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Why women often don’t report sexual harassment …
I think there are as many ideas about the boundary between playfulness and harassment as there are women. This, of course, confuses the hell out of men!
Helen Gurley Brown told a story about one of her first jobs, an office in which the men stole the women’s panties. In on the gag, the women wore extra fancy panties with embroidered roses and such. But Brown was too young and too skinny, so the men never stole her panties, she added regretfully.
This put a rather alarming image in my mind, but then I recalled this was a period when women wore looooong skirts. I figure they were able to present the “bandits” with their “loot” without showing more than an ankle.
For a more recent example, here’s Claire Berlinski just a couple of months ago:
“Over the course of my academic and professional career, many men who in some way held a position of power over me have made lewd jokes in my presence, or reminisced drunkenly of past lovers, or confessed sexual fantasies. They have hugged me, flirted with me, on occasion propositioned me. For the most part, this male attention has amused me and given me reason to look forward to otherwise dreary days at work. I dread the day I lose my power over men, which I have used to coax them to confide to me on the record secrets they would never have vouchsafed to a male journalist.”
She tells of an Oxford Don who was a perfect gentleman over months of one-on-one tutorials, but then “grabbed her bum” at a drunken Christmas party. Now she has the power to destroy his career. “This is a power I do not want and should not have.”
Great comments–very insightful. Thanks for sharing!