The first

It’s hard to be an innovator, a creator, the first person to do something.  It’s easy to copy what others have done and go where others have already broken trail.  It’s also easy to forget how tough it is to be the first, the one to break through to the new.

This is true of so many things.  Of pretty much everything, in fact.  It’s hard work to be the first and it’s sometimes downright risky.  You know this to be true even if you’ve never dared to break out of the fold.  Or maybe you have dreamed but haven’t dared to act, because you innately understand how tough it would be.

If being the first was easy, everybody would be doing it.

Tattoos used to be a way of signifying identification with and belonging to groups that outsiders couldn’t hope to be part of.  Sailors and Hell’s Angels and tribes.  The tattoos were meant to show that those so marked were special, with powers that others couldn’t have. In turn, people who flaunted tattoos were looked down on or feared.

Now everybody’s grandmother — and great grandmother and great grandfather and the next door neighbor’s new-born — has tattoos.  Now a tattoo shows you’re part of a group — the one that’s become the norm rather than of outliers.

Even so.  Even in the 21st century.

Being the first is still to be the one who breaks the barrier of conformity, a place that is safe and comfortable.  And that means that it still isn’t so easy.  Many try, many fail.  Those who persevere have a hard time daring to go where no man — or woman — has gone before.

Touchers, gropers, and rapists

Which brings me to the accusations of sexual misconduct.  First it was a trickle, then it became a streamlet. If you think it’s starting to look like a flood now, let me tell you pretty soon it’s going to become a tsunami.  People may believe that this is a sudden thing that men are doing (because it’s mostly men who are being accused), but that’s not the case.  What is the case is that women (because it’s mostly women who do the accusing) have been groped and worse by men probably since Adam.

Then what’s happening now?

Being the first to complain about sexual misconduct….  oh forget that.  It’s not “misconduct”, it’s wrong, it’s bad, it is evil , abusive, crappy behavior.  Anyway, complaining has never been a good idea for women.  Here we are in 2017 when presumably women have “equal rights” but even now a woman’s accusations are doubted .  Even now a woman is blamed for the inappropriate behavior for men.  Even now it just isn’t considered something a woman should complain about in the first place.

And yet you ask any woman and the high probability is that sometime during her life, no matter how old — or young — she is, she will have been the recipient of unwanted advances by men.

That’s just plain crap.

Understand: this isn’t a diatribe about men.  This is about being the first, and how hard it is to do that.  Humans mistrust people who step outside area of The Way Things Have Always Been Done.  Safety is in numbers.  But…

The first women have spoken.  More will speak up.  Suddenly it will happen that the complainers aren’t outliers.  Maybe finally those who  have always had their way will find themselves in the minority, not the majority, and things will change.