2.2. Types of sexual harassment
2. The psychical abuses of intimacy without provable violence
2.2. Types of sexual harassment
After the scandal of raped women or forced to have sex with a famous American filmmaker, there came out in on social media networks numerous statements of women raped or harassed in various contexts. There have also been some exaggerations followed by debates in the media, whether if that was or was not the case of sexual harassed. But beyond that, the real cases of sexual abuse reveal a worrying fact: although the legislation provides some clues for framing these facts, yet the legal procedures have lamentably failed to prevent the sexual abuses. This is caused by the consistently refusal to introduce the concrete situations of sexual harassment into the low paragraphs and to prevent them. Right now, the law is very elusive all over the world regarding the applicability to the concrete situations, although it gives the impression that it can stop and sanction these abuses.
From those paragraphs, we can see that international laws are somehow focused on the (outside) street sexual harassment. It consists in continuing emotional approach attempt to a woman on the street or in other public places, after she once refused it, in order to get an artificial intimacy towards her. But besides that, there is also the intra-institutional sexual harassment that uses other strategies than the street sexual harassment. It consists in premeditation actions against the victim's interest inside an institution. This may be a refusal to provide assistance or benefit from the social system, or it may be an abuse within the terms of a work contract.
As a result of this unnatural consent strategy for intimate relationships, following a subsequent negotiation between the harasser and the victim, one party eventually proposes the sexual favors to end the attack on this interest. If the proposal comes from the harasser, then it is the explicit harassment. If it comes from the victim, then it is the implicit harassment. The first is the direct or indirect request for sexual favors by the harasser. The other is pushing a proposal of sexual favors that comes directly from the woman to gain back her violated rights. The two forms of harassment can be combined in the course of the negotiation process following the abuse of the victim's rights. So the intra-institutional sexual harassment does not use the of street sexual harassment "techniques" inside of an institution. If this happens, that is a common street sexual harassment used inside. But the intra-institutional sexual harassment always involves the harasser strength and power position, with various blackmail techniques that can be applied from this position.
The action of the harasser to abuse the victim's right, done for unnatural gaining of sexual favors in exchange for stopping it, may be passive or active. The passive one consists in the work promotion refusal or gaining inherent rights, according to the work done and the colleagues’ professional development, or in the absence of direct competitors for the occupation of that superior deserved position. Simply the boss or the hierarchical supervisor refuses to carry out the promotion formalities, waiting for some favors in return. It can be deduced from this that the boss or the hierarchical supervisor conditions this promotion right approval by returning some favors, which are most likely of the sexual nature. The active one consists in the initial giving some rights, privileges and opportunities for career development, and sudden and unannounced cancellation after a period when the harasser did not receive these certain favors. It is the case with some women artists who are initially selected for an artistic project, after which their producer suddenly changes his idea, choosing someone else without any explanation. To keep its role in that project, the artist then comes up with this proposal of sexual favors.
Of course, when a project is financed from private sources, the state regulation on its hiring is almost impossible. The main criterion for building the team that works in it is, and must be, the maximum profit. But when the project is funded from the state budget, where profit or losses do not radically affect production, such practices are dubious. Even a private project that constantly replaces employees, using only 1 month “probation” employees, and paying them half wage of the amount a legal employee is paid, that suggests there is something dubious about it. If such a practice extends over the years, without a person eventually hiring in such a position, that means somewhere there is an abuse. It is a hidden way to put pressure on the potential employee. And if the person is a woman, then the abuse can also be the sexual inter-institutional harassment. This may also be the case for men in countries where labor law is formal, and employers behave like in Middle Age. Even the sportsmen, on whose shoulders there is high pressure to get results, have contracts of 6 months or a year. What does this legal forms hiring refusal suggest after repeated attempts over a period of several years, through which people have been paid under their deserved? Is it that this company would be somehow too good for the current evolution of humanity? I doubt. The social system must get more firmly actions in these cases if it wants to be fair!
It is also very strange that a woman, who has been employed in a company for a good period of time, has suddenly very poor results. Of course, there is a somatic disease exception, or a possible mental disorder rising up, such as alcoholism, pathological gambling, or others. However, these mental disorders are more common in males than in females, and the sexual harassment is predominantly faced against women. Both in the cases of men, but especially of women, with no previous such events in an employee's life, it can be deduced that there is no reason for that person work to become less ineffective all of the sudden. It is obvious that, somewhere, the superior hierarchical person that evaluates the work of a subordinate has an interest in that person, and it is very likely that this interest is sex.
It is also very bizarre for a student who had reasonable grades up to the final years and then suddenly fails the final exams without missing the classes or getting through disturbing factors such as those mentioned above. It is likely that that professor is perversely harassing her. In poor countries this happens frequently but sometimes it happens in the rich countries as well. The universities have organizational autonomy and sometimes work like a state within state. This is good for the academic objectivity that must remain unaffected by political interests. But when these facts happen something should be done.
Unfortunately, in poor societies such usage of hierarchical related instruments pressures are usually practiced in universities by the teachers on the students or on the hierarchical inferiors, or generally by the hierarchical superiors on the subordinate women in the hierarchy of the organization of activity. The teachers at universities use the evaluating arbitrariness to pressure females, while in the other case there are used a range of hierarchical pressuring-specific punishments. In both cases the victims are disadvantaged either by lower grades than they deserve, or by undeserved punishments in relation to their work. In Romanian legislation, the sexual harassment does not even contain the rudimentary mentions as in the Western ones . The section 223 of the Romanian Criminal Code, quoted above, is very elusive in this respect, being practically very favorable to the above practices.
There may be laws in other developed countries that better regulate the interior sexual harassment than those cited. The purpose of this article is not to make a comparative legislative analysis. However the exception is less important. It is enough that there are some civilized countries where these very frequent cases are not preempted. The social system tacitly tolerates them. Therefore, at this time both legislation and its related institutions are not sufficiently functional to prevent these cases of sexual harassment. In some Western countries such purviews for these facts exist only for the rape. For example, in the German criminal code (Strafgesetzbuch) , starting with Chapter 13 (page 85), this law describes a very wide variety of cases of sexual abuse. Here are described the position of power on the victim, which can be not only hierarchically inferior, but also immature, prisoner, or under treatment. Further, in this law is also mentioned the abuse against prostitutes, for the lack of consent.
We note that in these German law purviews there is literally no "sexual harassment" formula. The sexual harassment is only recognized as an attempted rape. But passive sexual harassment situations can not be classified as harassment or attempted rape as described above. Such behavior of intra-institutional sexual harassment can not be attempted rape because the harasser does not act against the victim's lack of consent. But it can not be sexual harassment according to these purviews, because the consent was somehow obtained from the victim. In this case the legislation ignores the fact that such consent is artificially obtained, forced, formal, without content. So, according to the law, the prosecutor's decision is that these facts would not exist. The law interprets the abusive gaining of victim's consent to accept sexual relations after the inner-intuitional pressure as natural consensus. There is something to be changed here, and clear purviews on the situations described above can solve the problem.
Placing the sexual harassment in the criminal code looks good for those who want revenge on the harasser. But, as usual, the vengeance does not solve the problem. Then, it is very difficult to get the conviction in court. That is possible only when the harasser loses his patience and becomes a rapist. And this happens very rarely. The victim's defense tools are limited to their own resources, which usually reside only in the hidden room. But often the evidence collected this ay is insufficient to build a solid case. The hidden camera does not show much of a legal matter. The harasser does not commit a rape or attempted rape, as eventually he (or sometimes she) asks for sexual favors. That is why there is a normal tendency not to criminally condemn a harasser, as the criminal punishment is much more drastic than the harassment fact.
If the victim refuses the sexual advances, and accepts the harasser subsequent persecutions, this is already another legal action, which is very difficult to prove, requiring meetings of committees and other committees. Usually these committees are made from colleagues of the aggressor who, like any colleague, defends him in these situations. Usually things are lost in institutional bureaucracy. The power of the harasser in the institution can lead to the victim's moral integrity being attenuated and marginalized.
This differentiation and detailing of sexual harassment has not been made very clear in the civilized countries law purviews because, unfortunately, even where the "democracy" shines things are sometimes dubious. In these countries too the state gets the controlled citizens consent for different actions just as the harasser gets the woman's consent to have intimate relationships. So these practices go beyond the restricted field of sexual harassment. Explaining these manipulation and control techniques actually means unveiling their own methods of persuasion, which would weaken their chances of success.
We can see that those who conceived these laws themselves have had an interest in abusing women or favoring those who abused, to whom they were somehow been obliged for supporting their position. This is what happened in Romania when some prosecutors sexually harassed their female subordinate colleagues . Unfortunately, if there would not have been personal investigations of those involved, with hidden camera filming the harassers, and sending the footage to the press, the Romanian judiciary would not do anything to counteract these obvious sexual harassment behaviors.
With the existing legal instrument at the moment only the wealthy women can be defended against sexual harassment, by hiring a detective and / or a lawyer to work on building a case that can be judged favorably by the court. We note that the principle of equality of all before the law is violated, because only women in a higher position in the social hierarchy can benefit from such a defense against the abuse. Women should be cautious to avoid these inconveniences. A female reader sent me a very detailed set of measures that women can adopt in their daily lives or in the online environment to avoid such experiences. So I invite the readers of this article to access and inspire them.
There are two ways to socially counteract these abuses. The first is the institutional-legislative one that have to become more explicit than what it is now, and the other is the feminist one. The institutional-legislative way consists in the creation of new institutions and a legislative framework to prevent this kind of abuses specific to intra-institutional sexual harassment. The society must do more than these legal provisions all over the world. The social system must go further than the legislation at this time. It must prevent such slippages. The intra-institutional harasser is usually declared innocent, as widely practiced today in the world, is abnormal. There is no need to punish a harasser, not even a violator. All we need is other tools to prevent the harassment and the rape, rather than punishment for the already committed crimes, no matter how drastic it might look. It is the state's duty to protect the victim and prevent abuse, rather than punish the perpetrator when the action that has already been committed.
There must be set up the national committees of evaluation that should be politically independent and not connected to the universities teachers or companies’ bosses, or other hierarchical superiors that tend to evaluate the potential victims. This type of control organism should reassess the examined material of a female student or employee who is suddenly negatively evaluated. This committee must contain a psychopathologist who may eventually find out if the person in question is going through a major depressive episode or other mental disorders. In this case, the professional deprivation is justified.
Also, such a control commission should evaluate the reverse situations, with examples of too rapid climbing in the institutional hierarchy. In this case there is corruption suspicion through the sexual favors. Such an organism can also prevent the situations like trying to get a job in a project team by sexual favors. Especially in the United States, there came up more and more cases of post-facto changing mind for sexual consent. These women want certain privileges from certain men who have decision-making functions in exchange for their sexual relationship consent, and they simulate very convincing the irresistible attraction to them. Later, they blackmail him to get different benefits in return for not rape complaining. The intra-institutional harassment is quite difficult to distinguish here from the blackmail practiced by some women through false accusations. And this has been seen in some phantasmagoric accusations under the #metoo hat, as some more or less actresses have been complained of being raped in the producer's office, at casting, or in other areas surrounded by potential witnesses, but, surprisingly, no one has ever heard anything suspicious and without any traces of violence. This complaining may hide the masked prostitution attempt. I have analyzed in more detail this phenomenon in this article . There is no classic rape in a hotel room with such a man, or in his house. These false allegations of rape when sexual intercourse did not occur, or when the woman initially offered their consent, also hide this type of corruption. However, as I mentioned earlier in this entry and I will continue to mention on later in this entry , there is a sexual abuse, very close to rape, which occurs in the case of sexual actions or sexual tendency facts on the other parts of the woman's body than the vagina, which the FBI calls new definition rape.
The feminism argues on creating a new generally accepted mentality about the natural rapprochement between a man and a woman. It consists in initiating the exclusive emotional approach by the woman. This is useful in the sense that, if universally accepted, it would reduce up to 0 cases of sexual harassment. But it has some applicability issues that I will analyze in a later entry . In the following entry , I will consider another type of emotional abuse, one in which the victim's consent is naturally obtained but the abuser intentionally or unconsciously uses it for something else than building a long-term emotional relationship.
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