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Persuasion and coercion and status
We've seen a lot of powerful men brought low in the past year by credible accusations of sexual harassment. (One presumes that far more lower-profile, less-powerful men have been doing the same thing, and have NOT been brought low because they're not celebrities. But that's not my topic right now.) Pretty much any such case is going to hinge on the difference between persuasion and coercion.
If I suggest to you that we go out for pizza, you had been thinking tacos, but after a few seconds' thought you say "Sure, pizza sounds good", that's persuasion.
If I suggest to you that we go out for pizza, you say "I'd prefer tacos," I add "There's a pizza joint all our friends have been raving about, right around the corner from where we're going to be anyway," and you say "Sure, pizza sounds good", that's still persuasion.
If I suggest to you that we go out for pizza, you say "I'd prefer tacos," and I then use physical force, emotional blackmail, threats to your job, or drugs to get you to the pizza place anyway, that's coercion.
Those are all clear cases, but somewhere on the fuzzy spectrum in between, things gradually morph from persuasion into coercion, and that's where things get messy.
There has to be a legitimate place for persuasion in a (budding or ongoing) romantic relationship, or nobody will ever make the first move; nothing will ever happen unless both parties are exactly equally enthusiastic at exactly the same time. At the same time, most people in my (socially liberal) circles would say there is no legitimate place for coercion in their romantic relationships.
To add another wrinkle, a "consensual" relationship between equals becomes something different if there's a large power difference between the parties. Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, as far as we can tell, was a consensual affaire, but between the President of the United States and a twentysomething intern, what does "consent" mean?
Now, suppose one party to a relationship thinks they're near-equals, while the other perceives a large power difference: even if there's complete agreement about what objectively happened, one will see mild persuasion while the other sees coercion. Also, people in a privileged position (white, male, cis, het, U.S.-citizen, educated, rich) are generally less aware of that privilege than people in a less-privileged position. So even if actual relationships and sexual activities were completely random and uncorrelated with status (they're probably not), one would expect higher-status people to be accused of sexually harassing lower-status people, because the higher-status party honestly thought what they did was consensual, while the lower-status party just-as-honestly perceived it as coercive. The resulting situation is unpleasant for both the lower-status party (who feels coerced a lot of the time) and the higher-status party (who has to walk on eggshells and avoid asking for things, lest it be viewed as coercive).
Even between my wife and me (both white, educated, cis-het, U.S.-born), there is a power difference that neither of us caused, neither of us asked for, and neither of us can do anything about: I make much more money than she does, so if the marriage fell apart, I could walk away from it much more easily than she could. That fact had never occurred to me until she pointed it out a few years ago.
If I suggest to you that we go out for pizza, you had been thinking tacos, but after a few seconds' thought you say "Sure, pizza sounds good", that's persuasion.
If I suggest to you that we go out for pizza, you say "I'd prefer tacos," I add "There's a pizza joint all our friends have been raving about, right around the corner from where we're going to be anyway," and you say "Sure, pizza sounds good", that's still persuasion.
If I suggest to you that we go out for pizza, you say "I'd prefer tacos," and I then use physical force, emotional blackmail, threats to your job, or drugs to get you to the pizza place anyway, that's coercion.
Those are all clear cases, but somewhere on the fuzzy spectrum in between, things gradually morph from persuasion into coercion, and that's where things get messy.
There has to be a legitimate place for persuasion in a (budding or ongoing) romantic relationship, or nobody will ever make the first move; nothing will ever happen unless both parties are exactly equally enthusiastic at exactly the same time. At the same time, most people in my (socially liberal) circles would say there is no legitimate place for coercion in their romantic relationships.
To add another wrinkle, a "consensual" relationship between equals becomes something different if there's a large power difference between the parties. Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, as far as we can tell, was a consensual affaire, but between the President of the United States and a twentysomething intern, what does "consent" mean?
Now, suppose one party to a relationship thinks they're near-equals, while the other perceives a large power difference: even if there's complete agreement about what objectively happened, one will see mild persuasion while the other sees coercion. Also, people in a privileged position (white, male, cis, het, U.S.-citizen, educated, rich) are generally less aware of that privilege than people in a less-privileged position. So even if actual relationships and sexual activities were completely random and uncorrelated with status (they're probably not), one would expect higher-status people to be accused of sexually harassing lower-status people, because the higher-status party honestly thought what they did was consensual, while the lower-status party just-as-honestly perceived it as coercive. The resulting situation is unpleasant for both the lower-status party (who feels coerced a lot of the time) and the higher-status party (who has to walk on eggshells and avoid asking for things, lest it be viewed as coercive).
Even between my wife and me (both white, educated, cis-het, U.S.-born), there is a power difference that neither of us caused, neither of us asked for, and neither of us can do anything about: I make much more money than she does, so if the marriage fell apart, I could walk away from it much more easily than she could. That fact had never occurred to me until she pointed it out a few years ago.
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This still leaves many situations in which the nuances of power are unclear – as you say there are many ostensibly egalitarian relationships which have inequalities of power simply due to the world we live in and the people we are. But so much of what's in the news these days are situations in which the power hierarchy is not subtle, and if there are not explicit rules against it in that occupation, organization, or institution, it's not hard to see how there should be, and certainly sexual harassment law pertains anyways. The problem seems to be men of power and authority feeling that rules don't pertain to them - or that they'll never get caught.
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To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his sex life depends on his not understanding it.
I won't dispute for a moment the phenomenon of "men of power and authority feeling that rules don't pertain to them -- or that they'll never get caught." This may be fed, in American society at least, by mythologizing charming outlaws and disruptive entrepreneurs. If I have a choice between seeing myself as somebody who breaks rules because I'm greedy or lazy, and seeing myself as somebody who breaks rules because they're stupid and artificial and written as a simplified guide for lesser people who (unlike me) can't see through them to the underlying principles, the latter is a lot more flattering to my ego. And we're back to motivated reasoning.
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