MARYVILLE (TN)
The Daily Times
December 4, 2017
By Amy Beth Miller
Over the past two months, dozens of men in powerful positions in entertainment and politics have faced public allegations of sexual misconduct.
The conduct isn’t new, but the response is.
“This has been going on for literally centuries,” said Dr. Tricia Bruce, an associate professor of sociology at Maryville College.
Public allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, starting in early October, provided a tipping point and motivated other women to tell their stories, Bruce noted.
Since then, dozens more men have been accused of misconduct, most recently NBC anchor Matt Lauer and longtime public radio host Garrison Keillor.
Bruce sees similarities with the child abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic church, affecting so many families either directly or indirectly.
Posts on social media with “#metoo” gave a glimpse at how widespread sexual harassment has been.
Bruce’s first book, “Faithful Revolution: How Voice of the Faithful Is Changing the Church,” published in 2011, is about the lay movement that started in response to that crisis within the church.
Like the child abuse within the church that came out in the early 2000s, often decades after the fact, today women are feeling safer to talk about past harassment.
“The behavior itself is not new,” Bruce said. “The question is why are people talking about it now, why is there accountability for it now.”
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