It was legal recognition that broke the rule of impunity that the more power a man has, the more sex he can exact from those with less power
Women’s voices recounting sexual abuse being heard, believed, and acted on is a real change.
The accountability for sexual harassment seen today, termed “voluntary compliance” in the discrimination field, has been driven primarily by mainstream and social media, not by litigation. But make no mistake. If sexual harassment had not been recognized as a legal claim for sex discrimination decades ago, powerful, prominent men would not be losing their lucrative jobs, political and academic positions, deals and reputations.
Transforming a privilege of power into a disgrace so despicable that not even many white upper-class men feel they can afford to be associated with it took decades of risk, punishment and work, including legal work.
It was legal recognition that broke the rule of impunity that the more power a man has, the more sex he can exact from those with less power. Destroying the legitimacy of what women previously just had to live through required effective legal intervention based on recognition of the reality that this practice of inequality is sexual and gender-based.
Despite the inadequacies of the legal system, this breakthrough was a precondition for this moment of cultural transformation. And the moralistic conflation of the inappropriate sex of “sex scandals” with reports of sexual exploitation and predatory molestation is at last being disentangled.
Most importantly, I suspect that a lot of the sexual harassment that has been a constant condition of women’s lives since forever is not happening just now.
Related: We created the #MeToo movement. Now it's time for #HerToo
Continue reading...from US news | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2D3xcP7
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