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:

“Several employees recall how he paid intense attention to a young woman on his staff that he found attractive, focusing intently on her career ambitions. And he asked the same producer to his hotel room to deliver him a pillow, according to sources with knowledge of the interaction. This was part of a pattern. According to multiple accounts, independently corroborated by Variety, Lauer would invite women employed by NBC late at night to his hotel room while covering the Olympics in various cities over the years. He later told colleagues how his wife had accompanied him to the London Olympics because she didn’t trust him to travel alone.”

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.