Tom Bradby: Men must stand up and say no to sexism, inequality and abuse

Like everyone else I have read the accounts of Harvey Weinstein’s behaviour these past few weeks with mounting rage.

He denies most of the accounts, of course, but as more and more women come forward to share their experiences under the #metoo hashtag, the question surely has to be; what more can we do? And the answer, I suspect, is quite a lot.

For a start, I think it is time that we men opened up a real conversation among ourselves about how we change male culture and what difference that might make.

At times like this it shouldn’t just be women raging against the abusers and the excusers, but men too. In fact, perhaps it should be especially men.

There would be worse places to start than with a basic examination of lads’ culture. I can’t say it has ever held much appeal but it was unavoidable growing up.

My grandfather played rugby for England and the game was something of a religion in my family, but I ducked out in the end because I couldn’t face the absurd off-field antics of the baying crowd with its blood up.

I played at a reasonably high standard into my first years at university, but early on there I had to tell a club official that I couldn’t turn up for training on one day, and one day only because it clashed with a crucial play rehearsal.

“What are you,” he said, “some kind of poof?” Brilliant.

A few weeks later, returning from an away match, the senior players tried to get the junior players back to the rear of the bus to strip us naked.

I fought my way to the front and said I’d take the bus off the road if they tried to do it to me. It was the last game of rugby I ever played, but lads will be lads, eh?

Since then I’ve found it necessary to swerve or duck out early from a raft of evenings and events, particularly stag nights that seemed destined to end in a way I just didn’t find comfortable.

And before you ask what the hell a bunch of lads on a good night out has to do with any of the allegations circulated these past weeks, I’d say: take a look at what can creep in on the fringes.

How many of us have been in the pub when a guy makes an off-colour joke or a slightly misogynistic remark? Did we call him out, tell him he was a jerk? Nah, let it go. Lads will be lads.

So here is where I think it starts; with men not tolerating that any longer. And the more of us that do it, the more anyone who thinks about women in that way will know he is a pariah.

Next, we need to talk about consent. Sure, the law is the law but I’m also done with the frequent public equivocation.

A woman is fully entitled to dress however she likes, flirt with you outrageously, get into bed with you naked, fool around — and then change her mind.

You might not choose to go out with her again but to move beyond that is rape. And every young man needs to know this from day one.

Whatever led up to it, consent must, in the final analysis, be clear and beyond doubt. And if you don’t accept it, then you are to blame, not the woman herself.

Beyond that, we have to talk about equality and the way the workplace functions. Earlier this year the gender BBC pay gap between men and women hogged the headlines. To say women should be paid the same as men for the same job is so basic as to be unworthy of discussion — it just needs to be done.

But we’ll never have true equality until roughly half the workplace is made up of women at every level. You want to know what the future looks like? Go to Denmark. We are going to have to share everything, from the payment of the mortgage to childcare. And it is time to tell our kids this, too.

It is probably true to say that, if women come to make up half the workforce, then these problems will begin to decline. Would actresses have felt under so much pressure to keep quiet about Weinstein if half the directors, producers and financiers in Hollywood were women? That seems highly unlikely. They could just have given Weinstein a wide berth and worked with people who were considerably less likely to lunge at them in a bathrobe.

But there is one final adjustment that I think might help. My brief experience of having the responsibility of a company director or equivalent gave me a clear sense of what you take on to your shoulders in such a role.

It is your job to hold the management to account and to ensure the workforce is protected and properly treated.

So what if there was a legal requirement for the management in general — and the human resources director in particular — to report any allegation of harassment, or even bullying, to the board? And what if that opened up the possibility of directors being prosecuted or censured if they failed to act appropriately?

It might or might not have changed things at the Weinstein Company. But in my experience, directors take things very seriously when their own backsides are directly on the line.

Even the men of Weinstein’s world might have been a little less forgiving if they’d thought there was a chance they might share a spell at Her Majesty’s Pleasure if he was found guilty and they hadn’t done enough to stop it.

And if you think all this is too much, well, I say only this: guys, you know well enough it can’t go on like this.

We can’t leave it to women alone to sort this out. It just isn’t right.