DSK, and sex crimes vs love crimes

As posted to an interesting blog at Crooked Timber (before some well needed edits):

I don’t have any feelings whatever toward DSK or his accuser. They are far away and I've never met either one.  I think if it turns out that DSKis guilty, I could become very angry at DSK or myself that my attempt not to rush to judgement (when it sometimes seems like I am the only one who hasn’t) has turned out to have been shielding a criminal. This is how it turned out in 1974 after I had campaigned for Nixon, presumed his innocence, and defended his innocence before my friends who mostly called me foolish. A key step on my personal journey toward socialism. But now very ironically I join those who look back at the Nixon somewhat fondly, as Chomsky says, the last liberal President, and wonder if people like Woodward’s friends had an extra agenda to bring an end to moderately socially democratic conservatism.

I do have considerable anger, however misplaced, toward those who have rushed to the judgement that DSK is guilty, and worse anger toward those who say this is just how men are generally. I just finished my 3rd posting on Katha Pollitt’s blog, not defending DSK (though having suggested there may be alternatives to the accusation made against DSK) because I fear he might indeed be guilty, as Nixon was, but rather pointing out the hypocrisy of her literally concluding that DSK is guilty while simultaneously accusing French media of a rush to judgement blaming the accuser.

Honestly I find it hard to picture how a man such as DSK could make attacks such as have been alleged (or proven?) and still be nearly in position to have been elected President of France, after having been one of the least antisocial chiefs of the IMF. Can someone point me to movies to help educate my imagination on things like this?

This is not at all comparable to (at least how I have imagined) priestly pedophilia because that is in some sense consensual, just that we don’t extend the authority to consent to the victims. Rape is non-consensual period; that is definitional. It seems hard for me to imagineDSK as a violent criminal. He seems more like the boring kind.

I perceive a kind of gray area involving lack of communication or differing cultural norms that is yet another kind of unproven hypothesis. Need I ask permission to touch my date’s hand? Normally, I now think not, though she is certainly entitled to refuse, and if done politely I should not be in the least offended. But I have had dates (even one continuing sets of dates with one woman that had gone on for a month) where the first such touch led to lectures, denunciations, or realized or nearly realized threats of dissociation (that in one case required vast apologies to overcome). Apparently I was supposed to have asked permission, though with others that might be seen as fatal weakness: an avoidance of risk taking that some women demand.

In this grey area, if you concede that it exists, it also makes me wonder about this: Isn't the reason that attempted rape (if quickly shunned or avoided without injury) is seen as a serious crime (not that far removed from murder) is because it is a violation of the victims dignity and respect?  Then if so, what about the other side in cases like I described above. Say if a hand touch leads to a lasting peer group ostracism and a therefore a long lasting personal crisis. Couldn’t that also be seen as a violation of dignity and respect? A crime of love perhaps rather than a crime of sex?

It seems to me that some feminists are sexist, and that the masculine role is a lot more difficult and complicated than they perceive. This kind of news brings them out, and that makes me angry, and also makes me angry at men too who don’t recognize the complexity of the issues and might therefore be inclined to join the chorus of those calling me a misogynist.