How Men And Women Differ On The Subject Of Sexual Harassment

Some men do things women find repulsive, and a few of them talk themselves into believing women wanted it all along. Speaking as a woman, my honest reaction is disgust. Part of what makes the harassment possible is the assumption that women's minds work like men's minds. If a man believes that, then every leer or grope gets reframed in his head as something she invited. That belief gives him permission to do things in front of women, or to women, that most women would never welcome.

I can tell you what this looked like in my own life. I was shown Playboy centerfolds. A psychiatrist asked me to sit in while he did a physical exam on his male patients so I could handle the mental portion, though I was neither a nurse nor a physician. A therapist I had been seeing invited me back so I could update him on how I was doing. I walked in and found he had rearranged his office so the two of us could sit on the floor together and make out. Was the fault mine or theirs? I was stunned and had no words. I am saying all of this out loud now because I carried the shame quietly for years, and I never should have. And there is one more: a man seated beside me on a Greyhound bus groped me after boxing me into the window seat.

Men can burn through hours discussing the women they say have led them off course. It may well have run in the opposite direction. A woman's name gets dragged through the mud over these stories. A man's name tends to come out of the same stories looking better, not worse. If women actually behaved the way men imagine, there would be no hours left in the day. Between a job, running a household, and raising kids, when exactly is a woman supposed to be slipping away for all of this?

My suspicion is that a lot of it lives only in men's heads, and they project their own wiring onto women. Once a man assumes a woman thinks the way he does, he feels entitled to act. A man who is cheating will often decide his partner must secretly want the same thing, which conveniently excuses him wanting it even more.

None of that lets off the women who weaponize their sexuality to trap men and use them. That real behavior is part of why some men, especially in conservative circles, refuse to be alone with a woman unless her husband is present or there is a group around. Where do you land on it? My guess is that most women will admit they would "like" to be with some actor or musician, and that the fantasy almost always stops right there.

A lot of women struggle to own their own attractiveness. They dress plainly, skip the makeup, make themselves smaller. That habit can quietly wreck the healthy intimacy they do have, leaving them feeling neither attractive nor attracted to the person they are with. Female sexuality tends to be delicate and easy to spoil in this way. Men, by contrast, have usually rehearsed the whole thing, in their heads and through masturbation. Sexual thinking is simply treated as more normal for a man.

There is a kind of child sexual abuse where a mother parades her sexuality in front of a young son, carrying on openly with a man in the boy's presence and going around with little or nothing on. It can escalate into fondling, the boy coaxed into touching her and cuddling up against her.

This is why education matters. People need to learn what is and is not acceptable in sexual matters. Leaving children, and plenty of adults, in the dark does not protect them. Ignorance keeps no one safe. When something crosses a line, the person on the receiving end has to know it is okay to speak and know who to go to. Back when I was harassed, I had no clue what to do. I felt humiliated, and I sat on the secret for a very long time.

You will notice this post has no images with it. I would rather not risk promoting anything through pictures that could read as sexually explicit.

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