Friendly banter is Herman Cain's apparent catch-all term for any physical encounters he cannot remember. I predict that it will become a standard excuse in the future to cover all manner of bullying, sexual advances and abuse. What would it mean to be able to subsume these things under friendly banter banner? It would mean a continued edge for patriarchy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse. It would mean a fuzzy layer of protective excuse around bullying. It was all friendly. No harm meant.
Obviously in the worst cases such obfuscation would have little weight. But this is precisely the point. The older an allegation the more useful are terms that minimize the possible reality. Absent hard evidence, Herman Cain or anyone else can call anything friendly banter. Whether it was a slap on the back or a genital grope.
Friendly banter joins "he said she said" in the lexicon of terms that minimize past realities. Words are so important that the Bible suggests that a word started everything. Friendly banter supports the idea that "nothing really happened" in reference to situations where aggression resulted in hurt feelings or worse.
The only apparent defense a victim has is a witness or witnesses. But sexual abuse tends to be private and concealed. To say years later that an actual instance of aggression was merely friendly banter is consistent with hear and see no evil perspective. Realities such as hurt, humiliation and shame of victims are deftly minimized. Absent witnesses, minus proof, the friendly banter protocol confers a sort of tough-it-out virtue on things and helps turn the victim into the accused. In this sense, we can say that the term friendly banter is indeed a weapon in the cause of sexual abuse.
Friendly banter joins "he said she said" in the lexicon of terms that minimize past realities. Words are so important that the Bible suggests that a word started everything. Friendly banter supports the idea that "nothing really happened" in reference to situations where aggression resulted in hurt feelings or worse.
The only apparent defense a victim has is a witness or witnesses. But sexual abuse tends to be private and concealed. To say years later that an actual instance of aggression was merely friendly banter is consistent with hear and see no evil perspective. Realities such as hurt, humiliation and shame of victims are deftly minimized. Absent witnesses, minus proof, the friendly banter protocol confers a sort of tough-it-out virtue on things and helps turn the victim into the accused. In this sense, we can say that the term friendly banter is indeed a weapon in the cause of sexual abuse.
