Have you ever been wrongly accused of sexual harassment?

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14 Aug 2010, 6:00 pm

This topic I have experience with, and will emphasize how important CONTEXT is.

A guy I worked with got fired for sexual harassment and I have no doubt that he was taken the wrong way, but he caused real harm and I couldn't argue with the firing, either.

Simple reality is that he was in the superior position and did not have the luxury of believing he had any right to be socially friendly with the women he bossed around all day. Add to that the fact that he was a difficult boss, bordering on being a tyrant, and his attempts at being friendly came across as attempts to force a relationship. You can't just have dinner on a business trip with someone you were yelling at two hours ago, and you can't casually watch a movie in your hotel room with anyone whose career you have some measure of control over.

Three of those women had quietly quit before one got brave enough to file a claim.

Anytime you are the boss, you must be very careful how you conduct yourself with employees of the opposite sex.

Not the boss? Well, then there is the hostile environment thing. Some conversations make women extremely uncomfortable, and have no place in an office. If they overhear you talking with the guys, and then you walk in and comment about their outfit, they are likely to connect the two conversations and assume you meant more than you do. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and there are many cultural differences in the work place as well. If any part of your obsession with the topic of sex shows up in your interactions in the workplace, you have set yourself up to be misunderstood. If any of these threads show up on a publicly viewed screen, you can be deemed to be creating a hostile environment.

For self-protection, remember that some thoughts and ideas have ZERO place at work.

The reality is, you don't have to engage in actual sexual harassment for someone to feel that they have been sexually harassed by you. My experience with the fired co-worker made that very clear to me; we all felt horrible for him, but we also felt horrible for the young women he had inadvertently made miserable. The company had no choice but to fire him, as a legal matter, but the worst part is that I don't know if he ever figured out how the whole thing happened, how he got so easily misunderstood. Stuff like that can be repaired, moving forward, if one is willing to take a solid and cold look at their own actions as viewed from a different lens.

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Last edited by DW_a_mom on 14 Aug 2010, 10:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

pschristmas
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14 Aug 2010, 6:44 pm

GoatOnFire wrote:

Back in high school I was the recipient of what may be the stupidest sexual harassment accusation ever. Some girl was following me around making fun of my backpack. I didn't find a verbal response worth the breath so I just flipped her the bird. Later, I get called in for an accusation of sexual harassment. It was about the middle finger, apparently the bird can possibly be interpreted as a phallic symbol. I was suspended for three days because some vindictive b***h realized that sexual harassment rules are so stupid that you can say that you felt uncomfortable because you claimed that you thought the bird was roughly shaped like a penis and get someone in trouble. Not that out of school suspension wasn't pretty sweet, I hated that school.

Since "flipping the bird" is symbolic for "f--- y--," there is penile symbolism in it. However, any reasonable person knows that it is most commonly used for telling someone where to get off, just as the verbal phrase is commonly used. The school badly over-reacted, probably because someone -- either the girl or her parents -- used the "L" word --lawsuit.

CrinklyCrustacean
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14 Aug 2010, 7:34 pm

DW_a_mom wrote:

The reality is, you don't have to engage in actual sexual harassment for someone to feel that they have sexually harassed by you.

So you are saying that all a girl has to do is claim that you sexually harrassed her, and you will get fired even if there is no evidence to support her claim? How does that work?

As for not knowing whether he ever understood what happened, why didn't you sit down with him and try to explain?

JohnisBlind
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14 Aug 2010, 8:20 pm

DW_a_mom wrote:

This topic I have experience with, and will emphasize how important CONTEXT is.

A guy I worked with got fired for sexual harassment and I have no doubt that he was taken the wrong way, but he caused real harm and I couldn't argue with the firing, either.

Simple reality is that he was in the superior position and did not have the luxury of believing he had any right to be socially friendly with the women he bossed around all day. Add to that the fact that he was a difficult boss, bordering on being a tyrant, and his attempts at being friendly came across as attempts to force a relationship. You can't just have dinner on a business trip with someone you were yelling at two hours ago, and you can't casually watch a movie in your hotel room with anyone whose career you have some measure of control over.

Three of those women had quietly quit before one got brave enough to file a claim.

Anytime you are the boss, you must be very careful how you conduct yourself with employees of the opposite sex.

Not the boss? Well, then there is the hostile environment thing. Some conversations make women extremely uncomfortable, and have no place in an office. If they overhear you talking with the guys, and then you walk in and comment about their outfit, they are likely to connect the two conversations and assume you meant more than you do. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and there are many cultural differences in the work place as well. If any part of your obsession with the topic of sex shows up in your interactions in the workplace, you have set yourself up to be misunderstood. If any of these threads show up on a publicly viewed screen, you can be deemed to be creating a hostile environment.

For self-protection, remember that some thoughts and ideas have ZERO place at work.

The reality is, you don't have to engage in actual sexual harassment for someone to feel that they have sexually harassed by you. My experience with the fired co-worker made that very clear to me; we all felt horrible for him, but we also felt horrible for the young women he had inadvertently made miserable. The company had no choice but to fire him, as a legal matter, but the worst part is that I don't know if he ever figured out how the whole thing happened, how he got so easily misunderstood. Stuff like that can be repaired, moving forward, if one is willing to take a solid and cold look at their own actions as viewed from a different lens.

I don't know enough about the details of this case to make a judgment.

hale_bopp
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14 Aug 2010, 8:22 pm

I think a lot of these claims are bogus and some girls need to get over themselves quite frankly. Sorry if this offends people.
But self righteousess can be taken too far.

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14 Aug 2010, 8:31 pm

pschristmas wrote:

GoatOnFire wrote:

It looks like more than one person that I've had conversation with on this forum has had an experience like this.

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14 Aug 2010, 8:39 pm

hale_bopp wrote:

I think a lot of these claims are bogus and some girls need to get over themselves quite frankly. Sorry if this offends people.
But self righteousess can be taken too far.

Sometimes events are misunderstood. We as human beings have a limited ability to perceive things and often things are not correctly understood. Sadly when we apply that incredibly non-controversial reality to the sexual aspect of human reality people are unable to see that simple truth.

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14 Aug 2010, 10:40 pm

CrinklyCrustacean wrote:

DW_a_mom wrote:

The reality is, you don't have to engage in actual sexual harassment for someone to feel that they have sexually harassed by you.

You didn't read the whole post. Regardless of what he meant, those women had valid reason to feel sexually harassed. It affected their work performance and led to talented employees leaving the company. Very ugly all around.

It wasn't my company and it wasn't my call. I was in a higher position than him, but not his supervisor; different departments. I knew him and I knew those women. Everyone was telling the truth. I did tell the lawyers I was convinced he had meant no harm, and that from his view his version of events was quite true, and I wasn't the only one to stand up for him in that way. But, realistically, a supervisor cannot spend the day denigrating his staff, and then treat them as friends in the evening, and even less should a supervisor on an out of town trip be inviting staff into his hotel room, even if it is supposed to be watch TV; the only place to sit is usually on a bed, and that is awkward at minimum. If he hadn't been fired for sexual harassment, he would have been fired for extremely bad judgment. He messed up.

Contacting him at that point would have been inappropriate on my part. I was still an employee there, and couldn't be sure how any overture would have been interpreted. It is my hope that once all the lawsuits were settled one of the owners had a beer with him and a nice long talk; I think that is the kind of thing they would have done, but it all moved out of my hands.

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GoatOnFire
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14 Aug 2010, 10:45 pm

pschristmas wrote:

Since "flipping the bird" is symbolic for "f--- y--," there is penile symbolism in it.

My use of it meant "f**k off" more than "f**k you." Her actual complaint was about the physical shape of the gesture. It was absolutely ridiculous arguing for an hour with the school administrators in their office that although the middle finger vaguely resembles a penis that there is almost no resemblance for the clenched part of the hand to testicles. They concluded that because the fingernail was pink and at a glance similar to the head of a circumcised penis it was close enough. So there you go people, wear gloves because your fingers look kind of like cocks.

pschristmas wrote:

However, any reasonable person knows that it is most commonly used for telling someone where to get off, just as the verbal phrase is commonly used. The school badly over-reacted, probably because someone -- either the girl or her parents -- used the "L" word --lawsuit.

There had recently been a mandatory sexual harassment seminar at the school and there was an epidemic of some of the most amusing sexual harassment accusations I have ever seen. I think she was just doing it because it was happening all around.

hale_bopp wrote:

I think a lot of these claims are bogus and some girls need to get over themselves quite frankly. Sorry if this offends people.
But self righteousess can be taken too far.

Thank you.

Alycat wrote:

As for what was 'wrong' with hitting on them - it's fine if they are interested in you, but if they send out the signals that they aren't and you keep going, then it is a problem. Or if they've sent out those signals in a previous situation and you try again it's a problem.
I'm not saying you thought 'hey I know they don't like me but I'm going to try anyway', you might just have not picked up on their signals.

And people wonder why some guys on this board are terrified to approach women. Some of those signals are pretty subtle, and as aspies we are worse at reading them than most. The risk is more than just being told "no."

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14 Aug 2010, 11:08 pm

GoatOnFire wrote:

That, and I still haven't gotten a clear response about what it was that they could have perceived me doing to them that is offensive. Since I stopped talking to them after a few sentences you can't say I did anything wrong.

I only have a vague sense that if your too forward then what your doing is wrong, but no explanation for why what I am doing is wrong. What is so wrong with openly expressing your sexuality in the first place?

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14 Aug 2010, 11:15 pm

JohnisBlind wrote:

GoatOnFire wrote:

That, and I still haven't gotten a clear response about what it was that they could have perceived me doing to them that is offensive. Since I stopped talking to them after a few sentences you can't say I did anything wrong.

I only have a vague sense that if your too forward then what your doing is wrong, but no explanation for why what I am doing is wrong. What is so wrong with openly expressing your sexuality in the first place?

we explained this already.

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DW_a_mom
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14 Aug 2010, 11:26 pm

JohnisBlind wrote:

What is so wrong with openly expressing your sexuality in the first place?

In the workplace to a co-worker? EVERYTHING. A workplace takes the most vanilla path in order to respect everyone's sensitivities and cultural differences. If it doesn't relate to work, the weather, or something else completely vanilla, you don't talk about it with a co-worker. That is the social rule; you don't have to agree with it, you just have to follow it.

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CrinklyCrustacean
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15 Aug 2010, 5:54 am

DW_a_mom wrote:

I did read the whole post and you said he was innocent. If you'd said he got fired for being a bully, well that would be different since you said he bordered on tyrannical. Going back to this bit:

DW_a_mom wrote:

The reality is, you don't have to engage in actual sexual harassment for someone to feel that they have been sexually harassed by you.

How can this statement be justified? If you don't engage in sexual harrassment, their emotions are unfounded and their claims invalid. To say otherwise just doesn't make sense.

Quote:

It wasn't my company and it wasn't my call. I was in a higher position than him, but not his supervisor; different departments. [...] Contacting him at that point would have been inappropriate on my part. I was still an employee there, and couldn't be sure how any overture would have been interpreted. It is my hope that once all the lawsuits were settled one of the owners had a beer with him and a nice long talk; I think that is the kind of thing they would have done, but it all moved out of my hands.

Okay, fair enough, I thought you were his supervisor.

Quote:

If he hadn't been fired for sexual harassment, he would have been fired for extremely bad judgment.

I've tried looking at it from both perspectives and from what you have said, it sounds like he made some bad decisions. The hotel thing was definitely inappropriate, but I wouldn't call it sexual harrassment. Then again, I don't know all the details so I'll have to defer to you on this one.

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15 Aug 2010, 11:59 am

DW_a_mom wrote:

If he hadn't been fired for sexual harassment, he would have been fired for extremely bad judgment. He messed up.

An accusation of sexual harassment is serious business. It is something that stigmatizes a person for the rest of their life. For somebody who hasn't been diagnosed with autism you seem to have an obliviousness to social reality that borders on the pathological.

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15 Aug 2010, 12:41 pm

Pistonhead wrote:

I had that happen, I was playing tag and I went to tap a girl's shoulder when she was walking backwards and I missed. Like holy sh** I accidentally touched her boob! Tell the principal!

Yeah, except I didn't brush them at all, accidentally or otherwise. But they swore that I intentionally groped them or whatever

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15 Aug 2010, 2:35 pm

SabbraCadabra wrote:

Pistonhead wrote:

I had that happen, I was playing tag and I went to tap a girl's shoulder when she was walking backwards and I missed. Like holy sh** I accidentally touched her boob! Tell the principal!

Yeah, except I didn't brush them at all, accidentally or otherwise. But they swore that I intentionally groped them or whatever

Sometimes girls can be bullies.

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