By Catarina Dutilh Novaes
A few years ago, I was going through airport security at Schiphol for a short European flight (to Munich, if I remember correctly), with hand-luggage only. As I was struggling with some lower back pain at the time, I was bringing an electric massager with me; sure enough, when my trolley went through the x-ray, the massager caught the guard’s attention. He made me open the trolley, and asked: ‘what is this?’ I said: ‘it’s an electric massager’. His reply (salacious voice): ‘oh, but isn’t it better if someone else does the massaging on you?’ (Wink, wink…) I am usually rather short-tempered, and normally would have made quite a fuss about it, but I didn’t want to risk missing my flight so I simply moved on.
Now, this is only one of many similar episodes I and every single woman in the world have experienced in our lives – nothing very extraordinary about it. But when I told my friendly, well-meaning male friends about this episode, they just couldn’t believe their ears: yes, there it was, a male airport security guard making entirely inappropriate remarks to a female traveler.
This episode illustrates a well-known phenomenon: the invisibility of harassment to those who do not experience it (and similarly for racism, ableism etc.). The ‘nicer’ guys who do not engage in overt harassment often think it is so inconceivable that anyone could be so grotesque that they fail to see it when it happens near them (and in fact, it often does not even happen near them; I doubt that the security guard would have made his remark had I been accompanied by a male travel companion). This tends to lead to an under-appreciation of the problem among these well-meaning men. Moreover, the men who do engage in such behavior often think there’s nothing wrong with it (‘hey, it’s just a joke!’), and so also fail to appreciate the gravity of the problem.
Last week, we were graced with a surreal demonstration by someone who seems to fall in the second category: R. Hanna’s response to the article on the ongoing issues at CU-Boulder’s philosophy department. (Daily Nous has all the relevant links.) (I was on holiday until today, hence the somewhat delayed timing of this post.) As well argued by philodaria over at the Feminist Philosophers, Hanna’s description of his predicament as ‘romantic relationship trouble’ (while criticizing the very concept of ‘sexual harassment’) is so off the mark that one wonders in which world he lives. (Wild guess: in the world of male entitlement to anyone who arouses his interest.)
But I, for one, was even a little happy that he came forward so explicitly; I hope our male colleagues out there who still think that a fellow philosopher couldn’t possibly be as creepy as that will get a bit of a wake-up call. (Hanna is not the only one.) Sexual harassment is most definitely a thing, and a very abundant one as a matter of fact, but also one that has the regrettable tendency to camouflage itself and become invisible to those who do not engage in the practice but who do not experience it themselves. (And so, Michael Tooley's claim that there is no such thing as sexism or harassment in the philosophy profession based on the fact that he hasn't witnessed any of it himself carries no real evidentiary weight.)
UPDATE: I probably should have said from the start that the What is it like to be a woman in philosophy blog has been extremely important in terms of decreasing this invisibility.
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