... and ain't i a woman?: Obscuring sexual harassment

By Kath Gelber "Women ... are losing out", according to Bettina Arndt, sex therapist and now journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald. In a piece entitled, "The Sexual Illiterates", on October 28, Arndt bemoans the inadequacies of current sexual harassment legislation in misunderstanding men's personalities. This has led to a climate in which men feel unable to approach women as friends, she concludes. Arndt draws on some real issues. It is true that current sexual harassment legislation does not sufficiently differentiate between relatively minor instances of inappropriate behaviour and significant, conscious abuses of power. This is because most of the current legislation dealing with sexual harassment is framed by a radical feminist analysis which sees all occurrences as "based on the abuse of power" and therefore of the same magnitude. It is also true that more emphasis is placed on punishment than on prevention. This is possibly the greatest single shortfall in current sexual harassment legislation. Arndt, however, interprets this set of truths in an extraordinary way. She concludes that in relatively "minor" cases, punishment achieves less than education would have, and that since few resources are devoted to education, the onus is now on men to "magically" put aside their conditioning and "intuit, ... sense women's reactions" to their unwanted advances. Indeed, the bulk of Arndt's article deals with a few poor, misunderstood men, whose slip-ups at office parties have caused them embarrassment or even cost their jobs. But they didn't really mean it, she assures us. It is all sounding very similar to Garner's defence of the Ormond college master in her now infamous fictional work, The First Stone. It is certainly true that more resources should be devoted to educating people in schools, on campuses and in the workplace about appropriate behaviour. Sexism awareness courses should be held, and women and men should have the opportunity to discuss openly what is considered abuse or harassment, and where the lines should be drawn on intimate behaviour in a public environment. But to move from this to conclude, as Arndt does, that the sexual harassment stage is littered with the corpses of misunderstood but well-meaning men misses, and in fact obscures the point. The point is that sexual harassment of any kind — however minor or major — is unwelcome and inappropriate behaviour. Such behaviour should not be excused on the basis that men receive little socialisation in how to deal with their emotions. Gender interaction in our society is shaped and conditioned by sexism — because we live in a sexist society. Addressing this sexism is necessary in order to address sexist behaviour. This means putting adequate resources into open, constructive, non-judgemental education and awareness programs about what sexism is, how it conditions our behaviour, how both men and women will benefit from a society in which sexism is eradicated, and what steps can be taken within our schools, universities and workplaces to eliminate sexual harassment.