Define sexual harassment for me again…

4 Responses to Define sexual harassment for me again…

1. Frank | March 5, 2009 at 8:22 pm |

   I’ll bite.

   You may have felt harassed, but this fails the sexual harassment test.

   Long answer:

   “Sexual harassment” has a legal definition, like intoxication. Drunk is a social concept. One can be drunk without being intoxicated. Some persons may be intoxicated–fail the breath test–without appearing or acting drunk.

   This incident seems to fall under the portion of the definition in bold. From the EEOC:

   Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.

   Sexual harassment can occur in a variety of circumstances, including but not limited to the following:
   The victim as well as the harasser may be a woman or a man. The victim does not have to be of the opposite sex.
   The harasser can be the victim’s supervisor, an agent of the employer, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or a non-employee.
   The victim does not have to be the person harassed but could be anyone affected by the offensive conduct.
   Unlawful sexual harassment may occur without economic injury to or discharge of the victim.
   The harasser’s conduct must be unwelcome.

   An overt request for, say, sexual favors in which one’s employment is clearly being used as a threat for compliance elevates immediately to the level of illegality.

   Comments, lewd gestures, and the like not involving explicit or implicit requests for sexual favors must be repeated to the extent that they, in the short hand of EEO investigators, “create a climate.”

   Short answer.

   The guy’s a jerk. He’s not a harasser. Yet.

   (I used to teach classes in this stuff telling supervisors how to keep themselves out of trouble.)

2. phillygrrl | March 6, 2009 at 6:41 am |

   You’re an invaluable resource, Frank. Thanks! I feel the same way. Sad thing is, I really like the guy. I tend to think he’s more ignorant than deliberately untoward. Then I found out about his two other sexual harassment suits….

   His professional etiquette also includes forgetting quotes and orders. Which is worse than obnoxious comments. As my coworker put it “Don’t sexually harass people and be bad at what you do.”

3. -W- | March 6, 2009 at 2:30 pm |

   sexual harassment laws have gone to the absurd if not imbecilic. I mean I agree they warrant some, but people take it too far. Let’s look at what the word “the” means in the legal sense so we can interpret it for this law suit, after coffee we’ll define what “a” means…

4. Doug | March 7, 2009 at 11:18 am |

   I’m not certain I understand what happened? What does “the original quote” reference? What was the sequence of whatever it was that happened? Was there another post regarding this matter?f

   Nor am I certain, Frank – and I say this with all due respect to your knowledge of the topic – how you can come to the conclusion that, “The guy’s…not a harasser,” without the qualifier, “Based on the information you (Phillgurrl) provided in your post”? Wouldn’t you have to know more about the incident to make that determination?

   I’m guessing, -W-, you’re a guy. Yes? No?

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