Will men reform?

HFrom: The New York Times AS America at last reached a turning point on sexual harassment? Watching the events of the past three weeks, one can hope. In the wake of Harvey Weinstein’s sudden and overdue expulsion from Hollywood for his serial predation, hundreds of long-silent women are calling out powerful, influential men at a remarkable clip and accusing them of sexual misconduct: Roy Price, the head of Amazon Studios; the film director James Toback; the literary critic Leon Wieseltier; the restaurateur and celebrity chef John Besh; to name just a few.

Several of these men have accepted some degree of responsibility for their behaviour. Former president George Bush, now 93 and using a wheelchair, apologised last week after multiple women said he groped them and whispered a crude joke during photo ops. He described it as an “attempt at humour”.

Let’s not forget – let’s not ever forget – Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, three giants of American popular culture who treated women despicably for decades, and paid a price, whether through criminal prosecution, public humiliation, job loss or forking out tens of millions of dollars in hush money. #MeToo, indeed.

This reckoning is all to the good, even if it is far too late. It feels as though a real and lasting transformation may be afoot – until you remember this isn’t the first time women have sounded the alarm.

In other words, even the highest-profile opportunities to change America’s endemic culture of sexual harassment, which is overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, committed by men against women, can somehow be lost or swept away. How do we keep that from happening again?

This may turn out to be the year when the tide finally turned on sexual harassment. The elements for a permanent cultural shift are certainly in place.

In the end, though, the most lasting change will have to come from men, who are doing virtually all the sexual harassing. Boys must be raised to understand why that behaviour is wrong, teenagers need to be reminded of it and grown men need to pay for it until they get the message.