Sexual Harassment & Men
By contrast, Europe espouses a far more laissez-faire attitude. Ask any American girl with blonde hair what her tour of Italy was like and she'll tell you how it was wrought with catcalls, lewd gestures and more grabbing than a rave. Across the pond, aggressive wooing (if you can call it that) is culturally acceptable; sexual harassment cases almost non-existent.
Such a dichotomy can be as confusing to the perennial play..boy as it is to the guy with only a modest number of at-bats. Not that I'm making excuses. If the advance is unwanted, there are no excuses if it persists. But what if it's welcome? When you consider the number of relationships that take root around water coolers, fear of being fingered for sexual harassment could become a hindrance to budding romance.
it's her callWomen alone decide what constitutes sexual harassment. If an advance evokes flattery, it's not sexual harassment. If it induces nausea, it is. Here the stench of hypocrisy is overpowering. All things being equal, if a woman is empowered in a social setting to invite further interaction, or stop a guy dead in his tracks, isn't she equally empowered between nine and five?
The problem is all things were not equal when the notion of sexual harassment came to the fore. By definition, sexual harassment is something that occurs between two coworkers of unequal hierarchal stature, but not every case is as black and white as the one that involved Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, in which the prominent Supreme Court Justice made repeated advances toward his disinterested underling. As women amass more upward mobility in the workplace, an encounter of the sexual harassment kind is just as apt to occur between coworkers on even ground.
Men need to temper their interest level with restraint. If this were a sexual harassment how-not-to guide, I'd tell you to make moves during happy hour, or be absolutely sure that the woman you decide to step to has demonstrated the most blatant and irrefutable of interest. "Sexual Harasser" is one label that won't help you climb the corporate rungs.
the bottom lineAs with most offshoots of political correctness, the concept of sexual harassment has been entirely blown out of proportion. So long as the baby games come to a grinding halt upon a woman's request, there is no reason for frivolous lawsuits.
The lingering fear of a sexual harassment witch-hunt should be enough to keep a grabby boss at bay, but it may also prevent two consenting adults from being two consenting adults. If no means no, shouldn't yes mean just that?