NCJ Number
164431
Date Published
1995
Length
9 pages
Annotation
Current legal definitions of sexual harassment are too broad; sexual harassment cases have become attempts to enforce rigid moral codes by using the court system.
Abstract
By using broader definitions of sexual harassment than the rest of society, the courts send the message that much of the ordinary social interaction between men and women will be strictly regulated, chilling relations between the sexes. Contours of appropriate behavior between the sexes, either as a prelude to, or part of, a sexual relationship, or simply as an aspect of ordinary social discourse, are not a fixed, universally known, or widely shared set of rules. To the extent that there are such rules, there are a variety of views as to how they apply in different social environments. Even those who agree on where to draw the lines between the acceptable and the unacceptable will disagree over whether violation of these rules should be viewed as a breach of etiquette, tacky behavior, a tort, or a crime. If a woman does not welcome a man's sexually aggressive behavior and he knows it and persists in it, he is guilty of at least a social wrong, and if his behavior is egregious enough, a legal one as well. The greatest cost to regulating sexual harassment in the workplace is that for an increasing number of people, the workplace is the best avenue for finding and pursuing romantic interests. This argument does not intend to abolish or curtail the enforcement of traditional criminal and tort penalties for sexual offenses. On the contrary, they should be enforced more vigorously and be punished more harshly; however, creating the undefined, politicized category of sexual harassment opens the door to the punishment of behaviors about which there is significant and widespread disagreement as to their severity and whether such disagreement should be resolved by law and the courts.