I was left with an overwhelming urge to apologise to all the women I know over the past couple of weeks. The skeletons that kept tumbling out of closets surprised me at first, and quickly shook me with the enormity of what was being discussed. These revelations happened largely on social media platforms, but even without the corroboration that a published news report requires, the sheer number of complaints left me feeling like a naïve rookie in a newsroom, simply because I had no idea how awful things really were.

I can't comment on the film industry, or advertising, politics or every other arena in which men have been named and shamed, because I can't claim familiarity with them. What I can look at is journalism, where I have spent a little over two decades, oblivious to what so many of my female friends and colleagues have been dealing with while simply trying to do their jobs. I have spent the past week thinking about editors I have worked with, wondering if they were decent human beings, and if they behaved differently with me because I happened to be male.