Conduct Unbecoming

It took only two weeks before the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal and its impact on sexual politics spread from Hollywood and Broadway to the Westminster Parliament. “Sexminster” and “Kneegate” are the names given to a brouhaha that is being treated here by the media as an outbreak of sexual immorality among MPs so severe that it threatens to bring down Theresa May’s government. In today’s feverish climate of general hysteria, moreover, that may be one possible outcome.

Yet one can’t help noticing that so far the total of all reported “offences”—ranging from a cabinet minister touching a woman journalist’s knee at dinner to one allegation of rape (of a young activist by a senior Labour official)—is only a small fraction of the rapes and serious assaults that have been alleged against Weinstein alone. Whatever pretensions the House of Commons may still cherish, it’s far from being Hollywood-on-the-Thames.

News and rumours of sex emerge with every twist of the twenty-four-hour cycle, however. So, with that qualification, here is a quick summary of the news from Babylon:

A dossier prepared by anonymous “researchers” alleged that forty Tory MPs were known to be guilty of sexual harassment of young aides and researchers. Some of the MPs and their allegedly harassed aides on the list, however, stood up to identify themselves and deny the charges. Two MPs are taking actions for libel. The number of MPs in the dossier has now been reduced to twenty-five.

A Labour MP was charged with vulgar sexual advances in a bar a decade ago; another with hinting broadly to a young Labour sympathiser that he nursed sexual feelings towards her; and the third case, mentioned above, was that of the Labour apparatchik accused of rape by a young activist. Both the grave and the trivial offences are felt to be worse if the accused MP is significantly older than his object of desire.

As the tumbrils rolled along, more names came out. One former Tory minister was found to have sexted a young admirer whom he had interviewed for a job. Another Tory MP has been accused of putting his hands up the skirts of women MPs in the elevator. A third resigned from the Whips’ office voluntarily and reported himself to the police over a gay pass he made to an activist some years ago—presumably to establish that the rumours were worse than the reality. A fourth Tory, Charlie Elphicke, has been told that the Whips’ office has withdrawn his membership of the parliamentary party after passing allegations against him on to the police (on which no action has yet been taken). He has not been told what the allegations are.

Careers have already been destroyed. One of the more able ministers in the government, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, resigned after admitting that he was guilty of falling below the high standards required by the armed forces (he had stroked more than one knee and kissed a woman reporter without adequate warning). It is hard to see how Mr Elphicke can regain his reputation if the police decide to take no action on the charges passed on to them by the Whips (as his wife has complained). And the Deputy Prime Minister, Damian Green, was accused of stroking the knee of a young woman activist, almost imperceptibly she said, and when he denied it, he was accused by a police officer of having “extreme pornography” on his computer. The Cabinet Office is now investigating, and if it finds against Green, he could be forced to resign and May’s government might fall.

All three major parties have agreed to establish a parliamentary office to which victims/accusers can make complaints. The police are investigating those offences already referred to them. And Prime Minister May is among those who have suggested that there’s more to come out.

There’s been a slight pause in the Westminster sex allegations in the last few days while we wait to see what charges Mr Elphicke will face, if any, and whether Damian Green remains Deputy Prime Minister. So people are beginning to ask what should be done in the way of general rules for the future. That’s not difficult to answer. George MacDonald, the Scottish religious novelist, once wrote that it was the duty of a man to protect women against all men, starting with himself. If all men were to act consistently on that principle, there would be little or no problem of sexual harassment to solve. But as every man must concede, only a small minority of men (generally with names prefixed by “Saint”), consistently live up to this standard. Since both sexes are composed of fallen creatures, we will always fall well below complete success in this endeavour, even in a high-minded society.

An additional problem is that we don’t live in a high-minded society. One woman writer on a Conservative website demanded a new set of rules that included forbidding the naming of women’s body parts as swear words, in order to create an atmosphere of greater respect for women. I understand that plea and feel a wistful hope it might be answered at some times and places such as mixed company. But it seems to me completely utopian as a universal rule. Almost the entire armed forces would let down Michael Fallon by falling below it minute by minute.

It might just about be possible to revive the custom that men don’t swear in the company of women that actually prevailed until fifty or so years ago. But that reform would have to surmount the obstacles that women themselves use such words as marks of liberation, and that their usage has been introduced and approved not by the submerged tenth of society but by its cultural leaders in literature, academia and the media as a litmus test of authenticity and frankness.

We probably face an acceleration of recent trends, which are the spread of formal rules of sexual engagement to replace the morality of male chivalry, female modesty and secularised Christian etiquette of two generations ago. That replacement may be better than nothing, but it is certain to be both less effective than a broad morality enforced by an overwhelming consensus, and less fair to either sex. This is already clear from how the scandal is rushing along—and the kind of implicit rules that are emerging in its wake.

To begin with, there is the erasing of commonsense distinctions in the use of the term “sexual harassment”. It’s as elastic as an old-fashioned suspender belt since it seems to cover everything from a flirty drink invitation to an actual rape. Mr Fallon was finally felled by the claim of a woman political correspondent that he had tried to kiss her as they walked back from a mildly alcoholic lunch twenty years ago. Maybe he shouldn’t have tried to kiss her. His wife probably thinks so. But when she rebuffed him, he didn’t persist. And they seem to have been on civil terms ever since. Does a simple “pass” in error—a faux pass, so to speak—amount to sexual harassment? And if the lady had responded enthusiastically, would it still be harassment? After all, though bad things like divorce sometimes start with a kiss, so do good things like romance, marriage, a family, and someone at your bedside in your last moments.

Some stern moralists insist that even the most tentative advances are wrong if the protagonist is in a position of power over her prey—yes, there has been at least one such gender-bending allegation. One can see the rough-and-ready calculation behind that rule. There should be a presumption that an MP’s junior staff is out of bounds sexually. But that broad argument rests upon a very formal and unreal notion of power. A political reporter is not less powerful than a minister; in many respects the reporter is more powerful, able to do real damage to a ministerial reputation if offended or rejected. A male boss in love with a secretary may well be inferior in power to her for that very reason. Power in these circumstances does not flow along the lines of a bureaucratic chart.

Power isn’t always easy to define—which is why consent is a vital if partial part of any new rulebook. But much feminist argument insists that the only legitimate consent is that of equal sexual enthusiasm; consent under the influence of alcohol or sympathy or “pressure” is really rape. That too is completely unrealistic. People inside and outside of marriage consent to sexual encounters for all sorts of reasons good and bad: a transactional performance on the casting couch; a celebration of mutual love; sympathy for someone being rejected otherwise.

These motives don’t amount to rape, and only a narrow puritan view of sex would suggest they do. In particular the idea that if two people have sex after drinking, then the man is a rapist, is a discriminatory misapplication of this consent rule.

It also rests on the assumption that women are nicer and more moral than men. While I’m prepared to concede that in a small way, I have to add the qualification: they’re really not that much nicer than us. Heather Mac Donald points out that if women set out to be sex objects, then they can’t immediately revert to being Victorian virgins at the first mistaken kiss or vulgar wink.

If the strictest rules play out against such an uncertain moral atmosphere, they will create uncertainty on the part of both sexes and eventually hostility between them.