What so many men don’t seem to understand about sexual harassment
The reaction of many men to allegations of harassment says everything about the society that allowed it to thrive, argues Media Wales editor-in-chief Paul Rowland
I’VE WANTED to write this piece for a while. Or, rather, I’ve been moved to anger so many times since this multi-layered sexual harassment scandal broke all those weeks ago that I felt I should put those thoughts into words.
And I have - except they tended to be exasperated texts to friends, or soapbox moments over a lunchtime sandwich. I had opinions. I was angry. But many people were expressing it better than me. So I left it to them.
The news was full of appalling allegations about how men had been treating women on a long-term and seemingly institutional level. Those that had been proved, accepted, were disgusting and degrading. Those that were and are yet to be investigated were nonetheless deeply unsettling.
But underneath the horror of these grotesque exposés lay a strange positivity. The power cycle that had kept this kind of conduct - so endemic for so long - under the radar was finally breaking up. Women suddenly felt empowered or emboldened to speak out about it. This had to be a good thing.
And it was - and still is. But almost as troubling as the behaviour itself has been the background noise into which it has been relayed.
For weeks, tales of bullying, groping, inappropriate touching, sexual pressure, harassment, lewd conduct, indecent exposure and the most serious forms of sexual abuse have been met with anything other than universal condemnation.
As sorry as I am to say it, I have not been shocked by the existence of institutionally misogynistic conduct in patriarchal worlds where a handful of entitled men sit at the top end of almost every conceivable power relationship: male/female, rich/ poor, old/young, senior/junior, known/unknown, established/new. Saddened, yes. Disgusted, yes. Shocked, no.
What’s depressed and confused me though has been the rush among so many men to condemn not the alleged behaviour of those accused, but the character of the women making those accusations.
The correct response to an allegation of sexual harassment or abuse is to listen to it, take it seriously and investigate it thoroughly. The appropriate thing to do when a woman talks about the insidious and wearing effect of living for years in an atmosphere of male-dominated gender politics is to instinctively believe her and, when relevant, consider how your behaviour as a man may have (yes, potentially unknowingly) contributed to that.
This is obvious stuff. And yet time and time and time again, the opposite is happening. I genuinely can’t understand it. Suddenly I knew what I needed to write.
I started with a working headline of “What men don’t understand about sexual harassment”. But that seemed unfair, presumptuous, generalising. There has been some superbly insightful and sensitive writing on this subject from men over the past few weeks. More than that, there have been men who have unquestionably Done The Right Thing, in a number of contexts.
But there have many men (so very, very many men) whose first instinct has been to belittle, undermine, divert, ignore, insult, employ false equivalence, and generally do anything other than admit that the reason they’d never contemplated a woman’s experience might have a little bit more to do with their own complete lack of empathy than attention-seeking, a hunger for fame or any of the other pathetic excuses or counter-attacks given for not believing them.
So my headline evolved, and became “What so many men don’t understand about sexual harassment”. But for some reason that didn’t sit comfortably either. I think that’s because it should be so easy to empathise and understand stories of exploitation that I struggle to believe so many intelligent people simply can’t. There must, I thought, be something more sinister going on here.
When (normally) smart, articulate people choose first to attack the source of a serious allegation of sexual assault rather than urge investigation of her claims, it implies not a failure to understand her point, but a transparent attempt to protect the culture in which the incidents were able to happen and be buried in the first place. If these people aren’t the architects of the problem, they’ve become so conditioned by it that they’ve lost the ability to see the damage it does. Neither perspective is ok.
So what you’re reading became “What so many men don’t seem to understand about sexual harassment”
I have never been so embarrassed to be a male journalist than reading some of the coverage of this issue since it first broke. From character assassinations of those first few women to break cover when the scale of the scandal first started to emerge, to those tawdry turns of phrase and lines of questioning that implied groping a woman could ever be described as “just a slap on the bum”.
I could fill this entire article with examples of this thing being spoken about in seriously problematic ways by people who should know better, but Kaitlynn Mendes and Jessica Ringrose already did that on The Conversation website way better than I could. Their brilliant piece is more than worth 10 minutes of your time.
The point I want to make here is this: men seem to be routinely failing to realise there’s no such thing as an isolated incident of harassment or groping. Of course, the physical act of touching or the unwelcome and persistent advance may be limited to one point in time. But what goes unseen is the psychological impact of a permanently infringed boundary. The peace of mind cultivated by a professional atmosphere where a woman knows she is protected by an accepted code of permissible conduct is destroyed.
That one moment may (or may not) have been “out-of-character” and long ago, but those factors offer no reassurance in a world where a woman feels intimidated from speaking out and a man faces no accountability for his actions.
My colleague Ruth Mosalski wrote yesterday superbly on what it’s like to live in that world. Within hours of publishing her piece, there was an air of familiarity to the responses. They all seemed to say things like this:
“If men went to the police about being groped or touched up by a woman they would in most part be laughed out of the building.” Or this: “Sexual harassment is common place for men and women it is not just for one sex to complain about.”
And, the point is what? That we should call it a score draw, forget about it and move on? Notwithstanding the fact that the second paragraph of Ruth’s piece said this: “I write this as a woman, but I know men are victims too”, the reality is that no-one should have to accept being treated in a way that they find degrading, humiliating or frightening. Treatment that may not offend one person would be beyond the pale to another. That doesn’t make either person wrong. Another common theme was this: “Calling someone ‘babe’, ‘honey’ etc does not amount to harassment. In fact all you fools are doing is devaluing genuine harassment. Anyone who agrees with this article should go live on Anthrax Island and stop polluting society.”
Charming. And wrong. It completely amounts to harassment if it makes a woman (or a man, for that matter) feel uncomfortable. It completely amounts to harassment if it’s used in a context that violates professional boundaries of respect. Harassment happens when people do or say things without considering how that behaviour will impact on the person it’s aimed at. That’s as close to a definition as I would ever dare to attempt.
I have no doubt that what I’m saying here will be misconstrued in a similar way as Ruth’s piece was, so let me be totally clear about what I’m saying. We all have a right to be treated with respect by those around us. When that doesn’t happen, we all have a right to speak out about it, and to have our voices heard. We all have a right to be believed, listened to and taken seriously. Similarly, the accused have a right to be regarded as innocent until proven guilty. They have a right to have any allegations handled fairly, impartially and thoroughly.
It is an entirely legitimate viewpoint to campaign for a platform for those who want to speak of abuse, and to urge a fair hearing for those accused of it.
Character references for people accused of bad things do not disprove the allegations. In the complex psychology of victimhood, it is entirely common for close relationships to develop despite a backdrop of inappropriate behaviour. Harassment allegations must be responded with comprehensive and dispassionate investigation, in an atmosphere of trust and confidence.
The ignorance displayed by so many men about these issues has been staggering. Let’s all do better. Respect and listen. It’s not complicated.