Who was the First Person Fired for Sexual Harassment?

[md2000]

@clairobscur

There’s a difference between “not the norm” and “would never happen unless it’s a lowly employee harassing the boss’ daughter”. I find the later statement an extraordinary claim and some people in this thread seem to think that before 1990 or so it was prehistoric times during which everybody thought that grabbing a woman ass was a perfectly normal action and nobody would have ever faced any consequence for doing so. Once again, try to picture in your mind a person deeming itself respectable in 1950,1900,1850 and wonder what this person would have thought of ass-grabbers.

Answering to the query by “I’m sure nothing ever happened to those people in the past” isn’t a factual answer, it’s a guess, and on top of it an unbelievable guess in my opinion.

I’m not sure how a cheap shot at France is supposed to have anything to do with the issue at hand. Maybe you intended to offend me or something? I mentioned France for the obvious reason that being French I tend to read more about France than about, say, Bangladesh, and as result what I read on this topic happened in France and not in Bangladesh.

I remember an article about being stewardesses (“flight attendants”) in the 1970s - and one complaint was that in those days, bruised rear ends from passengers (male, we hope) pinching the women flight attendant’s asses was a normal part of the job - one lady interviewed said upper management told them “just get over it”.

Tony Randall appeared on a talk show (Merv Griffith?) and got into a discussion with him that he’d goosed an intern, and they started on a discussion on the difference between goosing and pinching. Not sure if the host started out trying to embarrass Randall for his actions, but it devolved into a humorous discussion instead.

“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” -L.P. Hartley

[iamthewalrus_3]

@clairobscur

That’s a big assumption you’re making, thinking that nobody would have been fired before modern times over such an issue.

I was being glib, not trying to literally claim that not a single man was fired for this, but I realize that I chose my words poorly.

You are almost certainly correct that there were some firings for this sort of thing in the past, although they would still likely have existed in the context of a very misogynistic power structure.

Think of a 19th century wealthy man and factory owner, very respectable by the standards of the time. Do you think that he would necessarily take kindly that his underlings would allow themselves to grab respectable women he employs?

The word “respectable” conveys a lot here. Implicitly, there were plenty of not-respectable women who could be abused. Men got fired not for harassing women, but for harassing women with societal power.

[a_dudes_thought_s]

I know the answer to this one.I was just watching a tv program about it.There was a guy named Sexual Harris who would go around harassing woman. It happened so long ago you could almost say its prehistoric. I think he worked at the We say so corporation.

[Chronos]

[Moderating]

a dudes thought’s, if you don’t have anything to contribute to a thread, please just stay out. We’re trying to determine the answer to a question, here. It’s a very difficult question, yes, and it’s quite possible that we won’t find any definitive answer, but posts like yours do nothing to help.