Forty years since Fame showed the vulnerability of performing arts students, we can still do more to protect them. As we resume physical contact, we can use performance to renegotiate safe intimacy.
By chance, a sociologist started an experiment the day sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein became public. As the #MeToo movement gained steam, people’s responses changed.
Bryan Keogh, The Conversation and Nicole Zelniker, The Conversation
In the last year, workplace culture faced major upheaval for working women. We at The Conversation put together our reporting on that very topic from 2018.
Two-thirds of people who report workplace sexual harassment say they lost their jobs or are retaliated against in other ways. Most never receive any money.
Australians are more aware of domestic violence and sexual assault than before. But a worrying proportion blame victims for abuse, think women are lying, and don’t believe consent is always necessary.
Whether the sins of our past stay with us forever has become a pertinent question of our time. A philosopher argues we don’t need to carry our past burdens – although there are some moral conditions.
The social structures that once enabled male artists to exploit and abuse women must be cast into the past. But castigating their work to the scrapheap is an act of cultural suicide.
MeToo drew attention to sexual harassment in the workplace. But we are still overlooking other forms of discrimination and the insidious impact of sexual harassment on women’s identities.