Just as a marginal aside.
My DH frequents a football forum where the majority of posters are male.
I have been glancing at their discussion of the HW allegations this past week, out of interest.
They're generally very condemnatory of HW and supportive of his victims. There's much less understanding, I guess obviously, about why 'powerful' or successful women didn't speka out sooner.
However the thing that has really struck me is the repeated delusion amongst these young(ish) men, none of whom has mentioned they have been harrassed themselves (apart from one out of a group of say 50ish) that this is an issue that affects men almost as much as it does women.
Sexual harrassment/assault, I mean.
They seem very focussed on the more 'big ticket' items of assult eg the rapes and oral sex, and have become very outraged, as a group, about some random woman in the media who has dared to let slip the phrase 'all men are pigs'.
A lot of them are very keen call this 'sexist' and to paint hypothetical situations where older, powerful women might compel youbger, vulnerable men to perform oral sex on THEM etc... many of them are agreeing on this forum that sexual assault needs to be stamped out FOR BOTH SEXES and are seemingly outraged that anyone would dare to tar men with this brush more than women. Aparently it is 'sexist' to do so.
Is it just me who is a bit stunned by this?
But also, is this an important thing to realise?
Is it the case that the vast majority of perfectly-decent (if misguided) men just have NO CLUE or understanding of the pattern of harrassment in the average woman's life?
They are all happy to slate the men who rape/molest etc but seem unaware of the deep, deep levels of how far-reaching this is, the horrible ways in which men coerce, the 'low-level' staring, touching, hands-wandering, late-night-tube infringements...?
Hence why they are honestly claiming it is 'sexist' to say 'men' are responsible for this?!
Disclaimer: I know sexual harrasment (by women) happens to men, too. And when it does, that is obv bad. It just has never happened to any man I know. And I take into account the fact that it is probably hard for them to tell anyone. It just has never happened to ANY MAN I have ever known. It really hasn't, I don't think.
Whereas every single woman I have ever known has experienced at least one, usually far more, incidents of harrasment/abuse/abusive coercion.
Is there some way we can explain this to normal, decent men? The extent? The disparity? The utter nonsense of them even bothering to post, on an HW-related conversation, about men who have (hypothetically) been forced to perform oral sex on a powerful older woman...?