Harassment is in the eye of the beholder
David Remnick recently wrote in The New Yorker about the 1975 book “Against Our Will: Men, Women, And Rape”, a “startling and controversial” feminist declaration “about the origins” of male-dominated society.
“Man’s discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe,” the book’s author, Susan Brownmiller, wrote.
Remnick, taking his cue from Brownmiller, commented that “sexual coercion, and the threat of its possibility, in the street, in the workplace, and in the home … is less a matter of frenzied lust than a deliberate exercise of physical power, a declaration of superiority ‘designed to intimidate and inspire fear.'”
I’ve never read the book in question. Maybe I should. It might contain some insights into today’s stories involving certain successful men and their preying on unsuspecting women — women who may fail to realize that their rapists-predators intend to frighten and control them by deploying a weapon known to all.
This seems, at first blush, off the mark. I suspect sexual predators, let alone rapists, are sick, corrupted people, forget the control part, the power dynamics. These are men who can’t even control themselves.
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It has always seemed to me that women, not men, have the advantage in matters of romance. Far from frightening women, a lot of men I know are a little intimidated by them. Even today, the pretty ones leave me a little awe-struck.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t consider women to be the helpless little things they are portrayed as being, in these stories of sexual harassment now making the rounds.
Let me be clear. I’m not talking about a 30-something male (Roy Moore) seducing a 14-year-old girl. It’s weird. It’s also criminal. It’s called child molestation.
No, I’m thinking about heterosexual adults, males and females.
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A couple of years ago I was startled to discover that a young female co-worker detested the holiday duet “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” You know, the song with the lyrics “So really I ought to scurry — Beautiful, please don’t hurry … I ought to say no, no, no — Mind if I move a little closer.”
She was especially dismayed by this line, sung by the girl: “Say, what’s in this drink” to which the boy singer responds, “Your eyes are like starlight now.”
My co-worker saw menace in the antics of the male; coercion, physical intimidation; perhaps all this was leading up to a rape.
I took it as the flirtation that goes on between men and women attracted to one another; the dance of romance, if you will, between consenting, equally powerful adults.
I’m not certain the gulf between my view and that of my co-worker can be bridged. She was 25. I was 60.
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One of the women who accused Politico/New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush of sexual harassment cited as fact that he attempted to hold her hand.
I don’t even know what to say about that; if a woman doesn’t want to hold a guy’s hand, don’t. Just don’t. Is it really such a big deal? It shouldn’t be.
The Thrush suspension, administered by his current employer, The New York Times, is doubly interesting because (a) he was working for Politico at the time of his offending behavior and (b) his bad behavior included carrying on a brief affair with an editor, one of his bosses.
Formal power, at least, resided with her over him — yet she accused him.
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We have heard a lot lately, especially in regard to the Harvey Weinstein case, about sex as power. Powerful men. Vulnerable, aspiring women afraid and wary of fighting back, or incapable of walking out.
I get the incapable part. I also get the afraid part. Job security means a lot. Career is important.
But I don’t buy the theory, which is frequently implied, that all this will be a thing of the past if and when women are put in charge.
Here’s an example that has nothing to do with the weaponization of sex:
Once, about 10 years ago, I was out of the office covering a story when I chanced upon my boss, a female editor. She approached. She knew the guy I was interviewing.
“Dick is one of my reporters,” she told him first off.
I bristled, in silence. She was saying, at least this was the way I heard it, “I own this guy. He’s mine. I have the power.”
It was humiliating. And I think, by today’s standards, it was harassment.
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As for sex, there’s no topic more fraught. Power, pleasure, procreation. It gets confusing. Whole books have been written about it. I’m pretty certain more are on the way.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail .com.