How Not to Apologize for Sexual Harassment

Let’s say you are a man and you’ve been hit with a slew of allegations of sexual harassment or abuse. Perhaps The New York Times or The Washington Post has even published a deeply researched, rigorously supported exposé of your reported misdeeds. Yikes! The first thing to consider, of course, is your reputation. (The well-being of the women you may or may not have harmed has apparently not been a priority for you to date, but you likely have lots of practice caring about your reputation!)

Of course, your career might not be at stake: Harvey Weinstein was just fired by the Weinstein Company, sure, but a serial sexual harasser holds the highest office in the land. But as they say, better safe than sorry, and while you may not be sorry, it’s apology time. Take a page from the damage-control playbook of any number of men whose abuses of power have gone public and adopt one or more of the following moves.

1. Add an “if” to your “sorry.”

Apologize, yes, but express your compunction with a conjunction: You’re sorry if you’ve hurt or offended anyone. Best not to name names here: “Anyone” or “someone” is as specific as you should get in your quest to shift the focus from yourself to the people you’ve supposedly offended. Remember, you’re not the problem, they are. The If Whiff is an oldie but a goodie, one recently employed by none other than the president himself after the release of an Access Hollywood tape in which he bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy.” In this case, of course, he wasn’t even apologizing for sexual assault but about what he said when implicating himself in it. Apparently it worked.

2. Blame the culture.

After The New York Times covered Weinstein’s decades-long history of paying off his sexual harassment accusers, the former studio head provided us a textbook example of this blame-shifting tactic. “I came of age in the 60’s and 70’s [sic], when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different,” he began his apology letter. “That was the culture then.”

Ah, yes, the good old days when professional behavior meant trapping women in hallways and masturbating into potted plants in front of them, or stripping naked and demanding your employees give you massages. If you’re old enough — millennial sexual predators, this one doesn’t apply to you — you can try the Culture Critique too.

3. Remind everyone that boys will be boys.

The Locker Room Dodge was popularized by Trump in his statement following the aforementioned pussy-grabbing tape (“This was locker-room banter,” he said), but he’s not the first to use this classic technique. The “boys will be boys” argument is used time and time again in slightly different formulations to defend everyone from college students who rape their female classmates to start-up founders who harass female job applicants.

Access Hollywood / NBC Universal

Writing about the backlash against entrepreneur and accused sexual harasser Dave McClure earlier this year, for example, investor Chris Swies wrote on Medium, “If you know Dave you know him to be a very passionate person who is a lover of people…That passion is clear to anyone who knows him…He is also a MAN…A heterosexual MAN…Yes a MAN…A MAN who from time to time has needs and desires of a woman…”

Whatever you did or didn’t do, you are a MAN with MANLY NEEDS. Sometimes you just can’t help yourself. Remind people of this.

4. Beg ignorance.

The Ignorance Plea is a good move if you’re prepared to admit to (at least some of) what you’re accused of: Say you had no idea you were inflicting harm. None whatsoever! You thought you were just being nice; you thought you were just being funny. How could you have known, right? Here’s how it’s done: After The New York Times published a story on the treatment of women in tech, in which entrepreneur Marc Canter was accused of sexual harassment, Canter took to Medium — the crisis management do-it-yourselfer’s favorite platform — to explain.

“It was stupid and was one of those ‘Marc Canter’ moments where my unfiltered flow of sarcastic, unconventional communication and behavior backfired on me,” he wrote. He never intended, he added, to make his accuser feel “uncomfortable, ashamed, and scared.” And there you have it! You may be a sexual harasser, but you were just being your sardonic, misunderstood self, and your purported lack of ill intent makes it all O.K.

5. Say you’re damaged.

If you’re going for pity points, it’s a good idea to stress that you are one messed-up individual. You may be a grown man, but you’re also a lost puppy, in need of therapy and deserving of sympathy. Weinstein took the Damaged Defense route in his letter: “My journey now will be to learn about myself and conquer my demons,” he wrote. “I’ve brought on therapists and I plan to take a leave of absence from my company and to deal with this issue head on.” If anyone asks why now is the moment to focus on your mental state, well, tell them they’re missing the point. The point is that you’re broken. And if you’ve done this whole sexual harassment thing right, those women can’t speak out anyway because you’ve forced them to sign contracts saying they won’t.

6. Invoke your goodness.

Now is definitely an appropriate time and place for the Good Deed Demo, with which you remind everyone of your many positive contributions to society. The last paragraph of Weinstein’s letter is devoted to making sure people know he’s mostly a really good person, guys. “I am going to need a place to channel that anger” — he does not specify what anger, exactly, this is — “so I’ve decided that I’m going to give the NRA my full attention,” he writes. What’s more, look, everyone, he’s giving scholarships to women directors. Good deeds should cancel out at least a couple of the abuses you committed, so it's very important to submit yours for consideration in the court of public opinion.

There you have it — a roadmap for the treacherous waters you'll enter once your predatory history can no longer be buried by money or power. Remember, this isn't about you being sorry, it's about you protecting your threatened stature. If all goes in your favor, some combination of silence, fear, and misogyny will keep you right where you are. Maybe you can even run for office one day.

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