How the Franken & Franks resignations will, I'm afraid, end up hurting women.

1. Both Franken and Franks said they believed that the established due process — through an Ethics Committee — would vindicate them, but declined to go through that process and allowed the accusations to be the final word. That may seem like a victory for the accusers, but if the accused automatically concedes to the accusers — while maintaining that a fair process would prove them wrong — we are going to worry that the truth doesn't matter any more, that everyone is just supposed to hurry up and get on the predetermined winning side. We may start to think that the allegations of women can't hold up in a fair process, that women are being indulged and not expected to be fair or to care about truth and due process, and at some point, if this dynamic continues, the idea of listening to women is going to sound  pernicious. If we don't balance the listening to women with listening to a full and fair process, the period of listening will, I'm afraid, lead us back into suspicions that women tell stories that can't stand the light of day.

2. "Female senators took down Al Franken" — that's a headline at Vox. Subhead: "This is why we need more women in office." I'd like to see more women in office, but I'm afraid that the speed with which the female Senators aggregated and demanded instant surrender is frightening. Is that the way women use power? I want more success for women because women have been on the down side of power throughout human history. I want freedom and fairness for everyone. And so if women who acquire power are worse than men — vengeful and too impatient for due process and eager to take sides and ready to assume they know the facts — then we should be skeptical about the benefits of women in power. The Vox article quotes a congressional aid saying — about the women in the Senate — "Their patience had worn very thin." That reinforces old stereotypes that women are too emotional — too hysterical — to exercise power. That's not helping the cause of women's equality!

3. If the consequences of allegations of sexual harassment are disproportionate, women who are empathetic and who care about fairness may decide it's better not to come forward. Franken's first accuser said she didn't want him to resign: "I just wanted him to understand what he did was wrong and how he treated me and how abusers do that under the guise that it’s funny, or that ‘Oh, I can get away with it because I’m a comedian.’ That’s never funny. When you shine a light on it, that’s the culture of it — that’s the change we need to make." We could have learned that lesson without politically murdering Franken. He learned it. Why can't we embrace (figuratively!) and move forward into an enlightened, improved culture? When you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out.

4. Some of the recent progress in taking sexual harassment seriously has been leveraged on the notion that women have no reason to lie. When Dustin Hoffman asked John Oliver, “Do you believe this stuff you’re reading?,” Oliver had the viral answer: “she would have no reason to lie.” But the more we believe what women say without putting them to the test, without tolerating the man's defending himself, and put him to death socially and politically, the more we encourage the most devious, vengeful women to make accusations. Even as we silence the more empathetic, fair women, we may activate nasty women and the women who don't care if the The Reckoning takes down innocent men. Once that dynamic gets going, people won't be so receptive to the quickie argument she would have no reason to lie. The idea that women don't lie about this is going to lose strength. I heard some commentator on TV the other day assert that women don't lie and then accept pushback and say "only 2%" of the time. Whether 2% is or isn't the actual number of women who lie about sexual harassment right now, there's nothing fixing the percentage at 2. As the motivations to lie change, that number can change, and that undermines the overall project of taking sexual harassment seriously.

5. Will the workplace — after all this effort to include women — become a sterile place, where nobody ever laughs at sexual innuendo, no one ever touches anyone on the arm, nobody talks about their relationships? Look at how Franks got into trouble. I still don't know exactly what he did, but I imagine that he thought he could bond with female employees by talking about reproductive woes, the struggle to have the babies you dearly want. These particular women were offended. And he had to resign over it. The message is that men in the workplace better be damned careful about any kind of personal interaction with women. When women are around, men had better be starchily formal and all business all the time? Part of the value of going to work is to have colleagues who feel like or even are your friends. You can banter, you can laugh, you can (sometimes) share personal stories. Yes, too much friendliness can burden women (especially if the friendliness aimed at women is different from what the men get), but a fear of friendship, a cold bureaucracy in the workplace, an endless Era of That's Not Funny... it's really sad! That's going to hurt all of us, and, ironically, it may hurt women more than men, because women may care more about bonding with other people in the workplace.

Do you understand why the Arizona Republican Congressman Trent Franks thinks he has to resign?

I'd been trying to understand, and I don't get it. Chris Cillizza looks at the resignation letter and deems it "absolutely bizarre."

From the letter: "Due to my familiarity and experience with the process of surrogacy, I clearly became insensitive as to how the discussion of such an intensely personal topic might affect others. I have recently learned that the Ethics Committee is reviewing an inquiry regarding my discussion of surrogacy with two previous female subordinates, making each feel uncomfortable. I deeply regret that my discussion of this option and process in the workplace caused distress."

Also in the letter, as summarized by Cillizza, after Franks's wife had 3 miscarriages, the couple were able to use a surrogate to produced twins, and they wanted more children. That was a topic he discussed with 2 of his female employees. What's so terrible about that, especially after he acknowledges that the discussion made the employees uncomfortable and expresses regret. Can't we all move on?

Cillizza goes on to mock Franks's statement because it says too much. It proceeds to criticize the media:

"Rather than allow a sensationalized trial by media damage those things I love most, this morning I notified House leadership that I will be leaving Congress as of January 31, 2018," Franks said in the closing lines of his statement.

But I think it says too little! What was so awful about what Franks actually said (as opposed to how the employees, by their own report, felt)? Cillizza, a member of the press, goes sarcastic: "Riiiiight. It was the 'sensationalized trial by media' that's to blame here. Not the conversations about surrogacy with two female employees. Got it!" Cillizza wants those who resign from Congress to keep it short. "Be brief," he advises.

Well, that's one way to put it. If they get part way into an explanation, we're confused. We might want to say: Then why are you leaving? In the longish version that Cillizza mocks, the answer to why is that the media have gone wild and are horribly cruel. Cillizza didn't quote another line in Franks's letter, which I see here:

"But in the midst of this current cultural and media climate, I am deeply convinced I would be unable to complete a fair House Ethics investigation before distorted and sensationalized versions of this story would put me, my family, my staff, and my noble colleagues in the House of Representatives through hyperbolized public excoriation."

This is somewhat similar to what Al Franken said yesterday:

I said at the outset that the ethics committee was the right venue for these allegations to be heard and investigated and evaluated on their merits. That I was prepared to cooperate fully and that I was confident in the outcome.... I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a senator — nothing — has brought dishonor on this institution, and I am confident that the ethics committee would agree.... It has become clear that I can't both pursue the ethics committee process and at the same time remain an effective senator for them. 

The way things are right now, the member of Congress cannot pursue vindication through the established process. The trial in the media and the opposition from other members of Congress is so severe that you have to end the exposure to their attacks. No future vindication at the end of a fair process seems worth the pain. Not to Franken or Franks.

Now, Donald Trump and Judge Roy Moore. Those guys will stand their ground forever and take it. Do you understand that?  If Franken or Franks think they're teaching a lesson by example to Trump and Moore, I think they're mistaken. They're teaching an anti-example.