The Tub

I just finished a book of essays by Lawrence Weschler:Vermeer in Bosnia in which he wrote a portrait of Roman Polanski. I've only ever been peripherally aware of Polanski. I've seen a few movies and liked them well enough. I've just never had a strong interest. The essay felt like vague cultural memories for me. I did know he cannot be in the USA because he was charged and convicted for having sex with a thirteen year old girl. I did not know much about the case. If weren't for the strength of Weschler's writing I might not have read the whole piece.
Polanski's mother died in Auschwitz. His father was also interred and Roman lived rough until after the war when he was reunited with his father. In the essay there is a conversation in which Polanski doesn't accept that the thirteen year old was a child. He says she was almost fourteen, as if that makes a huge difference. But Polanski had been watching people being shot in the street when he was fourteen. That must have skewed his sense of maturity.
The trial is fraught with complication. There was the character of the time when everyone was still working through the perimeters of free love. There's a he said/she said quality about the whole thing and finally a punitive judge who may have been "over sentencing." I don't actually have an opinion about any of it. It's too messy. I do feel that Polanski, seen in the context of his early life and the culture at the time of the event, comes off as more of a cad than a lech.
I've been having a lot of mixed feelings about the Me Too movement. I wrote my own story because I believe our stories bring light into shadows. But it's been such a barrage of revelations. And I have been more sad than mad about many of the men. I was really bummed to hear about John Hockenberry, who it seems is a big jerk. I'm always going to feel like Al Frankin was tossed under a bus. His actions seem like a cross between stupid frat boy behavior and a kind of obtuseness. Garrison Keeler? I don't even know what the issues were. Louis CK? I feel like his act was organized around inappropriateness. He's been asking all of us to watch him with his hand in his pants and we have because it was so funny and human.
In a recent Harper's there is a piece in which Katie Roiphe talks about an editor of the The Paris Review who "had resigned under a cloud of acknowledged sexual misconduct." He had also been an advocate for women writers in the Review. Reading a tweet that celebrated his resignation the Roiphe writes that of the many things that could be felt about the end of his era as the editor, celebration was not one. 
Years ago a friend was visiting and I asked her if she wanted to watch one of the few movies I own. She didn't want to watch it because it was a Woody Allen movie. I had been gifted the disc and didn't really know it was an Allen movie. Again, I've never been a huge fan so I've never been overly interested in his story. He always felt a little creepy and I believe his step daughter's account. But I was slightly taken aback at the idea of boycotting his work.
I feel like we've lived for so long in a world where we accepted the bad faith behavior of men. Boys will be boys. At some point in life I stopped believing that and hoped for an awakening. The Me Too movement feels like an awakening but it also often feels like a hammer. In ending the silence of women to speak about what's happened to them we've created another kind of silencing. We allow no measure of consideration. There's a baby and there's bath water but there's also a tub. I'm always interested in the tub. I want to know about the scene of the crime. What is the context? I think there is a difference in the behavior of a man who created an unsafe environment at work and a man who did some goof ball grabbing. The difference is not about right and wrong. They're both wrong. It's about context. Does it matter if a girl is thirteen or fourteen when an older man seduces her? Not really. But there is a difference between seduction and rape. And again. The difference is not about right or wrong.
I think accountability matters, I'm just not sure what the shape of it should be.
In my work on the events of my life I have sought truth and healing. First and foremost my own but also in my relationships. It's been hard for me to accept when the other person won't or cant meet me in the process. I will always feel that I paid a huge price for someone else's bad faith. But I also became who I am. None of that can be measured or accounted for in conventional terms. Way too many moving parts. None of it ends up as easy narrative. 
Awakenings are fraught. When someone has been silenced they want to be the only voice in the room for awhile and that makes sense. But we can't just disappear people. Roiphe writes that being able "to hold a lot of opposites in our minds seems to be what the movement calls for, to tolerate and be honest about the ambiguities." Holding the tension of opposites is always where I feel the truest truth lives. It feels like the place where the healing lives.