From their very first day together in the office, the boss’s eyes were fixated on the new intern. The intern was inexperienced -- a first job. The boss, on the other hand, had been there many years, and oversaw the company’s nearly 200 staff members -- including the attractive new intern.
Despite inexperience, the intern was competent, a quick learner, eager to please. It was only a matter a days before the boss offered to take the young intern underwing, with promises of advancing their career. Within a year, the young intern was hired as a full time employee, and was soon promoted to head of a small division -- reporting directly to the boss. The young protege was grateful for this career success. And the boss felt satisfied to have the young protege at only an arm’s reach.
And that’s when things got messy. The advances started out small. A comment from the boss about how the young protege’s clothes looked particularly nice that day. A dirty joke. The young protege, clearly uncomfortable, forced a laugh, and then tried to resume working. Feeling the sting of the cold shoulder, the boss later that day came by the young protege’s office unannounced, and said, “I got you this job. I can take it away from you anytime I please.”
A week later, the young protege came to work and found a note taped to the desk. It read: “My office, 11am.” The protege knocked on the office door at the appointed time, whereupon the boss requested that they sleep together. When the young protege refused, the boss insisted, this time forcibly grabbing the young protege. Fearful, the young protege fled from the office.
Within hours, a new note had been taped to the young protege’s desk. This time, it read: “You’re fired, effective immediately. I’ll see to it that you never work in this industry again.”
***
If this story sounds familiar, there’s a good reason why. Of course, this story sounds as if it could have been ripped from recent news headlines. But there’s another reason why you may feel like you’ve heard this story before. Because this is the story of Joseph and Mrs. Potiphar.
In this week’s Torah portion, we read about Joseph, now living in Egypt, working as a young servant in the household of the family Potiphar. Joseph quickly arouses the attention of Mrs. Potiphar, and he rises through the ranks of the household. Twice Mrs. Potiphar makes sexual advances towards Joseph -- and when he refuses, she sees to it that his reputation is ruined. She spreads lies about him, he is fired from his job, and in a particularly painful twist of fate, it is he, the victim, who goes to jail for sexual harassment.
Over the centuries, the Jewish people has thousands of times heard this story from the Torah. But for many of us, it’s only recently that we’ve been able to truly hear stories like this from within our own community. We need only reverse the gender roles, and the story of Mrs. Potiphar easily becomes the story of Harvey Weinstein or Matt Lauer.
Over the past few weeks, many men, including me, have been shocked to discover just how pervasive sexual harassment is in our society. Many women, by contrast, are totally unsurprised -- aware that this problem has been lurking beneath the shadows all along, grateful that it is finally being brought out into the light.
This evening, I’d like to join the national conversation about our culture of sexual harassment and assault. As a man, I still have much learning to do -- and for that reason, this sermon relies heavily on conversations I’ve had and articles I’ve read written by women. One thing I’ve read time and again is that if our culture is going to change, the burden of pointing out what is wrong cannot fall exclusively upon women. It is in that spirit that I share these reflections tonight -- not as an expert, but rather as a novice who is eager to learn and do better.
In my conversations with women, I learned that the Joseph story lays bear a foundational truth: that sexual harassment is often not about the thrill of sex, but rather, is about the abuse of power. Mrs. Potiphar is able to prey upon Joseph because he has less power than she does. He is a mere servant in her household, while she is the lady of the manor. He is a foreigner, an outsider, the lone Hebrew in all of Egypt. She, by contrast, comes from the finest Egyptian lineage, a person of pedigree, entrenched in the aristocracy. In the narrative world of our story, she wields tremendous power, and he, none. It is as if Mrs. Potiphar is testing the limits of her power, to see what she can get away with. Similarly, the abuse of power can be seen in the many recent reports of sexual harassment. As author Rebecca Traister observes: “The stories of hotel-room meetings, requests for massages, professional interactions undertaken naked — they all speak of the abusive thrill gained not from sex but from the imposition of your will on someone who has no ability to resist.”
The abuse of power not only leads to sexual assault, it also allows for the cover-up. Who would Joseph call upon to report his abuser’s behavior? Who would believe him? Mrs. Potiphar, on the other hand, can activate her considerable social influence, and not only evade responsibility, but see to it that her refuser is punished. It’s no coincidence that many of the abusers who’ve recently been outed were public figures with significant klout. These men had at their disposal powerful media apparatuses -- a megaphone pointed at society. Their victims report campaigns of intimidation, the threat of being removed from a project, the planting of slanderous stories in the media -- even the fear of physical violence, stalking the victim at their home and threatening to harm their family. With power like this at their disposal, abusers felt emboldened in their abusive behavior, believing they could evade any consequences.
Of course, not all cases of sexual harassment are committed in the glamorous studios of Hollywood or in the glossy boardrooms of Silicon Valley. Just this week, Time magazine named as its 2017 person of the year The Silence Breakers -- the women, and sometimes men, of every socioeconomic status, of every skin color and ethnicity who’ve stood up and said enough is enough. The article features stories of famous musicians and hollywood stars -- but also stories of lobbyists, computer engineers, farmworkers,and hotel housekeepers. Notably, the magazine’s cover photo also shows an arm, belonging to a body, but with the owner’s face hidden from view -- an acknowledgement of the countless victims who must remain silent out of continued fear for their own safety, but whose trauma is nevertheless seen and honored.
Kira Pollack, director of photography for the “Person of the Year” issue, describes the experience of bringing this disparate group of victims together for the cover shoot: “you have these women all in the same room together, they probably will never be in the same room again … and there’s this very moving energy to it all, [that they have something in common,] that the thread that they’ve all shared [is the experience of abuse.]”
This feeling of shared experience explains the power of the #metoo campaign on social media -- a hashtag that, in its first 24 hours, had been used in more than 12 million Facebook posts. The critical word here is the second one: me too. Also me. #MeToo allows victims of sexual assault or harassment to know that they are not alone -- that the problem is not in the victims, but in our society. And when victims realize that they are not alone, that the fault is not theirs, they may feel more empowered to come out of the shadows. As the Time magazine spread puts it: “When a movie star says #MeToo, it becomes easier to believe the cook who's been quietly enduring for years.”
There are many reasons why a victim of sexual assault might have difficulty coming forward. Like Joseph, they may fear that if they name their accuser, then they, the victim, will be blamed. But there are still subtler reasons why a victim might remain silent: the very real fallout that accompanies a trauma, the feelings of shame, the fear of being forever branded as a survivor. Additionally, many women report an uncertainty over whether they could even participate in the #MeToo campaign -- wondering whether their experience of harassment was serious enough to merit the use of the hashtag.
But therein lies another key to the power of this movement. All offenses are recognized as legitimate. To be sure, certain offenses are morally or legally more disturbing than others. There is a difference between sexual harassment and sexual assault -- a difference between the male office worker who sneaks a glance down his female colleague’s shirt and the forcible sexual violence. Nevertheless, the #metoo movement recognizes the seriousness of them all. These offenses may be situated on a moral and legal spectrum, but all of these offenses exist as symptoms of the same systemic problem. Businesswoman Amina Sow makes a helpful analogy: “[We’ve] stuffed all [our] harassment memories in an emotional trash compactor because there are just so many. Now the trash compactor is broken, and everything is coming up.”
We can’t put the trash back into the compactor. The problem has finally been brought out into the light of day for everyone, especially men, to finally see.
In the best of cases, this new awareness has caused men to reexamine their pasts -- to search our memories for times when we should have acted differently than we did. For some men, this self-searching has led to a public, if non-specific apology -- often times in the form of a social media post, utilizing the hashtag #itwasme. Alexandra Schwartz of The New Yorker argues that such generalized confessions, while well intentioned, may only serve to further trivialize the problem -- seeking public forgiveness for a private offense. For other men, this self-searching may highlight past mistakes, and could indeed lead to future behavioral change. Still other men may feel that their conscience is totally clear.
But regardless of how we assess our participation in the problem, all of us are implicated in it. Even if we were not the boss who made sexual advances towards a subordinate, we were the colleague who did not step forward and thereby allowed such a workplace environment to persist. Even if we were not the cad who made the misogynist joke, we were the ones who chuckled, or at the very least, said nothing. By our very participation society, all us of are implicated. As writer Rebecca Solnit puts it, we are implicated “[by the way] we raise boys, in what [our culture] define[s] as erotic, in how men [congratulate] each other [for their sexual conquests -- promulgating] the idea that dominating women enhances their status.”
We are quick to dismiss these behaviors -- calling it “locker room talk” or claiming that “boys will be boys.” Such excuses do us no favors. Claiming that “boys will be boys” only deepens the problem. It gives men and boys a pass for our inappropriate behavior. It assumes that we will someday, on our own, come around to responsible action. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Instead, it reinforces the idea that boys and men will rarely be held accountable for our actions. There’s a t-shirt that my wife, Leah, recently showed me that gets at the core of this problem. Printed on the shirt in square block letters, it says: “Boys will be boys.” But then, that phrase is partially scribbled out, as if the wearer of the shirt changed his mind, and instead, the shirt reads, “Boys will be -- good human beings!” Boys will be good human beings -- but only if we teach them to.
I recently asked a female friend if she thought that anything would change. Without even giving it a second’s pause, she said: “It already has.” She’s right. Something has changed in our society -- a new conversation, a new accountability. We owe it to ourselves to continue pursuing that change.
The Joseph story may sound all too familiar -- in part because, although we’ve read it thousands and thousands of time, the story always ends the same way. We, by contrast, have an opportunity to change the story -- to actively push ourselves, to grow in understanding, to risk being better than we have been. Let us not miss the opportunity.
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Editorial note: Stylistically/structurally, this sermon is inspired by Rabbi Janet Marder’s sermon entitled “Scenes from a Marriage.”
