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You don’t grow up being told this can happen to you. Not as a man. Not at work. Not in a glass building with a fancy title on your email signature. So when it does, the first instinct isn’t to report it. It’s to wonder, “Am I overthinking this? Is it actually that serious?”

The JPMorgan Chase case has all the markers of a story that should dominate headlines. A 37-year-old senior executive, Lorna Hajdini, has been accused in a lawsuit, of sexually harassing and abusing a junior colleague of Indian origin, allegedly using her position to pressure him into compliance while threatening his career.

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The details are disturbing with claims of coercion, racial remarks, and a pattern of behaviour that escalated over time. The company has denied the allegations and said it will contest them in court. But strip away the legal language, and what’s left is something far more familiar and uncomfortable.

A man who didn’t feel like he could say no. Because that’s the part we still don’t know how to process.

In an Indian context, men aren’t raised with the vocabulary of vulnerability. You’re taught to push through discomfort, to not “make a big deal,” to be grateful you even made it into rooms like this. Especially if you’re working abroad, in a global firm, where your visa, your growth, and your entire sense of identity is tied to the job. Walking away would essentially undo years of hard work and ambition.

And then there’s the masculinity trap. If a man says he’s being harassed, the response isn’t concern. In most cases, it’s confusion or ridicule. Was it really harassment? Couldn’t he have stopped it? Why didn’t he just leave? Questions that quietly shift blame back onto the person with the least power.

That’s how silence builds in layers. First, you minimise it. Then, you rationalise it. And eventually, you convince yourself it’s easier to endure than to explain.

Cases like this tend to disappear because they’re inconvenient. They don’t fit the narrative we’re comfortable telling about men, power, and victimhood. So, they get flattened into allegations, buried under corporate statements, or reduced to something people scroll past without sitting with the discomfort.

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But the truth is simpler than we’d like to admit.

When power is involved, consent stops being a clean yes or no. And when the person on the receiving end is a man, we’re still not ready to call it what it is.