Some steps seem calculated to protect from false accusations, such as “the man in infrastructure investing [who] said he won’t meet with female employees in rooms without windows anymore.” Other steps, such as “no business dinner with a woman 35 or younger,” seem to reflect men’s distrust of their own ability to do something pretty simple: share a meal with a young woman without harassing her. In all cases, these self-instituted rules are deeply gendered, suggesting that the men suspect women are likely to fabricate harassment or assault allegations, and implying that the men do trust themselves not to sexually harass other men. Neither reflects well on them.
It is maddening to watch adult men respond to revelations of endemic sexual harassment in the workplace by instituting a series of ludicrous personal codes, rather than by learning the relatively straightforward lesson on offer: Don’t sexually assault or harass anyone.
At best, these “rules” are reflective of employers’ woefully incomplete approach to sexual harassment. Employers have long done the absolute minimum to comply with the law, relying on trite videos focused on what you can and cannot say or do in the workplace (“don’t give back rubs” or “don’t offer promotions in exchange for sex”) and sexual harassment policies designed primarily to protect them from lawsuits. The sweeping scale of the Me Too movement makes it clear that no mere set of rules is sufficient to prevent workplace harassment, especially when those rules fail to speak to all of the various power imbalances that make the critical distinctions between genuinely consensual workplace romances and harassment.
The lack of employer investment in these training resources does not, of course, excuse the men who have responded with a temper tantrum to women’s basic plea to treat them like human beings. As a teenager, I knew that my choice never to drive again was both absurd and unsustainable. Mostly, it arose out of a quixotic ― and self-defeating ― attempt to punish others for my mistake. The men who subscribe to these new “strategies” know full well that they are motivated in precisely the same petulant, childish way.
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.the men who choose this take-my-ball-and-go-home approach are robbing women of mentorship and professional development opportunities. They are restricting women from the social capital that is so often necessary to succeed and advance in the workplace. And, by adopting strategies based on the assumption that a woman readying a false accusation hides around every corner, these men give safe haven to predatory harassers who know that women who come forward with true allegations are unlikely to be believed.
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