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

True or false? M whatever people believe that intimate agony lone(prenominal) involves physical assault. False I dont know where Dr. Paludi got this red herring of a description from so that she could attack it, but sexual harassment had always meant quid pro 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 VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Act of 1972, and even without stimulant drug from the ongoing debate, I can see that according to federal law, sexual harassment is wide outdoors to interpretation. College policies? Same unhelpful and confusing statements. Staring at students, complimenting them, calling them dear, uncomfortable witticism, having a lesson on the unclothed female figureall these harassing behaviors have been used to fire professors. Even fully consensual love affairs werent safe, once some third party found out, got off ended, and found era to complain. I believe people do have a clear understanding of what constitutes sexual harassment all right.True or false? Frequently 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 response 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 class at that institution last spring, I witnessed an incident where the instructor told a pregnant student to waddle d aver 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 non getting an A in the class, that she might complain to the dean. Im sure that had she had been included in one of those surveys on verbal abu se, she wouldve reported to having been sexually harassed.True or false? at that place is a common myth that thither is a typical harasser who can be identified by his blatant and obvious mistreatment of many women. Maybe before now 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 private harasser, a nice Counselor-Helper, or even a smart Intellectual Seducer. As more women are exposed to this book, we cant really blame them when they start suspecting everyone except the garden variety pathological and abnormally-behaving instructor. As UCLA Professor, cultural critic, and all- fair sex Cristina Nehring sick itGive a group of indifferently successful individuals of either sex a glass through which to muckle themselves as very important victims, limited in their success not by the modesty of their own talents but by the ubiquitous insidiousness of the system, and chances are good they will 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. Add to this a potent pecuniary 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 comment of this form of victimization. False. Today, there is such a thing as too much awareness. Again, Nehring answered this bestIn our enlightened contemporary university, men walk on eggshells and women run from shadows. Every gesture is suspect if a colleague compl iments 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 refer to as grooming the victim for the kill. Academic encouragement, easy jesting, an affable epithetall of what used to be the currency of good fellowship as well as teachinghave become cause for vigilance, fodder for complaint, the stuff of suits.If there was ever a womans issue that deserves a backlash, it is sexual harassment unfortunately the backlash has appeared in other battlegrounds where there are real women victims, such as rape, incest and child molestation, but not this one. Feminists have already winthe occasional true harasser is easily identified and thrown out of office, But in reservation all college female students out to be weak and resourceless victims, and all male faculty as closet v illains, the regular classrooms are now fearfully and boringly intolerable for everyone they should be now left wing alone. Sexual harassment remains a major problem in high school and in the workplace, but I just dont see it being one in college anymore. start CitedNehring, Cristina. The Higher Yearning. Harpers Magazine 303.1816 (2001) 64-72.