An Issue to be Careful About
Comments. Considerations. Questions.
by Kenneth Bagnell
It’s well over fifty years since as a student at Mount Allison, I often took to Friday evening dances, a nice and pretty young woman from Trinidad, her name being Anna. She was studying education. Upon graduation, Anna went home, taught school and in due course became a senior person in Trinidad’s educational department. What I’ll always remember most about her was her graceful and stylish dancing. I could lean forward, and she in turn would suddenly drop back deeply, until – I’m not exaggerating – her head almost touched the floor. Then, by herself, she’d spring upright, do a twirl or two as a small crowd encircled us and stood there watching her dancing the night away. I told her more than once she was among the best and she modestly said it was just what she learned back home in Trinidad.
I mention this because it came back to me, as I read in The Globe& Mail, a week or so ago, an article revealing that a young woman in Toronto has launched a $10 million dollar lawsuit against a former Ontario Premier David Peterson. Why? Because among other rather trivial reasons – he’d complemented her, more than once as I did with Anna, by saying she looked like a flaminco dancer ready to “jump on a table and start dancing.” This remark, Mr. Peterson’s adversary insists, is not just derogatory but a subtle slur upon her ethnic background and culture. Moreover she alleged that once, in giving her a hug, his chest touched her breast. What? May I offer her a suggestion: if she finds former Premier Peterson’s passing hug offensive please do not go to some Christian churches I know, because there may well be huggers in the pews. And when real huggers hug other huggers, you probably won’t be able to get a piece of thread between the hugger and the huggie.
I know, I know. You and I may very well find all this a bit trivial, but the young woman insists she had real trouble recovering from David Peterson’s compliments and especially that hug. As she described its aftermath to a Globe & Mail journalist: “I had been crying uncontrollably the whole week, hadn’t been able to sleep, I was constantly throwing up…”
Anyway the incidents which provoked this — mainly a well intended compliment and a brief hug — led the young woman to launch her ten million dollar lawsuit. It’s made me wonder what actually provoked her – and perhaps growing numbers of women – to suspect a well meant compliment and a casual hug, to be deeply offensive. I suggest we might well consider the ever present influence of the legitimate and now quite mature and, of course, provocative feminist culture. I suspect, it’s being renewed and revived by the highly repugnant revelations of much male attitudes if not practices. For example, the Dalhousie dental students crude and ugly rants against women, then the public calls for more protection in light of male mistreatment to women serving in our military and our once revered, RCMP. (I will not go into any detail of the alleged, almost pathological sexual activity, of a fired CBC radio host.) All of this, so widely publicized on the front pages, has led to a deepening wariness, which, in turn, is reflected in this young woman’s profound suspicion and sad breakdown. What to do?
In part, men must re-examine their tendency to regard the women’s movement as a man hating intruder. The evidence of such is in certain parts of the media, not our national networks or publications, but in the tabloid press and on the internet. Anything anti-feminist goes. Take as but one example a lead article last month in London’s Daily Mail under the caption: “The denigration of men: ridiculed, abused, exploited – the triumph of feminism has made today’s men second class citizens…. It’s time to fight back….’ It get worse in the text, which near the lead even includes self-pity: “Today is the worst time in history to be a man:” What rot. When I look at a group portrait of world leaders it’s so male dominated that Angela Merkel looks lonely. It even claims that today’s universities are dominated by women. Again a falsehood. In Canada, for example, there are 98 universities, the last time I looked, guess how many women were university presidents? One. When I say this tabloid journalism is usually rot, it can be readily backed up elsewhere.
This attitude, widely trumpeted, is sadly taken seriously in many rank and file male activity, which would include the majority membership of the military and often in policing. Some years ago, doing research for a magazine article on the then police chief of Toronto, (a very good man ), I asked one of his senior departmental deputies if he felt women were given fair opportunities in every aspect of policing. He sighed and said: “Actually, when I send a squad out to raid — say a dangerous den ofcriminals — the last thing I say to the officers leaving is: ‘For God’s sake somebody keep an eye on Mary…’ ” Some confidence.
Perhaps, if the young woman, before making the incident a widely public issue, had consulted a specialist in the field of workplace harassment, she and David Peterson, and the general public, would be better off rather than now facing a dragged out legal wrangle. That’s probably the general view of an informed expert, an academic, who is a specialist in workplace incidents. She’s Catherine Burr, of the MBA Faculty at the University of Western Ontario. She’s dealt with such incidents in a scholarly article I read months ago and recently relocated. Her counsel is a lot more sensible than flying off the proverbial handle and provoking a $10 million dollar lawsuit.
“A proper investigation, not allegation” she writes , “ensures that the fact finding process – including the identification, gathering and assessment of evidence – is fair, objective and thorough. It answers two questions: did it (what is alleged) occur? And if it did, what is the significance of it, is it sexual harassment? A superficial understanding of harassment is inadequate and a superficial analysis based merely on the complainants allegation or focusing on subjective impressions is insufficient… An evidence-based process is fundamental to a careful, objective and thorough analysis, using the required “balance of probabilities…..” None of that is evident in the issue dealt with here, an issue provoked by what, on the surface, appears quite superficial, if not trite.
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