Sex and Power: How an Old Relationship Is Changing—Anita Hill to Harvey Weinstein | Esther Perel

Sexuality and power are tightly interwoven, and this is not the first time that people have taken on the abuses of power that are inflicted upon people through the currency of sex. Anita Hill, not that long ago, took on Clarence Thomas. But maybe what changed is not so much the accused as much as the accuser. That perhaps women today have enough 'massa' and enough power themselves to withstand the forces of denial.

And so the system, for the first time, has to reckon and has to act with consequence to the allegations that are being made. The big question is not why is there anything more happening today; it’s that people have not spoken out—women, children, lots of people who often were disempowered and humiliated—did not speak out because of the fear that they would not be believed. This is what is changing. That the burden of proof is switching a little bit and a certain norm is shifting.

One of the very good examples for me when I look at shifting norms is corporal punishment. For a long time parents and teachers could hit their children. It was part of discipline and part of childrearing. A norm shifted that said: “This is no longer possible. This is actually not a means for education. This is not a decent pedagogy. This is harmful and this is violent.” Similarly, something is shifting in the conduct between men and women. It’s a given that power and sex are intertwined, but sometimes they are intertwined in a way where it becomes power to, and therefore there is a power to feel affirmed, to feel desired, to feel strong, et cetera, versus a power over, and that is a form of humiliation, of oppression in which it is very little about sex and a lot more about violence.

So I think first of all, we’re using the word 'misconduct' and we are lumping in that word a number of different behaviors. We are talking about harassment, we are talking about assault, we are talking about rape. These are very different experiences, degrees of experiences, first of all. Second: I think that before we only focus on misconduct we need to talk about male sexuality, male sexual conduct rather than only the misconduct. There needs to be a context to this.

So it is true that in a different context women of a certain generation accepted a certain kind of banter or a certain kind of conversation, vocabulary, sexualization, use of power that they themselves participated in as well, that allowed women to actually be told all kinds of things for which they would have had probably different reactions than the younger generation today. It just was part of the deal. That’s what you have to contend with, and you know that some of them are vulgar and some of them have utter poor taste and some of them are creepy, and you just manage it. You manage a culture like that.

I think what is shifting is people are no longer willing to manage it, to take this as the granted norm and then hope that on the periphery of that there are other kinds of behavior. I think what is shifting is that the periphery is coming to the center and a whole context, a whole ecology that was seemingly accepted or tolerated is no longer tolerated. And those shifts take place culturally all the time.

Where we put the boundaries, what we consider is transgressive, what we—you know there is a difference. Women have known the difference between receiving a compliment and being degraded. In one they feel enhanced, they feel beautiful, they feel appreciated, they feel recognized for the efforts that they have put into making themselves look good. In the other they feel icky, they feel dirty, they feel spoiled; they know the difference. It’s a visceral difference.

And then there may be a range there where sometimes they’re not sure. But that is a small part of not being sure, with major territories of clear delineations between desire, between a compliment and between degradation. In the last weeks I have actually conducted a number of large-scale conversations about sex and power, men and women, and where we go from here. And I think that what needs to happen is a pl...