Another one bites the dust.

Today Show host Matt Lauer was fired from NBC over sexual misconduct allegations that the company says were probably not an isolated incident (Lauer’s alleged bad behavior has not been publicly described in any detail). He is only the latest in a string of high-profile men brought down by accusations of handsiness or inappropriate behavior toward female colleagues.



What’s stunning about the Lauer firing, though, is how decisively NBC acted – especially considering that Lauer is one of their marquee names, and has anchored one of their most-watched and profitable shows for two decades. The evidence for his misbehavior must be pretty solid (a video? A hot mic?), but so too must be NBC’s conviction that keeping a harasser or assailant on staff would be financial and reputational suicide.



This is new. And it’s a feminist victory.



Today Show co-host Savannah Guthrie captured what so many women feel when men we like, admire, or love commit harassment or assault. “All we can say is we are heartbroken; I’m heartbroken,” she said. That heartbreak extended to Lauer, her “dear, dear friend”, as well as the women he wronged. Guthrie said she was “heartbroken for the brave colleague who came forward to tell her story”.

Play Video 0:22 Savannah Guthrie: we are devastated about Matt Lauer allegations – video

A decade ago – heck, a year ago – media executives and network decision-makers would have taken the heartbreak that so many of us feel when a person we like is accused of wrongdoing, and extended it primarily to the man accused of harassment.

Women who accuse powerful men of wrongdoing have rarely been viewed sympathetically. Instead, we are troublemakers, creating problems for well-meaning and admirable men, forcing HR to step in, creating a public relations problem.

It has long been a woman’s decision to speak out, rather than a man’s decision to behave inappropriately, that has been seen as the catalyst for whatever unpleasantness follows. That unpleasantness was too often a warning or a talking-to; a moment of embarrassment, but no real change.



It’s been women’s careers and even senses of personal safety that have long been the casualties of our impulse to absolve men. That’s changing.

Maybe it was seeing it happen to Hillary Clinton when the stakes were as high as they’ve ever been. Maybe we’re just collectively fed up. Maybe more women in positions of power means that accusers garner a bit more sympathy from the higher-ups – maybe female executives feel toward more junior women that same heart-pull male ones felt toward accused colleagues.

NBC fires Today show host Matt Lauer for inappropriate sexual behavior Read more

Maybe more women in newsrooms means cases like these get covered with greater depth and nuance, sparking real change. Maybe companies are simply terrified of the avalanche of bad press that will come if they look the other way.

Whatever the case, it’s new. It’s powerful. And it’s the direct result of feminist work to get sexual harassment taken more seriously and to put more women in positions of power across industries.

Powerful too are Guthrie’s heartfelt and nuanced comments about Lauer and the colleague he is alleged to have mistreated. It’s tempting to demand black-and-white reactions, and to fit narratives into neat boxes – to say that Lauer is a bad man who should be universally condemned.

But the danger in demanding such stark and definitive responses is that it doesn’t account for the complexities of human emotions and reactions. It sets us up for a wholesale refusal to deal with harassment and assault when the accused is someone we can’t bring ourselves to fully condemn and revile.

Guthrie owns her muddled reaction – her pain not just at seeing a beloved colleague go down, but of being blind to the worst sides of him, of not seeing the pain he was causing others in their shared workplace. It’s a moment of reckoning not just with the behavior of another, but with oneself: why didn’t I see? What else am I missing?

These are the conversations we need to have. Most people who do terrible things don’t present themselves as monsters, least of all those whose terribleness can seem pretty banal in a deeply misogynist society where the overwhelming majority of women have been subject to some kind of sexism.

Bill O'Reilly is just one of the countless terrible men in media | Jill Abramson Read more

We must be able to hold these two things simultaneously: I can love, like or admire a man; that same man may have done something awful and should be held accountable for it. Until we are able to see this reality, men will continue to be able to behave badly, and they will be excused because someone else says they’re a gentleman, or a nice guy or a respectable father.

Guthrie also didn’t dwell on Lauer alone. She extended her sympathy and heartbreak to the woman who he allegedly wronged. That woman remains anonymous. Maybe she’s also a familiar television face; maybe she’s someone whose work was invisible to viewing audiences but was vital in ensuring that Lauer and Guthrie beamed into our living rooms every morning.

Either way, Guthrie seemed to relate to her, to empathize with how hard it must have been for her to come forward and speak about against such a well-liked and respected television personality. I suspect most men wouldn’t be so readily able to see themselves in that woman, and to feel their hearts break for her, too.

Lauer won’t be the last man to be pushed off his perch for his own decision to act badly. It’s easy to watch these cases stack up and become inured to it all, or to start to feel like maybe things are changing too quickly, that a witch-hunt is on, that good men are probably afraid and that’s somehow worse than centuries of female fear and abasement.

Instead, we should take a page from Guthrie, and allow our reactions to be complex and our hearts to be pulled in opposing directions – and in the end, to do what’s right by embracing victims and holding men accountable, even when it hurts.

