eye of the receiver - a tract on harassment

Harassment is a question that I and many around me have been grappling with of late. Folks seem to look at harassment in two ways.

There are people who believe that harassment is behavior. When you can identify specific behaviors that are hostile or initimidating you have identified harassment. Then all actions can be tested against the list to see what is harassment and what is not.

Other people believe that harassment is reflected in the feelings of the person that the behavior acts against. When a person feels uncomfortable, unwelcome, or intimidated in a human interaction, they are on the receiving end of harassment.
Much like beauty is in the eye of the beholder and harassment is in the eye of the receiver.

Interestingly in my very small survey men often argue that harassment is specific behavior and women argue that harassment is defined by how that behavior is received.

In one case human interaction becomes more and more restricted as the list of actions that are called harassment gets longer and longer. Or harassing acts that are not on the big list are dismissed as not harassment. In the other case people become afraid to interact because any interaction could be interpreted by the recipient as harassment (regardless of their actual intent) based on the feelings of the recipient. Additionally, the feelings of the person feeling harassed may be misattributed to the actions of another while actually have no connection with the actions of the person accused of harassment. This in a sense being an act of counter harassment. I will say as an overly sensitive person that sometimes people are overly sensitive - that sometimes people over interpret what is said to them.

Regardless a climate of fear and distrust is created.

The question of harassment is the action itself, the way that it is received, the way it was intended. Intent is the elusive factor that is really at the heart of the grey areas of harassment. It folds into not only how the action is intended but also what the recipient assumes the intent is. Intent, the crucial element, is impossible to determine to the satisfaction of all parties involved. Such that everyone points either to behavior or to reception of behavior. These are easier to dissect.

Let us acknowledge that there are actions observed that are clearly harassment. Often these are exchanges between strangers. Interactions that happen in which one person acts towards a stranger in a hostile or initimidating way on the basis of that stranger's color or gender or sexual orientation or level of poverty or some other social distinguishing feature. Racial slurs, sexist remarks, homophobic comments made to strangers are clearly acts of harassment whose only intent is to express hostility or intimidate.

Harassment is behavior, intent, and reception. When choosing a behavior there is the question of audience. Will the person you are speaking to understand your intent? When these interactions happen between people who are acquainted with one another we run into grey areas - the more intimacy exists between the individuals the greyer things get. When your behavior is not received in the way you expected, how are you then to react?

One grey area is in telling jokes - jokes that mock specific groups of people, blondes, gays, catholics, dead babies, what have you. People who tell them argue that jokes are just jokes. They are intended to be funny and not threatening or hostile. It's just a joke. In jokes and in other interactions it is a question of audience. And humor is a very subjective thing. The question at the start is: Do people in your audience feel included or excluded? When you tell this joke will a person who feels excluded then feel further excluded?

My father has always said that firstly you must establish an understanding of good will between you and the person with whom you speak. When good will is understood and accepted between conversants conversation is entirely free and you can say anything. The key is to be very clear in expressing your good will and in the other person communicating whether or not they feel, believe, and share these expressions. Before anything else this is the first step in good communication and a free exchange of ideas. And this is something that must be established mutually.

Be aware that you are not a mind reader nor is the other person, if you cannot establish good will amongst the parties involved it's best to err on the side of extreme caution treating the other person with the distance and consideration that you would a total stranger and be _very_ clear about when things have move into areas of discomfort.

Discomfort is not harassment but can be a step on a downward spiral to very bad conflicts.

It's takes a lot of the fun out of social situations but it keeps your ass from being sued off the planet - or worse, right?