As you are all well aware, I adore my mother and often find myself engage in spirited debates about current events with her. Our most recent squabble had to do with the Bill Cosby mess that will not leave the headlines. I'm sure you're aware of at least the basic details; that he's accused of drugging and raping women over the decades, that his wife is firmly standing by him and accusing the women of being liars out to ruin her husband's reputation, that many people are still defending him, despite overwhelming evidence of guilt. The whole thing has been seen as tarnishing a legendary legacy, but it's a legacy that really should have never existed if the allegations are true. And I'm inclined to believe that they are. Where there is smoke, there is fire. In this case it's more like, where there's so much smoke that you can't breathe, there's probably an inferno. Whether Cosby drugged and raped five women or fifteen women, he is a serial rapist who got away with it because...well, why did he get away with it, exactly? How did no one press charges? That's the mind boggling thing. And that lies at the heart of my debate with the Mother Ship. She agrees he's guilty as sin, but feels that some of the women who have come forward as alleged victims were not actually victims and are just jumping on the bandwagon, thus making a bad situation look even worse. She's curious as to how no one went after him via the legal system, especially since some had exchanged stories eons ago and had to have known he would keep doing it. The way she views it, the women who were not attacked and are just trying to gain publicity are no better than Cosby.
While I see my mother's point, and I also question if everyone coming forward was a victim or if they have other motivations for speaking up, I don't see it as such a black and white issue. Sexual assault is one of the worst things you can do to a person and, much like how someone grieves after a death, I don't think you can judge someone's psyche or gauge whether they're telling the truth or not based on how they act in the immediate aftermath. And things only get murkier when the alleged assault took place decades ago. I can believe that a number of them did not pursue charges for various reasons; the shame of the assault, not really knowing whether or not it happened, the fact that it was a beloved TV dad they'd be accusing. Money and celebrity can buy you just about anything and we all know it buys you out of a whole hell of a lot of legal issues. I can understand not wanting to take on such a machine, even if you were violated. So yes, it's entirely possible that some of these women are not being truthful, but that's for them and their consciences to deal with. I'm not going to have sympathy for the devil just because people may be jumping on the bandwagon for effect's sake. He still did what he did and, I believe, to multiple women. Also, I don't agree that all of that bandwagon hopping is making the story or the allegations worse. One rape is bad enough, but more than one is so incredibly awful and shows such an outrageous level of arrogance and disrespect. Even if only five women had come forward, it would've been an awful story. But that kind of arrogance, combined with having never been caught or even questioned about it, leads me to believe there very well could be dozens of victims. We'll never know for sure how many there are. As with any other story, there are two sides and either side could be embellishing or minimizing the facts.
Having heard some of the deposition Cosby gave regarding one of the rapes, I could not comprehend how a man with four daughters of his own could have such blatant disrespect for women in general. I have two girls, decades apart in age, and a niece on the cusp of becoming an adult and I cannot fathom ever viewing women as objects with which to do what you please. Every woman is someone's daughter, sister, niece, granddaughter or mother, and when you put things in that perspective, it's pretty disgusting to think about taking advantage of them. How do you rape women in your spare time and then even have the balls to look your wife or daughters in the eye? What if they were the victims of someone like you? A normal man would want to kill the SOB who did that to a woman he cared about. But Bill Cosby is obviously not a normal, or even halfway decent man. Nor is the understanding he and his wife seem to have had over the years about his behavior. I've seen many articles stating she's a "long-suffering" wife, or that she knew he had extracurricular activities involving sex with other women and she either permitted him to cheat, or turned a blind eye (which is basically the same thing). I don't agree with that. True, you can never 100000000% know any person, even if you've been married to them for 50 years, but you damn well know if that person is up to some shady business. I'm not saying she knew he was a rapist, but what are the odds he never brought up his penchant for wanting to sleep with women who were asleep at some point? I suppose it's possible her viewed her differently and that's why he wifed her. Again, we'll never know for sure, but I don't view her as another, albeit different type of victim of Bill Cosby. She had to have heard rumblings about it over the years. And furthermore, if a number of women have very similar stories about your husband having drugged and then raped them, and then he admits to having drugged and had sex with them, it don't take much to put two and two together.
The worst part of this recently released deposition is Cosby trying to defend the behavior by saying the women didn't tell him not to drug and rape them again, and that he picked up on non-verbal visual cues to know they wanted him to do so in the first place. That's just...there are no words for that ish. No means no and all the "non-visual cues" in the world are not consent. Some people like to take drugs and have sex and that's fine, so long as both parties are consenting. But he seems to view it like that, as if these women gave off a vibe that said they wanted to be knocked out and taken advantage of. Rape isn't about sex, it's about power. Cosby had plenty of that back in his heyday, and yet it still wasn't enough. And sadly, all the allegations and victims coming forward will not be enough to convince some people that he's a rapist. And none of it will be enough to bring him to justice for what he did. Talk about a perfect crime.
