A ‘Period Dignity Officer’ Seemed Like a Good Idea. Until a Man Was Named.
So the title of this post is going to be “Period Dignity Officer,” because that is what this is, really. A guy named Dave who I met when he was a student at Boston University in September, 2017. He was running for Boston city council and, given his background (he worked at the Boston Police Department for 20 years, and is a police chaplain), was a perfect candidate for the job, and he got it. He was then named the new Dignity Officer after being nominated and losing to a candidate named Susan Flaherty, who was a well-known feminist and the sister of the former Boston Police Commissioner, Ed Davis, who was, at the time, on trial for assaulting a man in a nightclub.
I do have to say, I thought this was a smart move. Because in the run-up to his campaign, Dave had made a couple of campaign videos about women’s rights, and in one of them he got very up close and personal with some feminist leaders who were in attendance at one of his events. I was impressed and thought he was showing a great deal of integrity, but also that he was doing what was expected of him, and that he, a man, was a better representative of women than the kind of politician who would pretend to be one and actually be one. I also thought his decision to make the candidacy a YouTube video as opposed to going through an official party committee was an astute one and a wise and astute one.
Unfortunately, Dave didn’t make it through the primaries (or the general election) because he got a nasty surprise when he got his name on a flyer for a march the day before the primary. It appeared that he had been mentioned there to show support for the candidacy of a man who had been accused by some women who he had dated for a while of “raping and molesting them.”
At the time, I thought this was more than a bit unfair. In Massachusetts, you can be convicted of a crime that is related to dating someone without their consent, and have to pay a fine, but if you