You’re a middle-aged man. It’s early 2018. You get an invitation from a company you know reasonably well to an all-male charity dinner at the Dorchester Hotel. You might have been before. But even if you haven’t, you know that it’s well known to be one hell of a booze up; that the hostesses are always super-hot; and that in the past there has been a bit of an anything-goes atmosphere. What do you say?
The astonishing bit about the Presidents Club saga is that the charity managed to find 360 people to say yes. That is partly because it was an all-male dinner. There is nothing wrong with single gender events on principle. But there is something odd about very large ones in a corporate context. It’s an odd hangover from the days when women found they couldn’t climb the career ladder because the real networking was conducted in places they weren’t invited to, over drinks they didn’t much like and long after they’d gone home to put the kids to bed. Not nice.
It’s also partly about the sleaze itself. Sure most of the guests might not have known their high-heeled and black-knickered hostesses had to surrender their phones and sign legally dubious non-disclosure agreements. And we can (I hope) assume only a small percentage of the 360 guests were bottom grabbers in their own right. But still, you’d think most sentient modern men would find even the thought of their peers getting away with being — as the guidance given to the girls at interview put it — “annoying” a tad off putting.