Working on my final project for "Women's Studies" -- sexual harassment. HELP!!!

[Rhythm]

Does anyone have personal stories about things that have happened to you or someone you know? I'm looking for anecdotal things that might keep the attention of college freshman-- mostly gals, though we have a handful of guys in the class as well.

If you'd like to talk, but don't want to do so "aloud," please PM me... i'll be up doing my notes and such for at least a couple of hours, if not more. This is a group final, and though my teammates did the 'hard copy' paperwork and a PowerPoint presentation, it's a snoozer, and it's up to me to save it when i do the actual presentation in the morning.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear ThinkBlue1966...

YOu know, maybe I've been oblivious all my life, but I cannot point to any examples of sexual harassment...

Sorry...

But at least this will keep you kicked for a while, sweetie!

Good luck tomorrow!

:hi:

[Rhythm]

2. Thank you, ma'am... i appreciate the boost!

I know i can kick arse in front of an audience... i always do. Pressure makes diamonds.

My group-mates just gave me a sow's ear to make this Coach purse from. *L*

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Hey! That was your 1900th post!

Congrats!

And, please, call me Peggy...

Ma'am is too formal for me, but I appreciate why you said it... :hug:

[Rhythm]

7. Typical southern response... i think i call every adult woman that...

Even my 24 year old Women's Studies prof... *L*

[GoddessOfGuinness]

4. When I was in college...

I spent a short time working in a coin shop. Silver was booming and people were selling their all-silver coins by the roll. The market dwindled and the boss cut my hours. I couldn't afford to pay the rent on the number of hours he cut me back to, and I asked if he couldn't manage a few more hours. He said he'd be happy to if I put the hours in on a cot in the basement of the store. His wife was ill and couldn't have sex blah blah...He was a gentle lover blah blah.

I left that afternoon and never went back. Found a job waiting tables at a restaurant down the street. It paid a helluva lot better.
I never sued the guy. I couldn't afford to, didn't have the time to mess with it, and wouldn't have been able to prove anything anyway.

[Rhythm]

6. Thank you for sharing this, Goddess...

Amazing how 'ballsy' (pun intended) some people can be when they feel that they have you over a barrel...
*ugh*

[LeftyMom]

5. pm'd

[Rhythm]

8. Thank you, Lefty...

:hug:

[yewberry]

9. Okay.

Here's one:

Worked in a corporate chain restaurant for about 4 years. The guy who was the general manager when I was hired was known for touching and rubbing female employees. He was let go after an affair with one of the waitstaff became clear. Pretty typical. However, one of the asst managers that Dave (that GM) hired became a real problem.

We didn't have lockers or anything at the restaurant, so all of us lower-level supervisors had to keep personal items in the managers' office. One night, that particular manager, Doug, had several female supervisors in the office doing end-of-shift paperwork. Doug pulled a box of tampons out of a drawer and began reading the directions to us and showing us the diagrams. He then asked us to show him what those directions meant. That kind of stuff isn't all that uncommon in restaurants.

On a more serious note, I was assaulted by a friend of a friend. I was very lucky and felt incredibly stupid later. If you'd like to hear about that story, please feel free to PM me. (I'm about to go to bed now, though, so don't expect an answer tonight.)

[Rhythm]

10. Methinks i would have lost my job right then...

after he got back up from the floor, and recovered for the hellacious slap that i put him there with.

That's just crude... please tell me that he didn't think that he was going to win points with the ladies or anything.

[yewberry]

23. I was just stunned. I think we all were.

We humiliated him for it, but he didn't lose his job. Then.

Truthfully, I can't imagine why he did it. Seems like a pretty horrible come-on, if that's what it was meant as.

[nomorenomore08]

11. "Reading the directions to us and showing us the diagrams..."

What the fuck??? That's not even assholish, that's just BIZARRE. I'm a guy, and even I can't begin to figure that one out.

[yewberry]

24. It's a mystery, I guess.

It is bizarre, but I wouldn't argue against assholish, either!

[Skittles]

12. here ya go

when I was an air(wo)man in the military there was a sergeant who was always trying to paw the lower-ranking women. When he tried it with me, I smashed him in the face with a heavy-duty stapler so hard it broke nose and teeth. He spluttered about pressing charges and I told him to go ahead, that I would get testimonies from half the women on base about what a PIG he was. Guess what? Not only did he not press charges, from what I know he ceased that type of said inappropriate behavior...... proving that those bastards can INDEED "help themselves." :D

[Rhythm]

13. Good for you, Skittles...

If nothing else, it seems he understood a forceful "no". Just glad that he didn't try his luck with the military courts; unfortunately, that would have likely been ugly for all concerned.

[Skittles]

14. he would not have dared to go against me

I grew the only girl in a large military family so I had much more guts than the average gal - yes INDEED. I do understand most women are not like me. :)

[JoDog]

15. Sexually harassed by classmates

I was the first girl in my class to go through puberty (4th grade). I was subjected to boys grabbing my breasts, and both boys and girls making comments about my body. When I reported this to teachers, there was a lot of hand-wringing, but few if any of the bullies were punished. This was the mid to late 1980s, and the attitude was that this was just something I had to "get through" because I lost some sort of genetic lottery.

In the worst case, a specific boy who sat next to me in band kept on caressing my thigh when I wore shorts. He also spoke loudly about "forcing" himself on a girl. I complained to the conductor, who told him that "some girls" don't like that. The boy proceeded to seek me out, came up behind me at the lockers and slammed the door of my open locker--right on my thumb. Luckily, it wasn't broken.

When my parents complained to my tormentor's parents, they (who were considerably better off than my family) said that their child didn't act like that at home, and it was all the fault of "that white-trash hussy you're raising."

He ended up going to private school after freshman year, and I never saw him again. That of course didn't stop the harassment. In addition to being well-endowed, I also committed the sin of being a smart girl who took no pains to hide it. I hated school.

[wickerwoman]

16. I used to work with a guy who really liked

showing pictures of his naked sons (they were two and four at the time) and commenting on their sizes of their penises... we're talking new pictures every couple days along with extended commentaries on each one.

He was a total pig anyway... he worked twenty hours a week and had his own flat downtown while his tiny trophy-bride worked full time and took care of two kids in a trailer.

I don't know if it counts as sexual harassment but it definitely counts as being a creepy asshole.

[Rhythm]

17. Definitely counts for a "hostile work environment" when all he wanted to do was talk about penises

I'm sure the inferrence was that the "apple didn't fall far from the tree" or something.

Still, taking pics of your naked kids and showing them off to others is creepy. If you had wanted to straighten him out fast, you could have reminded him that in a lot of places, such pix count as 'child porn'; bet he would have straightened up his act in a hurry.

[Deep13]

18. When I was in college, this middle-aged woman used to feel me up.

I worked at a grocer's deli and the space was close. She used that as an excuse to grab me eveytime she went by. Apparently, being a total fucking moron herself, she thought I would not notice it. I finally snapped at her and she quit it.

Also, in HS I had a math teacher you used to leer at the girls. He was a real douchebag. One day, he said something off-color and one of the male students punched him in the head.

[cynatnite]

19. Well, this was when I was in the Army...

It was accepted as normal behavior by most men. It began in basic training with some of our drill sergeants making sexually suggestive comments to us. Some of the women were offended, but being trainees many of us didn't know what to do nor were we even sure we could complain about it. This was difficult for a lot of us.

After we completed basic training, comments mostly came from fellow soldiers and much of the attitude at that time was if you couldn't tolerate the comments you weren't tough enough. In other words, we had to shut up and take it or it'd get worse.

It wasn't until later that the Army began coming down on sexual harassment. I was stationed at Ft. Ord, CA. There were stories of women who were having a rough time for speaking out, but things were beginning to slowly improve. Many of us were not afraid.

When a superior of mine began his sexual harassment I blew it off, joked around and walked away. That's how I handled it before and there wasn't much of a problem. After a few weeks, he showed up at my barracks wanting sex. I sent him on his way. For the first time I felt comfortable enough to report him because I believed I wouldn't have the backlash as we did before. He was punished and transferred out of the unit.

While there has been some improvement over the years, the military still has a long way to go when it comes to protecting the women serving.

[MountainLaurel]

20. Wish you had more time

Because I bet a lot of the women coal miners up there would have a stack of stories to tell.

As for me, one thing that I did not realize could be construed as harassment until many years later was having some guys in my freshman science class joking about my nipples (the science classroom was very cold). Every day for months on end. I was so humiliated I started wearing heavy sweaters and sweatshirts all the time (even in spring once the temps started climbing) in case I was being pokey. I hated my body for a long time after that. The teacher, who was new at our school, had to have heard most of it, but she never did anything.

And I'm not sure if this counts as direct harassment, but since it involves WVU, I thought I'd mention it, Two of the supervisors at the library where I worked were reported by another male colleague for constantly making lewd comments about female students. I had never thought much about it when I was there (it was just the way things were). But apparently it was a big to-do, with one of them getting transferred to a tiny special library on campus where he barely had contact with the public.

[NewJeffCT]

21. Yes, I have a couple

During a company picnic at an off-site location that had a swimming pool, a female employee snuck up behind a male employee and yanked down his swim suit. Not sure if she was fired for sexual harassment, or if she was merely suspended, but I remember it because I knew the woman, as she was our area's I/T contact. My memory is a bit foggy because it was a long time ago.

A year or two earlier, at a department ski trip that was formerly all male, a couple of women came along as well. However, several of the guys on the trip seemed to forget that there were women in the group and some of the jokes got a bit out of hand... the two men responsible for the joke were suspended for 30 days. The two most senior executives on the trip were fired. It even made the Hartford Courant. I'm guessing this was 1991 or 1992. For the record, I don't ski.

[IronLionZion]

22. I'm assuming you only wanted to hear from women

but I just want to note that men have gotten sexually harassed by other men, and sometimes by women as well. It happened to me. Just because it's much rarer, doesn't mean it doesn't count.

[5LeavesLeft]

25. I am a single 45 yo thin white male

and no I've never been married, no I don't have kids, no, I don't plan on getting married. Just fucking ask me if I'm gay. No, I'm not, fuck you. Would it help you to lable me if I said yes? Does getting the job depend on the answer? Am I a "diversity" hire?

[kath]

26. maybe not sexual harassment per se, but certainly "hostile environment" stuff:

when I was in med school (early 80s), it was not uncommon for a Playboy-bunny type photo to suddenly show up on the screen during lectures (of totally unrelated stuff, such as Histology, Micro or Path class) by male professors. The message was "yeah, we have to let you women (though they probably would have said "girls") in, but we don't have to like it. This is a boys' club." At the time, BTW, the percentage of women in our class was quite low compared to similar schools around the country.

After each of our third and 4th year clinical rotations we received written evaluations of our performance, not just a grade. You had to go to the Dean of Students' office to pick up your evaluation. But, instead of it just being handed to you, for some absolutely ridiculous reason you had to go into the Dean's office and he read the evaluation aloud to you (I guess just in case you'd gotten into a top-five med school while being illiterate.) Well, one day a female classmate, X, went to the Dean's offfice to get her Surgery evaluation. Dean H. read aloud "X (just her first name) is fine in form and body. Truly a credit to her gender." That was it. Not one. single. friggin'. word about her clinical knowledge, interaction with patients, performance in OR, or anything else. I guess the Dean just about dropped his teeth when he read it.
The asshole surgeon faculty member supposedly said that it was a mistake, that he'd dictated it but hadn't meant for his secretary to type it, or some such bullshit. The student didn't make a fuss, because she wanted to stay in town for residency. I don't think I would have remained silent - it pissed me off so much just hearing the story.