VALDETARO | Our Discomfort Is Worth It

The #MeToo movement has dominated news cycle after news cycle since last October, as men, and some women, from all walks of life have been accused of sexual misconduct. This has most famously been through allegations against figures such as Harvey Weinstein, almost-Senator Judge Roy Moore, actual-Senator Al Franken, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and now, Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh. They are accused of a wide range of acts that have forced us to consider not just how we deal with the abuse of power dynamics with sex, but what that abuse should be constituted as. This more complicated, more nuanced question forces us to deal with a topic that is present not just in gender issues, but in all of society’s most contentious and most controversial topics: discomfort. Discomfort is not as often in the headlines.