Groping and the Paradise Papers are both about men grabbing whatever they want

Last edited Wed Nov 15, 2017, 04:41 AM - Edit history (1)

Holding abusers to account is in no way a distraction from the democratic crisis. Crucially, the way that powerful men treat women around them is a strong predictor of the way they’ll behave towards the citizens whose interests they are supposed to represent.

Here’s the point. The way a great many political operatives have treated women is very much akin to how they treat the citizens whose interests they are meant to represent. It’s not about giving the people what they want, or even what they need. It’s about what they can get away with. It’s about bullying, cheating and exploiting any loophole they can find until they get what they want.

The common thread here is entitlement: powerful men who believe they are entitled to grab whatever they want, whether it’s cash, power or the conjugal attentions of the person sitting next to them, and to use as much force as they like as long as they don’t get caught. That does not meet the dictionary definition of democracy or, come to think of it, of human decency.