sexual harrassment in the workplace
- Thread starter alice144
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I agree with you that you have to take care of yourself, but people also have to be held accountable for their actions. Not holding people accountable perpetuates the behavior.
If management or HR doesn't take it seriously, then go above their heads. If they don't take it seriously, consider finding an attorney who will take your case on as one of workplace discrimination.. because there is no good reason why a manager or HR person should not take such a report seriously and try to investigate it.
I mean no offense when I say this, but all of that comes off extremely idealistic.
If you have a clear cut case, and the harrassment is severe enough in which you could go to HR...by all means, sort it out! I'm not against it.
Life isn't fair. Yes, people ought to be held accountable for their actions, but that doesn't always work out. Justice is a lovely little notion, but that doesn't always work out.
Like I said, if there's something you can do about it, and you can actually handle everything that will come along with that, then go for it. But sometimes situations are complicated and things don't work out (Which happens quite a bit, you know). So what I'm saying is, what's even more important than runnin off to have someone fix it is to be able to stand up for yourself and even be capable to take care of a situation yourself.
Maybe it's not ideal to you, but sadly, life doesn't work that way. ~Plenty of people have mentioned reporting a person to HR and suing...I'm just giving another angle on it.
[video=youtube;RCPOowojiC0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCPOowojiC0[/video]
IRT OP (NOTE: I am talking to a metaphorical or non-existent 'you'. Not anyone in specific)
Essentially, one has control over his or her own actions. He/she can fight to overcome the harrassment of others. Learn to ignore it. Or leave. Whether or not society should be a perfect happy utopia is irrelevant, because it is not. Does that mean we should just lay down our dignities and accept the stupidities in the world? Nope. Pick your battles. Regardless of your choice, that does not make you a good or bad person in anyway. Only a person that has made a choice that was the best for him or her. Should that person have had to go through that ordeal to begin with? That is irrelevant. If it wasn't sexual harassment, it would be one of 10 million other injustices in the world. Bad shit is always going to happen. You can let it rule you or you can rule it. Or tell it to go fuck itself and move on. I do not mean to invalidate anyone's suffering. If you feel wronged, I understand how you feel. If you couldn't give a shit, I also understand how you feel. I am always the first to stand and fight when a female colleague confesses to me that she has been sexually harassed.
If I may talk about this objectively for a moment. If you were at a workplace where you were sexually harassed, even if you fought it and 'won', why would you stay? It would feel very uncomfortable, if it were me in that place. If it were me being sexually harassed by the common workplace legal definition of sexual harassment (which Stormy1 pointed out) I would leave. I would still tell mine and maybe even the harasser's manager, and HR, about what happened. But I would still leave. Suffering the discomfort of being harassed is already bad enough, but then the awkwardness that would ensue after reporting it, is even worse. It always depends though. If it was just one guy doing it, I would fight it and stay. But if it were a group of guys, I'd rather move on.
Now don't get me wrong. Again, if you want to stand and fight, I would be 110% behind that decision. I am also of the belief that where there is a will, there is a way. I am willing to move mountains to make things happen than I want to happen. Ultimately, however, I would rather go work at a place where I am accepted and respected amongst my colleagues. It's not about being chased out, or standing up for myself or for my sex, it is about making a decision that is best for me and being able to live with the consequences of my actions (or inactions). In this knowing, I am empowered and free.
NOTE: I apologize for the horrible grammar. I am too tired to care to figure it out and fix it.
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Given your experience, it makes sense that you would find it idealistic.
I think standing up for yourself in this situation includes reporting it to the proper channels so the offender has to answer for their actions in a way that might cost them their job or career.
Otherwise, they just get the message that they can keep doing this stuff with no serious repercussions.
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See now the way I would handle this as a woman is I would go to the assholes house in the middle of the night and pop all his cars tires. Do it enough times he will eventually get fired form the job for chronic lateness.
I've never minded cat calls and offensive flirting. If you see how men treat each other, and consider themselves all friends you just have to kinda go with the flow. Men are crude and most are still animals. 
Can't expect too much from them now can we?
Seriously, if someone crosses a boundary you have to tell them. Just say, "please don't say xzy to or about me anymore and please don't hit me with objects in play or touch me like that. I know you probably don't mean it in a bad way, but its making me uncomfortable. Please stop. I'm more sensitive than others and don't know how to grow thicker skin, unless you'd like to tell me HOW to go about growing thicker skin..." That has always worked for me. No one knows how to tell you to grow thicker skin. Lol.
Or you could take Billy's crazy approach. whatever. Lol.
Can't expect too much from them now can we? Seriously, if someone crosses a boundary you have to tell them. Just say, "please don't say xzy to or about me anymore and please don't hit me with objects in play or touch me like that. I know you probably don't mean it in a bad way, but its making me uncomfortable. Please stop. I'm more sensitive than others and don't know how to grow thicker skin, unless you'd like to tell me HOW to go about growing thicker skin..." That has always worked for me. No one knows how to tell you to grow thicker skin. Lol.
Or you could take Billy's crazy approach. whatever. Lol.
Wars have been ended in this way.
Please U.S. solder, quit bringing me near to death by waterboarding me.
I've never minded cat calls and offensive flirting. If you see how men treat each other, and consider themselves all friends you just have to kinda go with the flow. Men are crude and most are still animals.
Seriously, if someone crosses a boundary you have to tell them. Just say, "please don't say xzy to or about me anymore and please don't hit me with objects in play or touch me like that. I know you probably don't mean it in a bad way, but its making me uncomfortable. Please stop. I'm more sensitive than others and don't know how to grow thicker skin, unless you'd like to tell me HOW to go about growing thicker skin..." That has always worked for me. No one knows how to tell you to grow thicker skin. Lol.
Or you could take Billy's crazy approach. whatever. Lol.
And if you kindly ask your "friend" to stop and they don't?
Back when I said that some women reinforce and perpetuate sexist treatment in our culture, well, this post is a good example of that.
I have a few friends who have ended up in the psych ward for this sort of behavior.
You get screwed either way.
I guess there's a point at which you find you can no longer deal with the situation on your own. I 'dealt with it' as long as I could by any means possible because I needed the job, but eventually I realized that they were never going to stop and were going to just keep carrying it on farther and farther no matter what I did or said. I knew that, reporting it, I would most likely get a severely hostile reaction, would be disbelieved, etc. Reporting changes nothing. But when you have no other options left, it's the best you can do.
How can we say its sexist when a lot of men treat each other the same way? I just roll my eyes. I'm sorry. I mean, I have pretty thin skin, too. I get my feelings hurt easily but can manage myself around some silly behavior.
I've never run into anyone that wouldn't stop when I asked them to. If someone didn't respect my boundaries then that's a sign of a problem; I agree with you.
I had one guy make a sexual comment that did truly offend me. I said "Do not say that shit to me. The other girls might be okay with it, but I am not with that, that's too much." and he apologized and it never happened again. So, I'm just saying what worked for me. I wasn't around a group of guys that were...you know...I was never treated like an object by anyone in the workplace. Maybe I shouldn't have commented in here as I don't have any experience with anything I considered over the line at work.
Yes, true conflict is always always started by people hitting each other "in play"
If someone is throwing stuff at you, then you've got an adult bully. I truly feel sorry for ANYONE that has to deal with an adult bully.
A lot of men make unwanted sexual comments to one another? I think it's a stretch to say it's appropriate because other men do it to one another.
And I'm not even sure it's as common place as you think it is.
But it is interesting that you had to separate yourself from the other women there to your co-worker when telling him that what he was saying was inappropriate..
Do your female co-workers enjoy being treated that way? Do they talk about how much they like it when so and so objectifies them?
I was sexually harassed once upon a time in my teenage years. At that time, I had never had anyone take interest in me romantically. When the harassment started I had no idea what was really happening. At first I was flattered that this person was interested in me, and then over time I started to become uncomfortable because he was trying to guilt and manipulate me into having sex with him. At that time I had no sexual experience and no relationship experience to draw from. I didn't understand that what was happening was wrong. He was the best friend of my sister's boyfriend at the time and he was always at our apartment. I ended up just locking myself in my bedroom whenever he would come around because my anxiety would spike to a serious degree if I knew he was coming by. This went on for a great span of time before I got pissed off and talked to a friend about it who informed me that it was sexual harassment.
When I finally realized that it was "wrong" and I had that validated by someone else, I blocked this guy out of my life. He was hard to get rid of just because of his close ties to mutual friends who I happened to live with. He exhibited other behaviour that got him banned from our apartment either way. I thought that once he was out of the picture that I would recover but I ended up developing a fear of human contact. I didn't want to be touched by anyone for a very long time because I could not trust their intentions and thought that all physical advances had sexual intentions. It took me a few years to get over that.
I did not understand that this was something that could be reported or that I could seek counseling for it because of my inexperience and being so naive. I also didn't have many people to confide in at the time and dealt with it on my own. This was ten years ago and it doesn't affect me any longer.
Perhaps this is just my experience but perhaps some women and men don't really see that the situation they are in is a serious problem until it gets really bad. I don't judge people who don't report it or who do. In my situation, it ended up ending. Being that I deal with truck drivers in my work place who spend days on the road alone I tend to get a lot of commentary that I wouldn't otherwise. In these cases I just don't take it personally and know that after my interaction with them I am probably never going to see them again and let it go. I guess it just depends on the context of the situation.
Additionally, women sexually harass men too and from what I've seen, a lot more often.
When I finally realized that it was "wrong" and I had that validated by someone else, I blocked this guy out of my life. He was hard to get rid of just because of his close ties to mutual friends who I happened to live with. He exhibited other behaviour that got him banned from our apartment either way. I thought that once he was out of the picture that I would recover but I ended up developing a fear of human contact. I didn't want to be touched by anyone for a very long time because I could not trust their intentions and thought that all physical advances had sexual intentions. It took me a few years to get over that.
I did not understand that this was something that could be reported or that I could seek counseling for it because of my inexperience and being so naive. I also didn't have many people to confide in at the time and dealt with it on my own. This was ten years ago and it doesn't affect me any longer.
Perhaps this is just my experience but perhaps some women and men don't really see that the situation they are in is a serious problem until it gets really bad. I don't judge people who don't report it or who do. In my situation, it ended up ending. Being that I deal with truck drivers in my work place who spend days on the road alone I tend to get a lot of commentary that I wouldn't otherwise. In these cases I just don't take it personally and know that after my interaction with them I am probably never going to see them again and let it go. I guess it just depends on the context of the situation.
Additionally, women sexually harass men too and from what I've seen, a lot more often.
Body language and facial expressions were fine. They didn't say anything to me or to them. What am I supposed to do? If none of that is there I don't worry about it. I can usually tell by body language and facial expressions if someone is uncomfortable, but if none of that is there... I can't intuit everyone's feelings?
True story: I was out a couple weeks ago and this woman was being harassed by this very controlling man. He harassed her about what she was wearing underneath her clothes...then when she tried to ignore him, he pulled up a chair and he sat down at her table with her DATE...when she asked him what he was doing, he said he would wait until she was done with her conversation with her date. When I noticed her date was doing nothing I met her eye and mouthed her the question if she knew who he was...she shook her head. So, I walked over there and asked him if he didn't get the hint? She didn't want to talk to him...leave her alone! He looked at me and said he was lonely. I told him too bad. She didn't want to talk to him. He told me I had a lot of hate in my heart...I said "Fuck you. Leave, you controlling piece of shit"
Her date gave me a high five. (wtf)
You could see it written all over her face. She was uncomfortable. She didn't have to say a word.
If a guy was belittling someone, it would be different. Like I said, I've not run into situations at work that crossed any boundaries, if they did telling them worked to stop it. People don't know where the line is if you don't tell them when they're crossing it.
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