Romantic Harassment

Romantic Harassment

We hear a lot about sexual harassment these days, but not much about romantic harassment. Indeed, I just invented the phrase (and perhaps the concept). What is it? Suppose A falls in love with B and wants B to fall in love with him. He begins a series of efforts to secure this result—flowers, invitations to dinner, declarations of love. Trouble is, B doesn’t feel the same way. She feels uncomfortable about the whole thing, and wishes it would stop. Eventually A resorts to more aggressive measures: he starts threatening B with loss of job opportunities, online defamation. She feels harassed, stressed, and angry. That’s romantic harassment. Her harasser doesn’t want sex (he is insecure in that area), but he does want candlelit dinners, love letters, and affectionate gazes. He is behaving badly, all because of his love for B. You know, love can make people do crazy things, shameful things. It’s bad, definitely, but it doesn’t quite have the punch carried by the phrase “sexual harassment”. It doesn’t come with the counterpart phrase “romantic assault” (what would that be?), and we don’t hear talk of the “romantic predator”. It doesn’t sound as bad, and it doesn’t introduce the topic of sex. But it has the same structure as sexual harassment and can have the same consequences. It comes in degrees, clearly, and it is hard to imagine it as a criminal offense, or as career-ending; it is doubtful the newspapers would be much interested in covering it. The phrase “romantic misconduct” doesn’t have the same salacious zing as “sexual misconduct”—it’s not as juicy and titillating. You see, it isn’t sexual—and we know how people are about that.

Are there other forms of harassment that follow the same pattern? What about friendship harassment?  You badly want X to be your friend, but he doesn’t seem interested. You do everything you can to make X like you: you compliment him, give him presents, invite him for drinks. Trouble is, he’s just not that keen. He already has a lot of friends and he finds you, well, a bit boring. He finds your attentions annoying and wishes you would leave him alone. He even tells you he doesn’t want to be your friend, but you persist, hoping to win him over. You might even threaten him with a loss of professional assignments (you have that kind of power). None of this is good, though your motives are pure—you are sure (perhaps correctly) that you and X would be great friends. Again, it is hard to see how this kind of thing could excite much of a frenzy. It shouldn’t be illegal or career-ending; it should be handled in the usual quiet ways (see TV sit-coms that deal with the topic). If it escalates, sterner measures might become necessary, but in the normal course of events it isn’t likely to require the full weight of the law, or total ostracism. Why? Because there is no sexual element—and we know how people feel about that. The same goes for “chess harassment” or “table tennis harassment”: trying to find partners to engage with you in these activities. It would be possible to become quite harassing about these things—persistent, annoying, even threatening. People might start saying you are a serial chess harasser, a menace to society, and excluding you from social gatherings and paid employment—all very hysterical, but justified by your proclivity to pester people to play chess with you. You might even be accused of “grooming” people to play chess with you (giving them beautiful chess sets, etc.). The point is that this kind of unwanted interpersonal behavior is structurally just like sexual harassment and may have the same kinds of consequences, but it doesn’t excite the same kinds of censure and antipathy (“His unhealthy need for chess was his undoing”). One might begin to wonder if too much emphasis is being placed on the sexual in sexual harassment and not enough on the harassment part. That’s what’s really bad, not the fact that sex is the harasser’s aim. And what is the sex that is aimed for—does light kissing count? Many distinctions need to be made, not just brandishing the phrase “sexual harassment” like an all-purpose bludgeon. The question of degree of severity must not be ignored.

There is another area in which sex plays a considerable part—consensual sexual relations in work contexts. These are supposed not to occur, or if they do remedial measures must be adopted. People are required to report sexual relations to the authorities, and the same goes for romantic relations. The latter are generally understood to involve sex, or else the rule becomes far too inclusive (what is to count as “romantic”?). But this is not the only kind of relationship that raises analogous questions—friendship does too, or family connections. The purpose of such rules is to exclude bias in treatment and evaluation—for example, giving your lover an A he or she doesn’t deserve. That can certainly happen in such cases, though it is not a necessary truth; but it can also happen in other kinds of case too. You can be biased in favor of your friend or your niece—say, if they are a member of your class in animal husbandry. In fact, you can be biased in all sorts of ways, depending on your dispositions—by religion, nationality, clothing style, looks, eye color. The human mind is full of prejudices, stereotypes, likes and dislikes. Romantic entanglement is just one of these, and may not be the most powerful or insidious. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that sex is figuring too prominently in attempts to enforce impartiality. It is attitudes specifically to sex that underlie the policies adopted by various institutions. People can be fired from their jobs if they are found guilty of failing to report their romantic or sexual feelings in an instructional context, but when did you hear of this happening in the case of feelings of friendship or family connections? What is the missing ingredient? Sex, of course.

Here is a final case to consider: what we might call “negative sexual harassment” for want of a better term. Suppose a professor finds a particular student extremely repellent sexually: he just can’t bear the sight of her. Nevertheless, he has to deal with her: she sits in his class, comes to his office hours, chats with him in the hallway. Let’s suppose our professor is a happily married man who just happens for deep psychological reasons to experience extreme sexual negativity in certain cases (something to do with his mother, say). He just can’t help it. When this student accosts him (as he might say) he has to stand at least ten feet away from her, cannot look directly at her, and keeps the interaction as brief as possible. All this is obvious to her, and very distressing. She worries the professor is biased against her and will not give her fair grades. Actually, he is perfectly fair, but the appearances are certainly not encouraging. Should she complain? Should he be reprimanded, or even fired? He is guilty of harassment by sexual negativity, it may be said. The situation is delicate and needs to be handled carefully, but I doubt it would rise to the level of administrative discipline, dismissal, or the attention of the press. Why? Because it involves the marked absence of sex as a motive for the behavior that is causing the trouble—the professor is the opposite of sexually attracted to the student. Yet his behavior may occasion the very types of reaction occasioned by overt attraction—discomfort, anxiety, fear, etc. These are the things that really matter, not the psychological cause of the problematic behavior. We need to be less obsessed with the sexual motive and more concerned with the effects of the behavior. And the language in which we talk of these things matters, especially if it is incendiary and triggering to the contemporary psyche.[1]

[1] In case of any misunderstanding, let me make clear that I have no wish to underplay the seriousness of sexual harassment. It is obviously a very bad thing to do. Cases do vary, however.