Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.censorship From: grady@netcom.com (Grady Ward) Subject: Re: USA Today jumps on a.b.p.e Message-ID: Followup-To: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.censorship Organization: Moby lexicons References: Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 22:59:09 GMT Lines: 36 Wes Morgan (morgan@engr.uky.edu) wrote: : Here's a question for you -- when does a discussion of a controversial : issue, or even a flamefest, cross the line into sexual harassment? If Unless the (crazy) law has changed, harassment is defined by the recipient if a 'protected' (Title VIII?) minority. So if you comment that on my beautiful outfit today I could legitimately complain about your harassment. For example, a leader of our gay rights group at work had published in the workplace newsletter a Q&A article about gay issues. One of the ideas was to the effect that 'sexual preference' was of no concern to the employer. I happen to agree, but made the mistake of asking him whether the rubric of sexual preference included behaviors such as pedophilia or bestiality. He looked puzzled but didn't answer. Next day the human resources group called me in for an official reprimand for 'sexually harassing' the employee. The human resources person told me that the phrase 'sexual preference' meant strictly 'gay or lesbian' and no other sexual practice. By implying other sexual behaviors could be called a 'sexual preference', the HR person argued, I was degrading this gay's lifestyle and harassing him in the workplace. After asking how I could know the boundary line between legitimate comment and discussion and harassment, the HR person told me that recent precedent made any unwelcome comments harassing. And that the protected minority defines what is unwelcome. And this Tartuffian drama was at Apple Computer -- one of the presumably more enlightened hi-tech employers. -- grady@netcom.com voice/fax (707) 826-7715 compiler of Moby lexical databases, including Moby Part-of-Speech, second edition: 230,000 entries, priority marked finger grady@netcom.com or e-mail for more information. Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,alt.censorship,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk From: greeny@top.cis.syr.edu (J. S. Greenfield) Subject: Re: USA Today jumps on a.b.p.e Message-ID: <1993Aug9.223341.16296@newstand.syr.edu> Organization: Syracuse University, CIS Dept. References: <16C25E06E.C96@vm.urz.uni-heidelberg.de> Date: Mon, 9 Aug 93 22:33:41 EDT Lines: 82 In article morgan@engr.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes: > >Here's a question for you -- when does a discussion of a controversial >issue, or even a flamefest, cross the line into sexual harassment? If >one's comments take a personal tone (as in, "yeah, you'd probably like >XXXXXXX"), I think that most of us would consider that "over the line." Perhaps I don't understand the situation your trying to describe. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a context in which a statement like "yeah, you'd probably like XXXXXX" during a net.discussion would constitute harassment. >However, what about generic comments? What about the fellow who makes >generalizations about women? What about women who make generalizations >about men? Can we apply the highly individual nature of the harassment >laws/regulations to generalizations and broad statements? Generally, no. Here's an excerpt from Meritor v. Vinson (1986): ...not all workplace conduct that may be described as "harassment" affects a "term, condition, or privilege" of employment within the meaning of Title VII. [cite omitted] ("mere utterance of an ethnic or racial epithet which engenders offensive feelings in an employee" would not affect the conditions of employment to sufficiently significant degree to violate Title VII); [cite omitted] For sexual harassment to be actionable, it must be sufficiently severe or pervasive "to alter the conditions of [the victim's] employment and create an abusive working environment." I believe the last sentence is the key here. Unfortunately, many adminstrators (and others) clearly do not understand this point--which is why there is such confusion over the question of what constitutes "sexual harassment." Many administrators seem to work under the *mistaken* impression that virtually anything that is both "offensive" (in anybody's eyes) and "sexual" even vaguely so) is potentially a form of "sexual harassment" in the eyes of the law. This is clearly incorrect. >If I say something like "you can't understand impotence, since you're a >woman," have I sexually harassed anyone? As an aside, I'll point out >that I've been told that my testosterone prevents me from understanding >PMS, pregnancy, motherhood and the abortion issue...... You can answer this question yourself. Is this statement "sufficiently severe or pervasive to...create and abusive...environment?" (Note: I'm not even bothering to address the workplace issues involved. The illegality of sexual harassment is based upon the prohibitions against gender-based discrimination in the workplace environment embodied by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As far as I know, there has been no major precedent that expands the "jurisdiction" of sexual harassment to environments other than the "workplace" and the action of an employer (or her agent) against an employee.) >I think that we need to tread rather lightly when making bold statements >like "more than 75 women said that they were harassed in a computer dis- >cussion group." There's a line between offense and harassment; let's not >blur that line further. Indeed. Great harm has been done to freedom, in general, and to the cause of fighting *genuine* sexual harassment by the wild use of these two terms as interchangeable. Unfortunately, many ignorant administrators would rather cover their butts than take the time to learn the facts about what constitutes actual "harassment," attempt to apply that standard, and then handle the problem of finding that *no* action (at least, no formal action) is the appropriate response to a given complaint. -- J. S. Greenfield greeny@top.cis.syr.edu (I like to put 'greeny' here, but my d*mn system wants a *real* name!) "What's the difference between an orange?"