Sexual harassment: A racket to extort money?

Is sexual harassment just a ploy to extort money from innocent men? asked Dahlia Lithwick in Slate.com. Some of Herman Cain’s conservative defenders are not merely saying they’re taking his word against that of four accusers; they’re insisting that sexual harassment no longer occurs, and that “the whole thing is just a racket.” Right-wing ideologues like National Review’s proud misogynist, John Derbyshire, have complained, “You pay a girl a compliment nowadays, she runs off and gets lawyered up,” while former Sen. Fred Thompson wrote that women can’t wait to turn an innocent comment into “their day in the limelight and the inevitable book deal.” In the alternate reality of the Right, men are the victims, while women who object to being groped, taunted, or pressured for sex are “money-grubbing, hysterical, attention-seeking tramps.”

Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, said Kurt Schlich­ter in the New York Post, but so is the notion that the modern office is filled with predatory lechers. In recent decades, the definition of sexual harassment has devolved from common sense into “a farce,” and men must now fear saying or doing anything a co-worker might find offensive. The resulting “grim puritanism” has drained “humor and humanity from the workplace.” If you’re accused of harassment today, said Curt Levey in The Wall Street Journal, you’re guilty until proven innocent. That’s why companies often choose to settle any and all claims, however meritless. They know juries sometimes award millions in damages to women who allege harassment, and that even when companies or men win in court, they can “ring up a legal bill of $100,000” or more.

That’s just one side of the story, said Sally Kohn in CNN.com. The other is that sexual harassment is still under-reported. A recent AOL survey found that one in six Americans has been sexually harassed in the workplace, but two thirds of them have never filed a complaint. I’m one of them, said Lauren Ashburn in TheDailyBeast​.com. One of my bosses told me that I had “quite a rack,” as he stared at my breasts; on another occasion, a male colleague pawed my leg and suggested we have some fun. I chose to remain silent, like thousands of other women, because I feared retaliation and the “potential humiliation” of a legal battle. By speaking now, I hope to make it easier for my “fellow close-mouthed colleagues to find their voices.”

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