David Quinn
There is a scene in iconic film The Quiet Man when John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara go on a date. This being 1950s Ireland (in the imagination of the movie’s director, John Ford), they must take a chaperone along with them in the shape of Barry Fitzgerald to ensure all the proprieties are observed and nothing gets out of hand.
In these more liberated, less repressive times, chaperones are no longer needed. Or so we think. Couples go off on dates on their own without anyone having to accompany them, and at dances and nightclubs the only supervisory adults are the bouncers in case there is trouble. What could go wrong, after all? Plenty, as it turns out, which is why some companies have turned to ensuring that at their Christmas parties individuals known as ‘sober chaperones’ are present. Yes, you read the correctly.
One company that recently announced it would have ‘sober chaperones’ at its Christmas parties this year is the major accountancy firm, BDO.
The Financial Times reports that two assigned staff at parties will be told not to drink alcohol so they can “be responsible in an emergency situation” and “ensure everybody can get home safely”.
The firm’s chief operating officer Andy Butterworth told their 3,700 staff: “I know these precautionary measures might sound slightly excessive to some, but I think they are sensible for the wellbeing of our people.”
Another accounting giant, KPMG has announced a similar policy.
They are attempting to ensure that when staff become drunk, they do not drink and drive, they do not do something stupid at the party that other staff record on their phones and then put on social media, and above all that no staff are sexually harassed.
Problem
The #MeToo movement has made many firms acutely aware of the problem of sexual harassment. Some companies have gone so far as to ban even consensual sexual relationships between junior and senior staff, that is, the boss-secretary affairs of old. For example, fast food giant, McDonald’s, recently sacked its chief executive because he had a relationship with an employee.
He later said that even though the relationship was consensual, he had “violated company policy” and shown “poor judgement”.
Why would a company ban even consensual relationships? One reason is the power imbalance between senior and junior staff. When a man is in a position to affect a junior female colleagues’ career for better or worse, she may feel coerced at some level into entering a sexual relationship with him. They might be no impropriety as such, but even the appearance of impropriety must be avoided.
Last year Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich stepped down for having a consensual relationship with an Intel employee, which was also against company rules.
What is clearly happening is that companies, fearful of huge lawsuits and reputational damage, are cracking down on the sexual behaviour of their employees. Their actions range from ‘sober chaperones’ to the outright ban on relationships between junior and senior staff just mentioned.
We are entering an era in which some certain chickens are coming home to roost, which is to say, when the sex revolution rebelled against the sexual restraints of the past, it naively believed there would be no negative consequences, and that men and women could be thrown together at drunken office parties and all would be well. Any ‘hanky-panky’ might be embarrassing for all concerned but it wouldn’t amount to much more than that.
Allegations
The curious thing is that the new sexual restraints are not being introduced in the name of the older, traditional form of morality, but in the name of feminism. The #MeToo movement is feminist. Its name comes from all the women who have gone public with their experiences of sexual assault and harassment and said, ‘me too’.
The movement erupted after the sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein become public.
Allegations of a similar nature have been made against the financier Jeffrey Epstein who took his own life in prison recently. Britain’s Prince Andrew has now been damaged by his public association with Mr Epstein.
One way or the other, what we are seeing is a recognition that sexual behaviour needs to be regulated”
In addition, a number of actresses have come forward to say they felt very uncomfortable being asked to do nude scenes for movies or television series.
One is Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones who first began acting in the hit series when she was only 23 and was asked to appear naked in certain scenes. She says say was very young and inexperienced and didn’t want to say ‘no’ and maybe jeopardise her career.
She is “a lot more savvy” now. She said recently: “I’ve had fights on set before where I’m like, ‘No, the sheet stays up’.”
So what we’re seeing, again in the name of feminism rather than traditional morality per se, is the return of a certain modesty.
The feminist movement is, of course, full of contradictions, paradoxes and internal arguments in terms of its attitude towards sex. For example, it tells women that they are free to have sex with who they want, when they want, but at the same time is increasingly strongly in favour of policing sexual behaviour in the ways described above, including by introducing measures such as ‘sober chaperones’ that seem to belong to an earlier time.
One key difference between the new feminist sexual morality and the older traditional sexual morality is that the former puts a lot of responsibility on men to act properly and threatens them with legal and social sanctions if they do not, while the latter was more likely to punish women.
One way or the other, what we are seeing is a recognition that sexual behaviour needs to be regulated in ways that the first generation of sexual revolutionaries naively believed was not necessary. Human nature has a way of teaching us old lessons all over again.