Insightful Analysis re Sexual Harrassment as WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION

[jesse_the_k]

Doing pretty well on the political newsfast, but the sexual-harrassment firestorm has come over the wall.


A number of authors are cautioning against a morality-driven panic. I think there's merit there. But the fundamental issue is that we must keep the focus on the prime issue: sex discrimination in the workplace. Rebecca Traister phrases it very well in her piece in from New York Magazine

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In other words, sexual harassment may entail behaviors that on their own would be criminal — assault or rape — but the legal definition of its harm is about the systemic disadvantaging of a gender in the public and professional sphere. And those structural disadvantages do not begin or end with the actual physical incursions — the groping, kissing, the rubbing up against. In fact, the gender inequity that creates the need for civil-rights protections is what has permitted so many of these trespasses to have occurred, so frequently, and for so long; gender inequity is what explains why women are vulnerable to harassment before they are even harassed; it explains why it’s difficult for them to come forward with stories after they have been harassed, why they are often ignored when they do; it clarifies why so many women work with or maintain relationships with harassers and why their reactions to those harassers become key to how they themselves will be evaluated, professionally. Gender inequity is cyclical, all-encompassing.
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More wisdom at https://www.thecut.com/2017/12/rebecca-traister-this-moment-isnt-just-about-sex.html