Photo via The White House

Member-only story

Four Things #MeToo Has Revealed About The Way Some Men View Sexual Harassment

Micheline Maynard

--

Brett Kavanaugh. Leslie Moonves. A bunch of public radio hosts. And probably a guy that you work with.

In recent weeks, all of them have been affected by the #MeToo movement. Kavanaugh faces an accusation of attempted sexual assault in high school. Moonves lost his job at CBS over numerous women who say he made unwanted advances and/or derailed their careers.

A series of male hosts fired from public radio jobs have tried to get back in listeners’ good graces, apparently forgetting that a good portion of listeners are women.

And certain men all over the map now wonder if their boorish behavior will come back to bite them.

I’ve been reading and listening to all this, and it has given me a picture of how a number of men see sexual harassment.

Listening to them has been much more revealing than I think they realize. I can sum up my observations in four points.

  1. Many men are worried.
  2. Some men think that if they let enough time pass, they can return as if nothing happened.
  3. Certain men define sexual harassment as actual assault, and anything less doesn’t count.
  4. And a few think that if society gives them an out, their…

--

--

Micheline Maynard
Micheline Maynard

Written by Micheline Maynard

Journalist. Author. The Check blog on Forbes.com. NPR and NYT alum

Responses (4)