Sex scandal: Talking about our generation
Gail Forrer
THE talk is all about our generation.
Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby Rolf Harris, Don Burke – they are all seniors.
If anyone ever questioned why women’s liberation had to happen – then right here, right now, on the media’s front pages, you will find the answers.
To vindicate his actions, Movie producer Harvey Weinstein flashed on a singular truth when he said: “I came of age in the 60s and 70s, when all the rules about behaviour and workplace were different. That was the culture then. I have since learned it’s not excuse, in the office – or out of it. To anyone.”
Yes, the 1960s and 70s. the age many of us grew up in, provided a lot of opportunity for men in charge to use their position to intimidate women. It was transition time, the first wave of women’s liberation saw changes such as women able to keep working in banks after they were married and, in various areas, wage equalisation. In terms of government legislation, women were starting to gain liberation from a stultifying culture of gender inequity.
But socially, well that’s another story and I think it’s here that Harvey Weinstein, sadly, tells the truth. The 60s and 70s rules about behaviour and workplace were different. While women saw the loosening of societal moors as liberating for their own spirit. Some men saw women’s liberation as another green flag to express their power. In those times, women were indeed taking on more public roles, but men were still the boss. In some ways, nearly 50 years on, things haven’t changed, men still dominate the highest realms of government, business and religious institution
What has occurred in the last months of 2017, is a clash of cultures. The truth that many men in power believed that the society of 1960s and 70s allowed them to abuse women and their belief was so strong, they were unable to move into a new world of respect wedged up against the essence of the Women’s Liberation movement that started in the 1960s.
At its heart, Women’s liberation was always about having the female voice heard, considered and owning an appropriately influential place in society. In 2017, we have a watershed moment when this is spectacularly happening. In some ways, I see it as rather like the process of Truth and Reconciliation commissions undertaken by various nations, as a process of healing after undergoing dreadful atrocities. Right now, we are at the face of truth, I trust that after we can follow up with honest reconciliation.
But for this to occur, the Senior men who have acted in these ways, need to man up, name it and claim it so they can at least show the next generation a better example.