Many people might be surprised to hear that one of my favorite movies about sexual harassment is Pretty Persuasion. It’s a very, very smart, extremely funny (not to mention raunchy) comedy that takes a swipe at pretty much all forms of discrimination. Like any good satire, it makes fun of a problem while highlighting how serious a problem it really is.
Pretty Persuasion particularly takes on the false allegations issue, focusing it around sexual harassment and racial discrimination. Constant references to David Mamet’s Oleanna are made throughout. The script mimics his dialogue and even the way he structures his story-telling. (Oleanna was a Mamet play and later movie about sexual harassment in higher education and suggests strongly that the allegations of the complainant are false.)
Neither of these dismiss the problem of abuse and discrimination. They simply say that false allegations are one of the few ways dis-empowered people have to fight back against a system that holds them down because of gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation. In the Mamet play, the university professor (the accused) is the epitome of the white-male-asshole, dominating, controlling, viewing education as “hazing” which he admits he enjoys. Mamet uses the phrase “White Man’s Burden.” to illustrate how the professor views his role as a teacher and elite male in society. The female student who later accuses him can barely get a word in edgewise when she goes to him for help. In Pretty Persuasion the male teachers in the movie take none of their female or foreign students seriously, viewing them as objects to abuse and lech over. In this movie, set in a private high school, an English teacher’s “White Mans Burden” is teaching a new Muslim student to speak proper English, a task he lets her know he finds disgusting but necessary. Here, the students fight back by bringing a blatantly false sexual harassment claim against the English teacher, though he is guilty of all the discriminatory and lecherous attitudes they accuse him of.
I’ve written a little about harassment complaints as a power play in my article on false allegations. I can say that without a doubt this really happens. I know because I hear from these people here at SHS. They want to publish their stories or they join the support group, and there is either nothing remotely sexually harassing about their cases, or, if there is, it is so mild that most people wouldn’t even notice it.
Most of the articles I’ve written here were inspired by recent emails or email trends which touch on patterns I’ve seen in my years working with SHS. This one is no different. A man submitted a story for publication last week that was clearly describing a power-play. He fought back against a bully boss by bringing a sexual harassment complaint against him when the latter made a sexual comment that wasn’t even referring to anything sexual.
Here is a quote from the story that pretty much gives the gist of the situation (Normally I only paraphrase from stories I DON’T publish, but I think in this case, we need his words exactly.):
I recently had a Floor Manager write on my Log Sheet “Take your nose out the customers ass”. Then about 3 seconds later, this manager turned back around & verbally stated…”yeah, just take the customers cock out your mouth”.
Now, I’im a guy, I should be able to take statements like that & just walk away right? No, not at all, I’ve been so uncomfortable with this guy around me at work, that its made it very difficult to perform up to the standards that are required of me. He walks around like a pompous arrogant prick all the time.
So, he went to HR and filed a complaint which was pending when he submitted this. Oh, and the bully boss told him he was fired after complaint was filed. (Human Resources later told him he was not fired.)
Okay, this fits the definition of sexual harassment, but only superficially. It fits if you don’t know what sexual harassment really is.
Now, the terms-of-offense are clearly substitute terms for “sucking-up,” “ass kissing,” “brown nosing,” and “wipe your nose” (referring to brown-nosing). We hear these terms all the time, even on TV. Still, I have never heard anyone refer to them as sexual harassment when they are being used. And if you DO think about them as sexual, they are hardly less offensive than the boss’s terms.
Telling someone they are sucking-up is hardly sexual harassment, even if it’s done in a crude, bullying, and unprofessional way. Telling someone they are brown-nosing is hardly sexual harassment, even if the reference is superficially crude.
The giveaway here that this is a power play is the phrase “pompous arrogant prick” used to describe the boss. If the boss was a balanced, fair, solid communicator, I doubt the employee would have been offended by what was said. He would probably have taken it as a joke. But this supervisor is clearly a bully and most employees have little ammunition to fight back against bully bosses. A discrimination complaint was the only weapon available.
This employee’s story is just one example, but know of many others. I can’t share most because of confidentiality (I can only repeat stories submitted for publication). But I think the classic case of the woman who simply can’t set boundaries is another one. This description below is a fiction, but the dynamic is not, I can assure you:
A guy asks a woman out and she is too dis-empowered to set boundaries, or too socialized to be “the nice girl,” which is a HUGE problem for women and rooted in oppression of women. So, she won’t give him an answer. She won’t tell him “No” because she doesn’t want to hurt his feelings or make him angry (’cause these aren’t nice). At the same time, she continues to be friendly with him, too be nice. So he keeps asking or flirting, maybe emailing her or calling her, complicated by the fact he may need to call and email her for professional reasons. She starts to get angry, maybe even frightened. It builds and builds. Now she starts to tell herself he is harassing her. Finally, instead of just saying “No,” she deals with it by filing a sexual harassment complaint or a police report, convinced she is making a stand. I have heard of men getting suspended or even fired over this kind of thing. Or, if the employer ignores her compliant, she may file a lawsuit convincing herself she is “doing this for all women.”
As illustrated in the Mamet play and Pretty Persuasion, the stand the victims take is based on projection of the real problem onto something else. The accuser may actually be exploited, abused, and/or discriminated against, and maybe even by the people they accuse. But in the end, the “victim” takes their stand upon a false premise or something that never happened. I think this is the primary root of the problem with most false allegations of sexual harassment–oppressed and exploited people fighting back with the only ammunition they can find.
In all the stories of false accusations I have heard myself, I have no doubt that these people making them have been abused or oppressed throughout their lives, and possibly by those they have accused. But I think the psychological damage from this has made it difficult for them to process and understand conflict. They have difficulty getting a clear perspective, many to the degree that they often see abuse, oppression, and discrimination everywhere they look, in every mistake someone makes with them, in every perceived slight. The oppression they have experienced makes it difficult, if not impossible, for them to communicate about conflict or set boundaries in a constructive way. Because of this, they “stand up” in a way that makes them no better than their oppressors.
It’s the classic cycle of abuse really, when the victim turns around and becomes the abuser. In Pretty Persuasion, the writers draw the analogy of the false allegation, discrimination lawsuit as being like a mass shooting (the “he went postal” kind.)
I am all for people standing up for themselves and for their rights, but it needs to be done in the right way, confronting the problem honestly, confronting the REAL problem. And solutions need to be constructive and not based on revenge. Standing up and speaking up only works if the goal is truly to make things better, not just for the complainant but for everyone in the community where the abuse or discrimination is taking place.
BTW, if you have not seen either Oleanna or Pretty Persuasion, you might want to see them together. Go with Mamet first, since the latter is constantly spoofing his style.
