Coy Evasion

As we hear ever more accusations of 'inappropriate' behaviour in the distant past, I wonder precisely what the miscreant is supposed to have done. Was a private part caressed, a bottom patted, a knee squeezed, or just a non-consenting head patted?  We cannot be reasonably expected to conjure up the 'appropriate' degree of moral outrage unless we know what happened.

I think that acts that would at the time have been dismissed as just bad manners are now reinterpreted as serious assaults.

In a biographical essay on Bertrand Russell, Alistair Cooke wrote:

"During his wartime stay in Princeton, when he was in his early seventies, the groves of academe were flustered by rumours of Lord Russell's goatish ways. One lady whose testimony is to be trusted made the shivering confession the the groping of the noble lord in an automobile conveyed the sensation of 'dry leaves rustling up your thighs' "

That was published in the 1970's without provoking any public outrage.

The quotation is from Alistair Cooke, Six Men  p. 204 in the Penguin Edition.