Reprint from My Notes

I published this article a month and a half ago.  At the bottom was a long note on my own brush with sexual harassment accusations.

Further Thoughts on Personal Development

KEN TAYLOR

APR 21, 2023

I am reprinting the note because one of the failures that I believe leads to a lot of discontent is the refusal to accept responsibility for our offensive behavior to others.  I could post this as self-justification, that I really did nothing  wrong and the women placed false motivations on my actions.  That I was not trying to offend them, but they became offended, nevertheless, so whether my motivations were not sexual, and in the second case I mention, I was exonerated after an investigation.  But that in no way means I did not offend them and my offending them is my responsibility.  To assume that for some reason we are not responsible for offending others if we did not intend to do so, no matter if it is a male against female offense or parent-child, or friend-friend or white supremacist-black, is to justify our actions and distorts us from realizing our own responsibility.We are always responsible for the consequences of our actions and when they are offensive to others, and we fail to acknowledge our responsibility, then we easily learn to justify our behavior and declare we did right; therefore the offended person is in the wrong.

My position is we are always wrong to offend another, and failure to acknowledge it to oneself leads to continually being offensive.  Anyway I wanted to restate these personal stories.

Note:  To be fully honest and not attempt to paint myself as Simon Pure,  long before sexual harassment was a terminology, back in 1962 when I was in 7th grade, I was more or less accused of it.  The story is that we had English class immediately after lunch.  So the students began gathering in the class prior to the teacher on most days. We had our seats assigned on the first day of class by the teacher, but all the students in proximity to my seat were girls.  As we gathered we talked about current music or the girls would gossip about some event in their lives.  Mostly I just prompted the conversations, as they would begin to take their seats I would ask what was happening and the others would answer, and if anyone didn’t seem to reply, I would turn to them and ask, “how do you feel about…?”  or something to insure everyone contributed.  I was against the wall, next to the door, in the second seat. And I would turn towards the girls with my back to the wall, and usually remained in that position even after the teacher entered and they faced forward. But there was one girl who never joined, who sat directly in front of me and she never looked at anyone from the moment she entered the class.  And everyday I would try to include her.  Everyday I would say, “Hello, T…, what’ve you been up to? And as my wont, when someone said something I would attempt to include her and ask how she felt.  The back of her neck would turn red, but she didn’t ever reply.  I very well knew I was making her uncomfortable but, in my weak defense, I kept thinking I needed to make her a part of the conversation, that somehow that would make her feel more a part of the group.  Occasionally I even asked others to try to engage her, that maybe it was because I was a boy.  They would sometimes comply, but usually shrug me off by saying, “T  never talks to anyone.”

Well, one day after class, the teacher asked me if she could have a word with me. 

 Now I have to say that she was the teacher I thought was the best teacher because she never told us the answers.  She would assign a book to read, or she would have us write a paper to read to the class.  In session she would let the class respond as they will.  She would never say a student was wrong, she would ask how they came to that conclusion.   

Well I smiled and was glad to be asked to converse privately for a moment.  When everyone had left, she walked around the desk and stood near me, and then a stern voice (not loud, but stern) I had never heard from her and said, “You are making T. very uncomfortable when you talk to her.  She has asked me to ask you to not speak to her.  Don’t say hello, just don’t acknowledge her existence.”

I guess it was the ultimate moment of embarrassment in my life.  For the rest of that school year, I not only did not talk to T, I ceased participating in the pre-class discussions with the other girls.  One of them confronted me out of class and said they all wanted to know why I was no longer participating and I replied that the teacher had informed me my participation had made one of the students feel uncomfortable, and she asked me to not speak before class.  The girl replied, “Oh it’s T.  We told you you shouldn’t try to include her.” 

They had been right, I had been wrong.  I didn’t learn anything.  Four years later it happened again on the base at Guantanamo. It was a small school and many a day, there were afternoon parties at the beach.  One girl never attended.  Never went to any of the sporting events, never went to any dances, never joined us at any of the outdoor movie theaters.  In the spring we were planning a big gathering on Easter sunday, with multiple events planned, and everyone in the school was participating in the planning, except that one girl, and as we were leaving school that day, I departed the crowd and walked over to her, (we usually departed as a group, but she walked separately and some distance from the rest of the students) and told her I hope she would come to the Easter event, and said, “if you need a ride, let me know, someone will gladly bring you.”  

I think that was the Friday before Easter because on Monday, as everyone was walking towards the first period, the school counselor came into the courtyard and yelled at me to come to his office.  He informed me that the girl had said I had attempted to rape her  and he wanted my side of the story.  I told him what I have related to above. He said  for the time being I would come to his office every morning and remain there for the school day.  A couple of weeks later she was sent off base, somewhere.  She was the exec’s daughter. (If you are unfamiliar with the exec’s role on a naval base, his rank is comparable to being vice-president, but his power to shield the Captain is similar to the chief-of-staff’s, and his judicial authority on maintaining order grants him the power to make decisions if any crime occurs before involving the Captain, who will seldom interfere unless he feels there is a blatant miscarriage by the exec.). Shortly after her departure, her brother, whom I didn’t know well because he was in junior high, told me his father wanted to speak to me and asked if I could come to their house after school.  The father told me they had sent his daughter to the states for counseling, and he wanted to apologize.  He told me the other students had corroborated that I had merely asked her to come to the Easter party and I was in no legal trouble.

It was not the case at home.  The first day, the Monday after Easter, my mother had confronted me about the accusation, when I denied it, she slapped me.  My mother had never slapped me in my life.  She never apologized for slapping me.  I don’t know if she ever believed after being exonerated that I had been innocent. 

 Well I have no clean hands to talk about harassment and rape, you can believe what you will, if I am proclaiming innocence falsely or not.  Because I don’t feel I am innocent.  I am not innocent because I did accept the clear “Hands Off '' signs that were plastered before my eyes in both instances, I did make approaches I should not have made, I made a couple of girls uncomfortable who had clearly indicated by their behavior that my overtures were unwanted. I had approached them and violated them because I willfully ignored those signs.  My motivations notwithstanding, I violated  them from their perspective.  So in both instances it was clearly harassment on my part. Even if I had no sexual motivation…harassment is a type of bullying and certainly those girls felt I was violating them, at the very least of bullying them, and from their perspective, making them feel demeaned.

So I have no clean hands.  And you can take the rest of the article from the perspective that I am as guilty of the actions of which I have written about.

I came to the conclusion after these encounters that men should follow the example of many other species, the male preens and the woman selects.  So I decided that I would not make advances to women, and only respond  if they initiated contact.  

But I suppose that is not seen as very manly by the manly.