The operative phrase here is “position of power” … Person A has the power to demand sex from Person B … Person B has no power so must comply … see how the issue of consent never comes up … in some jurisdictions it cannot be given … sex with someone without their consent is rape … pure and simple …
Let’s look at the extreme context … a court of law … the judge pinches the bottom of the defendant and looks around expecting everyone to laugh … you’re next on the docket, are you going to scowl at the judge? …
A very relevant point, to which I believe the answer is: Philosophically, yes; Legally, no.
Not two weeks ago I had a kid (friend of my son) turn up at my front door at 10pm bloody from a crow-bar beating he took from a ‘friend’ a few minutes before. We got the cops over who chatted with him for a while to get the story, then they asked him whether or not he wanted to press charges. “Huh”, thought I to myself, “Some guy is cruising the neighborhood looking to bludgeon people with a crowbar and you’ll leave it to a victim to decide whether or not Law Enforcement is going to do anything about it?” “No, I don’t really want to press charges, he probably won’t try it again.” was the answer, and my jaw hit the floor. Officer confirmed he would then write up and close the case. I had a brief discussion with the bloody mess in my living room, after which he changed his mind and said he would press charges.
TLDR: The act might meet the definition of a certain crime, but it is of no consequence until someone with standing to do so chooses to press charges.
There seems to be a consensus here. Yes the issues are both the clear message not only of not consenting but clearly communicating not wanting, and that the power dynamics at play pretty much forces the victim into not complaining too loudly (or consequences), as the power dynamic has for many other victims for many many years. Yet the public pressure for the perpetrator to minimally acknowledge that what they did was wrong, to apologize for it, and to otherwise experience similar consequences that a male who did such an act would experience, are … crickets …
Are we in an era in which “boys will be boys” is being flushed for the crap it always was but “girls will be girls” is fairly carte blanche? Or is such behavior relatively just smiled at precisely because it is a subversion of the more typical abusive gender dynamic (and thus “amusing”)?
Is this evidence that the problem is less one of sexuality and gender but one of power, with more men, for now, being in those positions of power so thus more often the abusers of it, but as more women are they will be abusers more often, and think nothing of it?
It’s the same as when a female teacher sexually assaults one of her male students. People will often say that he was lucky, and how great it must have been to have that happen.
There are definitions of masculinity which include being sexually voracious. Under that definition, it’s almost impossible for a man to be sexually assaulted, because men always want sex.
One potential way to disambiguate this. Has a 9 or 10 out of 10 attractiveness *man *ever gotten in trouble for such harassment? A Brad Pitt or swimsuit model, someone that nearly all women agree is super-hot?
I think when we see photos of a young and attractive female teacher, and *remember *being a kid in school with a perpetual boner and immense desire, we think how lucky we imagine it would have been for us.
I can recall that Arnold Schwarzenegger got in trouble for groping some women and it blew over pretty quickly. He was still elected governor and it seems than ‘just’ 6 women complained. I think he probably got a bit handsy with hundreds of women over his career, just those were the 6 that didn’t like it.
But that’s just me projecting - I sort of want to believe if you were a physical god and famous almost everyone would like you instantly.
Just wanted to add: of course as you get more women in positions of power, you will get more women abusing their power. Women are definitely not exempt from this widespread human failing.
I agree with most of the points made above. There is a double standard etc.
But at the same time, some of that double standard is based on real differences. Whether due to innate differences in psychology or due to differing societal expectations of men and women, it’s most likely that - on average - women harassing men is going to be different than men harassing women, both from the perspective of the perpetrator and from the perspective of the victim.
Because there’s a very widely assumption that most men would enjoy a kiss from a random reasonably attractive woman (not to mention a well known celebrity), while the reverse is not true. This may not be true in many cases, but the perception itself creates a reality of its own.
In the situation at hand, it’s unlikely that Perry thought of herself as getting some minor gratification at the expense of this kid. She thought she was doing something cute that the kid and audience would both find amusing. That doesn’t mean it’s all OK, but it does mean that it’s not the same as if she was genuinely looking for a kiss and didn’t care what the kid thought at all.
Similarly, the kid himself was probably not all that victimized either. Much of what women feel in these situations is about violations of their bodily autonomy, but this is itself wrapped up in the connotations of the acts. The reason there’s a difference between someone kissing or groping you without permission and someone tapping you on the arm without permission is because the former act has a lot of significance imbued into it by society that the latter act doesn’t have. In a case of “reverse” harassment, where the societal attitude does not view the guy as having been used by the harasser, and a good percentage of the population would find what happened pleasant, the sense of victimization is not going to be the same, even to the individual who may not personally have wanted that to happen.
That’s not to say that this is perfectly fine etc. But only that you can’t just say that gender makes zero difference at all and look at this type of thing as the exact parallel to a case where the genders were reversed.
Meh. I suspect that a large number of male abusers, from the wolf-whistle catcallers, to pats on the ass, to coming on aggressively physically, have had a perception, one that was shared by large segments of society for much time, that such was within norms for a man to do and that the subject of the comments, pats, and come ons, was flattered. Those perceptions were a large part of what kept so many women quiet abut the abuse they endured.
I can tell you 100% as a male that if I explicitly state I do not want to be touched by someone in a particular way that any thought that I would then find being touched that way “amusing” would be way off base, no matter how attractive others find the person touching me in that way to be.
The no reality that is created by perceptions of what males in society should be wanting that changes what that reality would actually be.
Now like the young man of this episode I might publicly act like it was not that big of a deal … because of these fictitious norms … especially if I was dealing with the circumstance he is dealing with - trying to get a career started and in a completely powerless circumstance. And of course Perry got gratification: she got the pleasure of power, the pleasure any bully gets from taking something away from someone that the person does not want to give and then laughing at their inability to do anything about it, the pleasure those bullies get when the observers join in laughing at the victim with them. Was it a sexual pleasure? I doubt. And that does not matter.
No question that gender does make a difference. Not to the victim. Having your clearly expressed wish to not be touched ignored and being laughed at is as bad for a man as for a female (if not worse because a male’s very wish to not be touched is being made fun of, which would not happen to a woman). But to the observers, yes. The male’s very wish, clearly expressed, to not be touched is not being believed, or is not being accepted as reasonable. It is acceptable to laugh at a male in that circumstance. In this case the public sanctions the power abusing behavior both by actively laughing along and by looking away.
We will see more and more women on major positions of power. I think though those victimized by women in power will be cowered into silent acceptance (young men and young women too), as female victims of male abuse had been, for quite a while. Because perceptions.