SEXUAL ASSAULTER SAILOR IN ICONIC V-J DAY TIMES SQUARE KISS PHOTO DIES AT 95

SEXUAL ASSAULTER SAILOR IN ICONIC V-J DAY TIMES SQUARE KISS PHOTO DIES AT 95

You know the photo. I mean, who doesn't know the photo? It is made famous because, well, we all took it to encapsulate the spirit of victory in a world war that, well, we sort of jumped in later on in and that crippled nations and, oh yeah, did I mention that Russia pretty much was kicking ass at and we totally didn't give them the proper amount of credit and thus started the whole cold war about.

Well, that iconic photo had two people. One sailor, George Mendonsa and Greta Zimmer Friedman, a dental assistant in a nurse's uniform. lips locked and very much kissing around full on celebration. What it doesn't have is consent. George, in a moment of straight up joy that the war was over and not having to ship off back to the thick of it, grabbed a random girl who looked like she was a nurse, but was actually in a dental assistant outfit, and dipped her giving her a full on kiss.

Let's just say she had no idea what was going on and I don't know about you, but with the clarity of today's equality and realization of what is and isn't okay to do without consent, is sort of lines that we should talk about.

Look, I get it, the shot is iconic. But at the same time it is problematic and highlights the fact that back then, and to a lot of degrees still now, women's consent seems like second fiddle to whatever a male wishes to do. That is something we're going to have to unpack and we have been avoiding doing so for so long. It's much like statues of confederate generals. Yeah, we want to honor our history and what not, but that history can have a lot of rather problematic situations along with it.

Maybe it's just that this dude's death brings up a big issue in that it reminds us of a time when you could assault women in the street, grab them against their consent and swap spit with them, get photographed and it was all something positive because of a bigger thing like the end of the war is more important than a woman's right to consent to an action. Now it seems that you can't do any of that and if you do, you'd have to settle for being President or having a seat on the Supreme court.

What I'm saying is eventually we will have to deal with the repercussions, right?