A reader comments. The portrait of Michael Colgan as painted by the women of the Gate suggests that it was "more about being a bully than being a sexual predator". If there had not been a sexual dimension to it would the women have gone public, this reader wondered – indeed, would this paper have been interested in making it public if it had "just been about a bully"?
Last question first.
A couple of months ago, Irish Times readers would have spotted this prominent headline: “Sinn Féin faces yet another claim of a toxic, bullying culture”. It was illustrated with a photograph of a smiling young woman councillor, Lisa Marie Sheehy, a postgraduate student of politics in UCC, who “perfectly fitted the profile of a new generation of Sinn Féin representative”, in the words of Harry McGee.
But following what she described as a “serious event” at an official party meeting, she complained, got nowhere and concluded the party was in denial about a bullying culture that was “bubbling up”. Sinn Féin denied this, describing the incident complained of as a “hostile meeting where accusations were made across the floor” and might have included “language that was not appropriate”. (Consider what all that implies about self-discipline, decency and collegiality in the workplace.) But it had not amounted to bullying, it was decreed. So – just another of those wee college snowflakes, not up to engaging with the ballsy, macho workplace.
Bullied men
Political parties are generously funded by the taxpayer and are an essential element of a healthy democracy – rather like theatres – so we have a legitimate interest in their governance. But the reason the Sheehy case made it into print was because there was a pattern. Ten SF councillors in six counties had resigned from the party over the previous three years. One complained of being threatened and intimidated, of being the subject of “vile allegations”, a death threat and an anonymous hate-mail campaign. Another ended up at the wrong end of a poison pen campaign (though it’s hard to conceive of a right end) and complained their mental health had been badly affected. Would it surprise our questioning reader to learn that these last two complainants were men ? Or that the majority of those feeling bullied were men? The term “sexual harassment” never featured.
Women are constantly belittled simply for being women; the cares and burdens they take on willingly or have foisted upon them are often trivialised or dismissed
But something about the reader’s question was disturbing.
Would the same question have been asked if, say, a perpetrator targeted only people of a different colour or with a disability? Bullying is not based on the target’s sex; sexual harassment is. A bully abuses power by roaring, needling, brooding, punishing and lashing out at the less powerful like an emotionally incontinent, stupidly counterproductive two-year-old. Sexual harassers assert dominance on the basis of their preys’ sex or gender. Bullying ruins lives, careers, even companies, but it is not interchangeable with sexual harassment.
Constant belittling
To conflate or confuse the two is also to deny a larger truth: that women are constantly belittled simply for being women; that the particular cares and burdens they take on willingly or have foisted upon them are often trivialised or dismissed. And not just by the slimy old goats who grew up in a different culture – bless – or the heroic young “disrupters” of Silicon Valley. It includes the doughty older women who pop up to boast about how they survived and prospered in spite of the routine gropings and who have zero empathy with the women who believe they shouldn’t have to tolerate such behaviour at all.
A retired foreign affairs correspondent boasted on Monday’s Channel 4 news that she once stuck a lit cigarette in a groper’s arm. Yes, that probably taught him – to confine his preying to the young and vulnerable. But the really intolerable response comes from those women who seek to amplify the trivial, before generously waving it away, as Zoe Williams put it in the Guardian. Recalling Michael Fallon’s hand on her knee, Julia Hartley-Brewer – a well-paid journalist with a series of powerful platforms – airily dismissed it as entirely trivial (#kneegate), adding with supreme illogic, that had it happened again, she would have punched him. Well, was it a punchable offence or not?
Turn the reader's question around. Is it possible to be a sexual harasser without being a bully? Is Donald Trump a bully and a sexual harasser ? Without question. By the words from his own mouth, he has committed sexual assault. Listen to his tone of voice as he gloats about his power. Read again the stories of the women from the Gate theatre. Remember the phrase: "He was a man who could end careers with a single phone call."