There has been much discussion in both the mainstream and in
the social medias as to what to do with the yahoos (Merriam-Webster ) who
at a Toronto FC game yelled a particular set of obscenities (FHRITP as it sometimes
referred to in the press)at a female reporter. The football club (soccer) and
the stadium owners have banned the men from the stadium for a year. It has also
been reported that one of the men involved who works for Hydro One has been or
will be fired for his behaviour. This incident and its response is on the heels
of Jian Ghomeshi's dismissal from the
CBC due to allegations of sexual assault and football (American) star Ray Rice
being suspended from his football team for his assault upon his partner.
Anyone who supports the rights of all women to be free from any sort of harassment
must feel the urge to give a cheer for these corporate responses (no matter in
two of the cases of how slow they were in coming). Responses that surely must
indicate that there is finally a consensus that these sort of behaviours are
not just inappropriate but that they are wrong, and that there must be a
consequence for men who engage in them.
While I am glad that there is some sort of public response/outrage
- I am not at all convinced that the consequences are appropriate or even
useful. They are certainly being applied inconsistently. When I went to George
Brown College in 1970 to learn how to support young people who were struggling
with mental health issues, one of the first things I learnt was that the
consequence must be relevant to the inappropriate activity. While Ghomeshi's dismissal from the CBC was
appropriate given his public persona, Hydro One's firing of an employee for his
very public behaviour when he was not representing that organization strikes me
as somewhat inappropriate. What the man did was wrong, but it had nothing to do
with his work.
While it is true
that companies could, through the threat of being fired, perhaps force some of their
male employees to behave better in public, there is no proof that such
initiatives have ever been truly successful. In fact such an attitude reminds
one of Mr. Harper and his fellow Conservatives who apparently believe that the
best way of stopping someone from doing something is the fear of punishment - a
treatment methodology that has been refuted by all who study the subject in any
detail. Perhaps a more appropriate consequence would have been to tell that man
and his buddies that if they ever wanted to attend another event at that
stadium that they would need attend to awareness classes and participate in
some sort of restorative justice process with the reporter. Perhaps Hydro One
could have supported that initiative.
Of even greater concern to me is the fact that while a
handful of men may receive some sort of very public shaming, nothing is really
changing. Will companies who hire construction crews fire them when they
"wolf whistle" or make sexists remarks as a woman walks by? Will
companies fire men who visit strip clubs and again make remarks that are at the
very least degrading? Will Hydro One and other large corporations do anything
to eradicate their not so subtle sexual discrimination policies that ensure that
the glass ceiling is as thick as ever? Will the Canadian Armed Forces do
anything other than the bare necessities to deal with the prevalent sexualized
culture. Will internet sites that promote this sort of behaviour be taken off
the internet. I don't think so.
Until all of these things and more happen, the occasional public
figurative slap across the face will be irrelevant. Until at the very core of
our culture there is a fundamental shift in thinking (paradigm shift), these
public punishments do not reflect a significant advancement in the rights of
women. At best it shows that we know we should be ashamed of these behaviours
but as of yet are not prepared to do nothing about them.
No comments:
Post a Comment