Speak Up! Blog

I got two of them today–emails and story submissions crying out for help with sexual harassment that isn’t sexual harassment. I got one from a man and one from a woman.

People still don’t get it at all.

A big part of the problem seems to stem from the fact that sexual harassment is defined as being a form of gender discrimination, or specifically “discrimination based on sex.”

And truthfully, sexual harassment “training” isn’t really helping much. Everyone I know who has attended one of those seminars said that all the attendees laugh and snicker throughout. These sessions don’t seem to be teaching people what the problem really is about and why it is so serious.

Sexual harassment laws were originally written to protect women from a particular method of discrimination as they were increasingly integrating into the workforce. Sexual harassment became a form of backlash against them by men who were angry at having to compete with women in the workplace. Many men did NOT want them there and lashed out in ways that were meant to drive the women down and out. They used sexually degrading treatment and sexualized environments to do this. (The Jenson vs. Eveleth Mines case is a good example of how this worked.) Sadly, this is still a very common problem.

Also, the laws were meant to protect subordinate women from being sexually exploited by their male superiors, for example, making it illegal for a supervisor to require an employee to date him or have sex with him to keep her job. It is scary how common this STILL is, too.

These laws have been expanded to (supposedly) protect students from the same types of harassment and exploitation from peers and school employees, such as teachers and coaches. Moreover, Oncale vs. Sundowner extended the laws to protect men from the same abuses.

Jump forward a few decades to today, and you will find that many have misinterpreted the laws and their purpose to the extent that they are screaming “Sexual harassment!!” the minute someone uses language they find offensive, brushes against them at the water cooler, or has trouble getting along with an opposite-gender colleague. If a problem contains the tiniest whiff of sex or gender, it’s being labeled sexual harassment.

I put part of the blame on the poorly executed training seminars that focus on the symptoms and not the larger problem of how SH is a form of discrimination.

Plus, we are so focused on sex in our society, the discussion is getting skewed in this direction, when the larger problem remains GENDER DISCRIMINATION on the whole.

Here is the definition of sexual harassment. This definition is from the SHS main site home page, and is adapted from the EEOC definition, which is the U.S. government definition. (When I say “adapted,” this means it was made a bit more comprehensive in it’s description for clarity, though clearly not enough.)

Sexual harassment is unwanted and unwelcome behavior, or attention, of a sexual nature that interferes with your life. Sexual advances, forced sexual activity, statements about sexual orientation or sexuality, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature all constitute sexual harassment. The behavior may be direct or implied. Sexual harassment can affect an individual’s work or school performance, and can create an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment.

Sexual harassment can occur in a number of ways, such as:

* The victim as well as the harasser can be either male, or female. The harasser does not have to be of the opposite sex.
* The harasser can be anyone: the victim’s supervisor, a client, a co-worker, a teacher or professor, a schoolmate, a stranger, even a family member.
* The harasser’s behavior must be unwelcome.
* The victim does not have to be the person directly harassed but can be anyone who finds the behavior offensive and is affected by it.
* While adverse effects on the victim are common, this does not have to be the case for the behavior to be unlawful.
* The harasser may be completely unaware that their behavior is offensive or constitutes sexual harassment, or they may be completely unaware that their actions could be unlawful.

Here are two scenarios that better describe the confusion that many seem to be having:

–A woman is denied a job as a carpenter because the crew boss believes a woman cannot do that job as well as a man.
–A woman is denied a job because she refuses to have sex with the manager doing the hiring.

A lot of people think both are sexual harassment. Only the second one is sexual harassment. Both are forms of gender discrimination.

Here are two more scenarios:

–A man works on an otherwise all female nursing crew at a hospital. He is frequently subjected to pinching, spanks, and remarks about his physique.

–A male nurse is frequently subjected to comments from his female coworkers about how men make inferior nurses. The team leader has stated she only hires male nurses for help with the more physical nursing duties, such as lifting and moving patients.

Only the first describes sexual harassment. Both describe discrimination.

Also, a consensual sexual relationship is not sexual harassment. Affairs can go sour, and what was pleasurable in the beginning can be mistakenly labeled “sexual harassment” by either party if they are angry after the relationship breaks up, or the break up is one sided. Legally, a consensual relationship is SH only if it was stated or implied something bad would happen to you if you didn’t comply with the sexual demands of the other person, such as being told you would be fired, or given an “F.” However, many have argued that there is no such thing as a “consensual relationship” between two people where one of them has a considerable amount of power over the other, such as in a relationship between a subordinate and a supervisor, or between a teacher and student. Truthfully, many have given into the sexual demands of an employer or teacher, without any coercion, because they believed they had no other choice.

Even as I work every day at SHS as a way of bringing some kind of meaning to my own harassment experience and the aftermath, I am concerned about how the discussion on sexual harassment is pushing aside the larger problem of gender discrimination and violence which are at the root of true sexual harassment in the first place. I think our preoccupation with sex in our society is causing us to narrow our view of the problem of gender discrimination, particularly discrimination against women. Sex is just sexier, and sells better, and stories about SH make better sound bytes than stories about gender discrimination, which remains a huge problem.

I think if people had a more comprehensive understanding of the issues, there would be less confusion about exactly what constitutes SH, and maybe a lessening of the problem as a whole. In an age where a sent email containing a racist joke will get the sender fired no matter how high up in the hierarchy he is perched, we continue to not only tolerate, but often encourage, the most degrading and sexist attitudes and behaviors towards women. This is happening not only in the workplace, but in the home, and in schools, and rarely does anything happen to the perpetrators.