The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced
1–10 of 73 posts
Re: The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced
#2I hope that as time goes on we are increasingly able to see ourselves as all in this together, rather than in a zero-sum game between genders.
Re: The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced
#3As a society we need to have a much more sober response to this sort of allegation. Immediate career-ending consequences based on a mere accusation are ultimately bad for both accuser and accused, because it raises the cost of making an accusation.
Re: The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced
#4Putting employers and schools at the center seems like the wrong approach. If there is a victim and a perpetrator, why can't it be handled in court between them?
Asking the employer/school to handle it is a recipe for injustice. Their interest is to limit their liability and favor their most useful employees, in that order. Justice is a distant concern.
Re: The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced
#5I hope that as time goes on we are increasingly able to see ourselves as all in this together, rather than in a zero-sum game between genders.
It’s stuff like this that makes me so incredibly happy to be gay.
Re: The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced
#6I hope that as time goes on we are increasingly able to see ourselves as all in this together, rather than in a zero-sum game between genders.
While I share your aspiration, let me make an inflammatory question for the purpose of prompting thought. (I would hope readers take this as a neutral statement; since obviously the women entering the workforce see it as a net positive, but it may be a line of questioning to attempt to explain why it's so easy to see it as a gender battle)
What if it is zero sum, or at least, approaching that? There are two phenomena going on that make me contemplate this; double income household normalization, and a somewhat sticky total # of jobs. As women further enter the workforce, the mean household income will trend towards double income, and the labor pool will be contested with more applicants, in both cases rendering a male applicant at a substantial disadvantage (comparatively to history).
The way one could rebut this would be to suggest that this inflation hasn't taken place, and that the total # of jobs has scaled accordingly.
A brief search hasn't turned up anything on my end, so don't take this musing as any more than posing questions. My pessimism lends me to think that the conflict I summarized above will be a rallying call for certain groups on both sides of the fold for many years to come; recent political discourse does not lend me hope for a broad view of "togetherness".
Re: The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced
#7As a society we need to have a much more sober response to this sort of allegation. Immediate career-ending consequences based on a mere accusation are ultimately bad for both accuser and accused, because it raises the cost of making an accusation.
We've reached this place in part because formal avenues of responding to harassment are so terrible. A lot of harassment cases involve sexual assault or other crimes, but the police and the courts are often so indifferent or hostile that they cannot even come close to fulfilling the role they should.
Improving how the criminal justice system handles such crimes would be a big help, but it's a monumental task.
Re: The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced
#8Putting employers and schools at the center seems like the wrong approach. If there is a victim and a perpetrator, why can't it be handled in court between them? Asking the employer/school to handle it is a recipe for injustice. Their interest is to limit their liability and favor their most useful employees, in that order. Justice is a distant concern.
> ... why can't it be handled in court between them?
If you're falsely accused, do you want to have to spend $10,000 to defend yourself?
If you're harassed, do you want to have to spend $10,000 to accuse the perpetrator?
That's why it should be handled in court only as the last resort.
Re: The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced
#9Putting employers and schools at the center seems like the wrong approach. If there is a victim and a perpetrator, why can't it be handled in court between them? Asking the employer/school to handle it is a recipe for injustice. Their interest is to limit their liability and favor their most useful employees, in that order. Justice is a distant concern.
Centering employers and schools in programs to reduce sexual harassment has developed as the consensus approach because it is where relatively privileged women (often rich, often white) are most keenly affected by it. That's despite the fact that, even once age-adjusted, students are victimized by rape at a lower rate than non-students.
Why not courts? Courts are constitutionally required to have a higher standard of evidence than other institutions. In the usual case where a rape has absolutely occurred, the evidence often amounts to he-said/she-said. That's rarely enough for a conviction. That's understandably deeply dispiriting to anti-rape activists, so they move activism toward places that can afford lower evidentiary standards.
Is that the right way? Who knows. But I think it may be best to treat sexual assault as an epidemiological problem. That's hard to swallow--after all, rapists are bad people and deserve severe punishment, not dry statistical treatments. But given how hard it is to "fairly" prosecute rape, treating programs to end sexual assault as interventions to decrease incidence and then measuring how effective they are seems like it may be more productive in the long term.
Re: The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced
#10Putting employers and schools at the center seems like the wrong approach. If there is a victim and a perpetrator, why can't it be handled in court between them? Asking the employer/school to handle it is a recipe for injustice. Their interest is to limit their liability and favor their most useful employees, in that order. Justice is a distant concern.
> ... why can't it be handled in court between them? If you're falsely accused, do you want to have to spend $10,000 to defend yourself? If you're harassed, do you want to have to spend $10,000 to accuse the perpetrator? That's why it should be handled in court only as the last resort.
It's much harder to make false accusations in a court of law.