Make no mistake about it Senator Franken, you didn’t just make some women “feel badly.” You took advantage of their admiration of you and assaulted them. But you didn’t just hurt those women.
Thirty-six women who worked with you collectively for at least three decades admired you so much, they put out a letter to defend your honor, took a lot grief for doing so. Innocent women defended you! And you made a fool of them. You made a fool out of all of your supporters such as me, who just couldn’t believe that Al Franken, of all people, could be guilty of such perverted behavior. And even now, people who admire you are twisting themselves in knots to defend you. And you don’t fucking deserve it.
Last night I posted a diary telling my #metoo story. But I deleted it this morning because that shit never stops making you feel embarrassed and ashamed. No, what you did to these women aren’t as horrible as the things that monster did to me. But if your goal was to behave better than a motherfucking gay basher and rapist, well, congratulations you cleared that fucking bar. Bravo!
You had a powerful voice. You spoke more eloquently on progressive issues than just about anyone. You spoke with passion. You more ably dissected and dismantled Trump and his “alt-right” white supremacist minions better than anyone in Washington, DC. You have been a fierce advocate for women, LGBT people, and other minorities. You are extremely talented. WE NEEDED YOU MOTHERFUCKER! We needed you. And America needed you!
Sadly, you turned out to be a fucking creep. You can no longer use your talents to speak up for us. Yeah, you can still vote our way. The people of Minnesota will decide whether your vote alone is enough, because every word you use on these issues in the future will fall on deaf ears. Everything useful you could ever say on women’s rights and LGBT rights will come with an asterisk: “but he’s a creepy hypocrite who pervs on women” “but of course he thinks transwomen should be allowed in a women’s bathroom, he probably would like in himself.”
I am not from Minnesota so I can’t say or do anything about your political future. But those of us who are LGBT and progressive who live here in the south need progressives from other states to fight for us; to protect us from our own governors, Senators, congressmen, and so forth. Your beautiful and powerful voice has been silenced. It wasn’t silenced by LeeAnn Tweeden. It wasn’t silenced by the women you assaulted. It was silenced by your inability to keep your hands to yourself. Your voice was our voice. In silencing your own voice, you silenced our voice. Why? Just to get a cheap thrill?
I keep waiting like an idiot that some bombshell evidence will magically appear proving the ridiculous fantasies I spread in your defense. But my common sense knows that is not ever going to happen.
Despite the fact that I am a #metoo, I still defended you, because it is hard as hell to accept that someone you admire, someone you depend on is a moral fraud. And that’s what you are. I admired you so much and needed this to be false so badly that over the last week or so that I made ridiculous stupid arguments to defend you. In doing so, I betrayed my own good sense, my own values, and my own #metoo status, and all of the women who have it so much worse because of how systemic abuse of women is in society. I am deeply sorry for that. I played a fool for you, Mr Franken, as many here at DailyKos continue to do right now.
LeeAnn Tweeden sounds like a terrible person. However, even women who are birthers and right wing nutjobs deserve to be believed. I admired you so much that I behaved in regard to her the exact opposite of what I knew she deserved. So, congratulations, you had me conned so well, that I let myself be complicit in your predatory behavior. To all women and all of us who have said #metoo, I am deeply sorry for that.
Growing up in the conservative suburbs of New Orleans in the 1970s and 1980s I was chronically bullied because the other kids correctly perceived me as gay. I made a decision by about the age of ten that I didn’t want membership in the world of males. I wanted to be the opposite of all the males in my life who treated me so terribly. I chose to be a loner rather than conform to that world and become “one of the guys.” By the age of fifteen I admitted in class that I was a feminist. That lead to even more bullying and more mocking. But I never allowed the bullies’ abuse of me to make me back down from what I believed and coerce me to behave in a misogynistic manner.
What bullies and fag bashers could not achieve, your Oscar-worthy performance as a genuine decent male did. I behaved like “one of the guys.” Though LeeAnn Tweeden likely never saw what I wrote, I still abused her. I still wrote idiotic defenses of you in places where my fellow survivors of sexual abuse could see, and I likely triggered some of them. I made myself behave in a manner that is unacceptable — intolerable. To my fellow sexual abuse survivors and all women, I am deeply sorry for my defenses of Senator Franken. He didn’t deserve my defenses, and you didn’t deserve to read them. This is a mistake I will be dilligent to never make again. So, again, my heartfelt apologies.