This is what I’ve been saying since the beginning. This is not a problem with education and training. Everyone involved know that it’s wrong.
Men need to be held responsible and accountable.
Via Shawn Vestal at the Spokesman Review:
As a man, on behalf of men, speaking with the full power and authority of the patriarchy at my back, let me just say: We don’t need sexual-harassment training.
None of us needs a seminar to learn not to swap a job offer for sex. None of us is just one bullet point shy of understanding he shouldn’t lock the door and start masturbating in front of a woman. No man requires a PowerPoint to get that he shouldn’t ask a subordinate to watch him take a shower or text you a nude picture of themselves.
Not one of us needs to “learn” that a fifty-something professor should not stick his uninvited tongue into the ear of a student … or that an editor should not plop a hand on the thigh of a young reporter … or that a member of Congress should not tell an employee they had a wet dream about them … or that a restaurant owner should not ask a chef what kind of porn they like to watch or … or … or….
It’s not about what men don’t know.
It’s about what men have known too well: That we can get away with it. That it will be excused, hidden, justified and rationalized, and no one will be called to account. This is as true for the unwanted advance as it is for forced physical assault, and the fact that this is changing has nothing whatsoever to do with training.
So much of the sexual harassment tsunami that’s been unleashed shows very well what this is about: Men knowing exactly where the line is drawn and relishing the authority to step over – and other men sustaining that authority by looking the other way. Recall the illustrative example of the moment: the Access Hollywood tape. A serial groper brags about getting away with it, while another man chuckles along.
Not one bit of it was because we didn’t know better. None of it was because we didn’t have the proper information. None of it came from a lack of training.
At the end of a year in which an army of brave, righteously angry women are forcing a long-overdue social reckoning, we have heard a lot of calls for more sexual-harassment training.
…
And he ends well:
Men don’t need to be taught to be better. I don’t mean there isn’t a lot of learning to be done, but it’s never been the case that the problem was a lack of knowledge.
We have known better, all along, especially those of us who were laughers, not gropers. We have known better and allowed ourselves to go along, to get along, to go to sleep, to be worse than we knew we should be. To snigger and laugh. To hold our tongues. To dismiss and forget. It should have been obvious that this was odious and unjust, that it was widespread and unacceptable.
It wasn’t training that we lacked.