# SEXUAL HARASSMENT LAWS BECOME TOOLS OF CENSORS

--by Dave Gross (dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU)

Some people call it "political correctness," others call it the "new McCarthyism." Whatever you call it, you can't help but notice that some very liberal people are taking some very illiberal stands on freedom of speech lately.

Whoever is banning expression, whether liberal or conservative, none calls it "censorship" -- there's always a linguistic twist which redefines "speech" as something else and thereby justifies its elimination.

So while the right wing has its anti-abortion "gag rule," or bans opposing views on the drug war from the university, or tries to get Robert Mapplethorpe photos defined as pornography; the left wing circumscribes a set of epithets and outlaws them as "hate speech," or bans opposing views on affirmative action from the university, or tries to make pornography a crime against women. But nobody, on left or right, will stand up and speak out in favor of "censorship."

No, they call it "sensitivity," or "decency," and they are only trying to stop "hate speech," or "degradation of women," or "filth." Whatever it is, it's Bad for you -- so bad that they don't want you to hear it or read it or see it. But, trust them: You wouldn't want to, anyway.

The latest tool in the hands of the censors is called "sexual harassment." By using this tool, speech which could not be censored by any politician or police officer can be banned for offending the sensitivities of any employee with a prude's eye and a hungry lawyer.

It wasn't too long ago that this trend started, and at first I confess I wasn't too alarmed. A woman working at a shipyard was upset at, among other things, explicit pin-ups that some of the employees kept on-site. She called it sexual harassment and won her case; the court decided that those pin-ups contributed to a "hostile environment" that constituted sexual harassment.

Businesses got the message that Playboy centerfolds at work could mean big judgments in court. The memos went out to employees: Take down the pin- ups, this is an order. Jesse Helms could not have banned Playboy from the workplace by Congressional decree -- Congress wouldn't enact the law, and if they did, the Supreme Court would overturn it -- but the censors have used the trojan horse of sexual harassment to enforce an anti-sex book-burner's wet dream.

"Bad idea," I thought, but I didn't get too upset. I don't read Playboy at work. Besides, I only read it for the articles. Really! You don't believe me?

But the slippery slope got a new lube job several weeks back. A professor at Penn State demanded that a print of Goya's "Nude Maja" be removed from a classroom wall because she felt sexually harassed by the idea of male students looking at this artist's interpretation of the female body while she was lecturing. A committee on women's concerns at Penn State backed the professor and "Nude Maja" was taken down.

They wanted to ban Playboy -- well, so do lots of people. But Goya? What's going on here? I think what it comes down to is that the debate about sexual harassment is a lot more about sexuality and a lot less about harassment than might first meet the eye.

Traditionally, censors of nudity and erotica have had a fear of sexuality. Right-wing censors express their fear as a fear of disrupting the family. Sexuality not confined to marriage, be it premarital, extramarital, homosexual or pictoral, is a threat. To feminist censors, the problem is male sexuality or a female sexuality which threatens their view of appropriate femininity. Women posing for Playboy, or for Goya for that matter, aren't Womanly Correct. If you let students see "Nude Maja," pretty soon they might get ideas that some women LIKE taking their clothes off!

The term "sexual harassment" has been translated by some to mean "if it's sexual, it's harassment." This is tragic. Sexual harassment is real and its effects are terrible. By confusing sexual expression, erotica and even art with sexual harassment in order to serve the agenda of narrow-minded prudes hiding behind the feminist banner, resources that could be spent to help victims will be spent to pursue censorship. Censorship. That's what it is, no matter what they decide to call it this time.

> "I think the true situation [of the women who make up 47% of Playboy managers] becomes more clear if you imagine Jews working for a magazine in which Jews are nude and Christians are clothed." -- Gloria Steinem