Sexual Harassment and Molestation of Women. Significant curbing can only be achieved by holding the people on top accountable.
Hamas, Nigerian Church SCOAN, US Coast Guard. What do these 3 distinct entities have in common? They all allowed/ enacted the rape of women. This blog was intended to cover just these 3 groups several months back.. In the mean-time, I have delayed because more reports have kept piling up. I had just now googled musician guilty of Pedophilia, since I had temporarily forgotten the name R Kelly, and I did not want to mistakenly write someone else's name. In searching, I came across Ian Watkins, who I never heard of before. Rebel Wilson's allegations against Sasha Baron Cohen; other allegations against Vince McMahon.. Â Most recently P. Diddy and molestation and other allegations: such as sex trafficking.
I realized that by holding off writing this blog, more egregious acts of violence against women and children would come to light. But if I kept waiting till they stopped coming into the news, this blog would never be written.
What is abundantly clear, one could put on a wall individual scraps of paper of all the occupations men are involved in, let us estimate 1000, stand 20 feet away and throw darts at the wall, and any occupation landed on, men have committed acts of violence, molestation and harassment against women, and at times children.
So what can be done about this? One can think why is there this epidemic, meaning recent mass occurrence, but the reality is it has always gone on, but just covered up.
In the setting of such a massive endemic abuse, jackpot justice (a few victims making it big, such as the USC victims of George Tyndall, MD and the Michigan State and female gymnast victims of Larry Nassar, MD) may draw light on the subject, but only a few have benefitted. Real change requires two major accomplishments: 1. understand where men of this potential behavior gravitate to and hold these occupations at higher scrutiny (the Willie Sutton rule: he robbed banks because that was where the money was), and 2. hold the people on top (administration) responsible for this misconduct, in addition to the perpetrators.
So occupations in which women are frequently seen (eg: gynecology, psychology, womens' sports) or female (also male) children (music, acting, children's' clubs in large entertainment groups, boy scouts and similar, grade school, pediatrics) or in which the occupation is violent by nature (military, law enforcement) the frequency of mistreatment of women are more likely to occur, or are particularly horrific (violent occupations). Some changes have occured in some fields. Perhaps the most remarkable example of folly in evaluation of these crimes, is for decades in the military, the individual who held the responsibility of evaluating complaints raised by women, was their superior officer. The superior officer was often the individual molesting these women. It is hard to imagine this level of stupidity, and yet it occured up until very recently. This stupidity continues to occur, to a lesser extent, but this must change universally A good example of the ongoing stupidity is in major Christian churches.
It has been true, and remains true to this day, that the people on top, senior management, have escaped being held accountable for the crimes committed by individuals under them. No doubt the majority of these senior administrators were well aware of this going on. They should be held responsible by the full force of the legal system, to experience similar penalties to the perpetrators. This alone would cause a dramatic change in the incidence of these events.
The other reality is what I have written about previously: people will do bad things if they think they can get away with it. Over recent years we have been surprised by highly accomplished individuals, former presidents, major movie moguls, actors, musicians, sports figures engaged in horrific acts of molestation against women. The culture of great success creates in a number of individuals the sense that they are above convention, above the law. The euphoria of incredible success, combined with the intrinsic principle drives in the successful of power, money, and sex. Thankfully, a few of these ultra successful men have come to justice, or are in the process of coming to justice.. maybe.
Throughout human history, perhaps the most common serious crime committed has been the raping of women. Not to excuse it, but capturing women from the enemy, and bringing them back as sex slaves/ wives probably has contributed to essential genetic diversity in earlier times, with the result of minimizing genetic diseases.
The FIrst World War was the event that achieved the greatest impact on equal rights for women. Women, out of national necessity, were conscripted into the work force in large numbers, The great benefits including women's suffrage (getting the vote), and the beginning of the long journey for equal rights. Since many of the young men were fighting in the Western world, women had to perform most of the military equipment manufacture, and other national labor work. Women enjoyed the work and financial freedom, and after the war did not relinquish it, which also contributed to the Roaring twenties. Some spreading of increased women's rights extended to other parts of the world, but slowly and incompletely..
Increased exposure of men to women in the work force and social setting, carried with it the increased exposure to molestation.
The one caveat I have previously mentioned, is that increased interest in seeing and handling women's genitalia, by male gynecologists , although perverse, may not actually have translated into poor medical care, and arguably probably equivalent, or even at times slightly superior. The more recent perverse activity that has come to light is in fertility clinics. Sperm donors are supposed to be random and anonymous, perhaps with a possibility of greater intelligence:such as medical students; but in one recently reported case the donor was actually the physician running the clinic. The downstream recognition is that this is likely not a unique case. Perverse and pervasive.
To summarize the above, why women (and children) abuse has happened is obvious:
Heterosexual men really like women
Heterosexual men really like the concept of sex with women.
If there are no safeguards of protection: if men can get away with doing bad things, they will, which includes rape.
Narcissism and sociopathy are relatively common, probably 5-10% of men are true narcissists/sociopaths (definition: individuals who are focused only on their own personal welfare, and don't care what happens to others). This would be the largest group of these male perpetrators. Interest in having sex, with no concern for the victim. A large proportion of ultra successful men are narcissists/ sociopaths.
Psychopaths are relatively rare, maybe 0.1% of men are psychopaths (definition: focused on harming other people, including murder). Interest in having sex, and doing harm to the victim, including murder. These would be the most revolting of the perpetrators, but rare.
Because it is natural to focus on the local, we focus on how awful US perpetrators have been over the years, but there still has been some safeguards, that prevent true horrific scale abuse from occurring. What no doubt some of the reported gynecologists did, was although inappropriate and perverted, taking some license with touching female genitalia, but this may not have resulted in worse medical care. Women may need to come to grips with that male gynecologists may be overly interested in their genitalia, but this may not mean they are getting poor medical care. This misconduct is nothing like what happened at the US Coast Guard, which is itself also nothing like what happened at SCOAN or by Hamas in Israel.
To briefly touch on these horrible subjects. Rape has probably been an active occurrence in all armed conflicts throughout all history. So rape in wartime has been always the norm. Warriors are generally young aggressive men pumped up with testerone from the rage of killing, that same testosterone surge combined with a sense that anything can be done in war, naturally lends itself to rape. Historically if women were fortunate, they would have been just raped. Some would have been taken back as sex slaves/ wives. Many would be raped and killed. As is happening in Ukraine now, and all other areas of armed conflicts around the world.
As bad as things may seem for women in the US, it is a lot worse in basically everywhere else in the world, except Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and nondictatorial Europe. But things should be better,.
This is what needs to be done:
.Accountability. Right now some accountability is being doled out to some of the ground floor perpetrators, even famous ones, which is progress. But at present no accountability has been meted out to any administrator in any of the numerous sex crimes carried out by many organizations (too many to list, perhaps essentially every organization). Until the administrators are held to account, no real change will occur.
Punishment. Some ground floor perpetrators have received appropriate punishment. Recently, even rich ones like Jeffrey Epstein and R Kelly, but even this took decades to prosecute, even though what they were doing was no in secret. Jeffrey Epstein's crimes placed him maybe only on the 3rd circle of Dante's Inferno, TB Joshua of the SCOAN church was at the very bottom of the 9th circle, since the women were prisoners, and he also had an abortion clinic in his sex prison, AKA church residence. Justice should be swift, sure, and severe. But this must be also meted out to the administrators who let this happen. These churches that have engaged in this, even if they are not the ring-leader, or the ring-leader is dead, should be closed down, and most of the senior members dealt severe punishment. All cults by definition should be taken down, and the ring leaders face appropriate punishment, depending how severe their crimes have been.
Responsible nonbiased government must pay attention to circumstances where abuse is more likely to occur: to all cults, religious organizations, and organizations where women and children may be congregated (entertainment, children organizations). This is not to assume that all men who enter these organizations are perpetrators, but the chances are high, and wariness even of the most senior is prudent and necessary. Many/all of these cult leaders, and some of these charismatic church leaders are sexual predators. In our modern age of absolute devotion to social media, In my opinion, the appropriate severe punishment dealt to the perpetrators, should be videoed and posted on TV and social media sites, so other perpetrators-in-waiting are discouraged from commiting crimes. Currently most of these monsters are just shown sitting silent in court after committing heinous crimes, like so many brooding antihero Lex Luthers, that if anything appear as antihero martyrs to onlooking perpetrators-in-waiting. . Elizabethan Justice (by which I mean Elizabeth the I) videoed and shown on social media would be perhaps the only deterrent that would have any effect on curbing the epidemic of rapes and murders.
Focusing back on the less egregious events occurring in the US, a number of individual examples of human crimes like rape, even some powerful perpetrators are now experiencing punishment served to them. What is missing and has to happen as the necessary important step: administrators in medicine and all other professions who allow or cover up egregious conduct: rape, harassment, dangerous physicians, drunken physicians, incompetent physicians, must be held to full account for this. It is essential that the senior administrators be dealt punishment for allowing these crimes to occur. Severe punishment.
Acting as the voice of the avenging Archangel Michael,
Richard Semelka, MD
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