A few months ago, I heard news that a former mentor of mine had been accused of some kind of sexual misconduct and had resigned from his position as department chair at his university. I knew this man, whose name I'll keep anonymous, while I was in high school. He was a mentor to me in the music arts magnet school and I played in the community bands he put together and in the summer music camps he organized. He offered me a full scholarship to attend school at his university as a musician in the clarinet performance program. I ended up going to another university but we've kept in touch over the years through Facebook.
The investigation into the allegations of misconduct have revealed a couple of things. For one thing, the professor who resigned admitted to having a relationship with one of his students. The other information that came out was that the professor had a flash drive with some pictures of this student or students(s) posing in a sexual nature or in bathing suits or lingerie.
Now, while I will concede that what this professor engaged in here is a clear violation of the university's code of conduct and can certainly be called inappropriate. However, the conversations I've been privy to about this professor have called him a "sex offender" and the #Metoo has been applied to this situation.
I think that those are unfair characterizations given that the nature of the relationships does not appear to be non-consensual, nor has anyone accused this professor of sexual assault or rape. He has simply resigned voluntarily after admitting to engaging in an inappropriate romantic relationship with one or more students at the university.
As I've been thinking about the harmless nature of my relationship to this man who was a mentor to me and a great influence on my experience in high school and in my later university career, I've thought about the article by Margaret Atwood, "Am I a bad feminist?". And I think it applies well to this situation.
I think we need space in these issues to say, alright, an individual has acted inappropriately but what they've done is not unforgivable and an action that is inappropriate doesn't get to re-write the history of their actions. Basically, in my bad feminism I would like to hold on to the positive memories I have of this professor while also acknowledging they did something inadvisable.
I feel as if the past few years have slowly killed off a thing called nuance. And I miss it greatly.