The subject: Sexual Harrassment -- Whadya think about this?

[Morgana LaFey]

You just gotta read it to believe it.

Harassment or Bullying? Apparently, It Depends on the Target's Gender
Marty Klein, Ph.D.
http://www.sexed.org/archive/article04.html


Thoughts? Curses and epithets?

[Warpy]

1. Well, put this one in the "Well, DUH" file

"But just like not all firings of Blacks are racist, and not all membership rejections of Jews are anti-Semitic, not all unpleasant male-female interchanges are about sex. Many are about power. In fact, many that look like they're about sex are really about power. But our culture is so eager to condemn sexuality that we sometimes highlight the gender aspects of situations, and the assumed sexual aspects of gender situations."

Sounds like the definition of sexual harassment by a superior to me, a power game played using sex as the weapon.

[TheWraith]

2. Uh, the whole idea of the piece is that gender isn't the weapon.

It's that gender is irrelevant to many of these incidents.

[MADem]

3. What caught my eye....

...efforts designed to protect people from others' sexual energy feels misplaced, even dangerous to me....

PROTECT people?? DANGEROUS? I mean, really--the only protection people need in the workplace is from the UNWANTED variety of "sexual energy"--often as not, if two people are strongly attracted to one another, they'll sneak around even if there are workplace restrictions on fraternization.

Also, I really don't think, as this piece concludes, that "sexual energy" in and of itself is "frightening" unless it's completely unwelcome--if not a flat-out sexual assault or a threat of consequences if favors are not provided, something like that hideous supervisor (of either gender) leering at one in unwanted fashion, placing hands where they don't belong, or violating that "personal space" around an individual in deliberate and repeated fashion in an effort to secure a liaison.

I dunno...I probably need to re-read this a few times, but my first fast glance leads me to believe this guy is irritated because he can't hustle the ladies in his workplace. Am I way off base in that assessment?

[Morgana LaFey]

6. I think you're right on target

personally, altho I'm not sure he has any actual "workplace" co-workers so it may not be LITERALLY where he's coming from.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

10. I think you're almost certainly wrong, to be honest.

"men who make repeated unwanted passes at their female colleagues typically don't feel powerful. They may be hostile, pathetic, or plain jerks, but they don't usually feel powerful"

Does not, to me, read as though it was written by someone who wishes he could indulge in such behaviour himself, and nor does the rest of the article. I think he's probably wrong, but I don't think the article gives any evidence to cast aspersions on his motivation.



"Those laws and changes will benefit everyone if they're about the destructive use of power. They will undermine everyone if ultimately they're simply about sex and gender."

This, I think, is where he goes wrong. I don't think laws against sexual harrassement are about "sex and gender" *or* "the destructive use of power", I think they're about sexual harrassement. My impression is that people tend to overgeneralise behavioural trends: neither sexual harrassement nor hazing are expressions of more general drives that will go elsewhere if thwarted; they're specific behaviours that some people indulge in. I think that "the destructive use of power" is too nebulous a concept for legislation to be much use against, but that there is a specific and relatively but decreasingly widespread behavioural pattern involving intentionally-unwelcome sexual overtures that turns up often enough to justify specific legislation against it.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

4. In Texas, same sex sexual harassment is recognized in case law

[MADem]

8. The SUPREMES ruled on it--unanimously (see Sundowner case, below) NT

[mongo]

5. I think this paragraph sums it up nicely

We're clearly looking at the confluence of our discomfort with sex and our desire to protect women--that is, to not treat them as equals. It may look like progressive consciousness, but as long as it's really about de-sexing the culture and insisting that women need special protection, it's a step backwards.

[MADem]

7. Huh?? Like women can't sexually harass people? Didn't you see that Demi Moore film?

This is no longer the "protect the little woman" issue--Geez, I am no youngster, but even I realize that sort of attitude is completely "20th Century," as the kids say. In fact, the offense can run the gamut in terms of age/gender. Examples:
http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/abuse/a/maleharass404.htm
Males, Adolescents Are Increasingly Victims of Sexual Harassment

http://www.feminista.com/archives/v1n7/stoltenberg.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/96-568.ZS.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncale_v._Sundowner_Offshore_Services
Male-on-Male sexual harassment (Oncale v. Sundowner)

http://www.amazon.com/Woman-Woman-Sexual-Violence-Northeastern/dp/1555535275
Women to women violence/harassment

And my personal favorite, to me the absolute winner in the BushCo sexual harassment AND hypocrisy sweepstakes, Armstrong Williams himself! Covertly on the government payroll, lying about it, AND trying to boink the help!!! Talk about a trifecta!!!
http://home.earthlink.net/~zkkatz/page88.html

[noamnety]

9. Not just an idiot, but an uninformed idiot.

Bloodwinging is not just a marine custom, and it wasn't a huge revelation in the 90's, I had friends who opted to go that route in the 80's, by choice, in the army.

Secondly, the army has been showing sexual harrassment tapes for decades now that acknowledge harrasment between all combinations of gender.

Next up, most schools DO have anti-bullying laws, just as fraternities are increasingly having anti-hazing laws.

He looks like an idiot when he's spouting off on crap he obviously doesn't know anything about.