Sexual Harassment versus Flirting
How do we know if someone is flirting or sexually harassing us?
This begs the question ‘Who is responsible for your feelings’. If you agree with
the old saying ‘sticks and stones will hurt your bones but words will do no
harm’ then sexual harassment can only be harassment when it involves physical
contact of some kind. Those that favour this argument might say that no matter
what someone says to you, it is how you choose to respond internally that
defines how it affects you.
A book by Susan Strauss ‘Sexual Harassment and Teens, delivers a set of
guidelines that are supposed to enable you to differentiate between sexual
harassment and flirting.
Interestingly enough, the guidelines are listed under how the particular action
makes the receiver feel. One of the tenets of NLP is that the meaning of your
communication is the response you get. Does this suppose that when you
communicate you are capable of generating feelings in others or does it mean
that when you communicate other people are likely to self-generate certain
feelings depending on their database of words and their general emotional
response.
My own view is that ultimately we are all responsible for our feelings and that
when we hear or see words or actions from other people, we somehow are
programmed to generate certain related feelings. We can re-programme ourselves
to block out these feelings. And, with practice we can programme ourselves to
generate alternative feelings. If we start to do this, are we then responsible
for perpetuating the said behaviours by our very acceptance? And if other people
are not as skilled as us in reprogramming their response are we being
irresponsible? Does this have deeper moral implications? I don’t know!
Let’s look at the guidelines set out by Strauss and her co-author Pamela
Espeland
Sexual harassment makes the receiver feel
- Bad
- Powerless
- Demeaned
- Ugly
Flirting makes the receiver feel
- good
- happy
- flattered
- pretty/attractive
- in control
Sexual harassment results in
Flirting results in
Sexual harassment is perceived as
- one-sided
- demeaning
- degrading
- invading
Flirting is perceived as
- reciprocal
- flattering
- open
- a compliment
Sexual harassment is
- unwanted
- power-motivated
- illegal
Flirting is
- wanted
- equality-motivated
- legal
If we take the definitions of sexual harassment offered by Strauss are we
then opening the door to accusations of sexual harassment each time we feel bad,
powerless or ugly when someone throws us a remark? Do feelings of being
degraded, demeaned and having negative self-esteem stem just from remarks deemed
to be specifically ‘sexually harassing’ or are they endemic to individual
psyches and therefore likely to be generated even when the remark might not be
considered ‘harassment’ by others?
What are the specific phrases or actions that are deemed to be sexually
harassing? How do you know that a remark is sexual harassment? Is it different
for everyone? If this is the case, how do we legislate?
I wonder what we would discover. I know that in my case, remarks that some women
might consider sexual harassment would be taken by me as a bit of fun. What are
the guidelines? When does the border get crossed and who decides all this?
Just a thought!
Copyright © 1999 - 2000 Peta Heskell
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