hi Vivacious, you know, you really can't make this stuff up. My G&L wife tells me a satire site recently closed down and went out of business because things have gotten so out of hand that the satire was less ridiculous than the actual events. We have reached a point that politics, the news media, and Hollywood are beyond parody. Frankly, this doesn't surprise me, because I have been in the company of high-octane rocket men and women who are willing to do anything for wealth, fame, and celebrity. It would be a good idea for people to be a lot less naive about heads that talk on television. And of course this is all part of dredging up the bottom feeders that will necessarily be purged as the zeitgeist continues.
This year has made me a little gun shy about the wilder stories I have seen because a part of me wonders "Could anything possibly be true (or too screwed up to believe) anymore? The thing with the "sexual misconduct" (to use a term that creates the broadest definition) revelations has been that it's both people one always thought were a little seedy, and people one thought would absolutely never; and accusers who are absolutely credible and have no good reason to be carrying tales, and people who might have other motives. Critical thinking is a worthwhile approach, and the old saying "there's nought as queer as folk" comes to mind. If the current opening of musty sad rooms where people were hurt and stayed hurt because of their silence can help us also stop hero-worshipping famous people for dumb reasons, and thinking not talking about bad things makes them go away, I think this is a good change. People need skepticism in their lives, and to consider what real ethics and morality are--what one learned by rote? or what is actually fair and decent towards others in practice? But in the meantime, there will be much shaking of heads, I am sure.
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