Michele A. Paludi’s “Sexual Harassment in College” Essay

True or false? M each people deliberate that sexual torment only involves physical assault. False I befoolt k direct where Dr. Paludi got this red herring of a definition from so that she could attack it, besides sexual agony had always meant quid professional quo, grades for sex, or, in the workplace, sexual favors to get the job or a raise. In either case, force was rarely needed.Regie T. has looked up both Title s fifty-fiftyer of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Act of 1972, and even without input from the ongoing debate, I can see that according to federal law, sexual bedevilment is wide open to interpretation. College policies? Same unhelpful and confound statements. Staring at students, complimenting them, c solelying them dear, uncomfortable witticism, having a lesson on the unclothed female figureall these harassing behaviors have been used to send packing professors. Even fully consensual love affairs werent safe, once some third party found out, got offended, and found time to complain. I believe people do have a clear thought of what constitutes sexual worrying all right.True or false? oftentimes individuals are told that sexual harassment is a rare occurence or that the campus has never filed for it against an individual. True. I inquired at Valley Colleges VP for Student Services and its chemical reaction was that in the past five years, only two students had filed sexual harassment complaints against anybody, the last being in 2001. In my public speaking sept at that institution last spring, I witnessed an incident where the instructor told a pregnant student to waddle down to the front.The student said it wasnt funny, broke down in tears, and the instructor apologized. Previously, this student also cried when a guy called her fat. At the end of the term, I overheard her say, after not acquiring an A in the class, that she might complain to the dean. Im current that had she had been included in one of those surveys on verbal abuse, she wouldve reported to having been sexually harassed.True or false? at that place is a common figment that there is a typical harasser who can be identify by his blatant and obvious mistreatment of many women. Maybe before instantly its False. One of Paludis sources which Ive read, Billie Dziech and Linda Weiners standard harassment text, has beenbrainwashing women for almost 20 years. It warns against The Lecherous Professor who could be of any imaginable type, from a stylish public harasser, a conservative sequestered harasser, a nice Counselor-Helper, or even a smart sharp Seducer. As more women are exposed to this book, we cant rightfully blame them when they start suspecting e realone except the garden variety pathological and abnormally-behaving instructor. As UCLA Professor, cultural critic, and all-woman Cristina Nehring put itGive a group of indifferently successful individuals of either sex a glass by which to view themselves as ver y important victims, limited in their success not by the substitute of their own talents but by the ubiquitous insidiousness of the system, and chances are good they leave learn to use it. Mix in the resentment of a relationship gone awry, or a relationship desired but never obtained, and you begin to understand the source of a good number of sexual-harassment charges. tack to this a potent financial bait (women have reaped considerable rewards through harassment suits in which the burden of disproof was on the defendant and institutional sympathy entirely with the accuser), and the attraction of such charges becomes still clearer.True or false? Women may not label their experiences as sexual harassment even though the experiences meet the legal definition of this form of victimization. False. Today, there is such a thing as too much awareness. Again, Nehring answered this beaverIn our enlightened contemporary university, men walk on eggshells and women spring from shadows. Eve ry gesture is suspect if a colleague compliments you on your dress, it smacks of sexism if a professor is friendly, he is readying you for future sexual abuse. There is no kindness so innocent that women educated in the patterns of harassment cannot recognize it as an instance of the newly identified activity experts carry on to as grooming the victim for the kill. Academic encouragement, easy jesting, an affectionate public figureall of what used to be the currency of good fellowship as well as teachinghave become cause for vigilance, food for complaint, the stuff of suits.If there was ever a womans emergence that deserves a backlash, it is sexual harassment unfortunately the backlash has appeared in separate battlegrounds where there are real women victims, such as rape, incest and child molestation, but not this one. Feminists have already wonthe occasional true harasser is easily identified and thrown out of office, But in devising all college female students out to be wea k and resourceless victims, and all male faculty as closet villains, the regular classrooms are now fearfully and boringly intolerable for everyone they should be now left alone. informal harassment remains a major problem in mellowed school and in the workplace, but I just dont see it being one in college anymore.Work CitedNehring, Cristina. The Higher Yearning. harpers Magazine 303.1816 (2001) 64-72.