Harassment by other names
March 31, in case you missed it, was Secretary's Day. Yet another invention of the creative capitalist market mind which serves to guilt-trip people into buying commodities to make someone else — in this case the hapless "secretary" — happy. Most of the propaganda distributed by florists, restaurants and the like assumed that the secretary would be a woman and her boss/flower-buyer a man.
Of course, one look at the statistics on the sex segregation of the work force proves them right. Nevertheless, it doesn't justify the propaganda barrage that accompanied Secretary's Day. If you thought Disclosure was bad, just get a load of this.
An advertisement by a restaurant in the Financial Review encouraged these (presumably male) bosses to take their (presumably female) secretaries out for lunch on the given day. The slogan: "Is our fish the only politically correct way to get fresh on Secretary's Day?" The small print advertised the fact that they could even organise the flowers and chocolates for you.
Now, in spite of the sexist stereotyping, relatively few "secretaries" would be as impressed as the ad implies. For a start, their title is no longer "secretaries". Administrative support will do nicely, thank you. Second, for the boss to take you out to lunch and buy you flowers and chocolates implies somewhat more than a boss-secretary relationship. If such a relationship already exists, they could go out to lunch any time.
More to the point, if that relationship doesn't exist, the message behind the advertising is clear. Make a pass at your administrative support worker, woo her with a fine lunch, flowers and chocolates and get "fresh" with her on Secretary's Day.
In normal terms, such behaviour on the part of the boss should be interpreted as sexual harassment.
But the worst thing about this piece of advertising is that it displays an understanding of the potential for sexual harassment accusations — hence the reference to "politically correct" ways of getting "fresh". It's an understanding of it and then a blatant attempt to write it off, render it a joke — to avoid the accusation while retaining the behaviour. A recipe for how to get away with it.
Putting a politically correct label on certain behaviour doesn't and shouldn't protect that behaviour from criticism and censure if it is unacceptable. Sexual harassment, by any person in a workplace to another member of the workplace, is entirely unacceptable — whether on "Secretary's Day" or not.
Sexual harassment by those who are aware of the criticisms of the feminist movement and feminists' attempts to prevent it, and who nevertheless choose to ignore these lessons, is unconscionable.
By Kath Gelber