#MeToo...How Should Women Respond?

by Georgia McKirgan

Last October Ronan Farrow set off a chain of events that will change how we live. While there had been many high-profile cases of workplace sexual assault before then - Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and Donald Trump - the article that Ronan Farrow wrote in The New Yorker, detailing the experiences of 13 women who had been sexually assaulted by the Hollywood movie producer, set off a tidal wave of sexual harassment claims that show no sign of letting up. Already, the careers of Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Louis C. K., James Franco, Dustin Hoffman, Jeremy Piven, Damien Green and Al Franken are effectively over or damaged and more will follow. Most of the cases so far have been in entertainment or politics but no-one thinks these two occupations are the only ones where this is a problem. The recent undercover reporting by the Financial Times of the President’s Club dinner in the City shows that finance may be an equally guilty sector of the economy.

A common feature of the cases so far has been men taking advantage of positions of power to force themselves on women to whom they are attracted. Some defenders of the men accused say that it is wrong to judge men for things they did many years ago by the standards of today. My response is, these kinds of behaviour were never ‘right’, we just used to put up with it. Much of the current discussion is about how we punish the perpetrators. Clearly, rape and sexual assault are crimes that need to punished but for less serious incidents, what justifies someone losing their job and career? Where do we draw the line? What are the appropriate punishments for different levels of offence? The junior minister Mark Garnier has kept his job after admitting asking his PA to buy sex toys for him but Damien Green obviously fell on the other side of the line for behaving inappropriately towards the journalist, Kate Maltby. Important as these issues are, my concern is looking forward. The landscape of sexual relationships has changed, and it is never going to go back. Women’s voices need to be heard.

As valuable as efforts are to educate men, particularly young men, about appropriate behaviour towards women, I think women are missing an opportunity if we sit back and let this be a discussion about how men should behave. A good example of the minefield we are now in and the role women can play is the recent case described in an article by a woman who had a bad experience with the actor/comedian Aziz Ansari. Ansari is a big star, having recently won a Golden Globe award for Best Performance  in a TV Comedy. The article by “Grace” describes events after she went back to Ansari’s apartment during a date. Clearly, he behaved badly and tried several tactics to persuade her to go further, more quickly in their relationship than she was comfortable with, but a discussion about what he should have done differently without recognising her agency is deeply sexist. While men like Ansari need to learn how to behave appropriately towards women, women like “Grace” need to learn to be more vocal and take more control of these highly-charged situations. At any point, she could have been much more forceful in making it clear what her feelings were. At any point, she could have left the apartment...this situation in particular was never physically abusive. He was clearly behaving badly but if we leave the discussion there, we are accepting that women are completely passive in these situations. This is not about ‘victim-blaming’. Men are still totally responsible if they put a woman in a position where she feels uncomfortable, I’m just making the point that women have some agency in the situation and we should help all women feel empowered to exert more control over these situations.

A development towards this goal is the move in many US colleges to bring in ‘explicit consent’ rules. Through organisations like itsonus.org, there is a thriving movement seeking to educate college students and on California campuses; consent is no longer a matter of not struggling or not saying no. If the student initiating the sexual encounter doesn’t receive an enthusiastic “yes,” either verbally or physically, then there is no consent. If the student is incapacitated due to drugs or alcohol, there is no consent. Some may feel these rules are an unwelcome intrusion into a very private situation but it should help drive the empowerment I describe above. Women are often the victim in these situations but while we are demanding that men learn how to behave in the 21st century, women need to learn to be much clearer and more decisive.

Things were changing anyway, but the #MeToo campaign has put booster rockets under the process. While, rightly, men have the most to do in terms of learning appropriate and considerate behaviours (why has it taken so long?!), women need to take this opportunity to learn how to fully exercise their rights as equal partners in the ‘relationship’ business. If we miss this opportunity, we will be letting ourselves, our sisters and our daughters down.