The Recent Focus on Sexual Harassment and Abuse
should, I think, be a time for men, in general, to reexamine how they behave with women. We're creatures of habit. We often behave in ways we learned from others at an earlier time.
I know that I've been looking at myself with an eye toward trying to see myself through the eyes of the women I encounter now and have encountered in the past. Am I doing things unconsciously and out of sheer habit that make people uneasy or fearful? That seems to me to be an important question. In some cases, I'm asking women I know for a frank opinion.
The news events and the revelations about men who we often think of as good, honorable people should, I think, raise questions in all of us. Just yesterday, I asked a question of a woman who was a girlfriend of mine for a couple of months back in high school over 50 years ago, when we were both 16. We're friends now on Facebook, and encounter each other occasionally when I'm back in my hometown.
My question was about whether I had been too "handsy" when we were dating each other. I remember our interactions pretty well. She said, "Heavens, no. We were just doing the fooling around we were of an age to do. If anything I wish I had been more eager to experiment." That's what she said. So, I guess things were OK. But, I needed to check myself and my past actions.
It's a lot like checking privilege. I have lots of privileges that are unearned. One of them is being a man. So, given all the news about men who have misbehaved badly, it's time to check that privilege, I think, and see whether my own standards have measured up OK. In some ways, what's going on now is a good thing, in that it gives us all an opportunity to re-examine things we do and have done from a different perspective.
Or so it seems to me.
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