When I was a young girl in high school, I had the lead role in an operetta -- a musical. I played the young girl who was in love. As a part of my role, I had to kiss the male lead. I was maybe 15 or 16 at the time. I had never been kissed, and had only gone out on one date in my life, and the guy I had to kiss on stage was utterly unattractive. But if I wanted to play the role of the ingenue and sing in the operetta, I had to kiss the guy.
Imagine Hollywood movies with no kissing. Imagine being an actress who is happily married, has three children and is required by a script to kiss an utterly unattractive man in a movie. Imagine playing the part of a woman who is, according to the script, raped in a movie. Pretty awful. Pretty disgusting. Just like being a never-kissed, over-protected, teenaged girl who has to kiss a boy in a high school operetta.
It's totally different from being harassed in real life. By agreeing to be in the operetta, I agreed to be kissed by this ugly guy. It was part of the gig.
Later in life, I learned to play piano bar. I was pretty good. The men in the bars I played in weren't, so I chose not to play any more piano bar. I learned that the job was not about my music, but about men who wanted a pretty woman to, shall we say, flatter them. It wasn't my thing. That was the end pretty much of my musical career.
An actress rehearses, even kisses from time to time if the role requires it. If you don't want to pretend with regard to sham affection and phony kisses, you don't become an actress. You don't take the part in the operetta.
Being kissed in a rehearsal may be unnecessary, unpleasant or even annoying, but it is understandable, especially if the act is either a comic or romantic scene, that being kissed by another actor or comedian that you find unattractive, even a slobberer, may be part of the gig if you accept a job in entertainment. I suspect that is particularly true if a woman who gets work because she is sexy agrees to go on a tour of a military base. Everybody knows that it is an act, a pretense. In the situation with Al Franken and the USO tour, everybody knew that Al Franken did not expect sexual favors from the woman he planned to kiss on stage. It was a joke. It was an act.
That's a very different matter from being a young woman working at a mall or restaurant or socializing at a mall being approached by an older man, being kissed or touched inappropriately by an older man.
It is also a very different matter from being a woman working in an office and having a co-worker touch you in a way you don't like.
We would have very few romantic movies if the kissing scenes could not be rehearsed or could not exist. There is an understanding, whether you are Franken and his accuser or some other actress and the leading man that you may play a romantic or even sex scene. You are both adults, and you both know that the pretend sex or romantic attraction is part of your job and that you may have to rehearse. You consent to the touching because it is part of your job.
When you work in an office, apply for a movie job with a movie producer or just live your life, you don't consent to touching by your clients, customers, the movie producer or the random guy in the restaurant.
What is inappropriate in one circumstance is quite appropriate in another. Fox TV has an entertainment station that features shows that sometimes require kissing. The actors and actresses know that when they choose their profession. When they accept a gig, they know what is involved.
Al Franken and the woman in question were working as comedians and actors. That is quite different from a situation in which an older man whose job is district attorney tries to pick up women 15 years younger than he is in a mall or a restaurant. The one is acting. The other is real life. I chose not to be an actress or a singer. It was my choice. I respect other women who make other choices. But when they make the choice, they have to accept what it means for them.
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Bashing Democrats is a huge draw for some. 
