Him Too

Morgan Freeman is one of my favorite actors. Wide range, emotional variety, voice of God. Shawshank Redemption, Driving Miss Daisy.

And he is now on the list of famous male to be accused of sexually inappropriate behavior.

As of this writing, the behavior in question is mostly verbal, sprinkled with a stray back rub or neck touch. No sex. Yet.

Is there a distinction in seriousness between talking and non-genital touching and actual
unwanted sex?  Does a leering 80-year-old ‘creepy uncle’ type of man get a pass from the Me Too movement? 

I think those are difficult questions.

Boomers will remember a time when leering, cat calls and other verbal behaviors that are now considered derogatory were “acceptable”. They were never a good thing but it happened a lot and women didn’t push back all that much.  Women’s rights movements slowly changed attitudes but the change was glacial and apparently incomplete.

There has never been justification for women to be treated as subhuman sex objects but it was the norm in many cultures, including ours. Women didn’t have the right to vote in elections in this country until 1920. Women weren’t in the American workforce in any significant numbers till World War II, in the mid 1940s. A woman’s income in a marriage was often considered ‘extra’ spending money as late as the 1970s. I’m embarrassed to admit that was my belief to some degree in my first marriage, even though she was a highly qualified teacher with a specific goal to become a school principal while I was floundering in unsatisfying jobs, still unwilling to commit to my eventual career.

Many surveys say women still make less money than men for equal jobs. Many women are emboldened by the Me Too movement but many are not.

I don’t really care much about the sex lives of famous people, but I am disgusted by famous men who use their fame and power to take advantage of women. It might actually be a good thing that famous men are finally being called out and punished for their behavior.

The most frustrating part of this is that some of those famous men hid their bad behavior behind good images. I was both surprised and disappointed by Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose and Bill Cosby. It appears the evidence backs up the accusations and the initial accusations were ignored by managers. Male managers.

But Morgan Freeman?  I just saw part of Shawshank Redemption for probably the twentieth time last week. His character is still one of my favorite characters in one of my favorite movies. I can only hope that the accusations aren’t true or that they are limited to the verbal and not the physical.    They are still inappropriate and wrong but less wrong than those of Cosby or Lauer. Or are they?