One of the most talked-about issues of the past few years has been the issue of sexual harassment, and it supposed prevalence in all workplaces. Pushed to the national spotlight by the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, in which Ms. Hill accused her bossJustice Thomas of sexual harassment, it has become popular belief that sexual harassment occurs in all workplaces and that the vast majority of female office -workers have been sexually harassed. Feminist groups have taken in upon themselves to interject in many offices, leading sensitivity training sessions on sexual harassment, and promoting the cause of those who charge others with sexual harassment.
Despite the claims of feminist groups about merely educating and “sensitizing” people on sexual harassment, the new state guidelines have only succeeded in trivializing the issue, and are actually very detrimental to powerful women. According to a pamphlet by the California Department of Fair Employment andHousing, one of the legally defined situations of sexual harassment involves such verbal conduct as “making or using derogatory comments, epithets, slurs, and jokes. ” While such examples of speech may be considered offensive or crude behavior, it is not the role of the federal, state, or county government to legislate what people can say, and where they can say these things. By adopting verbal comments as part of the state guidelines on sexual harassment, the state of California is actually encouraging stifling free speech,which should be considered unconstitutional. If a woman walks in on a conversation between co-workers in an office, in which sexual jokes and lewd comments are featured,this does not constitute sexual harassment. Katie Roiphe, author of The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism, states it best when she proclaims that “feminists.
. . seem to have forgotten childhood’s words of wisdom: sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me” (101). If a woman or man finds particular speech, jokes, or comments offensive, they should speak up, and voice their opposition, instead of crying harassment and calling their lawyer. As renegade feminist professor and society critic Camille Paglia proclaimed, in her book Vamps and Tramps, “If someone offends you by speech you must learn to defend yourself by speech. .
. and not beg for outside help to curtail your opponent’s free movement” (51). “Sexual Harassment is Forbidden by Law” continues its definition of sexual harassment, by proclaiming that “verbal sexual advances or propositions” are considered sexual harassment in California. While many people may consider this sexual harassment,this should be looked at as more about everyday, normal behavior being considered criminal.
If one finds another person attractive, regardless of position of power or status, a proposition is generally issued for a date, dinner, or cocktails. Asking your secretary out on a date is not sexual harassment, just as it would not be sexual harassment if the secretary asked the boss or co-worker out on a date. It should not be considered sexual harassment unless work-related advancement is denied to whoever refused the date offer. Author Katie Roiphe contends that a proposition for a date is normal, healthy behavior between a man and a woman. “To find wanted sexual attention, you have to give and receive a certain amount of unwanted sexual attention. Clearly, the truth is that if no one was ever allowed to risk offering unsolicited sexual attention, we would all be solitary creatures” (Roiphe 87).
None of us would exist if no one ever risked unwanted sexual advances. The criminalization of innocent date propositions is another example of the trivialization of sexual harassment. By focusing on this type of proposition as typical of sexual harassment, feminists are demonstrating that their objective is not stamping out sexual harassment, but stamping out innocent heterosexual behavior. One final example of the extreme nature of the sexual harassment guidelines is its characterization of such visual conduct as “leering, making sexual gestures, displaying of sexually suggestive objects or pictures, cartoons or posters” as sexual harassment. It astounds me that anyone could support such a Stalinesque proposal.
The banning of sexually suggestive objects or posters is a clear violation of our constitutional rights of freedom of speech and expression. As Camille Paglia once wrote, “we can never fully legislate the human psyche” (Vamps and Tramps, 47). Who is to determine what constitutes leering? This is, as Katie Roiphe wrote, “an ominous, not to mention difficult,prospect” (91). Our courts will be even more inundated with frivolous claims of sexual harassment, charging some man walking down the hall with harassment because “hestared at her, or “undressed her with his eyes. ” Imagine what such threats will do the supposed team office environment.
Instead of concentrating on producing the best product possible, or in the best customer service, our offices will be focusing on monitoring who watches what or whom, when, and how. If leering were a crime, then all of us would probably be in jail, charged with sexual harassment. As to the banning of sexually suggestive posters or objects in the office, it astounds me that anyone would feel harassed by some little sexual toy on someone’s desk, or a pin-up photo on the locker room door.
The last time I checked, the women who are complaining about such pin-up photos or sexual toys cannot legally be prevented from putting up their own pin-ups or sexual toys. Apart from that, this part of the sexual harassment guidelines will lead to much absurdity and trouble, such as female students “feeling sexually harassed by a graduate student bikini-clad wife” (Paglia 50). While women who are really being harassed see no action on their case, the women who are supposedly harassed by an asexually explicit picture of a wife or girlfriend see immediate action. This is another example of the absurdity and ill feelings that such guidelines will bring to the office environment.
Many other issues related to sexual harassment demonstrate the extremes and absurdities that advocates of the new sexual harassment guidelines are willing to advance,such as the wide use of sensitivity training in many offices, corporations, and agencies. Sensitivity training, which emerged as a widely used technique out of the ClarenceThomas-Anita Hill case, supposedly sensitizes men to the plight women face by sexual harassment. Yet, instead of legitimate education, sensitivity training “becomes a way of seeing the world, rather than a way of targeting specific contemptible behaviors” (Roiphe100).
Sensitivity training often includes role-playing exercises, such as that in the FAAexercise, in which men were “pressured to walk through a line of female controllers who fondled their private parts and rated their sexual attributes” (“Men Sue FAA,” A12). Christina Hoff -Sommers, author of the best-selling book, Who Stole Feminism, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying that “most men and women in a workplace environment can usually agree on core behavior they view as unacceptable. . . but some(sensitivity) trainers ‘take the most thin-skinned, chronically offended person in a group as the norm'” (Olson A13).
How does this type of indoctrination help to sensitize men or condemn sexually harassing behavior? By choosing “a thin-skinned person” or the”average man” as a typical harasser, the feminists running these sensitivity training programs are merely relaying stereotypes and propaganda to their predominantly male audiences, not realistic examples or helpful information. Instead of having a healthy dialogue on what constitutes sexual harassment, or each person’s perception of harassment, these sensitivity training programs often result in an “intolerance of diversity of points of view,” leaving the audience not really “want(ing) to object” (Olson A13). In not allowing an open debate on sexual harassment, feminists are merely just relaying their view own, broadly defined of sexual harassment, regardless of reality. An open debate on sexual harassment in these sessions would be healthy, since all points of view would be welcome, and all would get a better understanding of the issues and feelings.
Thus, open debate would actually sensitize people to the plight of victims of sexual harassment. All of us would agree that harassment is horrid and must be condemned and halted. Giving a feminist a bully pulpit to sprout stereotypes about harassers, subjecting their students to offensive language, situations and examples, does not do anything to educate about harassment, and actually introduces more tension, and lack of cohesion in the office environment. Another issue related to sexual harassment is the view that women are so powerless that they cannot withstand the advances of even subordinates without legal action.
Anita Hill, the darling of the feminist-sexual harassment movement of the early1990’s, proclaimed in a speech that “women who report harassment often blame themselves, a factor she attributes (s) to ‘powerlessness'” (Decker B6). This statement seems extremely degrading to women to assume that they are so weak and powerless that they cannot even reject innocent advances from their students, co-workers, or bosses. Camille Paglia put it best, when she stated that “women are being returned to their old status of delicate flowers who must be protected from assault by male lechers. . . (and, thus)it is anti-feminist to ask for special treatment for women” (Sex, Art., 47). Women have made historical advances over the past twenty-five years, requiring them to have strong character, will power, and great courage.
For the feminist movement, which has been the supposed champion of the advancement of all women, to proclaim that women are so delicate and weak that they need special protection to repel these innocent advances seems to go against everything the feminist movement has stood for. Great faith must be placed in working women that they are strong and tough enough to repel date or sexual propositions from their co-workers or students. Aside from that, women do have a”responsibility to define what (they) will and will not tolerate” (Sex, Art. . . , 47).
If the person who proposes is not given a clear signal that this behavior is unacceptable, unwanted, or undesirable, how is that person to know to halt the behavior’sexual harassment is widely viewed by many feminists as a national crisis, in which a majority of women have been supposedly been sexually harassed. Yet, the feminist statisticians on sexual harassment report widely conflicting views of the prevalence of sexual harassment. The New York Times reported that “40 to 70 percent of working women have experienced some form of sexual harassment,. . .
but only 50 suits were filed in the fiscal year 1996” (Lewin, A18). Katie Roiphe writes of “88 percent of Princeton’s female students experiencing some form of sexual harassment. . . (yet)Catherine MacKinnon (states) that ‘only 7.
8% of women in the United States are not sexually assaulted or harassed in their lifetimes” (99-100). The wide variety in statistics proves that feminists view what most consider innocent, everyday behavior as sexual harassment, even when consent is involved. If you consider leering, or lewd verbal comments as elements of sexual harassment, then most of us have probably been sexually harassed at one point in our lifetime. Catherine MacKinnon has stated that “feminism stresses the indistinguishability of prostitution, marriage, and sexual harassment” (Brock385).
Considering this statement, it’s easy to see how many leading feminists can come up with the view that over eighty percent of women in this nation have been sexually harassed. Women leading normal lives, who tolerate or participate in telling lewd jokes or sexual conversations are considered to be sexually harassed, according to people like Ms. MacKinnon. It would be interesting to see what Ms. MacKinnon would do when someone actually is assaulted, raped, or denied advancement as a result of sexual matters.
That person would probably be ignored. Those in favor of the new sexual harassment guidelines, are creating an office environment that is much more hostile to men than women, and may actually be encouraging “reverse sexual harassment. ” Feminists always consider men potential oppressors, and that given a chance, men will always sexually harass a woman, according to feminist definitions of sexual harassment. As a result, men are afraid to speak up in the office, or disagree with any woman, for fear of being labeled a sexual harasser. NationalReview best described the current situation the new sexual harassment guidelines have imposed on many offices.
“Men are doubly penalized by the current alarm about sexual harassment. On the one hand, they are weakened to any office encounter with a woman because she always holds the harassment trump card. On the other hand, the current interpretation of harassment law gives women license to say and do things in the workplace to which men cannot respond in kind. There is an open hostility toward men in many workplaces, and no one is rushing to document or change it (59). “It sounds as if these new sexual harassment guidelines are encouraging reverse harassment on the part of women against men. Where is the call for sensitivity training of women? Where are the calls for legislation outlawing looking at men, or saying anything provocative or unsolicited to them? This is clearly an example of a movement that has gotten out of hand into an anti-male frenzy, ignoring any evidence contrary to their position.
The movement for new guidelines on sexual harassment is detrimental to office cohesion, degrades the advancement of women, assuming their lack of power. Leaders of this movement assume that all males are potential harassers and that they will harass innocent females given a chance, according to their definitions. Instead of legislating unconstitutional measures that stifle free speech and free expression, feminist leaders should encourage an open forum on sexual harassment in many offices, which is the only true way for all to gain an understanding of the issue at hand, and truly become sensitized. Works Cited1. Brock, David.
- The Real Anita Hill. New York: The Free Press, 1993. 2. California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.
- “Sexual Harassment isForbidden By Law. ” Pamphlet, Dec. 1998. 3.
- Decker, Cathleen. “‘We Believe You,’ 900 Women Tell Anita Hill at Convention. ” LosAngeles Times 16 Nov. 1991: B6. 4.
- Lewin, Tamar. “A Case Study of Sexual Harassment. ” New York Times 11 Nov. 1997:A18. 5.
- Luthar, Harsh and Anthony Townsend. “Man Handling. ” National Review 6 Feb. 1997:58-60. 6. “Men Sue FAA, Say They Were Groped.
- ” Los Angeles Times 8 Sep. 1994: A12. 7. Olson, Walter. “When Sensitivity Training Is the Law.
- ” Wall Street Journal 20 Jan. 1993: A13. 8. Paglia, Camille.
- Sex, Art, and American Culture. New York: Vintage Press, 1992. 9. Paglia, Camille.
- Vamps and Tramps. New York: Vintage Press, 1994. 10. Roiphe, Katie. The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism.
- Boston: Little, Brown ;Company, 1993.
