Rooting out the pussy-grabbers – are we heading for cultural chemotherapy?

The shame-storm is turning into a hurricane, as we knew it would. Everywhere we look, women, and sometimes men, are stepping out to accuse the great and the good of acts that sit somewhere on a scale between inappropriate and illegal.

In my previous post on this subject, I wondered whether, after a crescendo of exposures, abuse allegations would die down because they would no longer be newsworthy, and the powerful would return to doing what they’ve always done:

“Does it fade away when the media loses interest in the outing of a never-ending trail of well-known miscreants from politics and show business – rather like an epidemic that runs its course because the most vulnerable are dead?”

But what if it doesn’t fade away? What if the torrent of disgrace and retribution ends up not as an epidemic, but as a kind of cultural chemotherapy, wherein to root out a cancer we almost kill the patient?

Western democracies tend to respond to outbreaks of perceived wrong-doing by taking preventive action. Public opinion, stoked up by the traditional and social media, screams out that “something must be done”. Governments, if they wish to remain in power, respond with new laws. Organisations, afraid of law suits and reputational damage, adopt codes, rules, charters and values statements.

There seem to be three streams at play here. The first is paedophilia. The second is what once upon a time used to be called sexual harassment. And the third is sexual assault, with rape at the end of the spectrum.

Governments have been very active over the past thirty years in dealing with child abuse. When I was growing up, paedophilia was a dirty little secret that didn’t generate many headlines. That doesn’t mean that it was any less prevalent then than now. It just wasn’t newsworthy.

The exposure of paedophile rings, the misdeeds of Catholic clergy and latterly online child porn and sex trafficking have made it impossible to ignore behaviour that took place with impunity for centuries. Our social antennae have never been more finely tuned to detect activities and attitudes that might indicate an unhealthy interest by adults in children.

As for sexual harassment, which in common understanding can mean anything from wolf whistles on the street to innuendo in the workplace, behaviour that in the sixties and seventies might have been the stuff of sitcoms has become grounds for constructive dismissal. Woe betide the dinosaur male boss who complements his female secretary on her fabulous hair, her figure-hugging dress or even her shoes.

And then we have sexual assault. What, when I was a student in the seventies, might have been laughed off as a clumsy pass by an inexperienced teenager during fresher’s week has become grounds for a criminal investigation. A drunken one-night stand carries the risk for a male participant of years in prison for rape.

And finally, the powerful, who know exactly what they’re doing, are being called to account.

Different times, different moral standards? Yes and no. The Summer of Love didn’t change everybody’s attitude towards sexual behaviour. Just as it’s foolish to generalise through the eyes of the English-speaking world, it’s equally invalid to make sweeping assumptions from the perspective of university-educated baby boomers and Gen-Xers.

But much has changed. Some schools have adopted a “no-touch” policy, even to the point of prohibiting teachers from consoling injured or emotionally distraught students in ways that come naturally to all human beings. Others prohibit photos of their students at school events for fear that the pictures will fall into the hands of paedophiles.

Universities have drawn up codes of engagement between students to ensure the consent of both parties before they move beyond each stage of sexual activity. And the other day, a British police force tweeted that bumping into someone under the Christmas mistletoe could be construed as rape.

Are we now reaching the point at which men are assumed by society to be child abusers, sexual predators and potential rapists unless they can prove otherwise? And, acting on that assumption, will society take protective measures that will radically change the way men and women interact with each other at work, in public spaces and even at home?

There will be many people, especially the recipients of unwanted attention from the likes of Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey who might say “bring it on”.

But let’s for a moment consider where this might go.

If we see a child weeping inconsolably, will we be forbidden from putting an arm round them? Instead, will we have to call its mother – not its father, who might be a paedophile – and leave the child weeping until she arrives?

Are we are witnessing a change in western culture wherein any act of touching in the workplace between peers or by those with power is prohibited because it might be sexual? In which every boss is assumed to be a sexual predator unless proven innocent? In which every family friend is a paedophile unless proven innocent?

Do we have to redesign workplaces so that there are no private spaces where men can masturbate in front of their female assistants, or put their hands up their skirts, without being seen by others?

Will CCTV become even more pervasive, including in hotels, offices and public lavatories, or drones, as in Dave Eggers’s novel The Circle, watching for our every misstep?

Will our employee handbooks tell us that we must follow Mike Pence’s rule never to sit down one-to-one with a woman who is not our wife?

Will we have to ask permission to hug a colleague of the opposite sex? Will we even be allowed to offer to hug them, given that that could be interpreted as sexual harassment?

Will employers be required to ask their employees to sign a code of conduct that includes behaviour away from the workplace, whether or not that behaviour is in the course of work?

Will it still be OK for footballers and ice-hockey players to brawl in front of thousands of people, where that behaviour outside a pub would lead them to court? Will it still be OK for them to hug each other, if that act is forbidden in other workplaces, and given that they would be setting a bad example to young fans?

And lastly, whose job will it be to police all this stuff, when the police themselves have their work cut out investigating murder, rape and terrorism? Public morality committees? Corporate morality commissars? Self-appointed vigilantes? Who will bring consistency to all this watching and informing? Who will bring consistency to punishment? How will the innocent be protected when society judges them to be guilty before they are given the opportunity to defend themselves?

I’m not saying all these scenarios will come to pass. But they might. I’m worried that we might end up in a society in which people are afraid to touch, afraid to engage as man and woman, man and man or whatever. And in which those who wish to break the rules of engagement do so in murky places where surveillance and policing is impossible.

All the while, at the cinema, on TV and via our smartphones, we can watch the very behaviour that society seeks to stamp out – rape, murder, abuse of all kinds. And our kids grow up believing that the interactions of porn stars are models for sexual relations.

I worry that in this new society we seem to be building, rules will leave no space for common sense. That people’s behaviour will be dictated by fear of punishment and an assessment of what they can get away with, rather than by a commonly accepted sense of right and wrong.

I also find it ironic that we in the West, who think we know so much better than the Muslim world, appear to be moving towards cultural norms more common in the Middle East, where physical contact between men and women who are not related is often taboo, to the extent that there are many women who reluctant even to shake hands with men outside their families.

If this is where we’re heading, let’s understand what we’re doing. Let’s not drift into it.

Or how about we accept that we live in an imperfect world, in which imperfect acts have been carried out ever since we came down from the trees? That we have laws that forbid us from going beyond existing societal norms. And that when norms change, laws usually follow.

That we recognise that there’s a line to be crossed, and that no matter who crosses it – President, Congressman, Member of Parliament, actor, teacher or garbage collector, gay or straight, transgender or intersex, the consequences will be the same: disgrace in one form or another. That line might move forwards, backwards or sideways as each generation succeeds the previous one, but it will always be underpinned by one fundamental principle: respect for the individual.

And in this imperfect world, we should also understand that not everybody recognises the same lines. The voters of Alabama and Donald Trump, for different reasons, might rejoice if an alleged paedophile is elected as a United States Senator. But it’s up to us to condemn or condone.

If, on the other hand, we need protecting from ourselves, perhaps we should find a way to ban alcohol and pornography, and make it illegal to show movies that include rape, murder and other sexually motivated behaviour. Fat chance.

If the law is only partially effective in providing us with red lines, what else will? Religion? Which religion? And if we opt for religion, is it reasonable that non-believers should be expected to conform to the ordinances of scriptures, divinely inspired but interpreted by humans, sometimes centuries ago? Or do we adopt principles based on humanism, which has no authority beyond shared values?

If in a pluralistic society we believe that we should not be subject to the rules of religion, but seek shared values that transcend individual faith, what are those shared values? If we can find them, are they the same as common sense?

These are all questions I will leave to those who are wiser than me – though not, God help us, to politicians, who seem incapable these days of reaching out beyond their ideologies and personal employment prospects.

If we must embark on a course of cultural chemotherapy, let’s do what we can to make sure that the patient doesn’t end up fearful, confused and permanently weakened.