Judith Woods
The real victims of the Presidents Club
You know how the Inuit have 50 words for snow to distinguish between subtly different varieties? I’m starting to think we ought to do the same for sexual harassment.
Because I don’t see how it’s possible to have any sort of nuanced debate when a paucity of language means almost everything – from a drunken arm around the waist to a crass chat-up line from a middle-aged booby in a rented dinner jacket – is being labelled as abuse.
But, before I go any further, I’m going to insert the usual caveats, because if I don’t, I’ll be mercilessly trolled back under my Three Billy
Goats Gruff bridge.
So here goes: I am not – repeat, NOT – seeking to diminish the suffering and trauma felt by women who have been attacked, intimidated or otherwise harmed by the predations of criminals. Because the law is very clear. Men who commit those sort of acts are criminals and should be dealt with accordingly. But everyday sexism, however unpleasant, is not the same as sexual assault.
In 2016, I spoke to women in the wake of Cologne’s New Year’s Eve attacks, when more than 600 women were subject to a terrifying onslaught by gangs of immigrant men who surrounded them, mugged them, tore at their clothes and pulled down their underwear. One man was held back as his wife and daughter were mauled, powerless to intervene.
I have also interviewed women in the course of my career who were treated appallingly by their own partners who sexually degraded them, raped them, treated them with disdain. Their suffering can’t be shrugged off.
And as for those vulnerable young victims of disgraced US gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, who has just been given a 175-year prison sentence, my heart breaks for them. They were children, assaulted by paedophile Nassar, on the twisted pretext of “medical therapy”. One was even preyed upon while her own mother was in the room; he carefully obstructed their sightlines and relied on his victim’s silence.
I suspect that is not quite as unusual as we’d like to think. I was sexually assaulted in my early 30s, by a GP who was examining me as a nurse stood by. It was so swift and so shocking that I flinched, but didn’t say a word.
I kept ruminating about it for days, wondering if his hand had slipped, if I’d got it wrong. But, deep down, I knew it was a very deliberate act.
I didn’t complain because I didn’t want the fuss of making a fuss, and I thought the nurse would accuse me of fabrication. I simply changed doctors.
Nowadays, older, wiser and more confident, I would kick up hell. Not so much for me, but on behalf of the other female patients at the practice. Such a heinous breach of trust should not go unpunished.
So forgive me for refusing to label a load of drunken, handsy a---holes reeking of entitlement in their dinner jackets as sex pests. Lecherous? Yes. Obnoxious? Absolutely. Shameful? Just a bit.
While they alone are to blame for acting like deluded extras in a Benny Hill video and grabbing at women young enough to be their daughters – possibly granddaughters – the event organisers must shoulder responsibility for sexually objectifying their staff by making them dress like dollybirds and offering them alcohol.
What is this, the Seventies? What did they think would happen? A page-long disclaimer in the charity auction brochure about groping in no way allows them to abdicate responsibility for a “men-only occasion” that was guaranteed to descend into seediness.
I feel really sorry for the women who were badly treated. If any daughter of mine were manhandled or flashed at, I would be incandescent with rage, although, for me, the clincher was the “hostess” who found herself being mocked for the way she pronounced her own name. The purveyor of that snobbish nastiness really does deserve a public horsewhipping.
The unfortunate truth is that the unstable combination of testosterone, alcohol and ego makes for a highly combustible mixture wherever large groups of men are gathered, whether in football shirts or black tie.
Guests, who paid £2,000 a pop for the Gropers’ Gala, were there to waggle their willy and wallet. The whole “elite boys together” ethos encouraged laddishness verging on puerile school boyishness. Add young women in heels being paid £150 to pour drinks while listening to their bilge and the results were… utterly pathetic. I can think of no better word.
If the club hadn’t already been dissolved, I would have been happy to go next year as a hostess (from hell) and dispense a few home truths to the leery and lairy, and wheel in furious wives hidden under silver cloches.
But that’s why the women were young amateurs rather than veterans of the hospitality industry. They would have been more pliable, and with less of an idea why they were made to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
But all the Presidents’ men have stumbled off home and probably won’t dare show their faces to pick up their auction prizes of a dinner with Boris Johnson and a course of plastic surgery that came with the tag-line: “Add spice to your wife.”
It would make for a fine legacy – as would all the cash raised, which has been handed back, for some insane reason. Great Ormond Street and Evelina Children’s Hospital are among the charities that said they will return sizeable donations. The £2 million raised is the only good thing to come out of this tawdry episode. Refusing funds from the event, as well as handing back previous donations, is laudable, but wrong-headed. By no means are all the men who were present guilty. I wonder if the Inuit have a word for “pot-bellied man who thinks he’s God’s gift when he’s had a drink and won’t be told otherwise”? Or “mortified husband who has been permanently grounded”?
Genuine equality may still be a long way off, but the salutary demise of the Presidents Club draws yet another line in the sand. There are ways to make an example of these Neanderthal boors, but penalising ill children ought not to be one of them. Two wrongs do not make a right. And just because a young woman laughs at a joke doesn’t mean she wants your hand up her skirt.