What we Teach Men.
After a few weeks of pondering this post, and given the sexual harassment scandals that have come to light in the past week, I thought I’d comment a bit on my own experience and process. I had a reflexively defensive reaction to the post at Tenure She Wrote. I think that came from the sense that, even though all those points are essentially good points and would be well heeded, it still came across to me as a lecture. That’s my problem, of course, not the author’s. But I know that it’s not only my problem, based on the comments there. And many, many men have difficulty accepting instructions on how to behave from women. But it is important not to let that small internal reaction prevent us from recognizing and acting on good advice.
But I also believe that we men need to clean our own house. And it starts with what we teach each other. When I was a grad student, I was an assistant in an engineering laboratory. The professor was a famous engineer who’d worked with NASA and other agencies. He was kind and humble and friendly. He always took his students out, as a group, for lunch once per semester.
Once semester there was a woman in the class that I was very attracted to. She was a 3/2 masters student, I was a 2nd or 3rd year grad student. She was actually older than me by a year. We had interacted a lot socially prior to her being in “my” class (I assisted, but didn’t teach or grade.). We flirted a lot. One day in class as she was having trouble with an assignment I rubbed her shoulders.
Now, there’s no question that was out of line. Our prior flirting doesn’t excuse it. We were in a scholastic situation and I had (a tiny bit of) authority. The professor took me aside after class. He was very gentle. He told me: “You can’t rub a woman’s shoulders in the classroom environment.” I told him, “Well, we’re friends outside of class, I wasn’t just hitting on a random student.” He said: “That doesn’t matter. You don’t know what she might say about it, or what someone else might think. You could get in trouble.”
I took his words to heart. And to my knowledge, I’ve never behaved inappropriately in a professional setting again. And while it was good that my professor said something, and it was important for me to change my behavior, I’m not sure that he actually said the right thing. Because, the important thing in these situations is not that we men “avoid trouble”. It’s that we do the right thing, and treat women as autonomous people.
My mother taught at the University of Washington for a while in the 70’s. But she never got offered tenure track even though many of her male colleagues were. I asked her about it recently and she said, “I didn’t have the right equipment.” Apparently, to be faculty back then required testes. She’s not bitter about it. An academic career wasn’t really what she wanted, I think. And she did incredibly well for herself as a practicing psychologist.
But whenever she saw me acting badly (which was fairly often), her refrain was always, “You can’t treat people like that.” I think that’s the better way to frame our behavior. The better way for men to teach other men how to behave around women. Yes, the self-interest and the fear of getting in trouble may be effective at putting boundaries on some men’s actions. But far more important is to effect the cultural change of getting men to understand that women are people. And it’s not OK to treat people like that.
We men have a responsibility to each other. But it isn’t the responsibility to close ranks and protect other men who are accused, as is so often the first instinct. The responsibility is for men to use the natural hierarchy that we understand to improve how younger men understand women in the workplace – and women in the world – and mentor them into recognizing women as colleagues and collaborators.
Because I think that one problem many men have is that we don’t see the behavior as harassment. We can convince ourselves it’s chivalry. Telling a woman she’s beautiful or nicely dressed is intended to be elevating. It takes education to see it as degrading. To understand that a compliment in one venue is a slur in another. And when we are corrected in this by women, even women we respect, too often we are simply confused and defensive as a first impulse; too often that first impulse is the last impulse.
We men need to listen to women on these topics. I don’t want anything in this post to be misconstrued that I am saying we don’t. But we also need men in positions of authority to start mentoring younger men in a new way. The goal of understanding male-female relations in the workplace should not be to “stay out of trouble.” It should be to see each other as fully human, fully autonomous, and important collaborators and assets to do the work we’re assembled to do.
It’s not about rules. It’s about empathy. It is, at the end of it, about humanity.
Infactorium 
I think many of us are bombarded by notion that these little things are not big deal and the real harassers are these arch-villian stereotypes out there demanding sex for grades. I am reminded of the video about telling someone “what you did was racist”. I think the same principle is useful in talking to other men about their actions. I know I’ve gotten very defensive when people have pointed out things I’ve done. It’s embarrassing, and you think “I’m not a bad guy. I’m a good guy. This person is clearly misinterpreting me” I think it’s useful to frame things not as intentions and character per se but actions and effects. At least that is the approach I have taken.
anyway those are my rambly thoughts.
That “what you did was racist” video was by Jay Smooth.
Excellent post. Excellent. i hope is goes viral.
Remember that the ‘fear of punishment’ stage is only the *first* step in moral reasoning, but at least it’s a step. As you point out, stopping there limits development into an actual grown-up, into understanding and applying universal principles.
Excellent point
Absolutely agree. I think shaming/punishment only goes so far — I’d much rather people learn from other people’s good behavior than have them be all neurotic about making missteps. The important takeaway, too, though, is that EVERYONE will make a mistake of some sort – even on this magnitude (even tho I hope not): it says a lot of who we are as a people, too, in how we treat those people who make mistakes. Some people clearly have problems, and should be called out on it — but on what scale, really? That’s the scary part when you have ‘mob justice’ or what looks like that. It’d be so much easier if people did just treat each other as they want to be treated (although that’s leaving out all the freaky outliers, of course haha). I’m not religious, but i’ve always liked the golden rule. :~)
I think that the teaching has to begin at a young age. Most men tend to treat women as they see their mother or other women being treated by the father figure in their life. Somehow the message needs to be there to help counterbalance the disrespectful message received in the media and elsewhere in daily life.
Violence against women is endemic around the world, and disrespect for women is a primary reason. Male allies can do a lot to lead by example and expose boys and men to powerful and accomplished women (who are powerful and accomplished for reasons other than their appearance) so they can have positive female role models. Again, I think that this needs to be taught at a young age. Because it seems to be difficult to change the thinking of adults.
Specific messages about harassment need to include the idea that women do not like it, feel the disrespect and perhaps then be more likely to stop or never engage in the behavior. One barrier to men understanding the inappropriateness of sexual harassment is male privilege, which can keep men from realizing or understanding a woman’s point of view and make them defensive when the topic is brought up. Viewing harassment from a woman’s perspective is an important part of educating men. In a workshop I attended on the subject during my career, an exercise was to ask men how they would like it if other men regularly interrupted them to tell them to smile, comment on their looks and body parts, ask for their name, touch them, follow them, or start making sexual gestures in front of them. It was quite effective.
I thought the comments on this post were telling of just how pervasive the problem is among young people: http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/have-you-experienced-sexual-harassment/?_r=0
Thanks for this. It is totally natural and expected that your first response to that article would be defensive. I am part of an online group that discusses topics of race, and the list in that article could as easily be from an article about race. I sometimes find myself reflexively defensive in that setting, too. But for the most part, all of the items on that list boil down to “treat others with respect.” I like Gloria Steinem’s definition of feminism better than any other I remember: “feminism is the radical proposition that women are people.”
That sounds shallow and redundant… until you think about it more profoundly. If that proposition actually guided all people’s actions on an everyday basis… the changes to society WOULD be radical.