Gay Alcorn: Helen Garner's The First Stone is outdated. But her questions about sexual harassment aren't

Gay Alcorn writes that Helen Garner’s The First Stone is outdated. But her questions about sexual harassment aren’t.

Garner is “aware of the immense weight of men on women, the ubiquity of their attentions, the exhaustion of our resistance”.

But through the book, there is no sense that that could change. It just couldn’t be comprehended at the time. It is hard to overstate what a mind shift that has been over the past few months, what an explosion of insight and possibility.

For this moment is not really about sexual harassment. It is about the unfinished project of equality between men and women. That has much more to do with disadvantaged women with casual jobs than Hollywood stars with all their privileges. But most women, from all classes, all backgrounds, recognise that “weight”.

Yet Garner won’t let women off the hook, not for a moment. She reminds us that feminism is about justice.

Unjust is the word for the behaviour of men who use their position of power as a weapon in forcing women to endure their repeated sexual approaches, or who take revenge for a knockback by distorting a woman’s career or making her workplace intolerable or sacking her. Unjust does not apply to a clumsy pass at a party by a man who’s had too much to drink.

These days, it does, and mostly should, if that man is a leader in an organisation. But her point about proportion, about gradation of offence, rings true today. The hardline view that every transgression reinforces rape culture and misogyny is a hindrance, not a help. “The ability to discriminate must be maintained,” writes Garner. “Otherwise all we are doing is increasing the injustice of the world.”

Emphasis Mine

In realising the dignity of women, men realise their own dignity.