[PREV - SYMBOLIC_ACTION] [TOP]
HARASSMENT_TRAINING
September 30, 2024
February 28, 2026
I ploughed through the California
Sexual Harassment training. This was a mind numbing
experience of waiting for them
to quit reading to me things
I've finished reading myself.
I was of course in a mode like
"Oh please, *I* don't need to
see this stuff"--
Then in a bulleted list they flash
the point that sarcastic responses
may constitute harassment.
"Uh oh."
General stuff:
They mention a "reaonable person"
standard at one point, but after I'm old enough to remember when
that they plough through endless that was a "reasonable man"
detailed examples where the standard. We've come a long
subjective sense of feeling way, eh?
uncomfortable matters a lot.
SYMBOLIC_ACTION
So: does intent matter at all?
They go through many cases
where behavior that's not at They're probably envisioning someone
all directed at the person who being cute, e.g. "accidently" doing
feels offended can matter. things to bug someone and falling back
on acting innocent. "Oh, but I didn't
mean to do that."
Having images showing that may
be "offensive" can be harassment--
But since the offensiveness is
subjective it requires When out conservative friends see
a commonly accepted standard. rules like this, they immediately
start acting deeply offended by
These arguably do exist, but this things like mentions of racism
then amounts to an endorsement of (e.g. the history of slavery),
conventional esthetics as part of homosexuality, trans-people...
the legal standard.
They might even feel *sincerely*
But this is the kind of point harassed. Once they were
that seems terribly abstract considered normal, now we're
and irrelevant until it isn't. telling them they're evil and
need to change.
And it often seems like these
rules have come out of nowhere.
Okay, they might've voted
for some anti-discrimination
laws, but someone sat down and
decided *this* is the way they
were going to be applied.
If you invite them to approve additional
anti-discrimination rules, do you
expect them to go for it? Or will they
presume there's a gotcha buried in there
and reflexively reject them?
(Note: I suspect something like this
may be why the ERA ran into trouble.)
They present the now standard
catcheism about gender identity
and expression.
It's nice to see "Cis gender"
explicitly defined-- sticking to
what you were assigned at
birth-- that isn't often done in
my experience. It's jargon
you're just supposed to know
somehow.
Myself I keep getting the feeling that
this new system is inadvertantly rigid PRONOUN_ETIQUETTE
in some ways that the customs I learned
weren't, e.g. someone running a drag
identity is expected to give you visual
cues as to whether they're being butch
or femme, and you're supposed to adjust But there is a brief mention of
your pronouns accordingly. "nonbinary" and "fluid" people.
Switching between butch/femme according to mood
is much more awkward under this new system--
There's a lot of room in the system for
someone who enjoys dramatics to set traps--
You could, for example, adopt a
thoroughly femme look but insist on
"he/him" pronouns, and act offended
when people get it wrong.
Or:
You could come on like you're cool with
everything and encourage some risque You're not supposed to
remarks, and then complain about being talk about cases like
offended later. that (you must *believe
women*)-- but I guarantee
If you *ignored* a clear that every HR department
objection that would be obviously in the world is familiar
bad, but since the the absence of with them.
a negative response can never be
taken as a positive, that creates Q: does HR have ways of
some wiggle room to game the side-lining a complaint
system. when they want to?
Q: what if-- just
hypothetically-- you had
an HR head more interested
in expanding their power
than in scrupulous
application of rules?
The issue gets worse in more
high profile cases where
it's possible for the
complainant to be a plant...
I know of one case where a CEO
settled on a sex harassment case
where I'm reasonably sure it was
a scam-- a woman I worked with
told me the scammers had asked
her if she wanted in.
A minor surprise: they haven't
gone with explicit rules against
manager-employee dating.
Though it appears that the boss
gets just get one strike. One
move, then back off, a second That doesn't sound too bad--
move qualifies as harassment. except that a "move" isn't
really well defined, is it?
But perhaps these various little
things I'm worried about really
are just little things, edge
cases that can be hashed out in
court if need me...
But just thinking about the hassles
involved in trying to get a court
to interpret the nuances of casual
work place interactions makes my
head hurt.
Do the courts mainly delegate the
problem to company HR departments?
That sounds like pushing the
problem around...
--------
[NEXT - POLAR_TRAP]