Sexual Abuse & Harassment
Fifty years of feminist organizing came to a head in early 2017. Millions of women and hundreds of thousands of men greeted the election of Donald Trump with some of the largest demonstrations the United States has ever seen. People joined in around the world. They were not only reacting to Trump’s boast of assaulting women but also were there to celebrate the impact of feminism and to show they would resist any attempts to roll back progress on women’s rights.
The people in the streets and the tens of millions more who cheered in support inserted new life into decades of feminism and powered everything that was to come. Within months, revelations of sexual harassment and assault poured out of Silicon Valley; the film, theater, and TV industries; and the corporate world at home and abroad. The betrayal of trust, abuse of authority, and the denigration of women by men in positions of power pounded into our brains. As #MeToo and #TimesUp captured our attention, discussions quickly moved from newsrooms to dining rooms, staff rooms, and locker rooms. Men asked wives, daughters, and coworkers: Did anything like that ever happen to you? and a frightening number of women answered, Yes, of course, but why has it taken men so long to listen?
The spreading shock waves are giving new impetus to demands in our workplaces for equal pay and equal access to all jobs. The millennia-long affirmative action program for my half of the species simply can’t go on. The shock waves are bringing new energy to concerns about the panoply of violence— verbal, sexual, emotional, physical—that countless women still experience. They are bringing more attention to the critical need for quality, affordable childcare and for parental leave.
And for men? More and more of us are realizing we cannot stay silent. We know we must speak out and we must examine our own attitudes and behaviors. But we’re also realizing that it’s time to rethink and reshape what it means to be a man because of the destructive and self-destructive ways we’ve defined manhood.
