For too long we have clung to the idea of “himpathy”, as Washington Times journalist Irin Carmon so perfectly described it at the writers' festival, the disproportionate empathy that we extend to men. Especially powerful ones, like film producer Harvey Weinstein and actor Kevin Spacey. It’s a term coined by philosopher/author Kate Manne to explain how we think we have an emotional relationship with these men from reading them or watching them on television or in films. We don’t.

Then I started remembering my own experiences of sexual misconduct over the course of my life. Not just the relatively innocuous examples, like the photographer who invited me to his skinny dip sausage sizzle in my first week as a cadet journalist in the 1980s. Or the editor of the very well respected magazine I worked for in the 1990s, who hung a Sports Illustrated calendar on the wall of his office. Or the time a man exposed himself to me on a Sydney street and the policeman to whom I reported it asked if I was "flattered or offended".

Novelist Junot Diaz is facing allegations of sexual misconduct from fellow authors. Credit:AP/File

For my generation – women aged over 40 who put up with the patronising tones and the pats on the bum – the sexism and sexual misbehaviour didn't stop when the naked calendars came down. And reporting it to the authorities wasn't much help either.

I had hoped that times had changed. Now perhaps it is time for a reckoning for those of us over 40: to examine the tally of our own experiences of “historical” sexual misconduct. I don’t use the word “historical” to in anyway distance or minimise anything untoward that may have happened in the past. I've sat through too many sessions of the royal commission into childhood sexual abuse to know the impact of abuse is lifelong. But I thought of all the women I know who have either left their careers or been sidelined, by type E – for entitled – personalities (who are not always men, but more often than not are).