nm
It’s really disappointing that you’re blowing off rape culture as casually as you do. It exists, particularly on college campuses.
Any sentence can be harassment depending on body language and tone of voice.
Now, do people misinterpret things? Yes, all the time. Back when I was young and cute I met several guys who misinterpreted my interest in whatever we’d been talking about as interest in them personally. There was even one who misinterpreted my taking his kid under my wing to protect him from Daddy (who was a creep and never missed a chance to put the kid down) as interest in, well, Daddy. But there is a huge difference between “misunderstandings exist” and “anytime someone doesn’t approve of behavior I find fine, they’re misunderstanding it.”
That depends on the company policy. My own company defines harassment as any behavior that makes someone feel harassed. I literally asked, “What if I compliment a co-worker’s new haircut?” The response: “That would depend on how the co-worker interprets it.” Okay then.
Is that “If the co-worker interprets it as harassment, you can be disciplined or fired?” or is that “If the co-worker interprets it as harassment and tells HR, HR will call you in and tell you to quit making personal comments to that person, as it makes them uncomfortable”?
And I would not consider the talking-to itself inherently punishment.
The way it works is that they investigate. That’s all they said. I’m guessing in the real world it depends on how important you are. I’m not very important, so I’d probably be gone at the first hint of trouble.
Due process is not most HR departments’ strong suit.
So what OUGHT a person do if a co-worker or boss is making increasingly personal comments each day and it’s making them uncomfortable? What should HR do if they receive such a complaint? Is it wrong to “investigate” and determine what happened? To suggest the person stop making such compliments?
What do you think that training should say?
IMO Manda JO’s formulation is the best available given actual real people who vary. Both within and outside of “normal” variation.
Everybody should try to behave within the “reasonable audiencemember” standard. And audience members are free to report where they think compliance doesn’t meet that standard.
HR should be aggressive about two things.
- Unreasonable behavior or unreasonable accusations are equally inimical to a smoothly functioning workplace and should be managed against.
- Employees have rights to due process and to fair, impartial, and proportionate treatment by HR regardless of their position in the hierarchy or their role as accuser or accusee.
Tolerating bad behavior, actively covering it up, or “fire any troublemaker” policies are all textbook examples of what not to do.
Folks who refuse to be managed to a reasonable standard, whether that’s somebody like the infamous Harvey Weinstein or our own ZPG Zealot should be managed onto the street. After sufficient well-documented failures to take the reasonable guidance given.
O.K., fair enough. Then I would say that perhaps a better analogy would be a member of a minority group who has experienced racism but thinks that other people who claim to experience the same are misinterpreting, too sensitive, imagining it, etc.
As I said, I’m sure there are some people who misinterpret innocent behavior. But I think the much, much greater problem is that harassment occurs with such depressing frequency.
Actually women in college are raped less often than women in the same age range who are not in college.
The way my company training approaches this is something along the lines of “it’s not your intent that counts, it’s how your message was received.” So, in your haircut scenario, if you were pulled aside and HR explained that commenting on a co-worker’s haircut is not allowed, and you stated, “but I only intended to compliment him/her”, they would say “it’s not what you intended, it is how it was received that is important - no harm, but please refrain from doing that again”. Essentially, if you notice a person’s hair style, what else are you noticing about them?
You may as well assume at work there is a direct line from commenting on someone’s appearance to leering, so best not to say anything about anyone’s appearance, ever. It’s just easier to treat everyone with professionalism and respect and refrain from commenting on anything relating to them on a personal level - that way there is nothing to misinterpret.
To simply answer the misogynist OP, no; it is usually men who misinterpret the extent of their own power.
Though there is a difference between “rape” and “rape culture” - SOME college campuses are full of “rape culture” Society at large is as well - but there is something about 18-21 year old entitled young men (who often go on to be the 40 year old boss who sexually harasses) that encourages the “no means maybe, maybe means yes, ply her with drinks, lets rate women like movies, lets keep score” sort of behavior than is part of creating rape culture. Plus college is a time of hookups, poor communication, and bad judgement - which can lead to a lot of “grey rape.”
I had a female boss last year whose frequent comments on my body were part of why I left the job. Several times a week she’d walk by my desk and either ask what I was going to have for lunch/dinner or see a snack I was eating and say something like, “You can get away w/ eating that sort of thing b/c you’re so skinny. I can only eat that as a treat.” I asked her to stop, told her to stop, begged her to stop and then finally went to our boss to get it to stop. In a meeting w/ me, her and HR she claimed that since she felt she was complimenting me I should not mind that she talked about my body. The HR lady let her know intent didn’t matter, she was to stop.
She started making fun of me about the HR meeting that day and I turned in my two week notice the next. In my exit interview the incredulous HR guy ran out of paper to make notes.
Absolutely, some women interpret what isn’t intended to be harassment as harassment. Of course they do. And others receive harassment, and don’t recognize it.
For instance, annoying coworkers are not necessarily sexual harassment. And there is a difference between harassment and a hostile work environment. Just because someone at work is being mean to you, or you think someone is being mean to you, doesn’t necessarily make it either harassment, or a hostile work environment.
But note also that there are a lot of men who think it’s okay to make comments, and touch appropriately, and anything else they think they can get away with, and have been getting away with.
I do think there is a certain male mindset where some men, actually quite a lot of them, think that any interest on the part of a woman connotes that said woman is interested in having sex with them. So, if you just really like a guy at work because he’s fun to be around, he might be thinking that you want to have an affair with him. This type of man will be genuinely surprised that a woman does not want to have an affair with him and is even insulted. On the other hand, this kind of thinking on the part of a man can also result in a sexual harassment charge against the woman–because she likes him, and he thinks that means she wants a sexual relationship. “She smiles when I come into the room” is to them equivalent to, “She’s coming onto me.”
It’s also quite likely that a great deal of campus rape goes unreported as the rapist usually frequents the same social circles as the victim and there could be social repercussions. Many young women also question if they really have been raped and/or falsely believe they’re responsible.
I would ask why does so many people (not you, evidently) think that “rape culture” is limited to college campuses, but I think I know why. Most people do it unconsciously, of course, but it’s one of those “just a few bad apples” kind of things. It’s just a few bad apples in just a few college campuses. It’s away from me, so long as “me” isn’t anywhere near a college campus.
No, it’s not. Rape culture is what you have whenever and wherever a group of people who think women are nothing but vagina-delivery systems congregate (or the equivalent about guys). Rape culture is present in some houses in some college campuses, but also in some groups of guys hanging around western unions, and in some companies’ boardrooms, and in many other places. When one person has it, it’s a mindset. Where several of them get together and reinforce each other’s mindset, it’s a culture.
That also seems to me a key distinction, whether there’s a company in the middle of it or not. If someone is uncomfortable with not strictly necessary comments you make to them and tells you to stop, then you should stop making similar comments. That’s not 100% cut and dried (what’s ‘necessary’?, how ‘similar’ were the subsequent comments?, etc) but it’s relatively close.
The idea OTOH of the recipient being able at her (usually, though not always) sole discretion class the comments themselves as ‘sexual harassment’ seems much less reasonable to me. There’s loads more subjectivity there, and lots of marginally to completely unreasonable people around (of all descriptions).
But back to workplaces specifically, sure it’s a punishment for people with any ambition (as opposed to those defining success at work as not being fired) to get hauled before HR about a sexual harassment claim and have HR take the claimant’s side, even to just ‘give you a talk’. That’s something you have to learn to avoid given the environment of company and particular person you’re working with. My personal tendency especially as manager was to be very business like. There’s a downside to that in forming a relationship of trust. Subordinates who hadn’t known me long would say ‘why doesn’t this guy like me?’, ‘he’s such a hard ass’ etc. But there was never anybody thinking I was coming on to them. There’s some trade off at the margin, with peers too. Zero chance of offending people can mean a drearier workplace and less close knit teams. There’s no way to describe the ideal in a simple statement. But it doesn’t work well IMO to adopt the policy ‘if some (perhaps highly insecure and/or naturally contentious) person wants to make an issue of a comment of yours, they get to class it as sexual harassment, racism, homophobia etc’.
I worked in a stratified workplace where young women frequently felt uncomfortable because they didn’t know any better. There really didn’t seem to be anything we could do to stop them attributing their uncomfortableness to there gender, and there really didn’t seem to be anything we could do to make people feel more comfortable. When they became more familiar with what was going on, they became less uncomfortable.
When people are in an unfamiliar place, they feel uncomfortable. When people don’t know any better, they sometimes atribute their uncomfortableness to their gender.
This was a particular situation where young people were coming into an environment that was not unfriendly, and certainly not rude or exploitative, it’s just that as children, they were used to having the world revolve around them (as it does at home and school), and were used to having everything carefully explained (as it is at home and school)… But commonly, the reaction of young women wasn’t : “I’d like to have everything slowed down, and I’d like more personal attention”, it was “This is not a female friendly workplace”
I don’t equate this with the situation where experienced people experience abusive workplaces. But I’m aware that sometimes what I /hear/ in a relationship is not what the other person is /saying/.