Sexual harassment in the workplace, unfortunately, is still a common occurrence, despite a large and ever-growing body of evidence that thoroughly demonstrates the many different negative consequences for victims of harassment, including anxiety, depression, loss of professional confidence, and disordered eating.
While popular opinion and even many traditional psychological and professional models and practices assume a male-harasser female-victim paradigm, between 16% and 17% of all reported complaints are filed by male victims. Thus, while the majority of workplace sexual harassment cases do indeed adhere to this assumption, a non-negligible number do not.
A recent study from Current Research in Behavioral Sciences seeks to explore the relation between victim sex, offender sex and type of sexual harassment, on the one hand, and attitudes about victims and perceptions of their behavior and the degree to which they suffer, on the other.
Two theories served to frame the author’s hypothesis that male victims would be generally received with less sympathy. Social Role Theory (SRT) describes how social forces indicate how men and women should behave according to traditional gender roles, and how they are rewarded (punished) with compliance (deviation).
Script Theory (ST) postulates that sexual behaviors follow a ‘normative script’ of social conventions and rules, and that men should seek out and enjoy sexual encounters. Deviation is seen unfavorably. Both SRT and ST thus suggest that male victims of sexual harassment are likely to be received with less sympathy.
To test this hypothesis, 837 participants (56% female; 80% white; 57% college-educated) were recruited and instructed to read a brief vignette describing a situation of sexual harassment between two coworkers (either harasser or victim could be male or female, resulting in 8 vignettes). Attitudes were assessed with a questionnaire.
The results confirm the hypothesis that male victims are generally regarded less favorably than female victims of sexual harassment. (Interestingly, male-male scenarios elicited the most favorable attitudes, and female-harasser-male-victim scenarios the least, underscoring the importance of heteronormativity in participants’ evaluations, although this is not explored.) In addition, male victims were believed to have suffered less and to require less time to recover.
A number of limitations are noted by the author, including the nature of participants’ employments, the emotionally superficial nature of written vignettes (compared to, for example, videos), and a largely college-educated, White female sample.
While male victims of sexual harassment may be fewer in number than female victims, there is still a need to treat all victims of sexual harassment with equal respect and cases with equal gravity. Studies like this are necessary for understanding the social complexities that may result in certain victims of sexual harassment struggling to find support, and addressing the social conventions, norms and assumptions at fault.
GENOCIDEGeorge on February 17th, 2021 at 12:31 UTC »
I got assaulted by a customer in the workplace a few years back - middle aged dude straight up stroked my groin through my pants while I was giving him a sales spiel. I was in my early 20s at the time, had no idea how to properly process it. Turned around to tell my managers and they literally burst into laughter.
I'll spare everyone the lengthy details but it was handled absolutely horribly - no formal report was made to HR, managers refused to pull CCTV footage, one manager thought it was funny enough to make it into one of the store's 'inside jokes'. Long story short, my head ended up in a bad place for a long time, sorta still is tbh, and I only made a police report a few months ago despite knowing it would go nowhere. The officer I spoke to straight up told me that this is not the first time he's heard of something like this happening.
The thing is, like - I can handle the fact that the managers were lazy and uncooperative. I can handle the fact that the dude will probably never be punished for assaulting me. I can even handle the fact that this was one of those wrong-time-wrong-place moments. What I couldn't handle is the fact that it was a joke. A literal joke to everyone in my workplace, people I would spend 20, 30, 40 plus hours a week with. So much so that when I told my managers what happened and they laughed it off, even I backpedalled and didn't register it as an assault. I got home from work, sat outside with everyone, and started telling them about my "funny story from work today".
I told my girlfriend, her mother and her brother that I got sexually assaulted, at work, during a sales spiel, by a customer, with a smile on my face, and couldn't figure out why they were looking back at me in horror. The words "what the f, George, that's sexual assault", the first words spoken after the half minute of dead silence following the punchline to my story, are burned into my brain.
Beware_of_Fatty on February 17th, 2021 at 11:44 UTC »
I'm literally admitted to a trauma clinic because I was drugged and raped by a woman... And even I have a hard time believing what happened. This is horrible, and I'm so sorry for each and every victim out there that suffers at the hands of these perpetrators. I hear you, and you're not damaged or irreparable. You deserve love, respect and compassion. Message me if you need to <3 we all deserve to be heard and not oppressed.
RipenedFish48 on February 17th, 2021 at 10:27 UTC »
Never at work, but I have been sexually assaulted. I told one friend, because she was the only person I trusted to not brush it off. I never told anyone else.