Man Notes: Why Is She Apologizing for Him?

Last night I had a casual conversation with my wife where she relayed a story that happened to a friend of hers.  She told me about this person's work situation.  Apparently, there is a man in this woman's IT department who likes to make advances at the women in his organization.  He is a married man and he is apparently "equal opportunity" in the women he flirts with.  My wife knows the guy too, but she hasn't had the same experiences with him that her friend has had.  In talking to my wife about this guy, it made me wonder after the way she and her friend were handling the situation.

Image taken from behindthebasics.blogspot.com

The main thing that bothered me was this: my wife and her friend both seemed to repeat the following phrase, "He's a nice guy and all, but he just won't take no for an answer."

What?!

No, I'm sorry.  The man is not a "nice guy."  From the sounds of some of the advances he's put forward, advances that include those towards happily married women, this guy is a creep.  Over the course of the conversation, it was said that other women in the workplace had received similar treatment from this guy.  Also, other ladies in the office warned my wife's friend away from meeting the guy in private.  Apparently, when this guy has a couple of drinks, he has the tendency to get a little "kissy."

I'm not sure what this phenomenon is, but I find it unsettling.  Here is a group of confident women in a professional workplace who seem to be tolerating a man who engages in regular sexual harassment.  Why is that?  I asked my wife why she seemed to be making excuses for this guy.  She hadn't experienced the behavior herself, but she knew her friend had.  I'm not trying to skewer my wife, or to say that she did something wrong.  On the contrary, I'm trying to understand the phenomenon.  Why do women put up with the behavior of these men?

My theory, and it could be TOTALLY off base here, is that women get accustomed to this type of behavior and write it off.  In addition, we culturally shame those brave women who come forward with allegations of sexual harassment.  I've seen the coverage of these trials before, dating all the way back to when I was a teenager and it was the Clarence Thomas case.  It was so clear that the world's attention was pegged to Anita Hill.  The burden lay so squarely on her shoulders in that case.  Her accusations became the cause of a million running gags about pubes on the Coke can and Long Dong Silver.  I had to look up Anita Hill's name to remember it specifically, but I didn't have to look up the reference to the Coke can or Long Dong Silver.  The jokes that surrounded those two details of the case remain engrained in me, but the woman's name does not.  What does that say about me?  About our culture?

Image provided by the Washington Post

I think about my daughter in these situations.  I think about my wife.  I wonder how I can help them understand that there is no reason they need to tolerate unwarranted and inappropriate sexual advances from men.  They don't need to make excuses for them, or write off their behavior as "boys being boys."  They don't need to look to the silver lining in a man's personality when trying to find a way to work with someone who is otherwise inappropriate.

I don't have an answer to any of this, which frustrates me.  This post feels wholly incomplete, like it is simply a rant against an institution that seems, at times, unmovable, but I have to believe that there has to be a solution either in training men to NOT engage in this type of behavior or in giving women the power to stop it without the risk of "shame" falling on them for being a whistleblower.

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this issue in the comments below.  Any advice for this man?