I’m not cheering Bill O’Reilly’s fall from grace.  Not because I think he’s innocent, but because I don’t think it will make any difference at all in our patriarchal society.  For all the many advancements women have made, we’ve not moved too far from the rape culture so wonderfully depicted in Mad Men.  I’m certainly not saying that it isn’t worth it to go after every Bill (for the record, I don’t really believe he’s gone at all), it’s just that until our culture changes, we are only going to have more Bills.

We currently live in a society that recently had a judge praise the abuser before giving his sentence for rape. We live in a time and place that thinks it’s okay that our candidate for President of the United States admitted to grabbing pussy whenever he felt like it.  A place where misbehaviors are characterized as locker room behavior, or boys being boys, or where another Presidential candidate tells women to avoid getting raped by not drinking.  Women are warned to never leave their drink unattended because; apparently, we live in a society that contains predators that find it perfectly acceptable to put a drug in it; a society that finds it acceptable for a (different!) judge to dole out a lighter sentence because he sees the future potential of the athlete rapist.  This world contains lawmakers who believe women are good liars because we are the “weaker sex”. 

I had a woman tell me she didn’t have a problem with the rampant revelations of sexual harassment/assaults because she knew she would never allow that to happen to herself, that she would fight back.  She had no answer when I asked why she should have to fight in the first place.  

I get it, the only way to change our culture is by dropping each Bill, one at a time (preferably without a 25 million dollar cushion to land on).  While I do appreciate each baby step, at this rate, it’s going to take a hell of a long time, probably a generation or two (when all the dinosaur throwbacks from Mad Men have died off) before we finally become a society that recognizes rape and sexual harassment is completely, without exception, intolerable.  That is not soon enough for this protective mother as I am about to release an 18 year old into the world. 

Make no mistake, she is strong and she is fierce.  She will fight.  I just wish we lived in a culture where she didn’t have to.