I’m so tired and sad about this legislative session. Not just the sexual harassment or the objectification of grieving people or the blatant disrespect of Black people or the arrogant preening. The fact is it’s always been this way.
I could have written this post 15 years ago. Stop treating female interns like sex with them is part of your compensation package as a legislator. Stop being so goddamn racist toward your Black colleagues. Stop being so corrupt while acting like you're morally upright. Stop shitting on marginalized minorities who are just trying to be in the world while you’re carrying on like a crowd of Caligulas. In fact, I’m sure I did write this 15 years ago. I’m sure 15 years before that, someone else was writing a similar piece. Back and back and back, all of us saying, “Recognize us as people with our own fundamental rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and not as objects for you to manhandle for your pleasure,” and dudes like this saying in response, “You’d be prettier if you smiled.”
Can you imagine what it must be like to be in the head of an adult man who reportedly put his hands on the neck of a 19-year-old intern and begged her to describe her sex life to him in 2023? We’ve had how many centuries of feminism at this point? And how many scandals in the Tennessee legislature in which men have gotten kicked out for their treatment of female interns? Like, how do you get to this point in our history, with all the examples of your own colleagues who have tanked their political careers and with all the testimony of interns and former interns about how gross and dangerous this behavior feels, and you’re like, “But what I’m doing is cool”? Just how far up your own ass does your head have to be, how much entitlement must you feel to think that you can get away with treating interns this way? What level of self-aggrandizing delusion must you have as a 39-year-old nobody from East Tennessee to think that 19-year-olds would want you? Are you BTS? Do you have a name that has a random dollar sign in it for some reason? Do you have a face tattoo? Do you have a hit single or a No. 1 movie? Are you also 19 years old?! If you are none of those things, then a 19-year-old does not want you. If you think a 19-year-old wants to sleep with you, you are playing yourself and probably hurting them. Nineteen-year-olds think Justin Bieber is an old person, and you, Scotty Campbell, are no Justin Bieber.
State forced to relocate intern after Rep. Scotty Campbell allegedly made repeated comments
How do we think Scotty Campbell would have felt if, when he was an intern for Bob Clement, some dude 20 years older than him kept asking him about his sex life? If that dude had complained about being lonely and grabbed his neck? He would not have liked it! He would have been grossed-out and frightened. And we know Scotty Campbell doesn’t just have a thing for 19-year-olds — which would have been gross enough —because Nashville is full of 19-year-olds. He wasn’t hanging out at Vanderbilt frat parties or frequenting coffee shops where Belmont students study trying to pick up undergrads. He was, according to a story first reported by NewsChannel 5, being a huge creep to young women he had power over.
Still. Man. Still. After all this time, they’re still up there preying on interns.
And after six people were shot and killed in a school here in Nashville — three of them children — and mothers and children who are angry and afraid came to Capitol Hill to petition the state government for redress of their grievances, did Republican legislators show them any compassion? Demonstrate any sense that they understand how their constituents feel? No, and in fact, state Sen. Adam Lowe was caught on a hot mic talking about how attractive these grieving mothers are.
And again I say, still? We’re still trying to get you to see us as actual full citizens with concerns we need addressed, and you can’t be bothered to pay attention to what we’re saying because you’re busy judging whether you want to have sex with us? Does Lowe go to funeral dinners to see if the widow is hot? Would Lowe like it if he were trying to talk to McNally about something and he later overheard McNally talking about how hot he was? Would that make him feel heard and respected? No. Of course not.
I really don’t even know how you would go about fixing this. Women have been begging and cajoling and yelling and crying for men to recognize that we are human beings with lives equal to theirs, with equal interiorities, for hundreds of years. And yet, still, when we enter a space, these dudes’ driving thoughts are about how hot we might or might not be.
At least Scotty Campbell resigned. But Lowe seemingly doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with letting his dick eclipse the humanity of these women.
Both these men also claim to be Christian, of course, so I have to assume that when they heard Jesus say to treat others how you’d want to be treated, they just assumed those others were only straight white guys?
My grandma died right before her 100th birthday. I could still have half my life ahead of me. And I have no hope that this column and others like it won’t still be relevant. So, I guess we’ll see each other here again next time, when we need to vent about yet another cohort of interns being preyed on. And the time after that, and the time after that, and the time after that.
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April 24, 2023 at 07:00PM
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Tennessee Republicans' Bad Behavior Is Nothing New | Pith in the Wind | nashvillescene.com - Nashville Scene
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