When we are young, we all do things which perhaps in hindsight, we wouldn’t do if we could go back and live that section of our lives again. There are all sorts of things in our lives that the ‘I was young and naïve’ defence can excuse. Some things though, I think we know are wrong – we know before anyone tells us they are wrong and we know they are wrong long before being involved becomes an issue. Watching a video of someone having sex with another person who is not aware of the video being streamed falls into that category – it is inexcusable and wrong, but for some reason in Australia at the moment, we aren’t having that discussion.
Of course I wish we lived in a world where we were all motivated to ‘do the right thing’, underpinned by a common set of values. But of course we don’t – we live in a world where some combination of the social and legal consequences of our actions determine how we behave. But what happens when the social and legal consequences of behaviour are inconsequential?
In 2011, Australians were outraged by the reports that two young men in the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) had been involved in an incident where a man had secretly filmed himself having sex with a young woman and broadcast it via Skype. There were allegations that ADFA was breeding a culture of misogyny and that young men were encouraged to behave in this way. There was very little commentary about the fact that these young men had only been at ADFA a matter of weeks. Last month, the two young men involved were sentenced to 12 month good behaviour bonds.
Yesterday, the sentence for a similar incident, this time in the NSW Police, was handed down – with the officer involved receiving 200 hours of community service. At the Gladesville Police Station, the officer involved showed the ‘highlights reel’ from his secret camera, hidden in an alarm clock which he had purchased on eBay. He filmed himself having sex with three women who he had built a relationship of trust with – in his role as police officer.
I don’t want to comment on the men who committed these acts – there has already been significant public commentary on them. The people who I think we need to focus on is the men who sat around, in a workplace, and watched their mate having sex with a woman – in one case, a colleague and in the other, a woman who they didn’t know. What is going on in the minds of those men – where they think that this is acceptable behaviour in a workplace (or anywhere, but let’s say the workplace for the moment)?
Here, I come back to my original point – there was no social or legal consequence for this behaviour. None of the men involved stood up and said ‘guys – this is really unacceptable, we are at work, and these women have not consented to us leering at them’. Maybe there was the odd man who stood up and walked out of the room, we are unlikely to ever know – but no one questioned the behaviour.
A good behaviour bond and 200 hours of community service also serves to reinforce that we don’t really think this behaviour was a big deal. Legally – we aren’t willing to put people in jail for this behaviour or say to others watching along that it is entirely unacceptable.
We can hope that the employers of the men involved in these incidents are taking it very seriously and if not suspending them from employment, ensuring that they are receiving significant counselling and training on acceptable behaviour.
In the workplace context, there is no place for sex videos. For me – that is black and white. There are no shades of grey around consent to the video being made or not. For as long as this behaviour is allowed to continue, we will live in a society which treats women as objects and undervalues their contributions. Sexual harassment is one of the biggest barriers to women’s full participation at work.
We need to support each other not to make bad decisions and poor choices. If we are involved in a group which is watching or discussing something that demeans women (or for that matter, demeans men), we need to stand up and call the behaviour for what it is – ‘unacceptable’. If we aren’t willing to do that – then these ‘incidents’ will keep occurring. Let’s not pretend they are the fault of Defence or the NSW Police – they are the fault of every single person that sees this behaviour in the workplace and stays silent.