Let’s Deal With It! a Rational Response to Sexual Harassment in Secular Spheres
At one point in my career as an engineer in the aerospace industry, my duties included delivering training for, and ensuring compliance with, our organization’s sexual harassment policy. As you may imagine, the emotional responses from my all-male team varied widely: from resigned patience that this was yet another box to check, to pure indignation that they’d somehow have to stop being what they thought of as male to appease corporate management. Neither response fit my intentions for the course, and no one on my team walked away from that training feeling threatened as a male. Why? Because I focused on how the company’s policy is there to uphold the laws of the land, and on why those laws exist as they do.
The rationale is this: if companies and organizations want to grow and meet their objectives, they need to provide an environment that all participants, male and female, customer and employee, vendor and guest, find safe and non-threatening. Sounds easy, right? Well, what about that cute intern you always seem to find an excuse to ask a favor of? What about the associate who expresses an interest in you when you’re alone with him on the elevator? Do these scenarios constitute harassment, or just normal human interactions?
Here’s where the law helps us—in directly negotiating the issue in a work environment, but also indirectly informing how we approach behavior in other settings where adults come into contact with each other. It gives us tools to take an emotional topic like human interaction and put some logical filters on so we can make rational decisions about what behavior is appropriate, and what behavior isn’t. Notice I call out behavior, not attitudes. People can think or feel however they please about others but when those internal mental processes get externalized as harmful speech or actions it’s a problem.
As I understand it, most U.S. state laws and federal law classify two types of sexual harassment in a work setting: 1) Quid pro quo, and 2) a hostile work environment.
In cases of quid pro quo, something is offered or threatened in order to obtain sexual favors: a security guard promises not to revoke the parking permits of several female employees in exchange for dates; the boss’s niece offers to put in a good word in exchange for a broom-closet affair; or someone from another department whom you desire sexually offers to give his or her body to you if you help them get a promotion.
All of these behaviors are illegal, and for very good reasons. Perhaps foremost, no one wants to feel like an objectified piece of sexual meat. We all want to be valued as individuals for the contributions we make to help our organization as a whole get ahead, not just to see that our bosses receive sexual favors. Flipping that around, no one wants his or her legitimate success to be viewed as ill-gotten gains from having slept around with the right influential players. We all want to be rewarded fairly for our efforts, and we want others to recognize the validity of the rewards we reap.
Most of us can agree to this point. However, it’s the second type of harassment, the hostile work environment, which is a concept some find threatening in ways they can’t articulate. Partly that’s because no one seems to intuitively understand what a “hostile work environment” means. If I tell an off-color joke and everyone laughs, did I just create a hostile work environment? If I’ve got a picture of my husband in a tight bathing suit on my desk, is that creating a hostile work environment?