Sexual harassment 101

To understand what sexual harassment is, you first have to know what it isn’t. It isn’t flirting, it isn’t complimenting someone on how they look or the clothes they have on or their physical attractiveness. Those kinds of things happen every day in practically every business and school in America and have been happening for as long as they’ve been in existence. Sexual harassment is much more sinister than the above examples. It’s doing or saying something sexual to another person who is offended or even harmed by what’s been done or said. Using your superior position to coerce someone into having sex is sexual harassment. Promising a promotion, a raise or a better grade in exchange for sexual favors (quid pro quo) is sexual harassment. Forcing yourself sexually on someone goes beyond sexual harassment and is defined as sexual assault. These are things people aren’t supposed to do and they’ve never been okay to do.

We are at a watershed moment in American history where women are finally feeling empowered enough to claim victimhood in this regard and name the people who have been sexually harassing them. For the past couple of weeks new, powerful, and prestigious names of Hollywood stars, politicians, and television icons have been named. I thought at first that some of these accusers had to be lying out of either vindictiveness or a desire to improve their financial standing but almost all the men have admitted guilt when identified. The only two dragging their feet are politicians; John Conyers, a Democrat representative in Congress and Roy Moore, a Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Alabama. In the case of these two, Conyers admitted guilt and resigned his committee post immediately but is hesitant to resign from Congress. So that leaves Moore as the only abuser named who hasn’t admitted guilt. And if the complaints about him are true, his acts were the most egregious because they involved him seducing girls as young as 14 when he was in his 30s.

The sheer number of women who have come forward recently suggests this is a huge problem that has been occurring beneath the radar for years and most likely, decades. Men have always been in positions of power and prestige and women have always been their underlings. Because of that discrepancy, men have taken advantage of women against their will simply because they thought they could. But the rules of conduct have changed.

Men must be aware today of the new standard which defines sexual harassment as ANY behavior that the victim deems inappropriate or not wanted. And even though the rules are different now, they shouldn’t pose much of a problem for most men. I think most of us can tell whether someone is interested in us or not. If they don’t seem to be, there’s little if anything we can do to change that person’s mind so we should move on to someone else. Very few people, men OR women, are universally attractive to everyone. We all have our likes and our dislikes and a picture in our minds of the perfect person for us. There’s obviously more than one person who will fill that bill so if we’re rejected by one, we simply look for another.

If we don’t, ignoring rejection is asking for serious consequences in return.