性骚扰缘何仍在不断发生？

Will the fall of Harvey Weinstein become a watershed in male-female relations? The outpouring of millions of stories of sexual harassment from women (and some men) under the hashtag #Metoo looks like the beginning of what social scientists call a “norm cascade”. Smoking used to be acceptable everywhere; today smokers, in developed countries at least, are confined to draughty stoops. If only groping women — and worse — could go the way of the cigarette.

哈维•韦恩斯坦(Harvey Weinstein)的倒台是否会成为男女关系的分水岭?女性在话题标签#还有我#(#Metoo)下讲述的数以千万计的性骚扰故事，看起来标志着社会学家所说的“规范普及”(norm cascade)的开始。曾经抽烟在任何地方都是可以被接受的行为;如今，至少在发达国家，吸烟者都只能在通风良好的门廊吸烟。要是猥亵女性——甚至更严重的行为——也可以像吸烟一样被禁止就好了。

The Weinstein affair will not be a turning point, but rather another milestone in a slow march. Over the decades of my lifetime, sexual harassment emerged as a legal category and a social taboo. Construction workers know not to wolf whistle; executives know not to demand sexual favours from secretaries. Mr Weinstein acknowledged the change, by saying that he “came of age in the ’60s and ’70s, when all the rules about behaviour and workplaces were different”.

韦恩斯坦事件不会成为转折点，但是会成为漫漫长路中的又一座里程碑。在我人生数十载中，性骚扰成为了法律问题和社会禁忌。建筑工知道不能对着女性吹流氓哨;高管知道不能要求秘书给予性好处。韦恩斯坦说他“是成年于六七十年代的人，那时一切行为规范和职场规则都是不同的”，这印证了时代已经改变。

Harassment continues not because men do not know sexual harassment is wrong, but because they do not believe they will be caught or punished. As one Weinstein victim after another made clear, women are afraid to report harassment due to a power imbalance between an individual victim and her harasser. The situation is he said-she said, and he is much more able to insist on his version. At best, she might end up with a settlement and a non-disclosure agreement, but at the cost of her job.

性骚扰仍在不断发生，不是因为男性不知道性骚扰是错的，而是因为他们不认为自己会被抓到或遭到惩罚。正如一个又一个的韦恩斯坦受害者所表明的那样，女性不敢报告性骚扰事件，因为单个的受害者与骚扰者之间权利不平衡。报告后的局面是各执一词，而且他能够强势得多地坚持自己的说法。充其量，她可能最终达成一份和解和保密协议，但代价是丢了工作。

The only safety in these situations lies in numbers, yet individual victims cannot easily find one another. It may be possible in the case of a serial abuser who preys on women in his workplace, but so many cases — politicians, directors, professors, priests, chief executives — involve encounters with many different women who do not know each other. Once women realise that others have had the same experience, they are more likely to pile on, but note that a number of Mr Weinstein’s prominent accusers, such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, only joined the chorus after others had come forward on the record. It still takes great courage to go first.

解决这种局面唯一保险的办法是以量制胜，但单个受害者不容易找到其他受害者。如果一名性骚扰惯犯是在他的工作场所向女性下手，这些女性或许可以联合起来，但是在太多情况下——比如政客、导演、教授、牧师、首席执行官——受害者是很多彼此并不认识的女性。一旦女性知道其他人遭受过相同经历，他们更可能加入控诉。但请注意，指控韦恩斯坦的多位知名女性，比如格威妮丝•帕尔特罗(Gwyneth Paltrow)和安杰利娜•乔利(Angelina Jolie)，都是在其他人已经公开站出来之后才加入进来。第一个站出来仍需要巨大的勇气。

Female investigative reporters can certainly help; New York Times teams have broken stories about harassment in media, the tech industry, and now Hollywood. This serial spotlight will incrementally help right the balance between men and women by alerting firms that exposure is possible and reminding human resources departments and management committees of the perils of ignoring early reports of bad behaviour. But #Metoo is not likely to become #Hetoo, as some social media users have urged. Each woman will still calculate the consequences to her job or career of accusing her harasser by name, and likely stay silent.

女性调查记者无疑可以帮上忙;《纽约时报》(New York Times)团队曝光了在媒体、科技行业的性骚扰事件，如今又报道了好莱坞的性骚扰事件。这种系列重磅报道能够警告企业这种行径可能曝光，并提醒人力资源部门和管理委员会忽视不良行为的早期报告会产生危害，从而将逐渐帮助纠正两性权力的失衡。但是#还有我#不太可能像一些社交媒体用户所敦促的那样，变成#还有他#(#Hetoo)。每个女性受害者还是会考虑点名指责性骚扰者而带来的失去工作或葬送前途的后果，并且可能保持沉默。

Individual decisions also have larger political costs, at least in the US. Republicans pounced on the Weinstein affair because a prominent liberal is in the dock. On the other side of the aisle, Fox News has had its travails, but the revelations about Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly never triggered an outpouring on social media. At the very top, 11 women came forward in 2016 to accuse then presidential candidate Donald Trump of physical harassment, with no apparent effect.

个人决定也会带来更大的政治后果，至少在美国是这样。共和党人强烈抨击韦恩斯坦事件，因为被告席上坐着的是著名的自由主义者。在走廊的另一边，福克斯新闻(Fox News)付出了艰辛的努力，但揭发罗杰•艾尔斯(Roger Ailes)和比尔•奥赖利(Bill O'Reilly)并未触发社交网络的热议。在政治最顶层的是，2016年11名女性站出来指责当时的总统候选人唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)进行肢体骚扰，没有明显效果。

On the contrary, a Washington Post-ABC poll three weeks before the election showed that seven in 10 respondents believed Mr Trump “probably made unwanted sexual advances towards women”, yet he won the presidency with the support of 53 per cent of white women. Many of them reportedly expected and accepted that kind of male behaviour as “men will be men”.

相反，《华盛顿邮报》(Washington Post)与美国广播公司(ABC)在大选前三周的民调显示，10个受访者中有7个人认为特朗普“很可能违背对方意愿对女性做出了有性意味的举动”，但他却以53%的白人女性支持率赢得了总统大选。据报道，很多受访者预料到或接受了男性的那类行为，认为这是“男人本性”。

Liberal harassers are hypocrites; conservative harassers are dinosaurs. In each credible individual case, our sympathies should be with the victim, assuming that the men accused are given their full due process rights. Yet if the exposure of harassment occurs largely on the left, the larger political consequence may be to give aid and comfort to a misogynist faction on the right. That is an ugly trade-off. The Trump administration supports a wide range of policies that will hurt millions of American women, denying them birth control, reproductive healthcare, and protections from sexual assault on college campuses.

自由主义的性骚扰者就是伪君子;保守主义的性骚扰者则是老古董。在每一宗真实可信的个案中，我们都应该同情受害者，假定被指责的男性得到了正当程序的充分权利。不过，如果被曝光的大多数是左翼人士的性骚扰行为，更大的政治后果可能是给右翼中的厌女者提供帮助和慰藉。这是一种肮脏的妥协。特朗普政府支持的一系列政策将损害美国数以百万计的女性的权益：不为她们提供避孕措施和生育医疗、并且拒绝保护大学生免遭性侵。

The best way to ensure the steady decline of sexual harassment over time is to educate young men to treat young women as equals. From that perspective, the stories pouring out can be an effective form of consciousness-raising for both young men and women who are prone to believe that the battle for gender equality has already been won. We still have a long fight ahead.

确保性骚扰事件随着时间推移而稳步减少的最佳方式是，教育年轻男性平等对待年轻女性。从该角度来看，这些事件的曝光可能有这样的作用：帮助那些倾向于认为性别平等之战已经打赢的年轻人——无论男性还是女性，意识到事实并非如此。战斗还远未结束，路漫漫其修远兮。

The writer is president of New America and an FT contributing editor

本文作者为智库“新美国”(New America)总裁和英国《金融时报》特约编辑