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Men must take initiative in fighting sexual harassment
Catcalling is never a compliment and men know it. No woman feels better after being told they should smile more, or after hearing yells from strangers that she’s pretty or sexy, or being whistled at.
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Catcalling is never a compliment and men know it. No woman feels better after being told they should smile more, or after hearing yells from strangers that she’s pretty or sexy, or being whistled at. (Shutterstock/-)
Y
ears ago, I was on a lunch break with my mentor when he answered a phone call. Another staff member was calling to ask something and he answered, “Why are you moaning? I thought Mr. Smith was out,” presumably meaning her husband. I was taken aback that my mentor, a father and a postgraduate, could harass a fellow staff member, a married woman and mother who helped me settle in when I was new.
I didn’t say anything. As shaken as I was during lunch, I wondered if I’d entered the reality of professional life. Maybe, I thought, sexual harassment was just a part of work life, men have their good sides and bad sides and such harassment is universal. Maybe I could just count myself lucky for being a heterosexual man.
The revelation of American producer Harvey Weinstein’s decades-long history of sexual assault has brought forward the conversation about sexual violence against women, and not only in the entertainment industry. Many of my friends have shared experiences about catcalling in the streets of Jakarta, which is one major reason many women are not comfortable walking on the few sidewalks the capital has. Neither Asian nor white women are immune to the catcalls, which much of the time have racist connotations.
Catcalling is never a compliment and men know it. No woman feels better after being told they should smile more, or after hearing yells from strangers that she’s pretty or sexy, or being whistled at. Men catcall to build a masculine bond among themselves, disregarding the welfare and feelings of women passersby. After all, such men believe that wherever they’re hanging out is considered their turf for the day.
Catcalling is harassment that can be talked about — more serious violations are often too traumatic to share. Among the few stories I’ve heard was a manager who made a sexist joke at the expense of a female staff member, and when she objected, he said, “I was just trying to keep everyone awake.” Many people also said that their office and university WhatsApp groups have become horrible spaces, with senior figures sharing pro-polygamy messages and jokes stereotyping women.
Men usually complain that anything they do can be perceived as harassment. The director Woody Allen, who married his adopted daughter, said this “witch hunt” against Weinstein could land men who “accidentally wink” to prison.
There is no man who goes to prison for accidentally winking at a woman in the office. Weinstein wasn’t a man who kept stumbling into awkward situations. He was a rich and powerful man who allegedly summoned dozens of aspiring and established actresses alike to his suite for “a chat.”
