Code of Silence: Why is it so hard to accuse politicians of harassment
SCANDAL NAMED AFTER THE DEPUTY SLUTSKY It will probably be immortalized as the first time that the word “harassment” has been spoken in Russian politics - even though harassment by local officials, as we now know, has a long history that did not begin yesterday. It may seem that in terms of attitudes towards the harassment of politicians, we hopelessly lag behind the entire planet, but this is not quite so.
Although the scandals associated with violence, sexuality and personal life, for many centuries were and remain almost the most powerful compromising material that can in principle be collected for a public person, the systematic struggle with harassment — like unacceptable behavior — began relatively recently in world politics . Let's try to figure out why harassment cases in the corridors of power do not work in the same way as in other public institutions.
"Publish and be damned"
Political sex scandals are a mirror of society’s attitude towards sex: it is not difficult to trace by it how the standards of public morality have changed. A national leader or simply a person invested with power in the eyes of ordinary mortals must be infallible - especially if power is given to him by higher powers. The discrepancy to the moral ideal at all times cost the political figures dearly - only the demands of society changed: Heinrich VIII Tudor was criticized for divorcing, contrary to the norms of Catholicism; Alexander Hamilton and the Duke of Wellington - for extramarital relations (the latter replied to the authors of the compromising text with a phrase that became winged: “Publish and be damned”); John Profumo, British War Minister of the middle of the last century, for his connection with the nineteen-year-old model. The focus of sex scandals changed as the boundaries of acceptable behavior changed, and the harassment was “taken out of the buoys” only some thirty years ago.
The very concept of "sexual harassment" appeared in gender studies in the 70s. And although it had been almost twenty years for harassment and unsolicited advances in the workplace, it was customary to turn a blind eye as to minor inconveniences (and even veiled compliments), the attitude towards them was gradually changing.
Harament goes to the White House
The first high-profile political trial, which was mixed up with harassment stories, happened in 1991: Upon learning that George W. Bush nominated his fellow party member Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court, law professor Anita Hill filed a report in which she reported cases of "inappropriate statements" Thomas, ten years before — they were colleagues in the education department at the time. Hill's statement was reviewed by the FBI and concluded that her testimony was not enough to conclude that there were indeed harassment.
Soon information about the report leaked to the press and fueled the indignation of the activists for the rights of women who were not so enthusiastic about the nomination of Thomas, known for his conservative views (including on the issue of abortion). Hill was summoned to the Senate Juridical Committee for public hearings, where she described in detail how Thomas re-told her pornography and boasted about how good he was in bed.
The committee took Hill’s evidence into account, but this did not prevent Thomas from getting a nomination, even if with a margin of a few votes in his favor. However, after the whole country listened live to a detailed account of how exactly harassment occurs in the workplace, the discussion about whether or not to tolerate "innocent flirting" from colleagues could no longer be the same.
Hill was summoned to a public hearing before the Senate Law Committee, where she described in detail how Thomas re-told her pornography and boasted about how good he was in bed
However, this did not mean that from now on the heads of high-ranking officials would fly whenever they were accused of harassment. In January 1994, an employee of the state apparatus, Paul Clark, filed a lawsuit against Bill Clinton, stating that he, being a senator from the state of Arkansas, had harassed her, and also publicly defamed her honor and dignity. The trial got bogged down in the courts - not least because Clinton at that time had presidential immunity (which, however, was deprived by the decision of the Supreme Court in 1997). Four years later, the case was settled out of court: Clinton paid Jones compensation in the amount of 850 thousand dollars (most of the amount went to pay court costs), but did not make public apologies - which was important in the midst of the impeachment process provoked by other, much louder Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The era of the developed Internet has brought with it a network harassment, which has not bypassed serious politicians. Republican Mark Fowley resigned from his post as a congressman after it became known that he was sending obscene offers to interns, including minors. Democrat Congressman Anthony Wiener was sentenced to twenty-one months in prison for sexting with a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, and this time he paid not only a direct participant in the scandal: Wiener case, according to political analysts, was one of the "bombs" that undermined the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign of 2016 .
Omerta
The fight against political harassment is difficult for several reasons at once. This is the disproportion of power, which the aggressors often have much more than their victims. And the unspoken code of party silence, which keeps people who have been harassed from openly speaking out against their comrades-in-arms: publicity threatens not only the harassar, but the entire organization. And the fact that a career as a politician, oddly enough, does not always depend on his public reputation: as psychologist and sexologist Pepper Schwartz notes, voters do not necessarily associate themselves directly with a candidate and may well support a person with a dubious past - as long as (a) represents their political interests (Trump’s example confirms this completely).
However, this does not mean that a high-ranking politician is invulnerable. After several French women politicians spoke about the harassment by the Vice Speaker of the National Assembly Denis Bopin (in some perverted irony, one of the active fighters against violence against women) in 2016, forcing him to resign, a large-scale the campaign against “Omerty”, which allows everyday harassment in political institutions to go unpunished.
Instead of examining each individual case and wondering who benefits from “merging” one or another official, opponents of harassment begin to talk about a systemic, total and universal problem.
Kate Moltby, an activist of the British Tories, spoke in the same vein about the inappropriate behavior of her fellow party conservative Damien Green (who recently left his post as first secretary of the cabinet ministers, not because of the accusations of the journalist, but because of pornography): "From the very first day [of the proceedings] I said that Green did not think that he was doing something wrong. The problem was precisely this. That is why we need change."
This is an important turn in political affairs about harassment, which are still viewed through the prism of party competition and black PR. Instead of examining each individual case and wondering who would benefit from “merging” one or another official, opponents of harassment begin to talk about a systemic, total and universal problem, the solution of which should not depend on short-term political benefits.
Of course, it is not worth waiting for immediate changes. And because political backstage will not become transparent overnight, and because far from all countries public condemnation of harassment has become the norm. Russia in this sense is closer to Italy, where the statements of Silvio Berlusconi that there is no harassment concern his compatriots in the twentieth place.
Photo:Wikimedia Common (1, 2)
