Someone is in the news again.   The one thing about the news regarding Mr. Allen is that there is enough ambiguity about what might have happened to be assured that we will never know what happened, and never have an honest conversation about molestation, abuse, incest, and bitterness.  Why did I add bitterness? It was added because what appears to be one universal truth about this story and the millions of others that do not make headlines is that America prefers to find the simple explanation instead of the reality.

There are things that we know, and things we assume.  This is a general statement, not specific to the multiple Allen controversies.  In the quagmire that is sexual molestation, sexual assault, rape and sexual victimization we on the whole as observers look for the simple answer to the questions the topic brings forth.

We almost never take the time to question deeply, to examine honestly because these topics are beyond uncomfortable for us.

Even though we know someone who has been in this situation – yes we know someone because it is that pervasive and is saturated into our human condition.  Even if the women in your life have never shared their story, you know someone who has been touched by sexual abuse and/or violence.

That woman could be your wife, your sister, your mother even if she’s never told you specifically.  We all know someone.  Yes we do.

Cases like the Allen clusterfuck of questions and impropriety give us all the opportunity to have the conversation about how to protect our children from abuse, and without fail there are doubters to the story of the child and proclamations that a bitter woman planted the idea to harm the man who dared break her heart.

R. Kelly can still make music and be a celebrated R&B artist.  The masses will invent all types of excuses why, even though there is enough anecdotal “evidence” of his love of girls under the age of 18 to compel further questions.  We don’t ask those questions though.  We say he was never convicted of a crime.  We say that there is no proof and step in the name of  not love but hiding our heads in the sand.  We say if we watched “that tape” she didn’t fuck like a little girl and ignore the age difference, the financial difference, the fame difference and take his side.

Woody Allen can still make movies, and get nominated for Oscars.

We ignore that he married the daughter of his girlfriend.  We say she was 21 when they married while ignoring his place in that household as a father figure.  We don’t ask if the “love” the two of them found came from grooming a child, in her teens to be the wife in her 20s.  That is a bad question to ask.

Almost as bad a question apparently as did Mia Farrow in anger plant suggestions of abuse in daughter Dylan who is steadfast in her accusation that Allen molested her in her youth.

We don’t want to think about how questionable it is that Allen married a child who he in part raised.  Even those of us who walk in the alternative lifestyle and utilize incest in our kink, don’t want to ask those questions outside of our own fantasies.

We remember the King of Pop Michael Jackson as a musical genius.  We no longer ask if those multiple accusations of abuse at his hands was possible.  We have to respect the memory of the dead we say, while never asking the question of ourselves would we send our 10 year old son to a sleep over at Never Land ranch.

Each story of the rich and infamous presents to us the opportunity to examine the issue, and have the conversation.  Each story gets ignored and denied because the conversation is uncomfortable for us to have.

While we wear our discomfort like your best pair of broken in blue jeans, our children remain at risk.

We need to have these conversations.  We need to have them today, tomorrow, the next day and beyond.

Even with these obvious prompts though, we still find a way to ignore the conversation.

I wonder what it will take to move the conversation from denial to solution.

 

Aphrodite Brown