Political ‘good guys’ are predators too, they’re just hiding behind progressive values

I was recently talking to a guy I like about the Weinstein effect, and he told me how surprised and upset he was that so many prominent liberals, like Kevin Spacey and Senator Al Franken, were being outed as sexual abusers.

He didn't mean it in the shitty "think about all the good art/policies/funny tweets we're going to lose" kind of way; he was genuinely disappointed that people who (probably) voted for Hillary Clinton were also fully capable of being serial predators. I thought it was funny because like, fucking duh.

But apparently this is an actual point of confusion for a lot of people, especially people who haven't experienced casual sexual harassment or survived sexual assault, so let me be blunt: rapists don't all vote the same way.

They don't all post the same Change.org petitions on Facebook, they don't all respond to our dumbass president's tweets in the same way, and they don't all walk around wearing MAGA hats and American flag shorts — although it's best to steer clear of anybody rocking that look anyway because they're probably about to shotgun a beer and yell about it like that's something remotely worth getting excited about.

There's literally no way to tell who's a rapist in this stupid hell world unless you listen to victims when they say, "uh, that dude's a rapist."

It sounds like that's exactly what the Clinton team didn't do with regards to Harvey Weinstein, who has been a prominent Democratic donor for more than a decade. According to a report by the New York Times, Lena Dunham and Tina Brown both warned members of Hillary Clinton's campaign about being associated with Weinstein, with Dunham calling him a "rapist."

But progressive values aren't the only values that predators use to hide. Even though the Republican Party touts itself as the end of the party that protects "family values," they must be talking about the family from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, because the Republican National Committee obviously didn't listen to the numerous women who've stepped forward to call Roy Moore out for being a pedophile because they just endorsed him. Also, like, the president.

One of the keys to outing and punishing sexual abusers is understanding that anybody can be a sexual abuser. It's a bipartisan issue. It's a power issue, and it transcends industries, age groups, genders, races, Hogwarts houses, what fucking ever.

It would be way fucking easier if rapists could all start wearing the same shirt or something, but that's not how it works. Instead, we just have to listen to women, listen to victims, and send abusers packing even if we agree with what they have to say about healthcare.

@k80way