Anti-harassment education everywhere for everyone

Anti-harassment is something that every workplace and school need to maintain strict policies in. Not just those of the progressive nature.

Anti- harassment is a serious issue that can affect men and women. Not just women. That being said, this piece is primarily a suggestion for those who identify as men in the world.

I recently was able to sit in on a anti-harassment seminar organized by my high school. The speaker was a former New York prosecutor. Note that this speaker just happened to be female. From this presentation, I was able to conclude that sexual harassment is any sexual behavior that is uninvited or unwelcome.

At the end of this seminar, there was a Q&A session. I am not exaggerating when I say that the only people raising their hands were males. On the surface, it was exciting that the boys were taking this seriously enough to have questions. This excitement was terminated when the first question that was asked was "So, am I supposed to just live my life worried that someone is going to be offended by something I do or say?" Figuratively, I felt every girl (and socially aware men) in the room face palm.

Until recently, I was not completely educated about sexual harassment. I took a course this year called gender studies. In this class I learned what the "male gaze" is. It refers to a sexualized way in which a heterosexual male might gaze at a woman and/ or her body that empowers men and objectifies women. This is something I've experienced first hand several times, but until recently, had not connected with sexual harassment. I was always under the impression that even if a woman felt uncomfortable with this, it is not encouraged for her to vocalize it. From the experiences I have had with boys, it seems that this view is that many (NOT all) hold.

It is also common for men to underestimate how often sexual harassment is really happening. Note that we only can record the data of those who have reported it. Many sexual assaults go unreported.

One of the major issues keeping these men from moving away from this misogynistic view is who is talking about it. If women are the only people talking about it, women are the only people who are going to care about it. Now refer back to the note I made about the speaker being female. It makes me wonder, if the boys take these conversations less seriously because the person who is leading it is a woman?

Kudos to the men who choose to be leaders for issues like this and educate other boys. By the way, yes, I am intentionally using different nouns, as there is a difference between a man and a boy (and I'm not referring to the gender binary). As a collective group, boys are desperately in need of male role models who show them and teach them about anti-sexual harassment. Even if you are not the one doing it, that does not make it an irrelevant problem. Sexual harassment is not just a woman's issue. For making a conscious effort to be this role model, my compliments go toward the head of upper school in my school. He made an admirable point in the seminar, claiming that this issue is much bigger than anti-harassment, it is a demonstration of how to treat people and maintain empathy in day to day lives. Meaning that, thinking about how others might interpret what you say/ how you say it, and what you do before you act, is very important in life as a whole.

On behalf of women, I would like to tell the boys that our intention is not to attack you. Let's make our women feel important, instead of ashamed, because our women are in fact important.