From: jsp@uts.amdahl.com (James Preston)
Newsgroups: alt.supermodels
Subject: Re: Sexual harassment on the net??
Date: 18 Nov 92 19:17:20 GMT
Reply-To: jsp@pls.amdahl.com
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

nml@csa.bu.edu (Newton Loui) writes:

}In article <c1=I03z3bbsI00@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> jsp@uts.amdahl.com (James Preston) writes:

}   jim@neb (Jim Hood) writes:

}   }>From LXP111@psuvm.psu.edu Mon Nov 16 12:57:25 1992
}   }>Hey Jen, I have the same problem wit da women on this net..heh heh heh.  Hey
}   }>since were both netsexobjects...will you do me baby fuck me.....just kidding ag
}   }>ain.
}   }You know...  Joke or not, legally that could be considered sexual harassment.
}[stuff deleted about possible repercussions]

}   And what a sad and sorry comment that is on the completely irrational
}   and hysterical atmosphere that has come to surround "sexual harrassment".

}   Not to even mention how this undercuts the seriousness of true sexual
}   harrassment.  Jokingly saying "fuck me" is in the exact same category
}   as fondling or other unwanted physical contact.  How many people think
}   that this will make people take the former more seriously?  How many
}   think that it will make people take the latter more lightly?

}"Completely irrational and hysterical"?  Jennifer had just posted that
}she had received a lot of e-mail harassing her, then
}<LXP111@psuvm.psu.edu> posts that sort of message.  

I was responding to what I saw.  And what I saw was that someone posted
an obviously not-serious message saying "will you do me baby fuck me",
and someone else responded seriously that this person might lose his
account because of that!  Now you really believe that that is a rational
response?

}If Jennifer
}believes that she is being harassed, then that treatment *is*
}harassment.  

And, as another poster has eloquently noted, this is a most disturbing
notion.  Hey, let's just do away with lawyers and courts and judges and
juries.  If you say it is, then it is.  Let's not even care about what
a man might have intended, let's only consider ONE side of this issue.
If I see a woman that I'm attracted to and I nicely ask her if she'd
like to have dinner with me, and she somehow feels harassed by that,
then by all means string me up, fire me, throw me in jail.  Really, it
clearly doesn't matter that I was not harassing her, I was only asking,
nicely, for a date.  If that made her feel harassed, it's still clearly
my fault.  Nevermind that my intentions were strictly honorable, they
don't matter, only what the woman feels matters.

}How would you define *false* sexual harassment?

I don't know, who ever mentioned it?  Oh, were you refering to my statement
about "true sexual harassment"?  My point was this:  If I walk up to a
woman and put my hand on her breast, that is clearly sexual harassment.
If I'm the boss of a woman, and I tell her that she either sleeps with me
or I'll fire her, that is clearly sexual harassment.  But how many people
reading this really and truly think that the the "do me baby fuck me"
posting that started this is of the same seriousness as the preceding 
two examples?

}Clarify your former and latter points.  This doesn't undercut the
}seriousness of sexual harassment of any form for me.  I will also
}*NOT* take lightly "jokingly" sexually harassing anyone.

Which is exactly my point.  Most people -- obviously you are an exception 
-- simply do not think that a joking posting is as serious a "crime" as 
fondling a woman.  So when you insist on putting the same label on both,
most people will find that they take that label LESS seriously than if
the label was applied only to the more serious "crime".  Consider:  the
term "murder" means killing a human being.  So if I say, "John murdered
Jane", everyone knows that we're talking about a serious crime; police
tend to work harder to catch a murderer than, say, a shoplifter.  But
suppose people started using "murder" to mean simply SAYING something
to a person that that person didn't like.  Now how many people will
still react the same way when they hear that "John murdered Jane"?
Won't you, instead, want first to know whether John killed Jane or just
said something that she didn't like?  Will you still think of "murder"
in general as as serious a crime as before?

And that is exactly what we're doing with this term "sexual harassment".
We're taking a term that used to mean something serious and we're
applying it to things that are merely uncomfortable.  Or worse, as above,
to anything that a woman decides it is.  The result, for me and I'm sure
many other people, is that the term "sexual harassment" has lost a lot
of its potentency.  When I hear it, I first want to know if we're talking
about something as serious as unwanted fondling, or something decidedly
less serious like a silly posting.

--James Preston

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