What is gender harassment?

Answer 1

Gender harassment is when a person is harassed because of their gender. It is considered a part of the greater problem of sex discrimination.

The legal definition of sexual harassment breaks it into two categories, pervasive or systemic patterns and egregious acts. Pervasive patterns are ongoing problems where each act might not be severe in and of themselves but contribute to a greater pattern of mistreatment because of one's gender. That could involve derogatory sexual language or name-calling, hostile joking, unwanted sexual advances, unwanted touch, malicious gossip, and so on. Proving a pattern of conduct can be difficult, and for it to be considered discrimination, more than one person would have to be affected. Targeting someone based on their gender or some other class is quite different from targeting someone simply out of dislike for just them or something they did in the past.

Egregious acts would be anything serious which would warrant legal or civil action in and of themselves, such as a boss or college professor requiring sex as a condition of employment or passing a course, or even attempted rape.

While traditionally, LGBT discrimination was not included in harassment suits, courts are finally starting to catch up. If a man is being harassed or coerced into sex by a male supervisor in a way similar to the type of harassment that women traditionally receive, he will have a case. Also, while dress codes are allowed, forbidding dress across gender lines are generally not, since the dress codes could have been established to harass those who fall outside of gender stereotypes. If a woman is fired for short hair, but men are allowed (or required) to wear short hair, then she may have a case.

Transsexual persons are generally not covered unless the harassment is because of which sex they transitioned to, and not simply because they corrected their sex. For instance, a transsexual woman who is harassed or fired after surgery might not be covered, unless the reason she is harassed or fired is because they don't want women working there. In a college-related case, a transsexual student was being pressured to have sex with a professor and threatened with failing grades if she refused. The defense attorney tried to argue that because the victim was "really a man," she could not be sexually harassed. The judge saw right through that claim, saying that there was evidence to suggest that the professor did not know she was a transsexual woman, and that he would have likely done it to any other woman. So she won the lawsuit. The harassment occurred because she was a woman in all practical aspects, not because of the type of woman she was.