Bevin doth not protest enough

Praise for Gov. Matt Bevin doing the “right thing” with “moral clarity” demanding that “any elected official or state employee who has settled a sexual harassment claim should resign immediately” begs a lot of questions: What about those sexual harassers who haven’t settled a claim?

Does a settled claim mean that any woman (or man) who can’t afford or hasn’t taken that difficult decision to hire a lawyer must continue to fend for herself with sexual harassers still present?

Resign from what to go where? Merely step aside from leadership like Jeff Hoover while still remaining a representative? How does that break up the sexual harassment culture still there?

And what about the many political appointees? Why are they missing from Bevin’s pronouncement?

There are too many exceptions to white-male rule to break up the good-old-boy cultures whose majorities run from 80 to 100 percent in societal organizations. Cracking that open via proportional equivalent female participation is both the problem and solution.

I suggest reading “The Power” by Naomi Alderman to see what happens when the other shoe drops. It’s fictional but certainly opens the blind eye to see by comparison when the “other” majority — female — runs amok.

This story was originally published December 8, 2017 at 6:57 PM with the headline "Bevin doth not protest enough."