What the Weinstein debacle says about harassment in America

What does the debacle surrounding the downfall of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein show us?

For one, even though it has been 42 years since the term "sexual harassment" was coined at Cornell University, workplace harassment still exists in its most heinous form.

But it means something else, too: That despite the high levels of sexual harassment still reported in American workplaces, the level of society's tolerance for such behavior has dropped precipitously.

The problem obviously exists. Depending on the study, either one in three or one in four working American women say they have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. One in 10 men also say they have been sexually harassed.

Possibly the most hopeful statistic is provided by a 2016 poll taken by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which found that 75 percent of Americans believe sexual harassment is a problem in this country.

That's a far cry from 1981, when anti-feminist crusader Phyllis Schlafly could assure a Senate committee studying guidelines on sexual harassment that "virtuous women are seldom accosted" - and know that a significant number of Americans agreed with her.

What this tells us, is that instead of failing, the decades-long campaign against harassment is making progress. Behavior that was once tolerated or even expected (see the cable television drama "Mad Men") now is uniformly hailed as disgusting and discriminatory.

The allegations against Weinstein and former Fox News executive Roger Ailes illustrate that unfortunately, the very powerful still can sometimes write their own rules, and that many victims would still rather not report it. Even in show business - a profession where we assume no one has a shred of privacy left - something like this can run for years as an ugly undercurrent, bursting to the surface only through a New York Times investigation. And the actors who say they were victims - some of them now very powerful themselves - have a huge megaphone with which to express their grievances.

Most Americans facing this kind of dilemma don't have that. What they have instead are programs in their Human Resources departments, workplace training and as a last resort, the right to sue an employer. And perhaps most important, they have the support of the broader society around them.

Sexual harassment hasn't disappeared. But unlike 30 years ago, public disgust over it has grown and flourished. Victims of sexual harassment should take heart from this outpouring of revulsion over the allegations against Weinstein. They may not be rich and famous, but at least public opinion is on their side.