Weaponizing sex

Or more precisely, weaponizing sexual harassment, coercion, aggression, and violence: largely, a good thing. Our culture has changed its view of these behaviors, recognizing some that used to be thought cute or harmless, criminalizing others that once escaped that category. Women, and men for that matter, now have greater opportunities for bodily autonomy and safety, freedom of decision, and the chance, albeit imperfect, to pursue the right to be left alone.

And yet, our notoriously sexophobic culture can turn sexual misconduct into a selective weapon, just as corruption—undeniably a social ill in itself—is easily incorporated into the tyrant’s arsenal to consolidate autocratic power. (Recall the child-sex-ring debacle of the late 1980s—now revived as QAnon—that led to many horrific imprisonments of innocent daycare workers.)

Anita Hill educated America about how sexual harassers abuse and constrain women as workers; it is one of the age’s great ironies that a principal engineer of the backlash against Hill is now the champion of millions of women eager to see the back of the pussy-grabber-in-chief. Clarence Thomas still occupies the Supreme Court bench that Joe Biden ushered him into. The felling of an Epstein or a Weinstein remains an unusual denouement while most abuse escapes punishment.

While it is healthy that people sometimes now dare to denounce outrages against the body, we should keep in view the great utility accusations related to sex have had historically for the powerful. Some barely reach our consciousness: the Malaysian regime deployed rape accusations in 1998 against Anwar Ibrahim, [above right] a deputy prime minister, leading to a lengthy imprisonment, convenient for his political enemies. Ibrahim’s ordeal was further complicated by the fact that his accuser was a man in a country where any homosexual acts were illegal.

That was far away, but closer to home we have the sexual misconduct (consistently headlined as “rape”) allegations against Julian Assange, exploited by the security states of the U.S. and U.K. to get him into prison. Having weaponized his behavior, the furious spy agencies now have Assange in solitary and facing life in prison in the U.S. for the crime of embarrassing and exposing them.

A more obscure weaponization of sexual harassment claims also comes from the U.K., where former first minister Alex Salmond was framed by his rivals in the Scottish National Party with a bevy of anonymous testifiers to his alleged groping and sexual assault [see photo above]. Salmond faced 13 separate charges—he was acquitted on each one. The court awarded Salmond 512,000 pounds in legal costs from the Scottish Government over their botched fishing expedition, termed “unlawful, unfair and tainted by apparent bias.” Sounds a bit fishy, no?

But the British legal system grants excessive protections to accusers in cases like these, enabling the tabloid press to splash for weeks lurid headlines, like the one shown at the top, while Salmond’s defense was hogtied and unable to counter the accusatory narrative. Although the case collapsed ignominiously, the tabloids never undid the damage inflicted by their salacious tales, which linger in the public mind and no doubt put an end to Salmond’s political career. A cynic might observe that Salmond’s opposition to foreign adventures such as the Iraq invasion may have put him in severe disfavor with the intelligence/weapons lobby, but we don’t know if they had a hand in all this. If we find out in 10 years that they did, it won’t matter. The accusations have done their job.

Furthermore, the judicial persecution continues with one of Salmond’s few defenders, former ambassador Craig Murray [left], now charged with contempt of court for his blog posts on the trial, in which he took meticulous care not to identify any of the women whose testimony the jury promptly tossed out. While the tabloids get off scot-free despite publishing far more questionable material, Murray has to face an expensive slog through the courts in what certainly smells like retaliatory, selective prosecution. Read the details at his excellent blog.

Then we have our presidential aspirant himself, against whom a credible accusation of sexual assault dropped into the well of forgetfulness soon after it surfaced. As a thought experiment, can anybody imagine what we would all be talking about today if the accused were Bernie Sanders? When the Democrat hierarchy coalesced around Biden’s candidacy, female Democrats jumped to exclaim “Me Too!” while tossing the “Believe Women” slogan into the temporary trashcan. Believe me, I get it—now’s not the time for purity tests. But let’s also admit to a towering double standard.

Which brings us to the case of Kansan Aaron Coleman, the teenaged dishwasher who pulled off a surprise primary victory against an incumbent for that state’s legislature. He turns out to have engaged in reprehensible behavior with a female middle school classmate and is taking considerable heat for it. He is apologetic and claims to have grown up. Some voices insist he be shunned and banned—no doubt many Biden voters among them. And the state Democrat party is amassing a huge war chest to reverse the vote with a write-in campaign for the corporate-friendly incumbent whom Coleman ousted, claiming that his behavior in childhood should disqualify him.

Of course, their campaign has nothing whatever to do with Coleman’s support for legalizing marijuana, abortion rights, and Medicare for All. But the party that welcomed an unrepentant Bill Clinton to their recent convention has no time for a kid who committed abuse at age 13.

I have read numerous accounts of how the Chinese Communist Party works at the local level and reached the conclusion that party operatives there are compelled to engage in routine corruption that greases the wheels of the state from top to bottom. If promoted, the lowly official then must collude with his bosses’ more lucrative graft and extortion at risk of marginalization, dismissal, or worse. With corruption then baked into the system, the top capos can easily take down their rivals with a lively “anti-corruption” campaign, which will resonate with the long-suffering citizens who have had to put up with the constant grifting by their overlords. Power struggles are veiled with pious phrases about cleaning up the bad behavior of this one and that one, but no real reform of the system is attempted or intended.

The weaponization of sex threatens to follow this playbook: shock and dismay over the antics of one’s enemies; understanding and dismissal on the rare occasion when the complaints reach one’s friends. Supporting victims of abuse should remain the focus; at the same time, we should not be naïve about when and why we hear from them and which ones are taken seriously.