what to do when boss asks for sex

I wrote this article in 1981, 36 years ago. With the current news of rampant sexual harassment in several industries, I am dismayed about how relevant information technology is today: http://world wide web.angelfire.com/sc3/ws301/html/eason.html

When the Boss Wants Sex

Yla Eason

Florine Mitchell watched the lights glimmer through each number every bit the elevator sped to the top floor. She and her boss were on their way to become her desk supplies. "Take you ever made beloved to a white human?" her boss asked casually. Florine wrinkled her brow and stared at him in disbelief. "Would you slap my face up if I fabricated a pass at you?" he inquired in the same tone. Florine shook her caput quickly in astonishment and searched the elevator walls for something on which to focus. All of a sudden the doors opened and she broke her silence with a sigh. Florine looked at her picket. She had been on this new job i hour.

Florine was exposed to something merely then dawning on the American consciousness and rise in the courts. In 1976, no i was sure what to call it. Today that something is clearly divers as sexual harassment. Unfortunately for Florine Mitchell (not her real name), that precise definition did non come soon enough. Later, as she stepped into the storage room, her boss told his new assistant manager how attractive she was and leaned frontward to kiss her. Blocking his movement, Florine announced, "I don't go for that, and I wish yous wouldn't attempt it again. As long as I've worked, I've never gotten involved with anybody on the chore, specially my boss." He apologized.

At luncheon he talked well-nigh the sad sexual relationship he shared with his wife. "We sleep in carve up bedrooms," he confessed. Florine was edgy, and she told him that she felt bad-mannered listening to him hash out his personal life. Again, he apologized. "I like yous," her boss declared three days subsequently. "Don't similar me," Florine snapped, trying not to bruise his ego. "I have a young man I'k in love with, and I have no intentions of cutting out on him." This time her boss didn't apologize. Instead he said, "Think about it." Florine was thoroughly confused. Information technology puzzled her that a man in his position was coming on to her this way.

When she discovered in her desk a lewd cartoon, which her superior laughingly admitted placing there, she threatened to tell his superior. "Go ahead," he mockingly

"You lot're gonna make love to me," he insisted a few days later on. He then explained the details of an out-of-town trip he was arranging to the branch office. Afterward the meeting, he continued, she would spend the night with him at a hotel. This offer frightened her, and she thought quickly about the mortgage note she had to make next month, her two sons, her separation from her husband and her family several hundred miles away. If she'd had this chore longer, she could collect unemployment. Florine decided she couldn't quit at present. She would reason with him. She would keep the trip "strictly for the job" and come back that dark. He repeated his request. "No fashion in hell," she stressed. "Think most it," he said.

Had sexual harassment been a more publicized consequence, Florine would have known what her options were. She too would have known that hers was not an isolated case. Statistics say 50 to 80 percent of all women in the work place have been subject to verbal or physical harassment. Of the four and a half one thousand thousand Black women who work. merely a few escape the adventure. . . .

Less than two months after, Florine Mitchell was fired. Shortly after she filed a suit alleging sexual harassment, saying she was fired because she refused to sleep with him. He denied all her charges and claimed he never propositioned her. She lost her case and is now raising coin to entreatment the decision. Florine believes the court ruled in her boss' favor because neither the judge nor the jury understood what sexual harassment was, nor could they believe a Blackness woman would be and so naively vulnerable.

No i bothered to point out to the court then, or most recently, that Black women have been in the forefront of the movement confronting sexual harassment. Black women have filed the cases that accept resulted in (1) a legal definition of sexual harassment, (2) the identification of sexual advances on thejob as sex discrimination, (3) the prohibition confronting sexual harassment under Title VII of the Ceremonious Rights Act of 1964, and (4) the detennination that employers can be liable for sexual harassment.

Munford five. J. T. Barnes was the first harassment case granted a jury trial. Williams five. Saxbe established that dismissal considering of refusing sexual advances was sex bigotry. Barnes v. the EPA (Environmental Protection Bureau) defined sexual harassment and declared it illegal under Title VII. Miller v. Bank of America confirmed that an employer is liable for the sexual harassment acts of its supervisors, and Alexander five. Yale University argued that the university is responsible for acknowledging and acting on the sexual harassment complaints of students against kinesthesia.

These cases, all brought by Black women, helped shape the new employer guidelines on sexual harassment issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in September 1980. EEOC, the bureau charged with enforcing the antidiscrimination laws, Title 7 of the Ceremonious Rights Deed of 1964, defines sexual harassment as an unwanted and unwelcome sexual advance, asking for due south! ii, when information technology unreasonably interferes with one's work functioning; or three, when information technology creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive working surroundings.

If 50 to 80 percent of working women accept been sexually harassed, 50 pct of those harassed fail to written report it, according to Working Women'southward Institute, a sexual harassment counseling service in New York. Susan Meyer, the institute's executive director, adds, "Very often we ignore our feelings well-nigh it. There is a lot of ambivalence among women because society blames u.s. for men coming on to united states." Susan Meyer, who is white, credits Black women with taking the lead in this movement before many white women considered it serious. One speculation as to why we accept so aggressively pursued this result is that as the final hired and first fired, we accept the to the lowest degree to lose. History shows that the about oppressed people tend to exist in the forefront of civil uprisings. Moreover, we are sensitized to discriminatory acts on the task and thus more than aware of and less conditioned to abiding by them.

Paulette Barnes, herself a victim of sexual harassment (Rames v. Train), offers another theory. "White women tend to proceed with a trouble on the job considering they have been 'brought up by white men to feel like 'you take to do what you have to exercise to get where y'all're going.'" She adds, notwithstanding, that Black women are the ones "stigmatized as being involved in sex (on, the chore)." Unfortunately, too, considering some women are willing to exchange sexual encounters for promotions and raises on the job, other women are expected to do the same.

"Women who say yeah have prepare a norm," declares Paulette Barnes, who causeless the position of administrative assistant to a human being who, ironically, was an equal-opportunity director. Ii months later she started there, he told her, "I think the first twenty-four hours I saw you lot. You had on a footling yellowish apparel, and I said, golly, that's my type of woman. I could assistance you further your career." So he 'crudely described what type of sexual pleasure he imagined her having with him. Paulette "cussed him out in a nice way" and connected her work. A week subsequently he timidly approached her to see whether they were notwithstanding friends. Reassured, he invited her to the annual backyard charcoal-broil for employees at his home. Paulette attended with her ii children, the man she was dating and his son. The next day at work, her boss was furious. "Why yous brought that man to my firm, I don't know," he said in a rage. "If y'all want to throw your men in my face up, you're gonna take to become another job." "I'm non going nowhere," a defiant Paulette responded. Two months later she had to go-he abolished her job.

In 1972, when she brought her case to the court, there was no name for sexual harassment and she was told to bring a charge of racial discrimination instead (a white man was later hired at a higher salary for her position).

The woman who preceded Paulette as administrative assistant testified on Paulette's behalf that the director had expected sexual compliance from his subordinates. The adult female, who was white, had slept with her supervisor because she knew it was necessary to get the job and to go along moving upward in her position. However, she had also documented everything. She showed Christmas and Valentine'south cards, receipts for gifts and the dates of their sexual meetings. Paulette lost and took her case to appeals court, where the estimate mled that her boss' request for sexual favors was sex bigotry and therefore against the police force. She received a greenbacks settlement.

For virtually women who fight a sexual harassment instance, it is an emotionally draining battle that causes depression and periods of self-doubt and loss of self-esteem. They report non feeling skilful most themselves, mainly because their private life is an open up volume during the trial process. Oftentimes their love relationships suffer, their subsequent piece of work performance is less confident, they are shunned by other workers and employees as troublemakers. In improver, the feel is frequently handled by the courts as if it were a rape case, which causes more women to be reluctant nearly disclosing its exitence. "My lawyer asked me if I could handle the court's bringing up the fact that had two children simply didn't marry their male parent," recounts Paulette Barnes. "I told her, I faced it then, and I can deal with information technology again."

So in that location are those few women who are flattered by their boss' attention until it jeopardizes their job or gets out of mitt and they have difficulty explaining why they endured the treatment before. Also, there are those who do not want to cause trouble and thus say nothing and offset looking for a new place to work. But information technology is the humiliation of realizing they take been victimized that gnaws at most women'southward self-concept after these experiences-explaining it to themselves is the hardest part.

And justification is not easy, because studies show historic period, dress, position, looks, teaching, romance and beloved have nothing to do with whom a homo will cull to harass. Whatever woman can have sex appeal-and dazzler, as the cliche goes, is in the center of the beholder. One adult female seeking counseling after an incident threw her hands up totally perplexed. "Look at me," she explained, "I'm 50 years old"

Dr. Cynthia D. Barnes, a respected New York-based psychiatrist.. says one reason we women are and so unraveled by the feel is that nosotros never thought information technology could happen. "You never remember a human is going to practice this. Even when there have been many things that actually led up to it, women ate'shocked, embarrassed, distraught." This reaction occurs, she adds, because of the way women are raised to think about men, "Women are also taught that men are in that location to take intendance of them. It'due south difficult to think that a homo who is in that location to protect you is as well assaulting you."

Florine Mitchell bears out that analysis. She says that at get-go "I wondered why he acted that fashion, and I thought he was silly, just harmless, Information technology took me a while to figure out he was hitting on me." When it dawned on her what she had endured as his employee, "I became withdrawn and ashamed of myself. I blamed myself and tried 10 figure out what I did wrong." She broke upwardly with her boyfriend because she had troublc relating to men after. During a discussion with a human being, he attempted a harmless joke, and she cutting him off, croaky on him and tried to belittle him. She accepted a task at lower pay with no heighten for three years considering she had a female boss and she refused to look for better employment because she was afraid she would have to work for a man. She was unable to go on a relationship going with a man, spent a lot of time alone at home crying, sought counseling and reports that information technology took her four years to start feeling good about herself and to realize that all men aren't deceptive. But she adds today, "It [sexual harassment] is the greatest pain anyone can experience at anyone fourth dimension." She says that when she realized she was not at fault for what happened to her, she could accept herself again,

Suffering continues for the victims, Cynthia Barnes says, because ...

with men correspond a dual-edged sword-men may exploit you as well as baby-sit you. So when it happens, women don't want to believe it. They think possibly this is a caring statement rather than sexual harassment." Susan Meyer adds that there is no rationale for the treatment. "Sexual harassment is a power play. In many ways information technology's a game where men play out their economic power over women." Women testify to this, maxim that what surprised them nearly when it happened was its spontaneity and the man'due south lack of guilt..One adult female, an executive with a New York pilus-intendance company, reports how she was continuing in her 'office when the president of the partitioning walked in, dropped down on his knees and ran his hand up and down her leg. The experience and then shocked her that she just stood and stared at him. When she asked him why, he simply replied, "I looked and I had to touch. I couldn't help it." She was outraged, showtime because he felt that costless to invade her privacy and 2nd because he was white. . . .

Fighting a courtroom instance is a costly and exhausting procedure and requires a good lawyer, a lot of time-digging up details and recalling events-and stamina. Showtime, legal fees tin can average $100 an hour. It doesn't take long to run upward a large bill if the lawyer spends twenty hours on your case. Second, one must nowadays bear witness that proves one's merits: witnesses to events, memos, letters, details of conversations, people who have had similar experiences, personnel files, statistics on hiring procedures and practices, employment records. 3rd, a person needs patience, conclusion, a sense of purpose and force to endure the questioning and what some call the "debilitating lies" that arise during the process. Too, courts are ofttimes hostile and unsympathetic toward Black women, especially if the case is against a white male person with some authority or social position.

Barbara Sims (non her real name), who brought the first student-initiated instance of sexual harassment to courtroom, claims she lost her example because the judge, a white female person, refused to permit much of her supporting show in court.

When Barbara was a higher sophomore, she alleges, a professor asked her, "How bad exercise you desire an A in this course?" She shunned his bait, saying, "I would like an A, simply it'southward not an insane desire of mine." "I would really detest to give you a C," he repeated until it sounded threatening. He then asked, "Will yous make dearest to me?" Barbara rapidly answered no. He commented on her body and she asked to leave. She was almost at her dorm before she realized her refusal meant she would go a C on her paper. "I was shocked, then I got angry," she says. For this to happen in an academic environment, she says, creates "an assumption of my inferiority equally a Black person also as my lack of seriousness as a woman." He denied her charges. In court the judge did not permit students who had experienced harassment under the professor to bear witness, because they had graduated. Although Barbara told her dean immediately after the incident, and the dean said at that place was nothing that could be done, that conversation was not allowed to be presented equally testimony. Also, she had given a written statement regarding the incident to a Blackness professor, but neither his testimony nor that statement was allowed. "It was all incredibly racist," asserts Barbara. Her lawyer, a white adult female, says she was "shocked by the callousness" of the courtroom. She adds that the example was lost because "the judge didn't want to believe us." They were "procedurally restricted," she says, from mentioning any other cases that related to Barbara's accuse.

Later on Barbara'southward case, the college instituted a policy whereby women who had been harassed could initiate a formal complaint; none existed at the fourth dimension Barbara complained. Today companies and organizations, warned by EEOC that they accept an obligation to create a working environment free of harassment, are issuing rules of behavior to employees. American Phone and Telegraph, with more 85,000 Black women employees in its Bell organization nationwide, recently issued a statement saying. "An employee who has been found guilty of sexually harassing another employee can get fired for it." Every bit more women are made aware of the rules against sexual harassment and how information technology operates, fewer incidences will be allowed to continue. Nonetheless, the price associated with confronting the consequence remains high. Of detail concern to most women is how their spouses respond. Neither Florine Mitchell nor Paulette Barnes told their male companions about the incident when it occurred. They cited fear of his "causing a scene" and their not wanting to hurt him by telling him nearly another man's abusive beliefs. Both women said they were "protecting" their man confronting maybe reacting physically' confronting their boss. "Women don't tell because they are embarrassed it happened, and they know they are bringing themselves up for scrutiny equally to whether or not they were provocative and encouraged information technology," psychiatrist Cynthia Barnes explains. In social club to combat the problem more than effectively, she believes, "women have to stop being so trusting. Women like to be nice, but we must exist aware that in that location's a potential attraction, and to virtually men there'southward not much difference between a working woman and a woman who exists for his sexual gratification."

Susan Meyer (of Working Women's Constitute) adds, "As women, we need to be articulate virtually our part as workers. We need to have ourselves seriously and be aware of our rights on the job. When we are harassed, nosotros tin can't say, 'I'g imagining it.' Chances are y'all aren't the merely 1 he has harassed." Florine Mitchell agrees that a woman who has been harassed should talk nearly it with other women at work. "People knew information technology was happening on my chore, but it was kept very cloak-and-dagger. I thought I could ignore the man. My manner to handle information technology was to leave him solitary-show him no encouragement and he would get tired.' thought as long equally I'k doing a adept chore, he tin't burn me." Although Florine Mitchell is still fighting her battle, she has assumed a new position equally a managing director for another concern. Her onetime dominate continues to deny having harassed her, and she occasionally must talk with him in her new position. Barbara Sims is now a law student at the University of California in Berkeley and says she might appeal her decision; Diane Williams is finishing her last year of. law schoolhouse as well. Paulette Barnes is an teacher of air traffic controllers in Oklahoma City, Okla. The sexual harassment events profoundly changed their lives, bilt none regrets her determination to fight. Paulette says she spoke upwards because "I was a mother who was working, and' had kids to support. Suppose I didn't take a stand there. and ten or 15 years from at present my daughter comes along and information technology'southward all the same happening." Diane Williams concurs. "So niany of the states have to work; therefore the situation has to be corrected. I have too much confidence in myself as a person and as a professional to subject myself to that treatment."

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