BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
So you know, this story discusses topics surrounding bullying, sexual harassment, and assault. For mental health support, contact your GP, call the Support Act 24/7 Wellbeing Helpline on 1800959500, or visit the National Association of Services against Sexual Violence for local resources.
According to Dr Jeff Crabtree, bullying and harassment starts with an imbalance of power. And in the Australian music industry — which thrives on the powers of reputation, revenue, and competitive gain — far too many workers become victims of toxic behaviour and abuse. Unfortunately, this happens on a systemic level: close to half of all workers in the live performance industry have experienced harassment, from unwanted physical approaches to inappropriate staring or intrusively personal questions. The impact on victims is serious: lost opportunities, a culture of fear, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are just some of the harmful outcomes.
Dr Jeff Crabtree has undertaken extensive research into workplace bullying and sexual harassment in the Australian music industry, and he shares his knowledge at a forum in the Australian Women in Music Awards conference.
Having first co-written a book called Living With A Creative Mind, which explored the social and mental health problems faced by artists, Jeff went on to study a doctorate through which he researched the systemic issues of bullying, harassment, and intimidation. Jeff says: “While I expected to find evidence of workplace harassment, the extent of what I found was profoundly distressing. Once you learn about this kind of thing, you simply cannot stand on the sidelines.”
In this interview, Jeff discusses his research, and offers insight into an industry that has a great deal of work to do when it comes to protecting its workers. Jeff describes the types of industry culture that can protect perpetrators, and outlines his findings on why toxic workplaces may still exist. Despite policies that should help prevent harassment, it remains a widespread cultural issue in the arts.
Jeff (pictured below) also provides tips on how artists and industry practitioners can support each other when they experience or witness bullying or sexual harassment in their workplaces.
It is never the fault of the victim.
Jeff, thank you so much for taking part in the conversation. You produced a research report on Workplace and Sexual Harassment in the Music Industry, in which you concluded that these issues are prominent despite the fact that they are prohibited by Australian government policy. There’s a lot to unpack here, so I’d like to start from the ground up: based on your research, why do you believe the law is not enough when it comes to preventing harmful behaviour in the workplace?
There are a number of factors. The first of these is that the burden of proof for obtaining a conviction is high. Workplace harassment is frequently very subtle, and is often in the form of social isolation, unreasonable work demands, deliberate use of humour as a put down, being ignored, or being continually bypassed.
Bullying is almost certainly intimidating. But you don’t need to be verbally or physically threatened to be intimidated: sophisticated bullies rely on this to be able to deny their toxic behaviour. The same is often true of sexual harassment, where the nature of the sexual pressure and innuendo is subtle.
When sexual harassment is unsubtle, it almost always happens without witnesses — so it’s one person’s word against another.
Sexual harassment that happens where there are witnesses is often calculated to occur in front of the perpetrator’s mates, who won’t testify against him; or in the presence of people who won’t testify for fear of losing their jobs.
The burden of proof to obtain a conviction is high, and these factors make it very difficult for those who have been targets.
What are some of the ways you feel the music industry perpetuates — or protects — perpetrators’ behaviour?
Firstly, all harassment is a product of a power imbalance. This is true of both workplace bullying and sexual harassment. So, the greater the power imbalance, the greater the likelihood of harassment.
The music industry systematically perpetuates harassment because it is an industry with vast power imbalances. For example, those who hold the power of gatekeeping, like record industry executives, possess extraordinary power in comparison to emerging artists — because they can shut down a career with a word, and there is nothing much a young artist can do about it.
Add to that, the industry is very tightly networked. No one can afford to get a tarnished reputation, as the whole industry is built on reputation. In fact, reputation is a form of power.
One of my participants said ‘no’ to a powerful industry figure who then went out of his way to make sure she was blocked from ever getting important gigs. In that case, she had no possible hope of a good outcome. Either she caved in to his demands, or her career is permanently damaged.
People are afraid to get on the wrong side of the big money spinners
Secondly, follow the money. Powerful people often gain their power because they have a track record of generating revenue, or because they have been lucky enough to find themselves in positions where it looks like they generate lots of revenue. People are afraid to get on the wrong side of the big money spinners, because it will have negative economic consequences. Such people are rarely brought to heel because they appear to be the goose that lays the golden egg. So in general no-one challenges the money.
This doesn’t mean that everyone who generates big money is a perpetrator. The decision to commit an act of bullying or to sexually harass someone is an individual choice. There are many factors that influence that kind of a choice — including someone’s worldview. There are those who believe, or have learnt, that their power gives them the right to exploit others. There are also men who think of women as subordinate to men, who who regard women purely as sexual objects. Not everyone holds these views of course — and I would like to think that these days they are in the minority. But clearly, there are enough of them who do hold these views and act on them.
Let’s talk more about that decision to act. To most people who work in the music industry, the desire to inflict harm or engage in this behaviour is unfathomable. So, based on your research findings, why would a person in power make that decision to intimidate or harass others in the workplace? What actually drives or enables this toxic behaviour?
I agree with you — the desire to inflict harm is unfathomable to most of us. But in order to bring change, it’s essential for us to understand what might be motivating perpetrators. We need to know the causes, otherwise we don’t know what levers to pull to make improvement.
This is a challenge, because it’s not really possible to know anyone’s exact state of mind. However, many researchers have tried to understand toxic and abusive behaviour. Their answers in part are a consequence of their field of study. Some researchers have proposed that sexual harassment is a product of a large scale social system: they lay the blame at the feet of patriarchy; a systemic cultural and social order which places women as subordinate to men. We can label this as ‘misogyny’ — an entrenched series of prejudices about women. I have no doubt that there are men, even in this day and age, who believe, deep in their heart of hearts, that women are not equal to men. That’s one explanation that has merit and I found plenty of evidence for this in my research.
We need to change the industry culture
Another is that we are social beings, and we definitely respond and conform to the prevailing culture. A closely related idea is what some call ‘toxic masculinity’, which equates masculinity with toughness and aggression, gaining and using power, and the rejection of so-called ‘feminine traits’ like empathy and showing emotion. This would mean that at the individual level, some people’s toxic behaviour is a result of social pressure. We know that people behave badly if the social pressure is strong enough — so we need to change the industry culture, but I’m not sure that alone will be the fix.
Even though my research found that harassment is so widespread that it is systemic, we still can’t ignore individual factors. In the field of psychology, some have proposed that toxic behaviour emerges from the so-called ‘dark triad’ of negative personality traits: narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy.
- Psychopathy is marked by lack of remorse and empathy.
- Machiavellianism is highly manipulative behaviour.
- Narcissism is typically an unhealthy self-regard and heightened arrogance.
Anyone reading this will have little doubt that such people exist. I have definitely come into contact with people who fit these descriptions and it is not a pleasant experience. So if this is the answer, we just need to be able to make a personality assessment of individuals and weed out the toxic ones.
This would work if we could be certain that all perpetrators are sociopaths or narcissists. Doubtless, some are — but the majority aren’t. And of course, people don’t routinely take personality tests that would help us identify the problem people ahead of time.
We also can’t ignore simple opportunism and lack of a moral compass either. If you add these to an environment where there is lots of alcohol consumption, that is a volatile combination. We know that alcohol and substance abuse reduces inhibition, and so we can predict an increase in the risk of being harassed where the drinks, and other chemicals, are free-flowing. […] But the majority of people are perfectly capable of drinking alcohol and having a good time without harassing or assaulting others.
There is a lot of competition, fear, and stress in the music industry — and these things can produce pretty toxic behaviour in response
Another factor that’s not related to any of the above is the matter of threat. I believe we really underestimated the power of fear and stress. There is a lot of competition, fear, and stress in the music industry — and these things can produce pretty toxic behaviour in response.
When people in positions of power find themselves feeling threatened by others around them, then they can easily resort to behaviour that minimises the threat. […] Some of the sexual harassment that I uncovered in my research appeared to be designed to undermine a perceived competitor. That is, it wasn’t about sex at all — it was about disempowerment. […] Gaining power in the music industry does not necessarily come with training on how to lead and manage others. People unfortunately reproduce toxic behaviour that they have seen modelled by others who were poor leaders before them. That is, they simply don’t know any better. The obvious answer to this is having leadership training, but that is incredibly difficult to implement across a fragmented industry.
Harassment is a product of power
Another highly underestimated factor in this complex mix is to do with a person’s sense of self; or in other words, their level of insecurity. We know that harassment is a product of power. Imagine someone with an insecure sense of self. Exercising whatever power they have will make them feel good about themselves: the toxic behaviour says more about them than it does those on the receiving end.
When insecurity is driving people to intimidate or subordinate others, this is an exceedingly difficult problem because people rarely admit even to themselves that they are fundamentally insecure. […] I believe that the causes are many, and I also believe that for any one perpetrator, it is likely that there really are multiple drivers. It’s a complex problem.
When we look at industry-wide sexual harassment, we can describe this as being systemic. That is, it continues in the system because of deep-rooted mechanisms, such as power imbalances between music workers. So how do you believe the Australian music industry can even begin to break out of this systemic issue when it occurs on such a massive scale?
This is an excellent question, and I see this as the central problem in trying to bring change. It’s not just the massiveness of scale — it’s the fact that the music industry itself is extremely fragmented and extremely diffused.
Even though there are three major labels, only a relatively small number of people are employed by them. Most people who work in the music industry are running small businesses, and a great many are really akin to start-ups, with the business owners themselves having to supplement their business income with other part time work. The kinds of businesses I’m talking about might be a PR business, a merchandising business, a live performance business, a commercial music composition business, a recording studio, a music production business, a photography business, and so on.
For example, you could spend an entire career playing in a covers band, and never have any intersection with the major recording companies. You can spend an entire career writing jingles, and never do a live gig. You could work in a live touring production company, and never meet anyone from music publishing. Thus, there is no one organisation that represents the whole gamut of the music industry. How could there be? As a consequence, someone who is a centre of power can become powerful in their sphere of influence without any countervailing organisation. […] There are so many sectors that have no representation in the form of a union or professional association, which are the ways that systematic power is offset in other other industries.
Beyond the harm caused to the individual, which can be catastrophic, what are some of the industry-wide consequences of sustained workplace and sexual harassment in the arts?
The first thing is that we have a large number of people in the industry who are suffering PTSD-like symptoms in the aftermath. How can the effect of this even be calculated?
Apart from the emotional scars each of them bears, there is an ongoing loss of trust in the goodness of others. When an entire industry is plagued by lack of trust, then not only is it a more difficult environment to work in, but also it hinders collaboration and connection, which ultimately hinders creativity and ultimately productivity.
There are so many survivors of sexual harassment whose professional relationships have suffered long-term damage. This is a hidden cost, just like what happens when we lose talented people from the industry as a result. How can we even place a value on that?
If harassment continues unchecked, then we will continue to lose highly talented people from the industry.
If a person is experiencing harassment in their music work, what are some of the actions they may then choose to take?
If you work in an organisation with formal power structures, the option of reporting [should always be made] available. Although, I really understand it when people don’t report, because often no real action is taken. Sadly, recent events have taught us that reporting a senior person in your organisation has harassed you often doesn’t end well. They may survive the investigation, and then make your life hell thereafter. In those cases, avoidance is the best measure.
Following any incident of harassment, you should definitely take the following steps:
- Confide in a friend, or in your network of friends.
- Get a conversation going within your support network.
- Write everything down.
- Seek professional help: see a doctor or a psychologist if you are having trouble sleeping, or if you are being triggered.
It is important to keep a written record of events, with dates, times, and as much detail as you can recall. Given that a lot of harassment takes place away from witnesses, it is important that your recollections are as accurate as possible. This is the case even if you don’t plan to pursue any formal complaint.
If you have been physically or sexually assaulted, this is a matter for the police.
Finally, you should take steps to manage your own personal resilience. The three best things we can do for ourselves to manage the negative impacts of stress and toxic behaviour are to get good sleep, eat well and get regular exercise. After that, it’s important to have great positive relationships with people who can support you.
If a person is aware their colleague has experienced harassment, because they have witnessed this behaviour or been informed of it, how can they offer support to the victim?
The first thing you should do is to listen to their story without judgement.
It’s difficult for someone to speak of being bullied or sexually harassed. Even though this shouldn’t be the case, there is for some of us still a stigma and a shame about having been on the receiving end of abuse. So as you listen, remember that it might be really hard for them to talk about their experiences. You may not relate directly with their experiences, but you should try to imagine what it might have been like for them. You may not have any answers right then and there, but listening to them will still be a really important help.
If you are going to offer help, it has to be on their terms. Don’t go intervening where they don’t want you to. Then, with their permission, you should help them build a support network. Our journey through these kinds of experiences is much better if we are not alone.
Then finally, help them to strategise a way to minimise their exposure to future risk. I think people in the music industry should consider doing a mental health first aid course. These kinds of courses are inexpensive, and they help you recognise when someone you are talking to is in significant distress. You are then in a better position to suggest they get professional help.
What message would you like to send to the Australian music industry about how to be respectful in the workplace?
I think that activism around sexual harassment and bullying is on the increase. […] This behaviour is widely considered unacceptable. All creative industries tend to reflect the societies they emerge from, and Australians are increasingly becoming less willing to look the other way — particularly with sexual harassment.
My research will not be the only investigation into the music industry. So, if the industry doesn’t change, then perpetrators run an increased risk of being exposed to public scrutiny, which will be a career-ender.
Perpetrators may have been able to get away with toxic behaviour in the past, but this will be increasingly less so. Therefore, everyone should take responsibility for their own behaviour.
If we all make a decision to step up, and behave as if everyone we meet is a human being with equal rights to our own — a person with unique value and dignity — then we can bring positive change.
I’m hopeful for the music industry, because there are so many amazing people working in it. Some of the most intelligent, creative, thoughtful, and hardworking people I know I have met in the music industry. With such people around us, surely we can bring change.
Dr Jeff Crabtree will take part in the panel discussion Workplace Safety & Sexual Harassment, hosted by the Australian Women in Music Awards conference, at Hotel X in Fortitude Valley, 17 May. His research is available to read on the website.
Learn more: What is sexual trauma first aid, and how can it help arts workers?
Disclaimer: This interview is of a general nature and not intended to replace formal health or legal advice. Interview has been edited for length.
Images of Dr Jeff Crabtree supplied. Featured image by Soragrit Wongsa on Unsplash.
