During the Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR, both were poised on the brink of nuclear self-destruction. Each protagonist clung to the hope that the other would realize it would be madness to begin using nuclear weapons. They both relied on the threat of “mutually assured destruction.” Within the American community today another war rages but mutually assured destruction has not acted as a deterrent.
Sub-groups within our community are making war on each other, shattering our society into mutually assured destruction based on a delusional incompatibility based on skin color, religion, politics, class, age, and most disturbing of all—sex. Many male Americans fear and mistreat women, often with physical and mental violence. “For years, we’ve been talking about strategies for working around a creepy person. There are three ways you could approach the problem of sexual harassment. You can fix the women. You can fix the guys. Or you can change the culture. And I think that really, at this point, what we should be talking about is fixing the guys and changing the culture.”[i] What Anita Hill is talking about, and she should know, is shifting the worldview of our society.
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Supplemental Reading: Sexuality, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 2
#9 Mutually Assured Destruction
[i] Hill, Anita. “The Reckoning: On Power and Sex in the Workplace.” The New York Times Magazine. December 17, 2020, p. 40.
