The great conundrum for women

Harvey Weinstein got his fifteen minutes of fame this week in a way I’m sure he never wanted it. Several women have gone public with accusations of sexual harassment by him, culminating in his wife divorcing him. Weinstein was a Hollywood mogul who exercised great power in determining who got certain roles in movies and the casting couch was certainly no stranger to him. In fact, his explanation for doing the things that he did to women was “That’s just the way things were done back then.”

And for certain men, he was right. Not all men mind you, just the cads and the jerks; the ones who have always used their positions of power for sexual access to attractive women. Most men play by the rules and make decisions based on a woman’s talent and expertise in her craft but some never have and some never will. But that doesn’t excuse Harvey Weinstein’s behavior.

The conundrum for women mentioned in the title of today’s column has to do with the benefits and advantages physically attractive women have always had in our society. Decades of polling has determined that physical beauty has always given women an advantage in competing for jobs, promotions, and marriage. To realize this, all one has to do is to be in a public place when an attractive woman walks by and watch the heads of practically every man there turn and watch her. And it’s not rare for suggestive words to be said to her either. Women know this and some use it to their advantage.

Because some women DO use their physical beauty and or sexual desirability to obtain things they otherwise maybe couldn’t get, does that give men the right to sexually exploit them by offering a quid pro quo solution to the woman? You do what I want you to do and I’ll give you what you want.

The answer goes back to how we were raised. Were we taught norms and values that coincided with what others were being taught or were we raised without them? Were we taught to respect women or to abuse and take advantage of them? Were we taught to abide by the rules or to break them whenever it benefitted us? For a vast majority of us, we act and behave the way we were taught. So if we had parents that taught us right from wrong, applied consequences whenever our behavior violated the rules and did whatever they could do to keep us on the straight and narrow, chances are very good that’s the way we live our lives today. If we didn’t have these benefits growing up, we have finished products like Harvey Weinstein who places his wants and needs above everyone else’s and breaks many of the rules to get what he wants.

Obviously, it’s not totally our parent’s fault for the people we’ve become because we always have choices to make. But we had to learn the difference between good choices and bad choices and the time frame we did that in was adolescence, guided once again by our parents.

And, like everything else in the world, even our socialization doesn’t work like it was intended to all of the time. That’s why there are some good kids that came from dysfunctional homes and some bad kids whose parents did all they could do to teach their children ways for living in the world that didn’t break rules and laws.

Unfortunately, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you have the money or the status or the prestige or the power to have things your way, it’s likely you’ll feel like you can do anything you want, regardless of how you were raised.

And that’s how we end up with pariahs like Harvey Weinstein.