It was reversed on appeal
Spreading slowly in Ireland. The former director of a theatre in Dublin is the only one who’s been named so far that I’m aware of, but a lot of women have begun saying publicly that prominent men in their field have harassed or assaulted them, without (yet) identifying those men. It’s only a matter of time.
I wonder if politics and entertainment self-selects for certain personality types, and the clustering of those types then lead to the outgrowth of a subculture where this happens ?
Does IT select for the same types? Teaching engineering? Because those are two other contexts where I’ve encountered that kind of jerk. Jerks tend to cluster together, but IME the lines of “by company” are much more clear than “by sector”.
Not sure if it is the same type. I think there could be more than one personality type that can lead to the development of a problematic subculture if they are overrepresented.
More than one type of person which can cause problems when a bunch of them get together, yes. But the problems caused are different depending on the type of person. “Assholes who thinks that being in a position of power entitles them to abuse those in subordinate positions” is present in many industries and causes the same type of problems in any of them when either they reach a critical mass or simply are allowed to get away with it. You can tweak that to “him” instead of “them” and make the abuse sexual to better reflect the specific current scandal, or you can leave it more generic, but the root cause is the same and the type of asshole is the same whether male, female, producer, teacher, team lead, shift lead…
“Milquetoast” and “micromanager” are two other types which cause problems when in positions of power. But I think we’d all agree the specific problems are very different from the one above.
I was thinking the entertainment industry probably selects for extreme extroverts. And gets in a significantly above average number of narcissists, people with poor impulse control and reduced respect for other peoples boundaries. Whereas politics would attract type-A personalities -competitive, driven, impatient, aggressive and ambitious. Probably also with a well above average number of narcissists and outright psychopaths. But successful ones might have good impulse control. Each environment, at least once you got into the successful levels, would be overstacked with its own personality type(s), but both would be likely to generate an environment conductive to sexual harassment or outright assault.
The “type” is “male”. Forgive me if I broad-broad my gender, but give us opportunity and many of us will act like the horn dogs we are (or can be). I think it’s in our nature to lean that way, and it takes some good civilizing socialization to prevent it. Not everyone, of course, but far too many.
The idea of treating women as equals is a very, very recent phenomenon in the history of our species. Like, in the past few decades.
Not everywhere. The notion of “one man, one vote” actually made women in my homeland lose the rights to vote and to hold office.
And even without that, there is a difference between “believing that a woman’s place is in the kitchen (in a world in which nobody has invented washing machines)” and “believing that being in charge means you’re allowed to demand sexual services from your maid or your gardener, based on what your sexual preferences happen to be”. All through history there have been people who confused being in charge with being in a position to abuse, and those who understood that being in charge equals being in a position of responsibility.
Your gender includes quite a few good men. If you are the kind of guy who doesn’t abuse because he doesn’t have the chance, then the problem isn’t your gender or your genitalia or your genes: it’s you.
Agh, OOT.
In the previous post, please understand the “you” in the last line as referring to anybody to whom it applies, not to John Mace personally. I fucking hate that English doesn’t have a decent impersonal. Thanks.
I’d ask you to clarify your comment. Are you saying there isn’t an actual sexual harassment problem in the United States and some people are only claiming there’s one in order to have an issue to be outraged over? Are you saying other countries have similar levels of sexual harassment to what the United States has but don’t see it as an issue worthy of outrage?
I think it’s just that these two fields get more public attention. If a man who works in science or finance or the law is accused of sexual harassment, the media isn’t going to see it as newsworthy. But if the accused man is a politician or an actor, people want to hear about it.
In the Canadian Military we are definitely dealing with it, but it started well before Weinstein. Also, the RCMP and Corrections Canada have had some pretty high-profile allegations.
There are plenty of industries with worse sexual harassment problems than entertainment and politics; we just don’t hear about them because it’s big news when someone famous is accused.
And while the things that make harassment/assault more likely are certainly present in entertainment and politics (male dominated, massive power differential between perpetrators and victims, late nights and the presence of alcohol), they’re also common in plenty of other industries. It turns out that the restaurant industry is one of the worst with respect to sexual harassment. Most servers are female, most managers are male. Many of the lower-echelon workers have few options and make very little money. They need those jobs.
But we’re not likely to see many national stories about a waitress being groped by her boss because her boss isn’t famous.