Male Star Worries Wooing will lead to Claim of Sexual Harassment
This piece about Henry Cavill got me angry. Cavill, of course, is the action-genre film actor who played Superman and is featured in an upcoming Mission Impossible movie. In an interview with GQ Australia magazine, he said:
“There’s something wonderful about a man chasing a woman. There’s a traditional approach to that, which is nice. I think a woman should be wooed and chased, but maybe I’m old-fashioned for thinking that. It’s very difficult to do that if there are certain rules in place. Because then it’s like: ‘Well, I don’t want to go up and talk to her, because I’m going to be called a rapist or something.”
Here’s why I was offended. In June, I attended a non-fiction writer’s colony at the New School in New York. In my class of 12, we had four men and eight women, ages ranging from 19 to 63 (me). We read our daily writing assignments out loud and classmates gave close reads and then feedback.
It was sobering to hear the essays by most of the women describing how they have been systematically objectified, dismissed, harassed, ignored, or vilified by men throughout their entire lifetimes. Despite this soul-crushing behavior, they are no longer hesitant to speak out.
According to a recent Quinnipiac Poll, 60% of women say they have been sexually harassed. That 60% statistic either means perpetrators commit sexual harassment serially or that most men have, either intentionally or not have harassed a woman.
If you are a man and are worried now about how to behave around women, lest you be accused of sexual harassment, how about trying to treat women as human beings with human rights as are bestowed us and codified in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Not as prey. That can’t be so hard, can it? And if you slip up and someone says your behavior is offensive, stop, apologize, promise you’ll never do it again, and then do not retaliate in any way shape or form.
That’s how you’d like to be treated, no, when you make a mistake?
Eliminating Sexual Harassment with Gender Equality
(Thoughts for March 8, International Women’s Day.)
#MeToo reveals that the cost-benefit analysis in most organizations has been flawed. CEOs and Boards routinely concluded that it was cheaper to pay off victims than to fire their cash cows predators. Yet research shows the hard costs of unchecked sexual harassment. For employees, it causes burnout, turnover, and stress-related illness, more sick days, which leads to higher health-care costs and more disability claims. Owners and shareholders lose when profits are spent on investigations, fighting lawsuits in court, cash payouts to victims, and through loss of productivity. In many places, it wasn’t until the hidden behavior of executives came to light and it threatened the brand that the Board took action. The Weinstein Company had been aware of Harvey’s behaviors for years, but when they finally fired him, it was too late, and now they have filed for bankruptcy.
Organizations will waste even more money if they think training alone will stop sexual harassment in the workplace. Seventy-one percent of American companies conduct anti-sexual harassment training, yet a 2017 Quinnipiac University poll found that 69% of US women and 20% of men have been sexually harassed at work. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which pursues lawsuits against companies for sexual harassment, commissioned a study of the sexual harassment training delivered in the US over the past 30 years. The researchers found that training had no effect.
Instead, companies should focus on changing their culture which enables predators. Global research and programs by the UN, the World Bank, and academia, have found that training combined with programs to create gender equality—equal pay for equal work, building pipelines to increase inclusion of under-represented populations, involving men as champions, and holding managers accountable—prevent harassment and lead to better job satisfaction, productivity, and business outcomes.
Gender equality simply means equal pay for the same work and women having access to the same opportunities as men. An example of gender inequality is the Fortune 500 list of CEOs, which just revealed that only 27 are women. Gender inequality often is worse in industries where the myth still prevails that women don’t have the same capabilities as men. For example, has been linked to the type of boys club, frat house, competitive, and hyper-masculine behavior seen in Wall Street and in Silicon Valley’s IT industry.
As one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, gender equality is a core goal of International Women’s Day programs and activities. It also turns out to be good business. For example, McKinsey recently conducted a study of companies in the US, the UK, Europe, and Latin America and found those that are more gender equal, in both pay and in leadership positions, outperform their competitors by 15%. The UN movement, HeFoShe, has enlisted champions from governments, private industry, and academia to spearhead efforts that address gender equality—both in developed and developing countries. At the core of these initiatives has been men taking a hard and honest look at how their privilege has advantaged them and made them blind to unconscious bias that perpetuates the systemic behaviors that limit women’s access to the same opportunities as men.
Gender equality, however, cannot happen without the support of men. Unfortunately, the status quo has tarred it as a feminist issue and being “anti-men.” Nothing could be further from the truth. What is often overlooked, according to Dr. Michael Kimmel of Stony Brook University in a recent Ted Talk below, is that men are often disadvantaged by gender inequality, which derives from the cultural norms that equate their worth with being the sole breadwinner. Long hours, competing to establish their place in an extremely competitive bureaucratic pecking order, and shame when they fail, results in men on average committing suicide 3.6 times more than women, having higher chances of dying of a chronic disease, abusing alcohol or drugs, and committing domestic violence.
Organizations like HeForShe, Promundo, MenEngage, Catalyst, MARC all provide resources for business on how to implement gender equality, for men on how to become champions, and for society on how to raise the next generation of men free from the toxic masculinities which victimize them as well.
Sexual Harassers Have Been Using the Same Tactics Forever
A while back, I wrote a role-play for a module on sexual harassment as part of an anti-harassment course. It involved a senior staff member inviting a junior person back to his/her hotel room to discuss a meeting they’d had and “get to know each other better.” Some people said it was so extreme that it couldn’t happen. Most research on sexual harassment says a power dynamic is always involved. The more senior person, who has power, will pay attention to the junior person suggesting he (yes, it’s usually men) can help or hurt the more junior person’s career. Many times, it happens on a business trip with an invitation to a hotel room.
For example,here’s what Rose McGowan said about Harvey Weinstein’s modus operandi:
Rose McGowan Calls Harvey Weinstein’s Hotel Room “International Rape Factories.”
Variety reports Matt Lauer using a similar tactic:
It’s been said that in medieval times, Kings had the “droit du seigneur,” that is the right to sleep with the wives of their subordinates on the wedding night before their husbands. Everyone knew it was going on. No one spoke up and stopped it.
People can say that the women are just as much as fault because they played the game and did so to get ahead. But, who made the rules to the game? Men in power. And even if the woman flirted or initiated the relationship, the person in the higher position of authority does not have to say yes.