One of the most difficult things that can happen to an adult male is to hear whispers that a male in his close circle is a sexual abuser. At least, that is how I felt at first. I confess to being totally blindsided by it all. Avarice? Treachery in pursuit of higher office? Recourse to deceit, duplicity, and double standards in the service of one’s office? All of these are familiar to me, inexcusable though they are. Regarding this new charge, however, the question “What to do?” seemed easier to answer than the question “What does it mean?”. Both questions, nonetheless, present a smorgasbord of difficulties. To the first question, there is only one valid moral response: to do everything to bring the culprit to justice. Two things make reporting difficult, however. Nearly always, unwanted sexual advances from a male to a female are shorthand for a relationship of power gone awry. The female victim is invariably younger, a subordinate, or vulnerable to the extent that a previous trauma reinforces her belief that all male attention is a validation of her desirability. Sometimes, sadly, she is all three.
All of which make the question “Is the allegation true?” a very necessary first step; and a most difficult one to answer even then. One hurdle in this case is not just gathering evidence that assuages the need for the claim to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. It is also that a sting operation, where the victim is required to lead the perpetrator on in her bid to obtain the much-needed evidence, looks no less dubious. The absence of consent, a key criterion in proving culpability for sexual abuse, represents a still higher hurdle. This requirement means that few acts of sexual harassment are easy to call out. Suggestive comments and sexual innuendos are bound to leave a trail of witnesses, as do sexual jokes. In the matter of accumulating evidence against sexual harassment, emails and texts with sexual content are sui generis. But there are those borderline actions — unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature — that take place away from witnesses.
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In a male-orientated world, every aspect – geography, politics, culture, architecture, even – of these “her word against mine” situations have the female at a severe disadvantage. This burden is borne not only when, in work situations, the accused is also the one who writes the accusers work appraisal – and is thus responsible for her career outcomes. The female’s disadvantage is the more so in these parts, where much of what we now describe as sexual harassment are indicators of male valence in our traditional, if not religious, settings. In other words, in a culture where most males still struggle to understand what the fuss is about, even as significant numbers of our females still imagine themselves God’s-designated recipients of every conceivable male outrage against women, the whole sexual harassment conversation runs the danger of descent into farce.
All these concerns, however, pale into insignificance before the indignation I felt from imagining that any of the random victims of a sexual predator could be one’s sisters or daughters. This sentiment raised a chapter of related questions. Which of the following scenarios is worse? The inconvenience of the female having to daily resist (physically, at times) the unwanted male attention? The shame from eventually succumbing to the attention? The trauma from reporting the harassment and not being believed? Or of being believed, but having to go through the discomforts of a “trial” that strips the female naked emotionally, yet is necessary to prove that this is not some charge conceived in malice? Or the self-doubt that follows one home from the workplace venue of this harassment, through to the inability to confide in one’s loved ones? Or the trepidation the female feels while getting ready in the morning to go face this ordeal, all over again, as if stuck in a vicious time-loop?
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Reporting accusations of sexual harassment is a moral duty, therefore, for two reasons. Not just to free the female alleged victim, but where the charge is malice-driven, to free the male of the smear to his reputation and character.
Uddin Ifeanyi, journalist manqué and retired civil servant, can be reached @IfeanyiUddin.
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