Have we hit tipping point for harassment, assault?
When I moved to Ottawa from Scarborough some years ago, my date took me to a well-known restaurant. The food was good, the service friendly. Yet it’s not the menu I recall; it’s the attire of the female servers — black and skimpy. Their wardrobe, apparently, was the reason the place was well-known, although it catered to families and the general public.
I felt a flush of embarrassment, much as I occasionally did about my workplace, where a gaggle of male supervisors had sometimes flashed scorecards as female employees walked by; or about the Parliament of Canada, where a male MP thought it just fine to call a female colleague “baby”; or about the guy who tried to take me to the cinema for an evening of pornographic film. And so on.
A few decades later, many of us believe we are far removed from such dopey sexism. Employers have embraced equality standards; governments strive to place women in positions of influence; restaurant associations have codes of conduct. Yes, we are getting there.
Until Jian Ghomeshi. Or Bill Cosby. Or Bill O’Reilly. Or Donald Trump. Or, of late, Harvey Weinstein. And this week, my newspaper, the Ottawa Citizen, is reporting about a wellknown local restaurateur who confesses he sexually harassed some staff through inappropriate comments, then went to rehab to deal with the addictions he says fuelled this. What else is still going on in workplaces in Canada? Guess.
Recent events have spawned the #metoo movement. I am stunned daily over the latest emotional Facebook posts about an assault or harassment case that some friends have kept to themselves for months, years, even decades. No longer, these women (and a few brave men) are declaring, with energy. From now on, it’s open season on sexual predators who misbehaved in the past and got away with it. It’s tipping-point time.
If that is so — hashtag campaigns have often fizzled, of course — the recent onslaught of revelations may alter the social and workplace balance between genders.
Abrupt change can be a pendulum careening wildly past the rational outcome we all want. An accusation of harassment can mean almost anything from a raised voice or an illchosen word, to a pattern of bullying and offensive innuendo. A criminal charge of sexual assault can cover acts from touching to full-on rape.
None of these things is acceptable, but some are clearly worse than others. Are we setting ourselves up for Salem-style public persecution of any person (usually male) who offends us? Are public accusations a sort of frenzied media piling-on? Are we developing for ourselves a weapon — blaring denunciations of private actions — that can be misused against men we don’t happen to like, for reasons unrelated to sexual behaviour? Are we slinking, through a cacophony of harassment or assault allegations, toward a society where people — especially men — fear simply making a casual comment or extending a supportive gesture?
Not yet, I think — and many of my sisters probably don’t care if we are. They’ve suffered humiliation and indignity for decades, they’ll point out; why shouldn’t men feel what it’s like to have to carefully assess their vulnerability before they act?
The answer, of course, is that not all men are predators, just as not all women are helpless waifs. Most people are actually pretty decent. So our battles must be concrete and verifiable — which is why the current wave of voices feels like it has real force. Complaints have described specific, concrete situations, many provable through video, audio or other evidence. Men have spoken out about what they’ve seen and regret not preventing or stopping.
We might just get somewhere. We might teach some sexist pigs some serious lessons. We might, finally, put the shame where it belongs.