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Nope. Harrassment is a legal term of art, not a synonym for disagreeable treatment. Harrassment occurs when a person or group is singled out for distinct treatm

Nope. Harrassment is a legal term of art, not a synonym for disagreeable treatment. Harrassment occurs when a person or group is singled out for distinct treatment, in the U.S. at least. Subjecting everybody to all types of porn is quite lawful. (There is a famous case of a bisexual pervert who indiscriminantly propositioned anything with a pulse. His self-designated victims were bitch slapped out of court.)

aestra 13y ago
What? No. Sexual harassment is unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature, no matter how many people are sexually harassed or the gender of the parties involved. There have been class action sexual harassment lawsuits. Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co. was the first which represented fifteen women. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenson_v._Eveleth_Taconite_Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenson_v._Eveleth_Taconite_Co. It's a fuzzy ground with say prominent displays of pornographic material in say an office environment. One might argue that it can make the workplace a hostile or overtly sexually charged environment. It is best to err on the side of caution.
- VLM 13y ago
  Good lord I've read that case and its about as far from the pr0n filter example as you can possibly get. That place was beyond nuts and so was the trial. They deserved every penny they got because the workplace was out of control crazy, and merely coincidentally happened to involve male/female issues. That is NOT a case about accidentally clicking on a web page or debating if huffpo headline stories are sometimes a little too racy, that was a case about a madhouse of stalking and intimidation and tire slashing and... I don't think a mere web pr0n image filter would have saved the mine 3.5 million dollars. Actually having capable supervisors and managers, yeah, that might have worked?
  - aestra 13y ago
    I should have been more specific. The defense "I sexually harass everyone, so it isn't sexual harassment" is just not in any way valid. Full stop. Period. I used the first class action sexual harassment lawsuit as an example to illustrate the point of "just because it's company culture/I do it to everyone/he's just like that" doesn't make it not harassment. The GP was giving false information that if you sexually harass everyone, than it magically becomes not sexual harassment and then it somehow gets thrown out in court, but does not cite the relevant court case. Just because you ass grab everyone that walks by doesn't make ass grabbing not sexual harassment by the law. That's mostly my point. As far as a p0rn filter, that's a different story. You can look at it a different way, legally. I'm just playing devil's advocate here as to why it would be a good idea for someone to try to err on the side of caution in the workplace filter rules. They may want to avoid the situation where person A is sitting in their cube while person B is watching hardcore gay porn next door specifically to harass person A. Person A might feel that the employee didn't do a good enough job to prevent this type of harassment by blocking access to that content. If the employer doesn't try to filter out porn or at least create a policy against it, it might look like it is condoning or supporting it whereas their peers filter. (I just made that up, if say 85% of their peers make an attempt to filter) especially if it is well known that managers tolerate risque images/video if not outright porn, or if company culture tolerates it. A less grey example is if you put a picture of two women who are mostly clothed but kissing and put it in the office breakroom. Everyone sees it, but it creates a sexually charged environment that can be hostile to some. That's a big no-no in HR land.
    - VLM 13y ago
      One important point to make about Taconite and your examples are I cannot comprehend how any of it could remotely relate to work; management needs to write them up and fire them not because the victims were women or it somehow had something to do with sex but because the workplace is apparently completely out of control. This isn't some pie in the sky daydream, this is decades of observation at a variety of F500 companies in the midwest. The problem with some jerk harassing female coworkers with .. full stop ... harassing coworkers comma, is he's not doing his job, and he's preventing others from doing their job, and the only mystery is why that problem is not being taken care of at that level. Its not pass the buck time, why didn't some dude in another department find some hairbrained technical scheme to try to temporarily stop the nutcase from bothering people... he's got a boss who's already responsible for that task. Is this one of those weird coastie vs heartland type issues where we have real bosses so coastie stories sound weird, or ... That's the crazy part of the story. If the boss simply doesn't care, then blocking certain pix on port 80 is merely going to result in your example of hanging up pictures, or carrying in zip drives, or whatever, obviously the boss won't care about those either. So the net result is a huge waste of time and money for ... nothing? I would think there's some CYA going on if you know there's about to be another 3.5 million dollar "taconite" type lawsuit filed, and its going to be a slam dunk, whoever it is ordering hairbrained technical solutions doomed to failure probably won't be punished as hard as the guy doing the harassment or his boss who doesn't care, or his bosses boss. But a legal hit like that means tune up the resume anyway, its not looking good.

aestra 13y ago

What? No. Sexual harassment is unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature, no matter how many people are sexually harassed or the gender of the parties involved. There have been class action sexual harassment lawsuits. Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co. was the first which represented fifteen women. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenson_v._Eveleth_Taconite_Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenson_v._Eveleth_Taconite_Co. It's a fuzzy ground with say prominent displays of pornographic material in say an office environment. One might argue that it can make the workplace a hostile or overtly sexually charged environment. It is best to err on the side of caution.

VLM 13y ago
Good lord I've read that case and its about as far from the pr0n filter example as you can possibly get. That place was beyond nuts and so was the trial. They deserved every penny they got because the workplace was out of control crazy, and merely coincidentally happened to involve male/female issues. That is NOT a case about accidentally clicking on a web page or debating if huffpo headline stories are sometimes a little too racy, that was a case about a madhouse of stalking and intimidation and tire slashing and... I don't think a mere web pr0n image filter would have saved the mine 3.5 million dollars. Actually having capable supervisors and managers, yeah, that might have worked?
- aestra 13y ago
  I should have been more specific. The defense "I sexually harass everyone, so it isn't sexual harassment" is just not in any way valid. Full stop. Period. I used the first class action sexual harassment lawsuit as an example to illustrate the point of "just because it's company culture/I do it to everyone/he's just like that" doesn't make it not harassment. The GP was giving false information that if you sexually harass everyone, than it magically becomes not sexual harassment and then it somehow gets thrown out in court, but does not cite the relevant court case. Just because you ass grab everyone that walks by doesn't make ass grabbing not sexual harassment by the law. That's mostly my point. As far as a p0rn filter, that's a different story. You can look at it a different way, legally. I'm just playing devil's advocate here as to why it would be a good idea for someone to try to err on the side of caution in the workplace filter rules. They may want to avoid the situation where person A is sitting in their cube while person B is watching hardcore gay porn next door specifically to harass person A. Person A might feel that the employee didn't do a good enough job to prevent this type of harassment by blocking access to that content. If the employer doesn't try to filter out porn or at least create a policy against it, it might look like it is condoning or supporting it whereas their peers filter. (I just made that up, if say 85% of their peers make an attempt to filter) especially if it is well known that managers tolerate risque images/video if not outright porn, or if company culture tolerates it. A less grey example is if you put a picture of two women who are mostly clothed but kissing and put it in the office breakroom. Everyone sees it, but it creates a sexually charged environment that can be hostile to some. That's a big no-no in HR land.
  - VLM 13y ago
    One important point to make about Taconite and your examples are I cannot comprehend how any of it could remotely relate to work; management needs to write them up and fire them not because the victims were women or it somehow had something to do with sex but because the workplace is apparently completely out of control. This isn't some pie in the sky daydream, this is decades of observation at a variety of F500 companies in the midwest. The problem with some jerk harassing female coworkers with .. full stop ... harassing coworkers comma, is he's not doing his job, and he's preventing others from doing their job, and the only mystery is why that problem is not being taken care of at that level. Its not pass the buck time, why didn't some dude in another department find some hairbrained technical scheme to try to temporarily stop the nutcase from bothering people... he's got a boss who's already responsible for that task. Is this one of those weird coastie vs heartland type issues where we have real bosses so coastie stories sound weird, or ... That's the crazy part of the story. If the boss simply doesn't care, then blocking certain pix on port 80 is merely going to result in your example of hanging up pictures, or carrying in zip drives, or whatever, obviously the boss won't care about those either. So the net result is a huge waste of time and money for ... nothing? I would think there's some CYA going on if you know there's about to be another 3.5 million dollar "taconite" type lawsuit filed, and its going to be a slam dunk, whoever it is ordering hairbrained technical solutions doomed to failure probably won't be punished as hard as the guy doing the harassment or his boss who doesn't care, or his bosses boss. But a legal hit like that means tune up the resume anyway, its not looking good.