A Challenge to Feminism — 

Sexual Harassment

by Joan Kennedy Taylor



For many libertarians, the current concern with sexual

harassment is a non-issue — another example of

political correctness run rampant that no

right-thinking person should pay any attention to

except, perhaps, as a subject for humor.

Well, yes and no.  The implication of this attitude is

that "sexual harassment" primarily concerns

language, and that is often (but not always) true. 

But this is no instance of mere social pressure: the

courts are requiring employers to forbid certain

kinds of jokes in the workplace, to forbid their

employees to possess certain reading materials and

pictures, and to fire employees for behaving in ways

or using language to which other employees object. 

Living up to these

legal expectations, and instituting elaborate

training programs for management, is costing

businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars a

year.  And defending against lawsuits (and paying

damages when they lose) was forecast in 1992 by

one magazine to have cost corporate America $1

billion by 1997.  That's no joking matter.  From a

libertarian point of view, both free speech and

property rights may be put at risk by this trend.

From a feminist point of view, the argument from cost is

by no means deciding, because it is silent on the

issue of injustice.  Some kinds of speech are really

actions, often actions that violate rights.  It is

sometimes hard to tell where expression ends and

action begins, as word turns into gesture, demand,

or punishment.  Should managers be permitted to use

their workplace authority to extort sexual favors on

threat of dismissal?  The Supreme Court has ruled

that nude dancing on stage is a form of "expression"

that cannot be banned, but surely no one takes this

to mean that a man exposing himself to a woman in

his office is

exercising free speech.   Women have long been

tormented on the job with demands for sexual favors

and hostile remarks disguised in the language of

sexual attraction, which often turned into overt

actions that could be called assaults.  Often they

have felt they would lose their jobs if they

didn't put up with gross behavior on the part of

their office superiors.  Don't think Anita Hill;

think Bob Packwood, who defended himself when his

physical mauling of numerous female colleagues and

employees was brought to light by saying that

standards of behavior had changed without his

noticing.

They have.  Until the late seventies and early

eighties, there was no general discussion of sexual

harassment — as Gloria Steinem said, "We didn't even

have a word for it.  We called it ‘life.'"  It is an

advance in civilization that it is no longer

standard for women to expect such behavior as a

routine part of earning a living.  But it does

still exist.  The Packwood style of sexual

harassment — white collar harassment in all its

forms — is characteristic of work situations where

there is little or no gender mix at the top.  It

has flourished wherever men and women are

stratified by authority, with women generally

holding the vast majority of service jobs and men

overwhelmingly in upper management.  It has

existed between doctors and nurses and between

professors and students.  In all of these

situations, the women are considered to be more or

less interchangeable; the men are not.  Therefore,

the men have had the power to require all sorts of

personal services from the women who attended them,

from sexual compliance, to picking up dry

cleaning, to the often denigrated making of coffee.

Today, women report that they are experiencing a new

style of sexual harassment, coming not so much from

their superiors but from their colleagues, and based

not so much on sexual predation (called in sexual

harassment law, "quid pro quo" harassment) as on

what they perceive to be general hostility couched

in sexual terms.  It may escalate from wolf whistles

to graffiti to disgusting jokes to what seem to be

calculated campaigns to throw them off balance and

drive them from the workplace.  In workplaces where

things really get out of hand, sometimes a woman may

be faced with a sort of mob action on the part of

numbers of male workers.

This is called "hostile environment" sexual

harassment.  It raises two important questions.  Why

does the environment become so hostile in some

workplaces, and what should be done about it?  The

answer given by contemporary experts on the subject

is simple:  American culture is deeply misogynist,

and the cure for this behavior is lawsuit or the

threat of lawsuit.  Only that will scare companies

into taking proper action.  If the expert is

advising the company, the advice varies only a

little: institute an objective set of rules and if

possible, a management training program; make it a

habit to take action at once; get any troublemaker

(read, harasser) out of the

organization quickly.  This advice may explain the

recent cases of first-grade students being charged

with sexual harassment for kissing girls in class —

if the schools didn't go on record as taking such

incidents seriously and punitively, they would be

liable for damages if students did something worse

in the eighth grade.

Both of these expert answers are wrong.  Two things

have happened in the American workplace that are

helping to create the problem, and they have nothing

to do with general misogyny. The first is that more

and more women are starting to work in

high-paying, "non-traditional" jobs that have

previously been male enclaves — jobs in the

construction trades, engineering, police work,

fire departments, commodities trading — as well as

flooding professions like law and medicine in

which they used to be a small minority.  It

doesn't help that in some of these workplaces the

men have been told that affirmative action requires

that women be hired, that they won't be

qualified, but that they will still be advanced

faster than the men.

The second and related issue is that there is no

generally accepted definition of what sexual

harassment is.  Like obscenity, we're supposed to

know it when we see it.  Women are being told in

books and

articles and courses that the final definition is

their feelings: anything that makes them

uncomfortable is illegal sexual harassment, and

therefore potentially actionable.  They are also

being encouraged to "stand up for their rights,"

which means in this context to be ready to sue or

threaten suit at the drop of a hat, because

legally, sexual harassment is defined by the EEOC

as a kind of sexual discrimination in employment

and therefore a violation of Title VII of the

Civil Rights Act of 1964.  A public service ad on

New York City television epitomized this approach:

a man tells a woman that she should buy some new

clothes and make more of her appearance — "After

all, it's your job we're talking about."  "No,"

she replies, "it's sexual harassment we're talking

about — and I don't have to take it!"  An

announcement of how to get information on bringing

suit then flashes across the screen.

We have here a recipe for a really hostile workplace,

one in which men and women are being pitted against

each other, by legal and regulatory actions in the

past and by the ever-present threat of legal action

in the future.  The issue is not: should employees

put up with upsetting behavior?  No one in

management or the workforce wants a tinderbox

workplace.  The issue is, how can we defuse the

situation?

Let me try to disentangle what I see as the mistakes

that have brought us to this seeming impasse.  As

readers of previous issues of ALF News know, I not

only disagree with the concept of governmentally

enforced "affirmative action" but I also question

the antidiscrimination laws from which the legal

concept of affirmative action springs.  The

government has no business discriminating against

members of any group, "affirmatively" or not, but

private individuals, organizations, and businesses

should be able to choose their associates and

employees — and those with whom they do business. 

This is emphatically not a defense of misogyny or

prejudice; it is a firm belief that the law should

treat everyone alike, and that therefore

homogenous-group association (even though sometimes

having negative effects on others) cannot be banned,

because it has benefits that shouldn't be forbidden. 

A prime feminist example is that battered women's

shelters shouldn't have to admit men.  So,

although I see sexual harassment as an important

social problem, I see it as a mistake that our

concern for it arrives tied up in a package with

discrimination law.  That law itself has

problematic implications for women, and it's a

procrustean bed for sexual harassment.

Mistake number two is that the courts have chosen to

deal with sexual harassment in a way that to many

legal scholars clearly violates the First Amendment

prohibition against government curtailing of

expression.  I refer my readers to my article in

the communications law journal, CommLaw

Conspectus, published by the Catholic University

of America, "Sexual Harassment and the First

Amendment," where I analyze several current cases

and the current Supreme Court treatment of the

issue.  Let me just say here that in my view not

only is it improper for the courts and the EEOC to

demand that certain pictures, reading matter,

jokes, and language be banned from the workplace,

but that this banning in and of itself becomes a

self-fulfilling prophecy fostering hostility

against women.  Will their entry into previously

all-male enclaves change the workplace for the

worse?  You bet.

So what should we do?  I suggest that we go back to

our feminist roots.  The essence of contemporary

feminism should be that women can take charge of

their own lives and that they can help each other

deal with problems by joint action.  But

contemporary wisdom, even much feminist wisdom, is

failing us in the workplace.  It is telling us that

there is nothing we can do about hostility in the

workplace short of going to court — and that is

usually a self-immolative thing to do.

I consulted libertarian feminist Lee Nason, who has a

long history of working in construction (often as

the only woman on the job) and is now in charge of

all maintenance at the University of Massachusetts

in Boston.  Taking the EEOC guidelines at face 

value, she says that in her experience, "Cases of

actual out-of-the-blue discrimination are very few

and far between....The guys may not know what to

expect with a new woman in the workplace and their

responses may be all over the block.  Maybe they

are getting jealousy-stuff from their wives at

home.  Maybe they are sexually attracted to the

new worker and have no idea of how to address the

situation.  The problem becomes a matter of sexual

discrimination when the woman has expectations

that she will be discriminated against and behaves

in ways that turn it into discrimination."

So one good step for the new woman on the block is to

stop expecting discrimination (even if it's there) and

concentrate instead on how to communicate with your

colleagues.  Lee says, "Find friends among older

workers who can help you put inappropriate actions

into context; address the problem to the person

who is offending you first, to give him a chance

to explain; don't scream to the bosses or claim

‘ladyhood.'  If the response can be mitigated, the

behaviors may be voluntarily modified.  And if the

solutions are not voluntarily entered into, they

will be subject to sabotage and the ‘bigot' will

find new ways to act out both his original

(non-discriminatory) emotions as well as new

(discriminatory) emotions (I'll show those

feminist pantywaists)."

In other words, he may be as confused as you are, but

each of you can change a situation of

misunderstanding into a situation of warfare.  Or a

situation of mutual acceptance.  So why shouldn't

women move to clarify communications, allay negative

expectations that we are unqualified and will reduce

standards, and show

how good we can be?  Why aren't feminists running

training programs for women, especially women in

these non-traditional jobs, to help them with the

new situations they face?  A new kind of

consciousness-raising, that will help us discuss

what had made us uncomfortable at work, where we

can role-play various ways to communicate this

discomfort — or perhaps even ways to change

expectations?  If someone makes you uncomfortable,

you can and should communicate with that person

and try to change the situation — it is not the

case that you can do nothing.

  At worst, if you are faced with a real sleaze, you can

make friends with some of the other men around by

your nonhostile but firm handling of the situation,

so that they will support you in a showdown.  But

making you uncomfortable is not violating your

rights.  Drawing that distinction firmly in your own

mind can only help you.

When you read the court cases of really egregious

harassment — mooning, group groping of a woman in

sight of a supervisor who does nothing to stop it,

hostile messages in lockers and lunch boxes — you

begin to suspect that the way the woman has

responded to the environment may have something to

do with the enormous hostility she stirs up,

especially when there are other women present who

are not harassed.  What are they doing that's

different?

The hostility brewing in the workplace is from both

sides, male and female.  There are reported cases in

which women have said to men, essentially, "Nyah,

nyah. I can talk dirty to you, but I'll take you to

court if you talk dirty to me."   Looking to legal

solutions only further fragments people, most of

whom in their secret hearts would rather work

together.  Sooner or later the Supreme Court is

going to enforce the First Amendment in this area

and say that words, ideas, and pictures are not

harassing.  Feminists can be ahead of the curve, by

promoting the abandonment now of what has turned out

to be a destructive reliance on legal solutions and

the substitution of real communal support for women

facing new horizons and new boundaries.  And we can

still insist that mauling is not allowed to take

place in the workplace.  

After all, acting from strength doesn't consist solely

in saying, "I'll get my Big Brother to beat you up."







Letter to the Editor: Call for Papers

I write to tell you the topic, Family Structure, of an

upcoming Forum of the Free Nation Foundation.  This

Forum will meet in April 1997, probably here in

North Carolina.  The specific date and place will be

announced later.

We seek both writing for Formulation and people to

present papers on the topic at the Forum.  I hope

that you or other members of ALF might have material

to offer.

As you may know, we in Free Nation Foundation are

trying to build vision of the institutions which we

believe would come to exist in a free nation.  So,

we ask, what shape will the institutions of

marriage, child rearing, and family support systems

take without intervention from the state? 

Particular questions which come to mind are:



Will most people marry in churches and couple in

traditional long-term monogamous relationships, or

will there be Heinlein-style "line marriages" or

group marriages?  What contracts and what

enforcement mechanisms do we foresee?

What supports, if any, will exist for abandoned

partners, notably parents of young children, who

find themselves cut off from their expected primary

source of support?

Will there be orphanages?  Will children be sold?



Again, we seek writing to help us formulate answers to

such questions.  We do not require original writing:

we are happy to recycle relevant material.  Most of

our papers on this topic will go in the Spring issue

of Formulations, which has a writers deadline of 15

February.

For papers which add meaningfully to our process, we

will invite the writer to come here to present the

paper at our Forum.  We will be able to help pay the

travel expenses of speakers we invite.

Thank you in advance.

Richard O. Hammer

Free Nation Foundation

111 West Corbin Street

Hillsborough, NC  27278



[editor's note: The Free Nation Foundation has been

working since 1993 toward the goal of negotiating a

99-year lease of land (probably from a third-world

country) on which to establish a small nation.  It

is still in the first stage of a projected

three-stage process: gathering a movement of

people to study, discuss, and publish descriptions

of all aspects of such a nation.  The other two

stages are establishing a founding organization to

raise money to be put in escrow, and actually

establishing the nation and subletting land to

settlers.  I attended a very impressive meeting of

the Foundation in New York several years ago. Their

Forum last Spring included Mary Ruwart and

Spencer Heath MaCallum as speakers.]





Update

Joan Kennedy Taylor's article referred to in this

issue, "Sexual Harassment and the First Amendment,"

appears in Vol. 4 No. 2 (Summer 1996) of CommLaw

Conspectus: Journal of Law and Communication Policy,

published by the Institute for Communications Law

Studies and the Columbus School of Law at the

Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.

Joan Kennedy Taylor is also one of the speakers at the

third annual Women's Freedom Network Conference in

Washington, D.C.  The conference is on "Rethinking

Sexual Harassment," entitled "Is There a Better

Way?" October 12-13 at the Double Tree Hotel Park

Terrace.



ALF's West Coast Coordinator, Sharon Presley, is

offering two courses at her nonprofit educational

organization, Resources for Independent Thinking,

located at 5236 Claremont, Oakland, California. 

Sharon and Dixon Wragg are offering three workshops

on "Communicating with the Opposite Sex," on October

13, November 10, and December 8, all at 7 p.m.  She

is also offering 3 lectures on "Myths of Gender" on

October 20, November 17, and December 20.  For those

who don't wish to commit to a series, it is possible

to attend individual lectures.  Resources for

Independent Thinking also has tapes for sale,

including tapes of Sharon's talks on the

individualist anarchist feminist heritage: "Loving

Freedom: The Anarchist Life of Voltairine de Cleyre"

and "Moses and Lillian Harmon: Radical

Lightbearers."  For more information call the office

of RIT: (510)601-9450.