https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pola ... SKCN1NO2D6
This week I have been painfully aware of a double standard from apologists for sexual abuse.
When prominent Catholic men in public life - like Kavanaugh and others who had a youthful career as sexual predators are unmasked, the apologists leap to their defence: "Oh that was then, its historical" "Boys will be boys" "It was just what boys did then, times have changed"
To which I say "hogsh*t.
The double standard shows up in a different response from the same apologists who are silent on the huge history of past abuse by Catholic priests. Notice how they never say "oh well, priests will be priests!" "It was just what a lot of priests did then, it was a different time" or even worse, "It was just harmless fun, they never meant to damage victim's lives, they didn't mean any harm" "maybe they had a bit too much to drink and got carried away; they weren't really responsible, it was just the alcohol and the culture of the time".
The stark hypocrisy of these different response patterns says something, something very very very ugly about ingrained mindsets and selective responses of apologists for sexual predators.
Sexual predators, whether college Catholic young men, or Catholic priests share an equivalence as perpetrators of serious crimes, and the efforts to exonerate one group while belatedly criticising the other, is a disparity that is in neon light intensity.
They both disgust me. What the priests did was probably more severe in effect, though their predations were as exploitative in kind as the Catholic students who thought women were fair game for predation.
19 Nov 2018, 4:06 pm
