Talk:Sexual harassment

This article tries hard to omit the fact that the "perpetrator" is always male and not female. I propose to clarify this and state explicitly that males are considered at fault in most of cases in this article if nobody objects. Best. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 13:33, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

:I'd say that quite a few of the references and several sections of the article contradict this addition, for example, the PEW research study indicating that 25% of women and 13% of men had experienced sexual harassment (source 26). Reconrabbit 14:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

:Women can sexually harass men or even other women. Dream Focus 15:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

::Only in minority of cases. Most of the time it's men in higher positions of employment who take advantage of subordinate women than otherwise. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 15:35, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

::There cannot be contradictions over here cause many studies are overhelmingly about women, not men. E.g. often cited [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27640867] is a gynocentric study. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 15:39, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

::Further, cases like Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co. where men are the blamed party and women are victims, indicates support for the said proposal. I can continue, but I got little time actually to dig it up more. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 15:49, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

:::It happens both ways and that should be mentioned. https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/sexual-harassment-workplace-key-findings-overview Case study: 70% of cases were men sexually harassing women, 19% women sexually harassing men, 9% men sexually harassing men, 2% involved women sexually harassing women. That's just in Australia. You can find case studies in other nations. Dream Focus 21:07, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

:Always ≠ In most cases. Moreover, if term sexual harassment is understood broadly, as it is understood in contemprorary US judicial practice then I very much doubt that conservative women, especially in conservative countries, rarely commit this act. Reprarina (talk) 09:57, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

'A man making an unwelcome sexual advance on a woman by putting his hand on her thigh'

The caption of the lede picture sounds as if it shows a genuine sexual assault that happened to be captured on camera. I'm inclined to think that it should be indicated clearly that it is just a scene enacted consensually for illustrative purposes (and hence the man's act was neither unwelcome nor a genuine sexual advance). I am not sure about the exact wording, though. 62.73.72.3 (talk) 09:22, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

:Yes, agreed. I changed the caption. Metamagician3000 (talk) 07:01, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

Also, nothing in the picture shows clearly that the advance is unwelcome, which is the crucial factor. Given that, I'm not sure that it is helpful as an illustration of the topic. --62.73.72.3 (talk) 09:40, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

'Sexual harassment is a type of harassment based on the sex or gender of a victim.'

Is it really, though? Given that the concept of sexual harassment seems to include all kinds of unwanted sexual advances towards the victim, annoying displays of sexual interest in the victim and similar, I don't understand in what sense it is 'based' on the sex or gender of the victim. For a bisexual harasser, it doesn't matter what the sex or gender of their victim is. Similarly, in a hypothetical hermaphroditic alien species, there could still be sexual harassment in the sense of unwanted advances. When a person sexually harasses someone of the sex they are attracted to - a straight man harassing a woman, a gay man harassing a man, a straight woman harassing a man, a lesbian woman harassing a woman - it is not the case that, say, the straight woman is demeaning the man for being a man in a display of misandry, or that the lesbian woman is demeaning the woman for being a woman in a display of misogyny. It is not as when someone demeans someone else for being, say, black or Muslim, using racial slurs, mocking them and so on (which is what could be called harassment based on race, religion etc). On the other hand, there are also genuine cases along these lines in the case of gender, too, where men are humiliating and demeaning women for being women in a misogynistic way. They may co-occur with sexual harassment in the sense of unwanted advances, but are clearly distinct issues and may also occur separately from each other. One is 'based on the sex or gender of the victim', the other isn't. It seems to me that the two things are actually being illogically conflated here. 62.73.72.3 (talk) 10:40, 26 April 2025 (UTC)