In the UK we're in the midst of some very contemporary sex scandals. There's the Lib Dem Peer (member of the House of Lords) who, it's alleged, was in the habit of letting his hands do the wandering and of making suggestive comments to female party members. This was at the time when he was the Party's main election strategist and therefore one of the people that could decide whether or not someone got to be a candidate. Now, to be polite, Lord Thing is not exactly a handsome man, and a good deal older than his alleged victims, so there is every reason to suppose that the only reason he imagined that he might have any success with his crude approaches was because he was in a position of power.
Meanwhile there are three ongoing court cases involving men who were famous in the entertainment industry and, it is alleged, took advantage of the opportunities presented by their fame and fortune to assault not only young women but also, in some cases, children.
Now the main reason that the entertainment scandals have now come to light is that after the extensive publicity given to the Jimmy Savile scandal, victims of other high profile "abusers" felt able to come forward and make their belated allegations. The common feature in all of these cases, however, is that an awful lot of people seemed to have a pretty good idea of what was going on at the time yet chose to stay quiet.
Now, whilst we might all be convinced that in such circumstances we'd behave differently, the evidence from psychological experiments suggests otherwise. In deciding whether or not to intervene we rely as much on our instincts for self preservation (If I report this will I be the one that loses my job, misses out on promotion, gets beaten up?) as it does on our more rational sense of justice. It also depends on whether or not we think other people know about it too. If we know that other people know then not only might we be spared the personal risk by waiting to see if someone else reports it first but, if nobody does, we also know that we're no worse than anyone else. The real scandal in the Jimmy Savile case, and in some of these others, is that its clear that senior people, those not in fear of their livelihood, also chose to keep quiet. Whether their thoughts were dominated by money or reputation I can't possibly say, but quiet they did keep.
Most of my proper working life was spent teaching in Further Education (in the main 16 - 19 year olds) and this naturally meant spending a reasonable amount of working time surrounded by attractive young women. It is with a certain amount of shame that I have to admit that, despite being one of those people that usually can't keep their opinions on other people's behaviour to themselves (would you mind explaining to me why you've dropped that fag packet when there's a bin just over there?; though I have learnt to stay beyond striking distance), I sort of knew that a couple of colleagues would not only fraternise with students on a night but would also attempt to sleep with them. My excuse, self justification, is that because I lived out of town and with small children I didn't actually have any direct evidence, just rumour and hear say. I've subsequently heard, from ex-students, that their habits were well known to the students but they still got through the system and are now "happily" retired. But, just like at the BBC, I've no doubt that the college's senior staff knew but, to avoid damaging the college's reputation and for an easy life, chose to remain quiet.
As far as I was concerned the students at the college were strictly off limits. It simply wasn't possible to have any kind of relationship, other than being friendly, that wasn't fundamentally asymmetric. Whether the student was in one of my classes or not there'd always be an asymmetry of power. I had it and they didn't.
Having spent my formative years among the more radical elements of student society, a bunch of wild haired lefties, and coming from a home where my mother did all the fixing of things and, even though she didn't say it, was clearly an instinctive feminist, I was lucky enough not to confuse sex with power. i.e sex is something that you do with someone else, but only if you both want to, and isn't something done by someone to someone else simply because they can. Sex has never been about accumulating notches on the bed post or bragging about conquests to my mates. In all this I consider myself very lucky. But it has to be admitted that for many men sex is about power and conquest.
In A Redacted Abuse of Power I described events that led to me exposing the CEO of the company I was doing some work for as a fraud. During my last week with them I was told a number of things in confidence that no doubt helped to precipitate my final show down. Not least among these, were the reports of sexual advances made by the CEO to much younger female members of staff and their subsequent marginalisation when these advances were rejected.
I suspect that when it comes to choosing a mate there's more to it than simple physical attraction. Men are likely to favour women who stand the best chance of having healthy children. Women are likely to favour men who look like they could keep the family fed. So if there is such a thing as straightforward physical attraction it will be modulated by age and wealth. There is also evidence that flirtatious behaviour is more common the first time you meet someone new than it is subsequently (In order to assess whether or not someone is a potential mate the idea has to be raised before it can be rejected). However, none of this excuses men who should know better. They may have crap relationships built on a gradient of power but there's no good reason to impose them on anyone else.
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