Sexual Harassment is any form of unwanted verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that occurs, with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person, in particular when creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. This experience can happen to anyone.
While it is clear from the reporting statistics that victims of sexual harassment are overwhelmingly female, male victims of sexual harassment and assault do exist and it is our duty to ensure that their voices are heard too. Even more so, it is also important to understand that women can also be perpetrators of sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment is a blatent abuse of power which feeds off the normalisation of abuse and the tabooisation of the topic. But while tabooisation of sexual harassment has been rampant for years, and we are finally speaking up- the tabooisation of sexual harassment of men is still very much within us.
As a movement, we want to make it clear that we aren’t doing this for women, or men, or non-binary persons. We are doing this #ForTheMusic and nothing more. This is why we welcome everyone in our collective fight against this abuse of power in an industry which we all love.
If you are a male victim of sexual harassment, you can find different support mechanisms which cater to male victims of sexual harassment in the “Get Help” section of our website.