A woman from another building at work called me yesterday. I assumed she called because of a problem with one of the four systems I support. That was not the case. She said she only called because “someone” had told her I have a “nice voice” and she wanted to hear it.
Is this another example of the double standard? Is it harassment?
Do I care? Do I have a career in phone sex?
All kidding aside, the real question is, if I called a woman at work only for the purpose of hearing her voice would I be considered a sexual predator and get fired? If so then how is this fair?
It’s only sexual harassment if you feel you are being harassed. Do you object to being used as an object for women’s fulfillment of their sexual fantasies?
Would you object if it were men calling you for the same purpose? If you object to men calling but not women, wouldn’t that mean the person with the double-standards is you?
I have nice handwriting (Thank you Catholic School) and I occasionally and regularly get people who ask for something from me just so they can see their name in my handwriting. Wierd yes, harassment no.
I don’t think she’s ever been called just for that purpose, but my wife is often asked to keep talking so someone can listen to her southern accent. She thinks it’s an amusing request, though a bit strange.
A necessary condition of sexual harassment
is that the behaviour be unwelcome.
The ‘nice voice’ thing is sexual–if you did it to a woman
that is exactly how it would be taken by all concerned.
If the person was your superior the case would be clearer.
If it persists after you tell her to stop, that too.
If you did this to a woman you would be asking
for trouble. This sounds innocent, doing it to
a woman would be fraught with more meaning
in the eyes of whomever she complained to.
In my experience it is very hard
for men to protect themselves against
sexual harassment in the workplace or
in education.
Obviously the definition of SH is very vague,
but there are clear cases and they should be
stopped. Obviously the chief intention of
the laws was to protect women, who had
been the principal targets forever.
But men really have to be careful, given the
vagueness of the idea. If I ask her for a date,
is that harassment? If she says no and I ask
her again a couple of weeks later? This sort
of thing can be really dangerous.
Also worth remembering that a lot of people
you deal with, women and men, are crazy
in ways you haven’t yet perceived.
That’s flirtation. Or maybe you just have a nice voice.
To be harrassment it would have to be a) unwelcome, and b) a power relationship would have to exist between you.
Lots of things that aren’t harrassment are nonetheless banned under individual workplace rules, because its easier to ban flirting than it is to make a rule saying that all flirtation must be welcome and that people should act like adults.
I certainly don’t consider it harassment. I thought it was a nice thing to say. Thank you very much.
I do believe, however that if I were female and the caller was male there would be a lot of crying about the piggish nature of men and so on. Much like Lamby’s thread about the word “gals”.
No such luck. Unwelcome attention of a sexual or gender oriented
nature is sufficient.
Here’s wiki, from the EEOC.
Varied circumstances
Sexual harassment can occur in a variety of circumstances. Often, but not always, the harasser is in a position of power or authority over the victim (due to differences in age, or social, political, educational or employment relationships). Forms of harassment relationships include:
The harasser can be anyone, such as a client, a co-worker, a teacher or professor, a student, a friend, or a stranger.
The victim does not have to be the person directly harassed but can be anyone who finds the behavior offensive and is affected by it.
While adverse effects on the victim are common, this does not have to be the case for the behavior to be unlawful.
The victim can be male or female. The harasser can be male or female.
The harasser does not have to be of the opposite sex.
The harasser may be completely unaware that his or her behavior is offensive or constitutes sexual harassment or may be completely unaware that his or her actions could be unlawful.
(Adapted from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission)[3]
In fairness, I think there are understandable reasons why this sort
of behaviour might feel threatening to a woman that
are less likely to affect the perceptions of men.
An aside: The Buddha didn’t want women in the monastic
order, and this has been held against him by contemporary
feminists. But at the beginning there were no monastaries.
Buddhist monastics wandered, slept by the side of the road,
slept in the forest underneath a tree. The Buddha said:
‘Women are not cut out for the wandering life.’ Consider
what might happen to a woman sleeping beneath a
tree in the forest. Men and women tend to be vulnerable in
different ways.
He did, by the way, relent and let women become monastics,
finally.
There are biological differences between men and women and it ends up making a big difference between what you’d consider harassement from men and harassement from women. You can’t simply compare both an equal way, unless you want to kid yourself.
I think the reality is that men have to be much more careful with how they behave with women than the other way around, and that’s the final truth, whatever we might wish for.
Right. And there is a history of women being harassed
in the workplace, not the other way around. Yet
women can do vicious things to men and it is very
hard to get this thing clear enough to know what’s
what.
For instance, under the EEOC guidelines, if I
ask my colleague out for a date, I produce a rose
and give it to her, and she gladly
accepts, another woman, sitting at our table
in the cafeteria,
who feels that I am creating a work environment
that she finds offensive to women, can charge
me with sexual harassment.
I may win, but winning something like that is like winning a nuclear war.
It’s a sad world where it can be illegal to let someone know you like them. No wonder there are so many sad lonely people around the world. I would probably never have hooked up with my lovely fiancee if we had worked in the same building…
Turnabout is fair play. Once they catch on that you get off on their getting off, you will once again be accused of sexual harassment and all will be right with the universe once more.
Not according to the US Equal Opportunity Employment Commission guidelines, which are the
bottom legal line in this case.
From my post above:
The victim does not have to be the person directly harassed but can be anyone who finds the behavior offensive and is affected by it.
…
So if the recipient doesn’t feel uncomfortable but somebody
else does, the defense that the recipient isn’t
uncomfortable won’t necessarily defeat the harassment
charge. If you tell people you received the call,
somebody else who is offended that such calls
are happening and
feels this sort of thing going on makes for an uncomfortable
workplace environment, can file a charge. Of course this is
a good deal more likely if the recipient is a woman.
