When we stop making distinctions, and all pile on to every sexual charge as if an inappropriate pass is the same as a violent assault or pro quod quo coercion, we are in the middle of a sex panic.
As during the revelations of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, when a pat on the butt in a swimming pool was treated as the same as a violent rape, when relations with a 16 year old were equated with advances on a 4 year old. As in the whole “Satanistic” child abuse in day care centers hysteria that relied on children’s fantasies and fears to put hundreds of innocent people in jail for very long stints.
The denunciations of Kevin Spacey spreading on social media give me that “sex panic” feeling. Sure, it really was inappropriate bad bad behavior to roll drunkenly onto the body of a 14 year old at a party. But Spacey did not claim drunkenness as an excuse. He called his own behavior horrifying. He is not using his lack of memory to question Rapp’s story–at all. He is treating it as presumptively true. None of the other accused men have done that. They have said or implied the accusers are lying–Woody Allen, Bill Clinton, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein. Spacey had no choice but to come out once Rapp went public. If he had denied being gay or been coy about it, he would have been casting doubt on Rapp’s story. What other choice did he have at this point?