Article: 16887 of alt.activism
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Path: parc!xerox!bader
From: bader@Xerox.com (Lars Bader)
Subject: Re: What is sexual harassment? (was Re: ex
Message-ID: <1991Oct13.042839.15285@parc.xerox.com>
Sender: news@parc.xerox.com
Reply-To: bader@Xerox.com (Lars Bader)
Organization: Xerox PARC
References: <1991Oct9.163051.3060@verifone.com> <27751@gdc.com>
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 91 21:28:39 PDT

In article <27751@gdc.com>, foster@gdc.com (Sharon Foster) writes:
> In article <1991Oct9.163051.3060@verifone.com>, kent_f1@verifone.com writes:
> > What is sexual harassment?  Is it casual, albeit slightly offcolor jokes?
> > Is it asking a co-worker out on a date?  Is it friendly kidding of someone of
> > the opposite sex?  Obviously, what constitutes sexual harassment is subject to
> > some debate.
> > 
> > All I've got to say is that Ms. Hill had better come up with something alot
> > more serious than the types of things listed above.  If not, I think that she
> > will have done tremendous harm to the cause of equal rights for women.  It is
> > certainly possibe to get so petty and nit-picky as to completely loose
> > credibility.  
> > 
> > As if the reputation of one man isn't enough, there's a tremendous amount at
> > stake when the hearings begin on Friday.  
> > 
> 
> According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the test of whether unwanted
> behavior constitutes harassment is no longer the opinion of a
> "reasonable man", or even a "reasonable person", but the opinion
> of a "reasonable woman".

The Supreme Court may have made a bad judgement.  I doubt you agree with
some of its other judgements; why rely on it in this case?  Perhaps that
judgement will change in the future.

> 
> I'm a reasonable woman.  If *Professor* Hill's account is accurate,
> I call it sexual harassment.

And I would too - after examining it closely, her testimony does seem
credible.  And I'm a man.  But I object to this "reasonable woman" notion.
How would you feel if a businesses were allowed to discriminate against
women if a "reasonable man" thought it made business sense?  Or if white
people could exclude black people from their neighborhoods if a
"reasonable white" thought having black people live there would depress
property values? Doesn't it grossly violate intergroup equity in a
proceeding between people of different groups, to say that the viewpoint
of the "typical" or allegedly "reasonable" member of one group is superior?

The way harassment has been defined is grossly unfair to men.  In our
society, the man is typically supposed to make the advances.  Until he
does so, he has no way of knowing what the woman's reaction will be.  She
can simply declare him guilty if she wants, for whatever reasons she may
have.

What "reasonable woman" are we talking about?  American women have very
different attitudes toward sexual interaction than French women.  In
America, there are continual complaints about ogling.  But the French Prime
Minister, Edith Cresson, complained that English, American, and German men
wouldn't look at her.  The truth is it will be used to institutionalize
and empower a certain form of monocultural American prudishness.

> 
> -- 
> /* Sharon Foster....First Generation Trekkie  *      foster@gdc.com        */
> /*   These are my own Biased Personal Opinions (tm) and no one else's!     */
> /* "The safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies */
> /*  involving not very nice people."           - Justice Felix Frankfurter */

And the violations of liberty have often occurred under the guise of satisfying
some aggrieved groups's authoritarian claims.

-- 

Lars E. Bader     
Email: leb@athena.mit.edu, bader@parc.xerox.com  
Disclaimer: My views may not reflect those of MIT,
Xerox, or any other organization (and probably don't).