From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy)
Subject: Re: harrassment
Originator: nadel@aerospace.aero.org
Organization: Natural Language Incorporated
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 00:53:58 GMT


In article <1992Mar30.195853.17445@aero.org> bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris) writes:
>In article <MUFFY.92Mar20152307@remarque.berkeley.edu> muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes:
>)
>)1. Why is "sexual harrassment" considered to be distinct from
>)>"harrassment".
>)2. Is this distinction based on gender in some way?  Does it have to be?
>)3. Is this distinction doing more harm than good?

>A point which you have not acknowledged yet is that people are NOT
>always complaining about harassment when they complain about sexual
>harassment.  You (apparently) think of sexual harassment as being equivalent
>to harassment and it appears that you are projecting this viewpoint upon all
>other people who use the words.  This is simply not the case.

I find this statement to be *very* odd.  In fact, the whole point of my
posting was that I had noticed that people *did* consider sexual
harrassment to be something DIFFERENT from (i.e. NOT equivalent to)
harrassment.  I was asking why that was, whether it made sense, etc.  It
is true that *I* do not see it as different, but that could always
change, given some reasonable explanation of the differences.

>Eric Pepke gave an example in his post about somebody labelling a poster
>from a popular children's movie 'sexual harassment'. There's also the
>example of the Goya painting at Penn state being labelled as 'sexual
>harssment'.

Here's a random dictionary definition of "harrass":

to subject (someone) to continuous vexatious attacks, questions, demands
or other unpleasantness.

That's pretty much how I understand the word to be currently used in
society (note that this is not the *legal* definition, which I do not
know).  Now, I would say that both of your examples come under
"subjecting (someone) to continued unpleasantness," assuming that the
(someone) finds the items in question are creating an unpleasant
atmosphere.  Therefore, these *could* simply be labelled "harrassment" as
well as being labelled "sexual harrassment."

>You seem to be not acknowledging that this is how the term is
>actually being used in the real world today.

No, dear, I'm asking *why* it is used as it is in the world today.  I'm
asking *why* it is considered to be different.

>You keep bringing up examples
>of some behavior which actually would fall under the 'classical'
>definitions of harassment when discussing any form of sexual harassment (as
>above, when you talk about telephone harassment).

The example of telephone harrassment *was* an example of "classical
harrassment."  I find it hard to understand how you can object to my
giving an example of "harrassment," when that is part of what I am
discussing.

>This comes across to me
>as a big <NACK> (negative acknowledge) of the points that are being made -
>especially when you rhetorically ask 'Does it make sense for people to
>respond "why are you against telephones?'.

That was NOT a rhetorical question.  I am quite serious.  Does it make
sense?

>The WHOLE POINT is that
>a poster of a children's movie or a Goya painting is NOT HARASSMENT by any
>other definition of the term other than 'sexual harassment'.

Not so.  See above.  Also, are you claiming, then, that EVERYTHING which
is labelled as "sexual harrassment" does not fit into the category
"harrassment"?

>Just so that we can be sure we are on the same wavelength, it would be
>nice if you would explicitly acknowledge this point.

What point?  That you disagree with me?  That you misread my posting?  I
will acknowledge both of those.

Muffy
--

Muffy Barkocy                             muffy@mica.berkeley.edu
~Little round planet/in a big universe/sometimes it looks blessed/
 sometimes it looks cursed/Depends on what you look at, obviously/
 But even more it depends on the way that you see~ - Bruce Cockburn


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