If you haven’t spent the last decade living on another planet, I’m sure you will recognise the following sequence of events:
- A powerful man says something egregiously sexist, either in a public forum or in a private conversation which is subsequently leaked.
- There is an outpouring of indignation on social media.
- The mainstream media take up the story and the criticism gets amplified.
- The powerful man announces that he is stepping down.
- His critics claim this as a victory and the media move on—until another powerful man says another egregiously sexist thing, at which point the cycle begins again.
The most recent high-profile target for this ritual shaming was David Bonderman, a billionaire venture capitalist and member of Uber’s board of directors. It’s no secret that Uber has a serious sexism problem. Following a number of discrimination and harassment claims from former employees, the company commissioned what turned out to be a damning report on its corporate culture. At a meeting called to discuss the report, Arianna Huffington (who at the time was Uber’s only female director) cited research which suggested that putting one woman on a board increased the likelihood that more women would join. At which point Bonderman interjected: ‘actually what it shows is that it’s likely to be more talking’.
To call this remark ill-judged does not do it justice. In the space of 12 words it managed to (a) slander women collectively by recycling the idea they talk incessantly (when in reality, as a ton of evidence shows, it’s men who do more talking in mixed-sex interactions); (b) insult the only woman on the board by dismissing the point she had just made; and (c) undermine Uber’s attempt to look as though it was taking sexism seriously. What was needed from David Bonderman was a moment of silence—a moment when he considered his options and took an executive decision not to say what he was thinking. But that level of self-restraint was apparently beyond him. And he’s by no means the only powerful man who has this problem.
A few days before Bonderman’s comment made headlines, the trade publication PRWeek had held its annual, ickily named ‘Hall of Femme’ event celebrating women’s contributions to the PR industry. This year, the organisers decided that what the event really needed was an all male panel, at which a group of male industry leaders would share their thoughts about women in PR. One of these men, Richard Edelman, made a particularly original and constructive suggestion: if women want to be heard they should try ‘speaking up more loudly’.
Once again, you have to marvel at the apparent inability of powerful men to practise the same kind of judicious self-censorship the rest of us routinely engage in. How could anyone with a functioning brain have prepared a speech containing this pearl of wisdom without ever thinking, ‘hang on, might there be something a bit dodgy about a male speaker on an all-male panel telling women they need to speak up?’ It’s even more ironic that this PR disaster was perpetrated by a leading PR professional, who apparently didn’t see it coming. Induct that man into PRWeek’s Hall of Shemme!
You can’t resign from a conference panel, so in this case the ritual only got as far as stage (2), public indignation. David Bonderman, however, was obliged to fall on his sword. His resignation statement took the form that’s become standard on these occasions: (1) apologise for causing offence; (2) deny that you really meant what everyone thinks you meant (one perennially popular version of this denial is ‘my remarks were taken out of context’, but Bonderman went for another cliché, ‘the way it came across was the opposite of what I intended’); (3) say that you’re stepping down because the controversy has become a ‘distraction’ (‘I do not want my comments to create distraction as Uber works to build a culture of which we can be proud’).
Every part of this is bullshit. The belated apology is rendered even less convincing by the accompanying denial of prejudiced intent, and the form of the denial adds insult to injury: Bonderman appears to be claiming that when he said women talk too much, what he really meant was that women don’t talk too much—an interpretation even Humpty Dumpty might think far-fetched. (More likely he meant that he was joking, but that’s also an insult, implying that his critics have no sense of humour.) The obligatory reference to ‘distraction’ is itself a distraction—very obviously in this case, where the issue from which Bonderman’s sexism had allegedly ‘distracted’ was—well, sexism. The purpose of this formula is damage limitation: it’s an attempt to contain the criticism and draw a line under the affair. ‘OK, a rogue individual said something offensive, but he’s accepted his mistake and done the honourable thing. Problem solved. Time for the circus to move on’. Until the next time it happens, which will probably be within a week.
Increasingly I find myself wondering what good this ritual does. To me it doesn’t feel like much of a victory when a man like David Bonderman resigns: it feels more like cutting off the Hydra’s head when you know the Hydra will just grow a new one. If you really want to change a culture, you have to change the behaviour of the people in the culture: just replacing one director or CEO with another who’s cut from the same cloth is never going to solve the problem.
You might say, but at least Bonderman was held to account: he wasn’t just permitted to carry on as if nothing had happened. But you could equally argue that resigning is the easy option. Rather than having to change his behaviour, the offender just cuts his losses and walks away.
One day I’d like to see a powerful man in this position taking real responsibility for his actions by dispensing with the usual boilerplate and saying something more like this:
The asinine remark I made at yesterday’s meeting has prompted many people to call for my resignation. But instead of stepping down, I’ve decided I should try to step up.
For as long as I can remember, I have been given a license by the people around me to say whatever came into my head at any given moment, regardless of whether it was on point and with no thought for its effect on other people. But I’ve now realised that needs to change, and I have hired a consultant to conduct a year-long intervention. One of her responsibilities will be to interrupt me every time I begin to speak in a meeting. She will also arrange a series of corporate events at which male attendees will be obliged to listen to mainly all-female panels while having no opportunity to speak. In the Q&A men will be permitted to raise their hands, but the Chair will operate a policy of ignoring them. A couple of panels will feature one token man: in those cases a woman will be tasked with talking over their contributions, then explaining at length what they’ve just attempted to say.
I know I can’t recreate other people’s experience of being ignored and disrespected from cradle to grave, but I hope even a small taste of my own medicine will make me less of an arse in future. Then perhaps I will have something to contribute to the creation of a culture we can be proud of.
This fantasy non-resignation speech was partly inspired by the title of a lecture once given by the artist Grayson Perry: ‘Men, sit down for your rights!’ In his book about masculinity, The Descent of Man, Perry argues that men—especially middle aged, middle class white ones—are lacking in self-awareness because they have gone through life taking their privileged position for granted. Being treated as the cultural default means never having to interrogate your own behaviour. But in a world which is moving towards greater equality, where maleness can no longer be regarded as an automatic ticket to the top, men will have to develop more humility and learn to, as Perry puts it, ‘sit down’.
One crucial element in this metaphorical sitting down will be learning to (literally) shut up. Because there is no form of privilege men deploy more frequently, more casually and more unselfconsciously than their assumed Divine Right to Talk—to monologue, to mansplain, to interrupt, to say whatever’s on their minds without considering the consequences. This behaviour is everyday sexism at its most basic: it’s even commoner than catcalling, and its effects are felt by women of all ages, races and classes. Yet as I pointed out in my last post, the most popular way of addressing it involves telling women they should act more like men. Women are constantly exhorted to speak up. But who is making speeches telling men to pipe down?
Some mixed organisations are trying to grasp this nettle. Not long ago, for instance, a journalist told me about a small political party in Denmark which had introduced a rule to even out the distribution of speaking turns at its meetings. A male speaker cannot speak straight after another man, but must wait until after a woman has taken a turn. Yes, there’s a degree of artificiality about this arrangement, but that’s true of any rule-governed system for managing the floor in a group—Roberts’s Rules of Order, or Parliamentary procedure, or the rules feminists of my generation sometimes followed in women’s groups to prevent the most confident and articulate women from dominating the discussion. Without analysing the evidence it’s hard to say how well the Danish rule works in practice (if anyone reading this can supply some data I’d love to hear from you), but even if it works imperfectly, its existence will at least be making people pay more conscious attention to their own behaviour.
The absence of self-awareness that Grayson Perry talks about is one of the hallmarks of the true alpha-male, and it is never more visible than when one of them is forced to apologise for some casually bigoted comment. These gaffemeisters always seem astonished by the outcry their words have provoked–it’s as if it had never occurred to them before that anyone might think they were arses. The sports star who used the N-word protests that he hasn’t got a racist bone in his body; President Donald ‘grab em by the pussy’ Trump declares that ‘no one respects women more than I do’. I don’t think they are actually lying, in the sense of saying something they believe to be false: I think they genuinely can’t see the world from anyone else’s point of view.
The question all this raises is why we go on putting these self-regarding solipsists in positions of power and influence, by choosing them as our leaders, our role-models, our cultural icons. Occasionally we punish one of them, but mostly we continue to reward them–if we didn’t, they wouldn’t keep reproducing themselves. In my youth they seemed like dinosaurs on the verge of becoming extinct; but 40 years later they are more powerful, and more popular, than ever. From Russia to the USA, and from the Philippines to Turkey, their star is once again in the ascendant. Mere indignation, however righteous, is not enough to turn the tide: it might even be as much of a distraction as the gaffes that set it off.
language: a feminist guide: It does what it says on the tin: a feminist language guide.
