h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This post is going to consist 100% of my personal opinion, and will not reflect the outlook of h2g2, the h2g2 Post, the h2g2 Core Team, or any of this site's subsidiaries or agents. I just have something personal to say about the difference between legitimate public discussions and witch hunts.

First of all, let me say that I greatly admire a certain senator from Minnesota. Yes, I admire him. Not for succumbing to the temptation to pose for a puerile photo in 1977, nor for admitting as he should that this photo was pretty disgusting in retrospect, and he couldn't imagine what he'd been thinking. [I'm thinking, the entertainment business, USO shows and their vulgarities, the pressure to be 'funny' while jet-lagged? Sleep deprivation? Maybe? I'm being charitable.] Be that as it may, the senator's next step is what won my admiration: he's calling for an investigation of himself. This is the perfect thing to do. Let's get this topic off social media, which is not a responsible venue, and into a Senate chamber, where it belongs. The senator can explain what he did and did not do, apologise for what he did do, and people can react appropriately. And, just possibly, have an adult discussion of the topic.

You Brits may not realise this, but over on this side of the Atlantic, we're having a media feeding frenzy over sexual harassment. Those outed are mainly politicians and entertainment professionals. Most of the behaviour exposed is pretty nasty, and goes far beyond posing for tasteless photos. Some of it is criminal. The miscreants in the entertainment field lose their jobs. Those in government usually stand pat. Their supporters become increasingly vociferous in their defence. Then they look for someone in the opposite camp to expose. [Private detectives must be making a killing.]

Liberals and conservatives both are playing a game of Gotcha with these revelations: 'Ha! You have more 'pre-verts' in your party than we do, nyah, nyah!' is pretty much the way it goes. Other public figures have to tread very carefully in their response to allegations about friends and colleagues. If they appear to be insufficiently shocked, appalled, sickened, and disgusted, they may be accused of being...what? Sexual harassment fellow-travellers?

We've seen this before. Witches. Communists. Pedophiles.

'Okay,' you say. 'But this time, the offences are real. Witches didn't exist. Religious nuts invented them. People accused of 'communism' weren't terrorists, just folks with dissenting opinions. And many of the people accused of running 'pedophile rings' turned out to be innocent, like those poor daycare workers in North Carolina. Besides, you forgot to mention the Satanic Ritural Sacrifice Scare of the 1980s. Not one Satanic Ritual Sacrifice was ever documented. But sexual harassment exists, it's endemic, and it's high time we stopped it.'

Yea and amen, as the Germans say. I'm on board with all of that. But hear me out.

Sexual harassment is one of the shameful aspects of modern society. It must stop. We need to change the way we deal with each other. But a lot of the current flap isn't really about sexual harassment: it's about power, like all the feeding frenzies that went before.

Accusers are almost always people without power. The accused usually have power. It's possible to attack them this way. Enemies with power will often encourage the powerless accusers, just to get at their opponents. And the powerless accusers will be glad that they're finally being heard - not realising that they are, once again, merely being used.

'She turned me into a newt: I got better.' Yeah, but after they've burned the witch, you won't be any richer, or more popular, or happier than you are now.

This is why I admire the senator. He didn't think of himself first. He thought about the issue - one he cares about - and found a way to get it off Twitter and onto a serious forum. The issue isn't, 'So-and-so is a nasty predator, shame on So-and-so,' or 'How virtuous am I for being shocked at all this gossip? Tell me more!'

The issue is nuanced, and too serious for sound bites. Let's have this out, finally, so younger people don't have to put up with this b.s. any more. I don't care who you are, male, female, gay, straight, American or European - if you're over 40, at some time in your life, you've witnessed behaviour that you considered threatening or just plain disgusting, and felt powerless to change the climate that fostered the behaviour. I've seen it, you've seen it, and we're all heartily tired of it.


Now is the time to change the climate so our kids don't have to live with that. Maybe each country should have a sexual harassment Truth and Reconciliation Committee.

Well aid, Dmitri

Not because I agree with it all, because I don't. And not because I have a clear view on all of this, because I don't have that, either. But because a grown-up conversation is the only place for something as serious and fundamental as this.

You're absolutely right that the Twitter mob isn't going to solve this - it only polarizes opinion. But it has given folks a voice. I fear for how this most powerful of platforms could one day be harnessed by forces of evil (if it hasn't already).

A few random thoughts ran through my head. The main one is about moral leadership. Where is it now? Where was it in the past? Has it moved, or simply evaporated?

If you'd asked me a few weeks ago, I might have said that young people take a lead these days not from clergy or politicians, but from figures in the public eye. That Mr Spacey for example seems a well-balanced, talented and exemplary individual...

That's always struck me as odd. Why would anyone expect moral leadership from an entertainer? They keep their jobs, such as they are, by selling tickets. I suspect that the reason people expect entertainers to be 'moral' people is that they're confusing the person with the role. But I may be wrong.

And while I agree that political figures should behave ethically, I'm not sure they should be the role models, either. They should do their jobs and not steal money or sell secrets to the enemy.

I'm not shocked by any of it, having been "hit on" most of my life, including molestation as a child and teenage grooming by my summer job boss, I grew up with the impression that men will go after anything. Luckily I met a few good 'uns on the way who convinced me that not all men are like that. Trevor Noah said what I was thinking last week when he said "every time a favourite actor's name starts trending I pray please be dead, please be dead". Yes that's funny but it's gallows humour. I think the entertainment industry as a whole will change and if we have to go back to the once-expected chaperoning, or at the very least no less than three people present at "auditions", that's a good move. As for politics and politicians, I have no words other than the old adage: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I think you've got a good point, GB. This bad behaviour is nothing new. What we need to do is to acknowledge that it happens, point out that this is not a desirable outcome, and put some more safeguards in place.

I'm going to do something surprising, and say a word in defence of our vice president, whose name is Mike Pence, in case you didn't know. I disagree with Mr Pence on a multitude of issues. But he has stated that he did not have dinners alone with women unless his wife was present. He was mocked for this. I think he had a good idea, though.

We just need to place the onus on the men - or whoever has the most power in the room - when it comes to avoiding what the religious might call 'the occasion of sin'.

You and I know that the politicians and entertainers aren't the only people with the problem - that's just where the power and money are. This is just as likely to happen in school, at church, at the supermarket, in your workplace...

It’s particularly rife in the media industry, but you never hear of journalists accusing their editors, do you? I wonder why.

Good question! Do they not do it, or is there some particular reason it's underreported?

Galaxy Babe is right, of course. This has been with us forever. Sad but true.
How many cartoons have I seen of a neanderthal draging a woman along the ground by her hair after obviously having beaten her unconscious with the bludgeon he carried over his shoulder?
Why was that ever funny?
Time to take another step forward.

Time, indeed, Pierce.

I dunno if y'all can see this, but Stephen Colbert was talking about this last night. Apparently, women who work in Washington, DC, have a 'creep list' of who behaves badly in government:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC-0cm1g5_g

Psst: every woman I know has their own personal "creep list"... just saying.

OK I need to ask something here. With my Asperger's tendencies I find it often hard to understand other people's emotional responses. So: I watched the Stephen Colbert video and what I couldn't understand is why the people were laughing at something that is so horrible. I mean, I could understand shock, or outrage, or anger, or disgust ... but do people express that through laughter? I know there's nervous laughter when something makes you feel deeply uncomfortable ... there's hysterical laughter ... but it doesn't sound like that, does it?

This vividly made me recall an incident of someone relating serious sexual abuse. I was there when this person told a church deacon about suffering sexual abuse at the hands of a school teacher. That schoolteacher, by the way, abused untold numbers of schoolkids during his career and was never found out ... the story was told several decades after the fact. Back in the time it happened, there was no awareness of sexual abuse in this country. But anyway: as this person told the story to the deacon, the deacon burst out in laughter as if this was quite a good joke. It was one of the most shocking incidents I've ever witnessed ...

I'm with you, Willem: I don't think it's funny at all.

Sometimes, I think they laugh because it's an 'insider' thing: oh, we know this is *wrong*, now, aren't we clever? And that's sort of the problem, in my opinion. They're making a partisan issue out of something that's much more serious - and has nothing at all to do with politics.

I have seen what you're talking about in people who are religious or not religious, educated or semiliterate, etc. It's not about that.

Part of the problem with one of the cases here is that the man was actually banned from a shopping mall when he was a practicing government attorney, because he harassed teenage girls there. Now, that they laugh at to ridicule him, because he was not only antisocial, but also a bit ridiculous.

Unfortunately, the people in his state are defending him, with many saying they'd vote for him, anyway.