Article content continued

I have heard men express incredulity about the idea of a woman suddenly “freezing” when fondled or assaulted. But I have personally heard stories from women who did. Going into shock instead of stomping off or crushing an assailant’s windpipe does not make a woman complicit or dishonest.

Or a man. Let me also here insert a plea to hear the voices of male victims of sexual assault, harassment or intimate partner violence, by another man or a woman, who surprisingly often find a scornful gender line drawn around our professed commitment to support survivors.

At the same time we must not adopt an image of women as frail, helpless Victorian heroines. It infantilizes women to say none would lie or scheme. Or it dehumanizes them, since even children are capable of fibs. Like men, women are prone to bend the truth out of vanity, malice or simple weakness. Besides, if women are always to be believed, no sane man will ever be alone with one, which does not advance human decency, women’s social position or relations between the genders.

There is no perfect justice here, at least not on this side of the grave. But there can be compassion

It should also be possible to treat sexual assault seriously while conceding that some young women display a disquieting mix of naiveté and deviousness getting drunk and going into bedrooms alone with strange men then being shocked, shocked that sex was expected. (Women, do not let “swingers” or feminists tell you “hooking up” is liberating.) We can also agree that a man who takes no to mean no did not commit assault, yet if he nevertheless made a habit of getting young women drunk and seducing them, he is still a creep that we would rightly refuse to elect. But I don’t know the facts on Patrick Brown, and the facts matter.