We're hearing a lot about men groping women without consent, and it's good that we may finally be getting somewhere in thinking about relations between the sexes.  Nothing excuses this type of behavior, but at the same time, one wearies of hearing the left cry about how beastly men are, as if they didn't know, and carrying on as if women were completely innocent.

Women aren't always, or even usually, all that innocent.  Excluding blood relatives, relations between the sexes are fraught with sexual overtones.  It's difficult for men and women to "just be friends" because female sexual allure unfailingly gets in the way.  That's not her fault.  But her failure to respect her power by dressing too revealingly, or dancing with too much abandon, or otherwise putting her wares on too obvious display, is very much her fault.  It sets the stage for her (or another woman) to be abused by an Al Franken or Roy Moore.

It's all about the dance of the sexes, which is about the continuation of the species.  This dance advances by move-countermove, and both he and she know she's the one who chooses.  He expresses interest; she shrugs him off.  Maybe he moves on to another possibility.  But if she dresses to show her upper advantages to most powerful effect, or walks in a way that calls attention to her lower assets, or wears a skirt that leads the interested eye ever upward, she has made the first move.  When that's the case, he is emboldened to push farther than he normally might.  Maybe she's playing hard to get?  Just being coy?  Playful?  Inviting further attention?

Few women can say they've never played this game.  It's wired in us.  We don't really need Mom or Pop to sit us down to talk about the birds and the bees.  Most of us are interested in sex at an early age but know, instinctively, that it's private, so we don't talk about it except perhaps with friends of our own sex and age.  If we haven't been interested before, we certainly are after puberty.  That's what puberty does – it wakes us up to the other kind of person walking in our midst.  It's the line of demarcation between childhood and adulthood.

Can anyone honestly say he didn't know all this?  That he didn't know that women, not men, make the choice, and that they use their sex appeal – "sexuality," if you prefer – in these ways?  How many women didn't know that sex (and sex appeal) is unstable, like nitroglycerin, and if you don't respect its power, it just might blow and give you more than you bargained for?

You are responsible for the unintended consequences of your actions as much as the next person is.  Speed long enough through a residential area, and you will run over a child.  They are part of the scene.  So are men who can't, or won't, or just don't control themselves.

Let's put away the nonsensical notion that women never, ever have any responsibility in these incidents, especially in Hollywood, where it's all about sex and always has been.  Dangle your bait out there enough, and you will draw fish you really didn't want to attract.  You have very real power.  Respect it.