Sexual harassment: an overdue reckoning
Men who mistreat and degrade women will sleep a little less easily this weekend
Ultimately, sexual harassment is about power. Power buys the perpetrator the silence of the victim. At least until now it has. Illustration: Dearbhla Kelly
If you were surprised by the rush of sexual harassment claims that has rippled from the United States to Britain, France, Ireland and elsewhere since the downfall of Harvey Weinstein, you’re probably a man – and an inattentive one, at that. The individual accounts of harassment shared by many brave women in the past week have been devastating, certainly, but together they paint a picture that will be familiar to virtually all women. The lewd remark in the workplace. The lingering gaze or the wandering hand. The off-colour aside. The groper, the grabber, the whistler, the boor. Every day, in every walk of life, women live with, and learn to normalise, endemic patterns of inappropriate behaviour designed squarely to put them in their place.