Diana Mahabir-Wyatt

It is at the top now. The CEO of British Petroleum, Bernard Looney, was "encouraged" last week by his board of directors to resign over what is called nowadays as 'inappropriate behaviour.' When he refused to resign, he was fired.

Then a week later, the acting CEO, Murray Auchincloss, appointed to replace him also had to "resign" for the same reason. Then there was Spanish sports celebrity Senor Rubiales, who for some strange reason chose to display his self-image as an alpha male capable of displaying his power and control over a World Cup athlete and humiliating her front of several million people live on TV.

As for Russell Brand, I am prepared to accept that the quintessential narcissist, accused of raping a small young woman against a wall, claiming he only ever had consensual sex, truly believes he had life privileges to her body. He doesn't.

When I first began to work in the commercial field on an executive level, in industrial relations I was usually the only female at the table other than, occasionally, a recording secretary. It was so long ago that secretaries used shorthand to record minutes.

At that time, in relation to 'inappropriate behaviour,' I was warned,"If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen' - usually with a smirk. I was also warned in advance by the women's underground network, who we should try to evade and who would push the "inappropriate behaviour." Almost every member of the secretarial cohort in TT shared with every other one who to watch out for.

I learned the value of silence at lunch breaks with my male counterparts, where I soon became invisible, and the wisdom of ignoring crude jokes such as 'secretary not permanent unless screwed on desk' followed by jovial sniggers: what Donald Trump referred to as "locker room humour" was acceptable.

I wondered about some of those men: they weren't bad sorts, just unpolished, unsophisticated, and grew up learning that women in business were not as human as they were, so ridiculing them didn't matter, and thought that kind of inappropriate behaviour would be appreciated by other men. And by and large it was.

Around a negotiating table or in conferences they were serious and models of propriety. Then, in a discussion with a dear friend who had listened to more abashed details of male sexual behaviour in the psychiatrist's chair than I ever would, he taught me a lesson about intimate relationships that I have never forgotten. It goes way back to the observations of Greek philosophers about human relationships and taught me things that my parents didn't but Plato and Aristotle did.

Some of these can develop safely at work. Some are "inappropriate."

For the Greeks intimate relationships fell into seven categories:

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Eros: romantic love, physical need, sexual, dependency

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Storge: family love, parent to child, siblings, relatives, life partners

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Philia: Close friendship not based on sex or on gender but a shared desire for a deeper understanding of self and the other and of life.