Sexual Harassment: Why Conservatives Should Take A Second Look

This is one of the most bizarre articles I have ever read in my life. The values she mentioned “conservatives” having were at one time commonly held social values, they cannot be imposed by a fascist police state. If their goal is to drive men and women completely apart and totally destroy the family and all the mechanisms which contribute to family creation, they are doing an excellent job of it.

Robert Stevens wrote — “the solution is simple go back to the original common law standard. That is for a crime to be committed there needs to be an injured party. Your feeling being hurt or simply feeling uncomfortable with what someone else does, does not qualify.”

Unfortunately R.S., getting your feelings hurt, being uncomfortable, even feeling like someone might not approve of you …

all of these subjective perceptions are valid bases for “hate speech” on our college and university campuses.

Many universities have created “free speech zones” where anything can be stated without reprisal. (Consider the Orwellian irony of our nation’s institutions of higher learning partitioning off campus spaces into “free” and, by implication, “unfree” speech zones!)

Hint: the unfree zones are the classrooms, the dorms, the cafeterias, the quads, the administrative office suites, the athletic fields, the parking lots… etc.

The “free speech” zones are little spaces on the margins of campus where “the crazies” can stand and deliver their manifestos.

To be historically accurate and fair, it’s necessary to mention the linkage between the Sexual Harrassment movement and the Multi-cultural Diversity movement.

Each has worked in concert to exile free speech from public and private spaces, on the basis that your right to not ever be offended should be written into law.

So in fact, there’s no reason to return to the Common Law dictum of proving that there’s an injured party.

Because under feminist (i.e. American jurisprudence) laws, we are ALL ALREADY POTENTIAL VICTIMS.

Case closed. Verdict determined a priori.

Sexual harrassment laws and the behavioral codes and policies that businesses reactively put in place were supposed to “empower” women.

Outlawing sexually harrassing behaviors (try defining them objectively…) would, so the theory goes, remove barriers impeding women’s success, eliminate “hostile” working conditions, and eradicate the Good Old Boys system that was oppressing women in the workplace.

But a funny thing happens when you proscribe behaviors … unanticipated side-effects occur.

One of the single biggest casualties of the sexual harrassment regime has been women’s access to male knowledge and networks.

Men who value their careers will not “mentor” female employees any more, for fear of becoming victims of a false sexual harrassment charge.

In schools and universities, male teachers and profs won’t even have a conference with a female student unless the office door is open and a female staff person is within earshot.

There was a recent prominent case where a senior male research scientist at an Ivy League university denied an up-and-coming female post-graduate candidate a spot on his lab’s team.

His decision not to accept her was widely reviled as a case of sexual discrimination, though she got a leadership position at another prominent institution.

As a poster above stated, the main problem with sexual harrassment laws and workplace codes is that all power is immediately delivered over to the subjective perceptions of the offended party. (Who might be a heterosexual male as well as whatever other socially defined genders.)

Men by-and-large have taken the prudent path of self-censorship of both speech and behavior.

That certainly includes refraining from flirting with a female colleague at the water cooler; but it might also include not criticizing her at a corporate strategy session, even if her ideas would benefit from constructively critical input.

Sexual harrassment codes have done for the boardroom what school playground codes have done to recess.

No more “rough and tumble” because the girlies might be disadvantaged in such a testosterone-driven arena. Someboy’s feelings might get hurt.

And, as we all know, “ignoring her needs” now legally constitutes “emotional abuse” in DV laws.

So, in promoting the Sexual Harrassment regime, feminists have once again legislated the illusion of female advantage via female victimhood.

‘…it’s only harrassment if she doesn’t like it. So in other words, it’s her rules, her definitions and her reactions. Talk about empowerment.’

That’s what I’m talkin’ about!

Bravo, Squiggy!

(always liked him more than Lenny, anyway…)

‘…the presence of women in the work force has its demoralizing consequences…’

Way to go, grizzlieantagonist!

And, they should not be allowed to vote; own property; or, to drive, either.

Sound radical?

No more so than the notion that women AS A CLASS are as capable of making rational decisions as are men AS A CLASS.

That was the simple premise of the 1st Wave Feminists in their suffragettic struggles.

Events since women won the vote, thence all the ‘rights’ now taken for granted by millions of women as the basis for their rapacious and persistent demand that everything go their way all the time, have clearly shown that extending such powers to women was a complete mistake.

That it was a mistake is shown by nearly a century of unsurpassed individual, familial, social, political, economic, business, and legal turmoil not only in the US, but in every industrialized Western nation.

Whether by law or by social re-norming, the exit of women from the workforce, the government, the schools, and our roadways will result in a cultural and economic boom not seen before in any nation.

It’s as simple as that.

The “right to free speech” applies only to political speech, or at least it’s supposed to. This kalifornia krap about “freedom of speech” meaning I can pierce anything, tattoo anything, or say anything, and my employer can’t fuss about it is ludicrous. We didn’t start this country because King George wouldn’t let us comment on some chicks endowments.

And as for sexual harrassment, it’s only harrassment if she doesn’t like it. So in other words, it’s her rules, her definitions and her reactions. Talk about empowerment.

One of the things that struck me when the issue of sexual harassment in the military came up is that it was raised by the people who had created the issue.

Basically, it was mostly liberal social experimenters who decided to allow women to integrate into an environment composed of high-octane young men and who then became shocked-shocked-shocked at the fact that these high-octane young men often looked at their female counterparts as sex objects. Just imagine that!

To the Patricia Schroeders of the world, the solution was obvious. Just bring even MORE women into the military and give everyone instructions on just how bad sexual harassment really was. That would cement the status of the women as “equals” and all that sexual tension would disappear. Oh sure, that would do it.

Then the SAME liberals introduced the notion of allowing open gays into the military and tried to refute fears of the consequences by juxtaposing that issue with the issue of women in the military: “Afraid of being sexually harassed by gays? Maybe you should revisit your own attitudes towards women>”

But really all that this social experimentation did was to establish that military discipline would go a lot smoother if military opportunities were limited to straight males.

The same argument could be made in the civilian world. If there is “sexual harassment” in the work force might just mean that the presence of women in the work force has its demoralizing consequences and that the presence of women in the work force is the issue that needs to be revisited.

It is certainly one thing for a woman to say “don’t harrass men” in the work place. Men should respect that.

But when women infiltrate an all male establishment or enclave, like the Air Force Academy, the men’s high school wrestling team, a college football team, the United States Navey – and then DEMAND that these men now change their entire behavior just to accomodate women who likely should not be present….is ludicrous.

“restraining behavior at work does not face the First Amendment obstacles that plague anti-obscenity laws”

Have to disagree. Even if government restricts speech via a proxy (the employer) it’s still restricting speech. The fact that people spend a large minority of their time at work only makes such a violation more egregious.

IMO it’s one thing for an employer to have regulations about behaviour at work but it’s something else entirely for the government to exceed its powers by dictating what those regulations will be.