> on: The long-term cost of sexual harassment
There will always be disparity while this change takes place, if it does. There will be both men and women who abuse the system and get away with it with no repercussions. But you can't use that as justification for acting the way they do.
But you don't have to be a person with a lot of power to make this choice. When enough people make this choice, then the predators are far less free to do whatever the fuck they so choose because more people will call them on it earlier, before it turns to assault.
Catherine Shu (author of this piece) was in a public setting and there were other people there who knew her. One took a photo of the incident without realizing the incident was basically assault. The same person had earlier sent mixed signals to Pollock, on the one hand saying Catherine was unavailable because she was married, on the other saying she liked white men because she was married to a white man.
So Pollock's predatory behavior was enabled by other people who not only failed to be supportive of Catherine, but even to some extent cooperated with his plans to get laid, and propriety be damned. I think it is completely gross and disgusting that her friend said she likes white men, she is marred to one.
When ordinary people stop doing things like that, then predators have a lot less latitude for pursuing their ugly goals. When you reduce their latitude enough, you may find that in order to get laid at all, they need to behave something like decent human beings instead of overentitled rapey bastards.
People get away with this shit because everyone either averts their eyes and refuses to see what is happening right in front of them or actively supports some powerful man's ugly agenda because he has power and they desire to curry favor. That is a choice. You can decide that you aren't willing to curry favor at that price.