Boston Globe Details Harassment Complaints at LGBT Health Center

Via The Boston Globe:

"Fenway Community Health Center permitted a doctor accused of sexually harassing and bullying employees to continue working there for four years after the first serious complaint was filed in 2013, according to interviews with current and former employees and documents reviewed by the Globe."

The article goes on to report how the organization hired outside lawyers to investigate the allegations made against the doctor, with the CEO both ignoring the lawyers' recommendation to fire the doctor and failing to report the matter to the board of directors. Fenway, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, also is reported to have paid $75,000 to a male employee to settle related sexual harassment and bullying allegations.

The board chair and the CEO of Fenway have since resigned in the wake of these reports. The current senior management is comprised of 5 men and 1 woman.

Meanwhile, the doctor, who had previously resigned, has denied the allegations. Per the Globe:

"He said Fenway has a culture where people sometimes hug or have casual contact, and that his behavior was not outside the norm."

Of the many reports we're seeing of harassment in the workplace, notice that this argument is a consistent theme: this particular workplace just has a cool, sexually libertine milieu that is different than other, more buttoned-up, workplaces.

Yet, if the recent spate of allegations have shown us anything, it's that the workplaces in which powerful men do not regularly hug, kiss, and/or rub their dicks against their subordinates all in the name of "we just have a quirky culture like that" actually seem quite few and far between. That is, powerful men in the workplace seem to experience this norm "confusion" quite frequently about what is and isn't appropriate behavior, as they "struggle" to understand why people report them.

 The life lesson, as always, is to never mistake a sexual revolution for a feminist one.


*I use scare quotes for "confusion" and "struggle" because I think a lot of powerful people know exactly what they're doing and these aren't mix-ups at all. They actually "struggle" is not with understanding that their behavior is wrong, but that people would actually report them for it and that they might therefore experience negative consequences from it. Of course, another possibility is that some of them are complete sociopaths.