Hashtag MeToo

One of the downsides of the whole Brexit fiasco has been how it has sucked all the air out of the room in terms of other news stories. One of the exceptions is the "Hashtag Metoo" movement which blew up around the Harvey Weinstein scandal. While this story is shocking (the extent an enormously famous man manages for years to abuse his power to take advantage of women), it was not surprising to me. In my previous life I had a supposedly high powered desk job which involved socialising with certain new and also longstanding clients. With only a few exceptions, these men could be quite predatory, albeit none of them were on a par with Weinstein. In fact, I am sure they meant no actual harm. Nevertheless, it became almost routine to expect to be propositioned over dinner, or for hotel rooms to be booked in the expectation or hope that you might agree to some extra curricular activity. I am sure that most of these men respected me as a professional, but they still couldn't quite make the invitation to have sex off limits. With a sinking heart, you learned to deal with it. What is surprising is that its taken this long to have the conversation.