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Bonfires Of The Vestal Virgins

Dec 19, 2017
by Caroline Miller
sea-change in sexual behavior, sexual harassment, The Scarlet Letter
4 Comments

courtesy of google.com

After 35 years on the bench, a federal appeals court judge is facing the sexual harassment charges of four women. Three staffers said he showed them pornographic photos in his office.  A fourth complained he suggested she workout naked.  (“The U. S. at a glance…” The Week, Dec/ 27-29, 2017, pg. 7.)

In the past, men routinely made salacious remarks to women.  More than once, a male colleague has suggested he and I take our meeting to a motel.  Each pass made me uncomfortable, but I never considered it harassment.

Growing up, I learned to expect men to be aggressive. My home economics book in  junior high preached that, “Boys will be boys: girls must ladies.”  Girls were responsible for the standards set in a relationships.  Unwed mothers were foolish women who allowed the customer “to drink milk before buying the cow.”

For centuries, women accepted this double standard, and condemned a sister who stumbled.  Feminine scorn can be as cruel as remarks men make in locker room. Last week, a woman my age said she thought girls who got drunk and were raped at a  fraternity party were “asking for it.”  A teenager in the 1950s, like me, she failed to distinguish between making a mistake and giving license to a predator. We should never confused the two.   

Unfortunately, when I was a girl, women accepted that, as daughters of Eve, we’d brought sin into the world.  As such, we were in charge of manning the temple of the vestal virgins.  If  a woman stumbled, she suffered the bonfires of the righteous.  Men got off scot-free as in The Scarlet Letter.  

Given the recent sea-change, I’ve no doubt men are bewildered.  Anita Hill, hear us roar.  I only ask that as we celebrate our delayed sisterhood, we acknowledge our previous silence.

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4 Comments
  1. Margaret December 19, 2017 at 3:18 pm Reply
    Hopefully the recent sea-change is of tsunami proportions and attitudes of the past centuries become flotsam and jetsam. My mother said to me when I was railing against an obvious injustice towards women, “Nothing will change you know”. It annoyed me, but I see now what she had been up against.
    • Caroline Miller December 19, 2017 at 3:34 pm Reply
      You mom was right. Because they felt powerless, for a long, long time, women saw only half the equation. Nothing will changes...as long as women remain silent.
  2. Susan December 19, 2017 at 7:26 pm Reply
    From a legal standpoint, the judge's comments were not harassment. The victim has to tell the person that such comments are not acceptable and to not say anything like them again. If no one says anything, then no education takes place and he continues to think it is acceptable. Obviously some behavior falls into the "any fool should know" category but from what you've written, it doesn't sound like his behavior did.
    • Caroline Miller December 20, 2017 at 8:06 am Reply
      I didn't think that it was and was using it as a example of an idea gone too far. Good to have a legal opinon that was the case.

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Contact Caroline at

carolinemiller11@yahoo.com

Portland, Oregon author Caroline Miller had distinguished careers as an educator, union president, elected official and artist/advocate.

Her play, Woman on the Scarlet Beast, was performed at the Post5 Theatre, Portland, OR, January/February 2015

Caroline published a serialized novelette, Marie Eau-Claire, on the website, The Colored Lens.  She also published the story Gustav Pavel,  a parable about ordinary lives, choice and alternate potential, on the website Fixional.co.

Caroline has published four novels

  • Ballet Noir
  • Trompe l’Oeil
  • Gothic Spring
  • Heart Land

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