You too? Confronting sexual harassment requires candor and willingness to hear

A new trend is developing on social media, mainly on Facebook and on Twitter, with women sharing posts containing the phrase "Me too."

It means the person posting has at some point in her life fallen victim either to sexual harassment or assault, or both. And there are a lot of them.

Perhaps the subject seems sticky because it is uncomfortable to talk about. If men start trying to define what constitutes harassment, that can come off as dismissive or an attempt to excuse a behavior.

That is not to say that a man cannot be the victim of the harassment or even the assault, he can, but by looking at the numbers what should be obvious is at least apparent. Most women will, at one time or another, be on the receiving end of unwanted sexual advances, comments, innuendoes or, at its worst, forcible sexual aggression or attack.

Often, women who come forward with allegations of assault or harassment are treated as if they are at fault. They must have invited it. They must have worn something or said something or suggested through body language that a comment or a touch or a kiss ... we'll stop there ... was being solicited.

And then there is the stigma. There is a heavy burden of shame, blame, guilt and grief associated with being the victim of any kind of abuse, especially sexual assault. A woman who raises such an allegation might be looked at -- sometimes even by other women -- as unclean, or dirty. She might have words we neither can nor would print lobbed at her in public and in private.

But instead of dismissing the trend as a taboo, or politicizing it, we should discuss the subject, openly. We should, as we are sure most parents do, talk to our daughters and our sons about what is OK to say and do and what isn't. We should discuss boundaries and respecting others' wishes and their bodies.

And since no amount of discussion can sanitize the world to the point where these acts will not occur, we should also openly discuss how to report harassment and assault, wherever it occurs and regardless of who it is committed by.

No one is above the law. No one is exempt from respecting the body and the personal space or the self-esteem of another person.

As we have seen in recent weeks and months -- and throughout great chapters of our nation's history -- with matters of race and religion and sexual orientation and with gender, these issues do not simply go away.

We might learn something about ourselves as individuals and as a society if we are open to the discussion. At least then if we identify a need to change we can begin working toward it, rather than keeping it in the dark.

Published in Editorials on October 16, 2017 9:42 PM