Others who find the behavior distasteful, but not necessarily sexually harassing, will simply avoid individuals and situations that might produce such behaviors. I think a man putting his arm on a woman or patting her on the shoulder is normal male-female behavior. In my definition, it's not sexual harassment. If a woman doesn't like the behavior, she should tell the man she doesn't like it. A 1996 American Management Association survey of 456 mid-sized to large businesses found that the majority of sexual harassment complaints reported were cases of coworker to coworker harassment, a finding that doesn't surprise Paula Popovich, an associate professor of psychology at Ohio University.
Sexual harassment is a reaction to a perceived power of one person over another.
But there are different bases of power - expertise power, power of attraction, or physical power. And it's not only gender that influences these perceptions. Popovich has found that physical attractiveness also plays a role. In one study, Popovich had college students review a description of a sexual harassment complaint and then provided photographs of alleged harassers and victims with varying physical traits. Subjects were less likely to give a guilty verdict to an attractive defendant accused by an unattractive plaintiff.