Dan Drezner writing for the Washington Post talks about these issues as a being like a tax on women seeking advancement and success. His article is specifically about women in the national security field but it really applies broadly.
Fascinating article in Vox, describing how the culture of harassment works:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/20/16678094/glenn-thrush-new-york-times
The article concerns allegations about Glenn Thrush, 50, now a star reporter at the New York Times, formerly a star reporter at Politico. At alcohol-laden events with other journalists, which I believe would be all events with journalists, he allegedly would get drunk and come on to female journalists in their early 20s. He was a person of considerable power:
The author describes several incidents between Thrush and young reporters he allegedly came on to. She says that when he came on to her in a bar and she rebuffed him, the next morning he smeared her to other reporter colleagues, hurting her career. There was no HR department at Politico at the time and she didn’t think she had any avenues for complaint there.
Thrush was suspended from the Times this morning and is entering drug rehab.
I always said, politics aside, that I believed the Clinton accusers because I worked in that era with men who had been law school classmates of the Clintons, and the culture of sexual entitlement was pervasive in that era. It’s changed a lot since them in law firms, but less so in financial firms. Lawyers and law firms are terrified of negative publicity and law suits.
Did anyone read Maureen Dowd’s column in either Saturday or yesterday’s NYTIMES? Her take was that so many women are empowered to come forward now precisely because of Hillary’s defeat. With Trump in the White House, women are feeling that the climate has changed now for the worse and it is time to come forward and take a stand now and say enough is enough.
Or it could be that because Hillary lost, women know that they won’t be creating awkward questions for the president’s husband that wouldn’t get covered by the press.
Or it could be that women are consumed with rage that harassers are going unpunished, including getting elected to the presidency.
Women are not the cause of the problem, but the solution will almost certainly involve women changing our behavior around harassment. Also men who do not harass need to change their behavior, such that corporate and political leaders (men and women) support people (men and women) who report harassment, and punish the perpetrators even if the perpetrators are otherwise valued contributors. Taking the shame out of reporting is a big step, but the reports still need to be made, and there will be some people whose careers will be ruined in the interim because they reported before the tide turned. Change is usually ugly.
MomofJandL, what do you suggest the Vox reporter should have done differently?
Or it could be that women are consumed with rage because regardless of who had won the past presidential election, an abuser of women would have been living in the people’s house.
That argument doesn’t really work though when you consider the fact that the majority of these harassment/assault accusations involve liberals… Hollywood executives/actors/producers (liberals), Al Franken (liberal), various people in the news media NPR, NYT, etc (presumably all liberal as well).
It’s tempting to suggest that this whole harassment/assault movement is a political ploy, but I just don’t see it that way based on the people accused so far.
I don’t think it’s a political ploy. I think it’s totally sincere and very serious, including against the president.
I don’t think these issues would have been raised if Hillary Clinton had been elected, because such conversations would be very embarrassing to her, and because people like Weinstein, et al. would have been very close in her inner circle. I think it’s because she lost that women are free to speak out.
I think it’s just that a dam broke, I track it to Weinstein since there have been “dam breaks” before (let’s go with Bill Clinton and Donald Trump both) and nothing bad really happened to the men involved. Now there’s a long list of actors, journalists, politicians, CEOs etc who have resigned, been fired or been professionally ostracized . So women feel like maybe - MAYBE - it’s worth all the negative attention to speak up.
Editing to add Travis K of Uber too, he was before Weinstein actually…
Whatever caused it, that genie isn’t going back in the bottle. This is going to be a huge change in our culture.
@Cardinal Fang, I’m not suggesting the Vox reporter could or should have done anything differently. What happened to her falls in the category of careers ruined before the tide turned. It’s ugly.
I’d even go back to Roger Ailes. He resigned in the summer of '16.
The media and Hollywood outrage after the election spurred this avalanche. People with big audiences complaining day after day, and late night shows, and award shows, and everywhere about the White House occupant’s statements about women. And women in Hollywood said “hey, what a relief to know everyone around me thinks that attitude, and the actions implied by it, are wrong. Guess it’s ok to speak up now.”
I trace it back to having someone well-known, that is, Gretchen Carlson, file the sexual harassment lawsuit against Ailes claiming she was let go because she rebuffed his sexual demands. That was the first crack in the current dam. Why that didn’t happen 20 years ago is anyone’s guess.
Two words: social media.
I don’t see the election connection some do. Ailes, as an example, was one guy, a moment of, “Good, he got sacked.” And other men, too, seemed just random trickles out of the dam.
What’s happened now is the rush of “Me, Too” claims. That’s what’s broke the danged dam.
We can sort later who’s made a mountain out of something less. For now, I personally hope we’re pleased harassment and assault are getting the attention so long missing. I hope this leads to positive change.
And, that the naysayers don’t focus so long and hard on one or two women they think are exaggerating or using this for gain or are wimps, that we women sweep this back under the rug.
After reading the WAPO article about Charlie Rose, it seems like reporters are aggressively following the rumors.
It sure seems like the atmosphere is more favorable to speaking up, but even so, not everyone in the Charlie Rose felt comfortable using their names for fear of retribution or damaging their own reputation.