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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."