Should Democrats excuse Al Franken’s bad behavior?
NO: He’s not irreplaceable, no matter what good he’s done YES: The senator is a rare champion for women’s rights
It’s really the picture that does it. There is something particularly revolting about the sight of Al Franken, now a Democratic senator from Minnesota, reaching for the breasts of a sleeping woman, a naughty grin on his face as he turns toward the photographer.
For Leeann Tweeden, the picture punctuated a bad 2006 USO trip. Tweeden says that though she was only supposed to present and act as a master of ceremonies for the show, Franken wrote a skit that gave him an opportunity to kiss her, and then pressured her to rehearse the scene and the kiss with him and harassed her afterward.
As has so often been the case, Franken’s alleged behavior seems at odds with other parts of his record as both a comedian and a legislator. But we should know by now that these sorts of contradictions are commonplace. And we shouldn’t let the seeming tension between the good Franken has done and the hurt he’s alleged to have caused tangle us in knots or lead us to treat him as if he’s irreplaceable.
As a senator, Franken pushed to cut off government funding to defense contractors who require their employees to submit to mandatory binding arbitration in sexual assault cases. When a man who had interned for Franken raped two women, Franken took the experience of one of the man’s victims, Abby Honold, as inspiration for a bill that would provide federal funding to train police officers and first responders in best practices for interviewing sexual assault victims.
Like with plenty of men before him, these facts may prompt some Franken supporters to try to explain away Tweeden’s experience, or to hope other women don’t come forward with other allegations of misconduct by Franken. Harvey Weinstein championed great roles for women at the same time that women have said that he harassed and assaulted them. Louis C.K. spoke out about the harm men do to women, even as he was doing that harm.
These supposed dilemmas are driven by an assumption that’s powerful but also untrue. We must live with the conduct of men who behave badly toward women, the thinking goes, because their contributions count for so much.
We shouldn’t allow ourselves to get trapped by this false logic, not least because it prevents us from pushing other men to step up to the plate. If we were really in a situation where Franken was the only male senator willing to stand up for rape victims, then we would be in even deeper trouble than we are now.
As a feminist and the author of a book on rape culture, I could reasonably be expected to lead the calls for Al Franken to step down, following allegations that he forced his tongue down a woman’s throat, accompanied by a photo of him grinning as he moves in to grope her breasts while she sleeps. It’s disgusting. He treated a sleeping woman as a comedy prop.
But I don’t believe resigning from his position is the only possible consequence, or the one that’s best for American women.
I am a Democrat because I am a feminist who lives under a two-party system in which one party consistently votes against the interests of women while the other sometimes does not. I am not a true believer in the party itself, nor in any politician. I am a realist who recognizes that we get two viable choices, and Democrats are members of the only party positioned to pump the brakes on Republicans’ gleeful race toward Atwoodian dystopia.
I recognize that men’s harassment of and violence against women is a systemic issue, not a Democratic or Republican problem, a Hollywood problem, a sports problem, or a media problem. Its roots lie in a patriarchal culture that trains men to believe they are entitled to control women’s bodies — for sex, for sport, for childbearing, for comedy.
Sexual harassment and assault are simply too widespread for Democrats to respond to Franken’s offense with only Franken in mind: We need to respond in a way that helps us develop a protocol for meaningful change.
It would feel good, momentarily, to see Franken resign and Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton appoint a senator who has not, as far as we know, harmed women. But in the world we actually live in, I’m betting there will be more. And they won’t all come from states with Democratic governors and a deep bench of progressive replacements. Some will, if ousted, have their successors chosen by Republicans.
In other words, if we set this precedent in the interest of demonstrating our party’s solidarity with harassed and abused women, we’re only going to drain the swamp of people who, however flawed, still regularly vote to protect women’s rights and freedoms. The legislative branch will remain chockablock with old, white Republican men who regard women chiefly as sex objects and unpaid housekeepers, and we’ll show them how staunchly Democrats oppose their misogynistic attitudes by handing them more power. Mac Tully, CEO and Publisher; Justin Mock, Senior VP of Finance and CFO; Bill Reynolds, Senior VP, Circulation and Production; Judi Patterson, Vice President, Human Resources; Bob Kinney , Vice President, Information Technology