A woman I admire recently said something about the current rash of celebrity men brought down by accusations of sexual assault and intimidation of subordinate women.
The gist of the comment was that although these stories of women speaking up and the male perpetrators punished (if not legally then at least socially and economically) are in many ways positive, the narrative is also misleading.
If the average woman at an average job speaks up today, is she likely to see the same result as the famous?
Probably not.
Almost every woman I know has had her gender used as a weapon against her at some point.
This happens in Squamish, of course.
The current Hollywood/Washington movement implies, “Speak up and someone will believe you. The man who hurt you will be shamed and exiled.” But that is not, unfortunately, the case in many companies and organizations. Chances still are, sadly, that if retail workers, restaurant servers, etcetera, speak up, they will be blamed, perhaps fired — eventually and for something “unrelated” — and left without a reference. I have seen this happen.
These workplace incidents are still very hard to prove legally. They become he said/ she said cases.
So what do we do? I certainly don’t pretend to have all the answers. Frankly, I am at a loss as to how we ended up here.
All I can come up with is this — talk to our sons about power and the right and wrong way to wield it. Talk to them about vulnerability and feelings and to ask for help if they can’t control their anger.
Show them men in their lives who make the world a better place by their actions and character. We have plenty of wonderful men like that in Squamish.
Raise confident girls and don’t force them to kiss Uncle So-and-So or even sit on Santa’s lap if they don’t feel right about it. We teach compliance and put a priority on girls being polite and then are surprised when adult women are taken advantage of.
Tell children about the sexist culture they are inheriting. So often we don’t want to tell our kids about bad things in our society as if wishing it so will make the world better.
Young women, in particular, are prey in our society as are many LGBTQ+ folk.
That is the truth.
We need a gender-equal court system, government and labour force. But we aren’t there yet so don’t pretend we are.
Advocate until we are.
Hopefully, in time, every person who is sexually harassed or intimidated on the job will be believed and supported, not just the famous.
