John Roughan: Campaign against harassment should revive some social graces

This week Monica Lewinsky joined the #MeToo movement. Photo / Getty Images

A generation of gentlemen is passing. We lost another one this week. Ken Grant was an engineer who spent much of his career overseas, especially in Hong Kong.

I knew him in his retirement as a tennis player, a very good one. Tall and slim, he wasn't as quick as he would have been in his prime but more than made up for it, as experienced players do, with the anticipation to be in the right position most of the time.

He had a wickedly accurate serve, infuriating when he put it impossibly short and wide.

He loved the game, turning up to the club just about every weekend, sunshine or rain. Nothing short of a downpour would keep him off the court. So long as the astrograss was draining he would have us out in the drizzle. Wind, which ruins tennis more than rain, never bothered him.

But the one thing many recalled at a gathering for him on Thursday was his that he was a gentleman. Not in a conscious or showy sense. Not at all. It was just his nature. In more than 20 years playing with or against him, I never saw him have a moment of ill temper towards anyone, even himself and, heaven knows, that's rare in tennis.

When Ken chastised himself, he was amused. When you put one past him, he would make little gestures of mock aggression with his perpetual grin.

He was 84 when he died last Saturday yet he'd been playing socially as recently as November. Just quietly, he preferred men's doubles to mixed but he didn't want the women to know.

Men of his generation, born before World War II, reached their maturity before the 1960s. The graces that came naturally to them are worth celebrating when so many ageing and less worthy celebrities of the next generation are being exposed as anything but gentlemen in their approaches to women.

It is often claimed in defence of these clods that they are products of a society that was more tolerant of sexually aggressive males who misused a powerful position or just imagined no woman who rebuffed them could be serious. It was never so. Characters such as that were never well regarded by either sex. It is just a pity they were not openly scorned by men and publicly embarrassed by more women at the time.

As recently as the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was amusing himself with an intern in the Oval Office, I was surprising how little was said of the age difference. Even female commentators at that time regarded it as just an unseemly "affair". Kennedy had affairs, Clinton was taking advantage of a 22-year-old, less than half his age, young enough to be his daughter.

This week Monica Lewinsky joined the #MeToo movement, realising at last she had been too young at the time to be considered "consenting" with a man of Clinton's age and status.

Oddly we have Donald Trump to thank for the way women are blowing the lid on these characters. As with climate change, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and perhaps now even US gun controls, Trump's repulsive manner and pig-headed comments dismay many on his side of the argument and put new resolve in those who care about these things.

The fact that someone could be elected President after the testimony of his ways with women was too much for female forbearance. Now we have an Auckland law firm squirming, an Australian party leader resigning, an edict to federal ministers against relationships with staff and throughout the Western world new rules are being written for the workplace.

Women columnists, understandably, are writing about almost nothing else and some have said they wish males would write about it too. The few who have answered that call have wondered whether the new rules will go too far, inhibiting men from daring to show an interest. What nonsense. Everyone has antennae for mutual attraction, men know when it's not there. God knows why some don't back off.

I hope women's demand for respect goes further and revives some of the social graces that governed behaviour before my generation decided gender equality was paramount in the most trivial ways. Last week two Labour MPs refused to shake hands with an Iranian delegation at Parliament because a female colleague had been advised they did not shake hands with women.

Why did we start shaking hands with women? I always find it clumsy. It's not like shaking hands with a man. I think women find it awkward too. An Iranian nods or bows and touches his heart. The nod could do, I think.

There is a sea change happening in how we deal with these things. Those old gentlemen going to their graves knew what to do.