There is in fact a pattern
I saw this
So I looked it up. What is ACAS? Google says:
The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service is a Crown non-departmental public body of the Government of the United Kingdom. Its purpose is to improve organisations and working life through the promotion and facilitation of strong industrial relations practice.
Under Workplace Problems they have Discrimination, bullying and harassment, and under that they have Sexual harassment, and sure enough under that they have the anyones.
What sexual harassment is
Sexual harassment is unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature.
It can happen to men, women and people of any gender or sexual orientation. It can be carried out by anyone of the same sex, opposite sex or anyone of any gender identity.
Now…wait a minute. Back up. It isn’t that simple. They’re leaving out the whole power imbalance aspect. The larger category, to repeat, is Discrimination, bullying and harassment, and what do all of those involve? A power imbalance. That’s how these things work. The peasants can’t bully the lord, the workers can’t discriminate against the owner, the women can’t sexually harass the men.
Ok there are exceptions, as MenAtWork says. A rich and powerful woman boss can sexually harass a subordinate, and people are weird so no doubt there are such cases, but there is also a fundamental power imbalance between women and men, and women are the ones with less power. ACAS could say there are exceptions, and make it clear that men can report sexual harassment too, without occluding the pattern altogether.
The law on harassment
Harassment includes bullying because of certain ‘protected characteristics’ and is against the law.
Sex is one of the protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.
The full list is:
- age
- disability
- gender reassignment
- pregnancy and maternity
- race
- religion or belief
- sex
- sexual orientation
So that has to mean “sex” as in “female sex.” It can’t mean both sexes, because that would be incoherent.
So why is their advice on sexual harassment written as if it’s a toss-up which sex is generally the one being harassed?
I just finished the sexual harassment training at my work (we have to do it every year for Title IX). It does the same thing, and in fact makes sure that there are many pictures of men looking depressed and same sex couples. There are, in fact, not that many of women.
At my work place, I am aware of no instances where men have been harassed on account of their sex. There are numerous cases of that happening to women. But yeah, we must make it “both sides now”.
It’s as if we have to keep teaching the ABCs on this every damn day.
In several conversations I’ve attempted regarding the transgender issue, I’ve brought up the fact that the overwhelming proportion of sexual assaults are males assaulting females. I get pushback about it, claiming the statistics are wrong, or stating men rape men, too, or women abuse, too, or emotional abuse (implicitly by women against men) is just as bad. I think these viewpoints fly in the face of the data. What surprises me more is that the people making these statements are almost always women, and they are always people who insist that the people most knowledgeable about oppression are the oppressed, all others should shut up and listen. So, they are both rejecting the objective information and rejecting my interest in supporting the rights of women because I’m not a woman and they are women.
Which doesn’t hold, of course, if the oppressed is identified as a TERF.
And yeah, the data have to be wrong if they don’t fit what you want/believe to be true.
I wonder if it isn’t useful, though, to “pretend” that straight males are frequent victims of harassment, as a way of getting them to “buy into” the fight.
I think there’s a non-trivial number of men who aren’t harassers, and aren’t entirely unsympathetic to harassment, but who harbor a suspicion that the whole anti-discrimination industry is an attack on white men.
And yeah, I know, it’s tedious to always be catering to their fragile sensitivities, but that’s sometimes a necessary, or at least a helpful, evil.
Slightly tangental, but today’s Women’s Hour had an interview with an academic who has written a book about the politicisation of Mumsnet. I thought she’d be rabbiting on about “transphobia” but in fact she was very strong on how Mumsnet is a safe space for women to discuss things like the Gender Recognition Act, since places like The Guardian, the BBC and the progressive political parties had been slapping them down.
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4050057-the-politicisation-of-mumsnet
I think the number of males sexually harassed by gay men (Kevin Spacey, Catholic priests) is not insignificant, so I don’t think typing the victim as female would be a good change.
KBPlayer @ 6 – Unfortunately though the presenter – Jane Garvey – felt it necessary or was told to interject that Woman’s Place UK, Fair Play for Women, and FiLiA “are groups that some people have described, in some circumstances, as transphobic.” The three groups thus branded are not happy.
https://womansplaceuk.org/2020/10/20/joint-statement-comments-bbc-womans-hour/
Skeletor @ 7 – try reading the post.
Skeletor, one problem with the whole Catholic priest thing is that girls and women get molested by priests too, and apparently in much larger numbers than boys. While it is awful that this is happening to boys, almost all the people I know think it only happens to boys, because that is what we hear about. Watching the movie they made about the revelation (Forget the name…), the reporters were shocked to be given the name of a girl that was abused, as well, because they thought it was only boys. Then you don’t hear about girls again in the entire movie, until the very end when two young girls are waiting to be heard by police, or someone, taking their story, and you only see them for a second. If you happen to close your eyes to sneeze, you’d miss it.
So, yeah, I don’t have much worry about noting the sexual harassment of females as the prime; boys get the attention, and I suspect there are several reasons. First, I think we value boys more than girls, though people (parents usually) deny this. I also think it is seen as being worse for boys, because for girls it is seen as a right of passage, a validation of her femininity, while for boys it is seen as emasculation. I also suspect at least part of it is just that sexual abuse of girls is so normal, and so normalized, that it gets much less attention. That’s just sort of the way things are, right? But with boys, it’s like Judge Brock says in Hedda Gabler, “People just don’t do that! Be sure to hear that in the appropriate shocked tone.
And the one thing most of these cases have in common is the perp – males. Males are the primary abusers of females. Males are the primary abusers of males. Oh, women abuse, there’s no doubt about that, as I can attest from my years of suffering at the hands of my mother and older sister, but the abuse tends not to be sexual or sexualized. Most of the rape cases I have seen (all, actually) that involve a female abusing a male have been women having consensual sex with males too young to consent, often students of theirs. Coercion could be an issue, power imbalance definitely is, but physical force is not in play. I’m not sure there is the fear that the abused female often experiences, either, though I can’t be sure of that and I do not wish to minimize anyone’s trauma.
OB@8 – yeah, good point. I suppose it shows how this ideology has been embraced by the progressives that it was a pleasant surprise that an academic should be speaking against it.
I don’t follow Mumsnet however when I dip into it, I find it a wide-ranging site with plenty of good contributors. I do remember them being very amusing about Naomi Wolf and her magic vagina.
Well, ACAS are going to be in trouble when word of their transphobic hatemongering gets out. Sexual harrassment, carried out by anyone, of any gender? Don’t they know trans women are incapable of being sexual predators?