SEXUAL HARASSMENT Feminism Lecture 2

PLAN 2 Types of Sexual Harassment accepted at law: 1.Quid pro quo 2.Hostile Environment First, an objection to having sexual harassment laws Second, what is sexual harassment? Specific Qs: can men be sexually harassed, must it be sexual, how severe does behaviour have to be? Third, is there a unified account of sexual harassment?

PERPETUATING WOMEN AS FRAIL & NEEDING PROTECTION The Objection: women should be assertive in the face of sexual harassment, they don’t need legal protection But Neither quid pro quo nor hostile environment are gender specific nor addressable individually The Source of the worry: Mackinnon’s Dominance approach Crosswaite and Priest’s account in terms of oppression But do not view women as fragile; rather focuses on power dynamics of society Neither Account has been taken up at law

WHAT COUNTS AS SEXUAL HARASSMENT?

MUST SEXUAL HARASSMENT BE MEN HARASSING WOMEN? Gender policing, sexual orientation/identity harassment, and horseplay

MUST SEXUAL HARASSMENT BE SEXUAL? An argument that it need not be Sexual harassment is behaviour that creates an environment that is so hostile that it is discriminatory on the basis of sex Behaviour need not be sexual in order to do this So sexual harassment need not be sexual behaviour Problem: Sexual harassment need not be discriminatory Two types of sexual harassment? Neither necessarily worse than one another: Sexist sexual harassment & Sex-based sexual harassment

SEVERITY Not just a romance, friendship, or any one-off off-colour joke On the other hand Are sexual harassment laws too harsh? Media representations of cases of firing for sexual harassment misrepresent the cases as less severe than they were

SEVERITY Are institutional policies too harsh? Many institutional policies rule all ‘unwelcome sexual behaviour or comments’ as sexual harassment Even asking someone if it would be okay to ask them out could be an unwelcome sexual advance Learning that someone does not find sexual jokes unwelcome does not establish that they will not find your sexual joke unwelcome Institutions want to avoid behaviours which are fine on their own but when pervasive represent hostile work environment sexual harassment Need institutions call this behaviour sexual harassment?

BEYOND JUST THINKING ABOUT SEXUAL HARASSMENT? Employees should call people out on behaviour that might lead to sexual harassment and a hostile work environment even if itself does not constitute sexual harassment Even in cases of sexual harassment we should think about how to react not just in terms of bringing institutional and legal action

WHAT IS SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN GENERAL?

SO WHAT IS SEXUAL HARASSMENT? Dominance & other power approaches could not deal with men harassing The difference approach The stereotype approach The dignity approach

IS THERE A UNIFIED THING THAT IS ‘SEXUAL HARASSMENT’? The discovery of sexual harassment For sexual harassment to be a distinctive category must it be one unified thing?

SUMMARY Embraced a broad understanding of sexual harassment But shown that this does not make sexual harassment a useless or ambiguous concept Next Week Pornography and Sex Work Required Readings: Saul ch. 3; Feminist Perspectives on Sex Markets, SEP