My, how nice you look!
by Nancy Ahern
March 26, 2004
A story carried by Reuters
is a demonstration of how the sexual harrassment sword can
indeed cut both ways. It ought to serve as a warning to the
rabid anti-male feminists who wield that particularly charmless
weapon.
The story recounts how a female receptionist in Sweden had
been fired for sexual harrassment. The receptionist did not
pressure a co-worker into having sex. The receptionist did
not make sexually explicit comments that lead the more sensitive
around her to feel uncomfortable. The receptionist did not
make sexual overtures to her boss in order to attempt to gain
favor. The receptionist committed the heinous crime of telling
a male client he looked good.
"I joked with a client about how handsome he was,"
the receptionist told the daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet. The
man said he had not been offended by the woman's remark.
The report further notes that it "is not uncommon in
Sweden for women to accuse men of sexual harassment, but the
opposite is rare."
Perhaps the opposite needs to become less rare, in order
to provide a set of "consequences" that hard-line
"all-male-female-sexual-intercourse-is-rape" feminists
need to understand.
No, I'm not serious in the above statement -- all such incidences
are unacceptable. When sexual harrassment is real -- when
a man or a woman feels pressured or threatened into having
sex, or is made to repeatedly feel uncomfortable
concerning sexual advances or innuendo after requests to stop
have been ignored -- it is valid. Sexual harrassment charges
really require a
victim. The victim is the person who is the object of the
sexual advances. It is not a bystander overhearing a conversation
who merely feels disgusted. It is not a repressed someone
who, snooping through a co-worker's office, discovers lurid
photos of the co-worker's girlfriend or wife. And, it is not
a company whose unoffended, rather content clientele has shared
a friendly
conversation with a receptionist.
I wish I could offer a solution to these spurious and damaging
claims of sexual harrassment. I fear such pointless watering
down of a reasonable and serious situation will indeed cause
backlash, to the point where genuine harrassment is too easily
blown off.
Oops. I said "blown." Fire me.
©
2003 Tocqevillian Magazine
