[admiralEyebrows]

It makes me wonder how the men who have the focus and discipline to get in to those positions of power have not learned the discipline of controlling their sexual urges.

Those that are doing the harassing are at fault of course, but something is also wrong if men are acting on potentially career destroying impulses. Is the education system failing at teaching discipline? or philosophy? I've gone through the public education system in the U.S. and neither were taught to me, I had to seek them out myself. Maybe sexual harassment seminars should be less about defining and identifying sexual harassment and more about the type of person you can become when you stop letting pleasure and impulse define your life.

[wmeredith]

The sad answer is these behaviors just aren’t all that high risk, despite what “#himtoo” would have you believe. Take the most extreme form of sexual assault: rape. The best statistics we have(1) say that only 31% of all rape is even reported at all. Out of 1000 rape occurrences 994 (!) times the perpetrator will see ZERO jail time. It’s hard to find equivalent statistics for murder, but compare that to a murder “close” rate of 56% in the US, as reported by the FBI.

There are obviously a hundred shades of gray between rape and an unwanted compliment. So if rape is the most extreme, and the most risky, and you have a 70% chance of literally nothing happening and the chance of seeing actual jail time is statistically zero... this whole category of behaviors is definitely not “high risk”.

1. Statistics compiled by the RAINN institute which uses the US Justice Department’s reporting for its main data sources. More info here: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system

[atoav]

There is a known relationship between power and sexuality. Many businessmen are in control all day, so in their spare time they like beeing dominated. This is common enough to be a wide spread trope throughout art and literature.

But for some it is the other way round. They have to dominate in order to get sexually excited. Then, if you are in a position of power, and you feel there is a seemingly consequence-free¹ area in which to abuse it, many of these otherwise mostly rational and educated men give in to the temptation.

It is not that we suddenly have a problem with some men sexualy abusing their positions of power. It is just getting a bit more visible than it was before, now that it has become a topic. This certainly feels like illuminating a dark corner with light, to find it filled with bugs fleeing in all directions.

That is why "lets just switch off the light" is not a rational option here.

¹ in legal- and job-related terms that is. These actions still have real consequences for their co-workers and subordinates

[admiralEyebrows]

I agree "Let's just switch off the light" is the opposite direction in which we should be going.

How do we get from having men avoid these urges and situations at work (which is what is sort of the standard sexual harassment education) to having men want to better themselves and create a work space free of sexual context.

A lot of men I know already do this, but not all of them. And for the ones that somehow missed the "don't give in to your sexual urges because it will make you less than what you can be" part of becoming an adult, looking back at my own education there was very little to actually teach that other than life itself.

[ealexhudson]

> something is also wrong if men are acting on potentially career destroying impulses

I think the lesson here is that empirically, it's not potentially career destroying - in fact, it's highly likely to have pretty much no consequence.

I'm pretty confident once these actions do become at least plausibly career destroying, that men as a whole will find ways of being able to rein it in. "Consent", as an example, is a straightforward concept.

[DoreenMichele]

It makes me wonder how the men who have the focus and discipline to get in to those positions of power have not learned the discipline of controlling their sexual urges.

I will suggest that a lot of powerful men are only just now in recent years beginning to see women "in their league." It's highly problematic for them to respond to that with propositioning these women, but it's possibly not entirely fair to say they simply haven't learned to control themselves.

In some cases, they may control themselves just fine most of the time. Then they meet some very happening lady who blows them away under circumstances where they aren't used to seeing women at all and they find themselves in new territory they aren't entirely prepared for.

FWIW, I happen to be a woman. No, this is not an "apologist" position. This is my framing for how to navigate the social/business landscape without stuff blowing up in my face.

[noxToken]

> It makes me wonder how the men who have the focus and discipline to get in to those positions of power have not learned the discipline of controlling their sexual urges.

I have nothing to back this up, but I think it's one of two things.

1.) It's the culture of their day. This is applicable to older CEOs where it was the norm. They never grew out of it, because they never needed to grow out of it.

2.) They're powerful enough that it doesn't matter. Of course, if tens or hundreds of women come forward accusing a CEO of sexual misconduct, then it's going to be a problem. But in the day-to-day, it's only going to be a problem if the culture in the company allows it to be a problem.

Either of those cases has nothing to do with the inability to control urges. The problem is that those men are being overly aggressive with their sexual misconduct because they can.

[vnorilo]

I've observed some behavior from older male teachers toward young female students that seemed inappropriate and clearly unpleasant to the recipient from a sideline (male) pov. My belief is that these guys somehow convince themselves that their attentions are welcome. Alcohol seems to help them do it. The same fellows did it again and again, it was often reported, but repercussions were a mild slap on the wrist at best, nothing at worst. I believe this dynamic increases with the position of power (and imbalance).

[scythe]

> It makes me wonder how the men who have the focus and discipline to get in to those positions of power have not learned the discipline of controlling their sexual urges.

I think there might be (at least) two kinds of discipline: the discipline of doing and the discipline of not-doing. Does getting up early and putting in long hours running a business really use the same mental skills as not throwing your trash on the sidewalk or coming to a complete stop on the white line next to the red octagon? We might call these initiative discipline and reactive discipline: in one case, you go out and find the situation where you're supposed to do something, but in the second, the mountain comes to Muhammad, so to speak.

[pdpi]

On the contrary, the sort of attitude where you see others as disposable, as means to get what you want, and generally doing anything you think you can get away with, is precisely the sort of profile that rises to the top

[rocqua]

It seems there are a few explanations, with the truth probably being some combination of these.

* The harassers genuinely believe they aren't doing something wrong / think their victims want it * The harassers can't control their urges in the moment / over long times * The harassers don't care that they are doing something wrong / think they have the right to do wrong.

I'm not sure which is worse. And again, it is probably a mix of the above where cognitive dissonance nudges the harassers into after the fact justifications.

[faitswulff]

It seems more like the rules of the business world would aid and abet the same kinds of people who would commit sexual harassment. There are a lot of parallels between rape culture and business culture:

- Never take no for an answer

- Don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness

- Break the law as long as you get away with it

- The bottom line is about the benefits I can extract from any given situation

A quick search will surface evidence that corporations as a whole are psychopathic and that CEOs skew heavily psychopathic (1 out of 5, similar to prison populations, according to a study - though I can't find the original paper).

[dominotw]

This is like suggesting obesity and inactive lifestyle can be eliminated by "education. That reptile brain can simply be dominated and put in it's place by rational educated part of the brain.