This is another article about sexual harassment. You know by now how it will go. I will share the details of my small degradations in order to convince you that it’s real, that it happens, that it happened to me.
I might describe how it felt to be 19 and dragged into a bedroom at a party by a man I barely knew; my shame and relief when my flat-mate hammered on the door after he had hurt me a little, but before he hurt me a lot.
Or I might recount the work trip a few years later, and how everyone around the breakfast table laughed as an older, married man told a convoluted story about trying to break into my room. Or I might tell you about the other man on the same trip, who did actually follow me into my bedroom.
Weinstein watershed
I might describe standing in conversation with a friend at a professional event a couple of years ago, when a man – a well-known groper – strolled up and grabbed her by the crotch. I might share decades of smoothing over off-colour jokes and ignoring ugly misogynist comments online.
I might, but I won’t. You’ve heard versions of all these stories countless times already. It’s been three years now since the so-called watershed moment of Harvey Weinstein. A lot of words have been shed in those three years, but not much water.
Why are women still required to prove the existence of a phenomenon that we all know is endemic? Why do we feel compelled to catalogue our humiliations in order to keep it in the news? Why are we still trying to clean up a problem that men created?
We have done our bit, more than our bit. And nothing much has changed. A study in 2012 found that nearly half of Irish girls and women had been sexually harassed.
A spate of recent stories remind us that it is still happening, that men in many walks of life are blithely carrying on with the business of harassment.
Men in politics, for example. The Irish Examiner reported this week that 13 out of 17 women who are Senators have been sexually harassed. Fourteen have been subject to a sexist insult or remark while they worked in politics, according to anonymous surveys collated by Aoife Moore. "It was great to see you, nicer to watch you walk away," one man texted an elected representative. A week earlier, the same newspaper found that 12 out of 25 female TDs had been harassed.
It's in academia too. Dr Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin courageously disclosed to Una Mullally her experience of being harassed over two years by a colleague at UCD. After that article, Dr Marie Keenan described her unsuccessful efforts to draw the attention of university management to sexual violence on campus.
Minister for Further and Higher Education Simon Harris says now he will take a zero tolerance approach to sexual harassment and sexual violence in universities. So too does UCD president Dr Andrew Deeks, which raises the question of how much tolerance there was before in these institutions. A survey carried out by NUIG this year in higher education institutions found 41 per cent of women had changed their behaviour in order to avoid someone who sexually harassed them.
Men feel entitled to act out their structural power by harassing and degrading women
If it’s this hard for women in politics and academia to be taken seriously when they talk about harassment, how much harder is it for women whose jobs don’t require them to have a strong voice and a platform?
Where are the good men in all of these stories? Not the perpetrators – but decent men, who would never dream of harassing anyone themselves? Where are the accounts of their own degradations: the times they stood by and said nothing? Where are the male politicians and academics confronting the colleagues doing the harassing and belittling? Where are the men taking part in panel discussions on harassment? I’ve participated in many such discussions over the past three years, and it’s striking how the audiences are always almost entirely female.
A toxic society
We’ve heard enough from women; it’s time we heard from men. Maybe they’re embarrassed or bored of it all. Maybe they don’t feel it’s their place to talk about this. Maybe they’re afraid of what might be revealed about their own past behaviour. These aren’t unreasonable concerns. But a little discomfort and risk is necessary if we want to build a healthier, less toxic society.
And that is something we should all want. Toxic masculinity is as much a noose for boys as it is a threat to girls. The environments and ideologies that allow the harassment of women to flourish also put unhealthy standards on men.
Of course, none of this is to say that men can’t be harassed. Or that women can’t be perpetrators of harassment, or lie about being victims. But the structures and systems in society support the harassment of women by men. Systemic change won’t happen until men do the work.
One of my #MeToo encounters had a friend. He was, I suspected, a decent man. After the incident at the party, he would approach me sporadically around college. “What happened that night,” he asked me once, when he finally cornered me. I wasn’t sure what he wanted – evidence? Titillation? Absolution?
“I don’t know why you’re asking me,” I said. “Ask your friend.”
But I kept seeing them around together, so I doubt he ever did. And that is how the cycle continues.
Men do it because they can. Because they feel entitled to act out their structural power by harassing and degrading women. They interpret the silence of other men, good men, as tacit support. Until they see they don’t have that support, it doesn’t matter how many of these articles women write. Nothing will change.