I just got home from attending the new-hire orientation at my contract agency. We went over the basic rules, filled out forms, then watched the obligatory sexual harassment training video. There are few things in this world that are more infuriating to me than the topic of sexual harassment. In this video we were shown a mock sexual harassment training session in which an expert showed attendees a sexual harassment video. It was like looking into a mirror, totally spooky. Anyway, depicted in the video-within-a-video segments were various scenes of sexual harassment.

In one segment, the boss was informing his female assistant of an upcoming conference taking place in Florida and requested that she accompany him on the trip. She said that she wasn’t interested, and he, in response, said that if she attended there may be a promotion or other career advancement in her future. She declined again, he said “Ok” in a “suit yourself” sorta way and left, obviously disappointed in her decision. That was it. He never winked, he never used the words, “if ya know what I mean, sweetcakes”, he never fondled her wispy locks. The next scene shows the assistant reporting the activity to her HR representative, who delivered a severely over-acted, “We’ll take care of him!” I found myself waiting for the on screen expert to state that the assistant had overreacted, and that there was no sign of sexual innuendo. Such a statement never came. The lesson was that people in the workplace should be on the lookout for a boss offering career advancement opportunities, as the boss is obviously only looking to get into one’s pants. There was no mention of the idea that the manager may have been choosing the best person for the job and offering to reward good work.

In another scene we are treated to a sexual harassment one-two punch. This time an assistant does accompany her male boss on a business trip, and shortly thereafter is awarded a promotion. A male employee evidently feels that he deserves the promotion more, and is convinced that his female worker received it in exchange for sexual favors performed during the trip. He, as in the previous story, is told by HR that the issue will be remedied. In remedying the issue, I can only assume that the assistant would be demoted and labeled as a hussy for sleeping her way up the corporate ladder, the boss would be severely reprimanded and labeled as a lecherous heathen, and the male coworker would go home at the end of each day feeling secure that he’d done is righteous duty. The problem is, the boss and his assistant showed no signs or inappropriate behavior, no signs of anything but a mutual professional respect for on another.

See, this is where the problem lies in the whole sexual harassment theory; the laws are based solely on the interpretation of the alleged victim. In other words, anyone, anywhere, for any reason can claim that they have been the victim of sexual harassment, and the system, in the form of an HR department or even the Supreme Court, will defend the alleged victim’s rights. If they don’t defend the alleged victim, the corporation or court opens themselves up to a lawsuit of their own. As shown in the above examples, this is absolutely wrong. I can think of no other law in this country that is enforced based on an individuals interpretation of said law, and I can think of no other law that is enforced based on the idea that someone felt that they may have been victimized.

And what of the accused? Innocent until proven guilty? Not a chance. From my own personal experiences, most of which I’ll write about someday, I can state without reservation that someone accused of sexual harassment is guilty until they apologize, after which they’re still guilty. The issue that arises is that, by simply defending themselves and their position, the accused individual destroys their own credibility. The worst thing the accused can do is say that their actions were misunderstood or harmless. That will land them in the front row of the quarterly sensitivity training session, or worse.

In short, what we have here is a law that can be molded and interpreted to fit any individual issue or grievance. A law that, once aimed at a particular person, is impossible to defend against. A law that, even if one could prove their innocence, will still be used to label, criticize, and punish the falsely accused. The only other scenario I can think of that’s even remotely similar to this is being a suspected terrorist.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 25th, 2006 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Other, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.