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From: jeffw@midas.UUCP (Jeff Winslow)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.singles
Subject: Re: Re: Beach harassment
Message-ID: <130@midas.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 6-Feb-86 12:52:12 EST
Article-I.D.: midas.130
Posted: Thu Feb  6 12:52:12 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Feb-86 06:04:03 EST
References: <8342@ucla-cs.ARPA> <2581@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Reply-To: jeffw@midas.UUCP (Jeff Winslow)
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 29
Xref: watmath net.women:8775 net.singles:10161

In article <957@whuxl.UUCP> stu16@whuxl.UUCP (SMITH) writes:

>         Harrassment is in the eyes of the harassee. What I
>may think of as harrassment by a sleazeball, I might take as
>a compliment from a "civilized" co-worker. It really depends
>on WHO is doing the harassing.

I'm sorry, but this just won't wash. If there's no intent to intimidate or
annoy, you may not like it, but you can't call everything you dislike
harassment without the word losing some meaning. How is a random man
to know whether you consider them sleazeball or civilized? (or even
a well-ordered man?) One answer to that would be, "never make an approach",
but you don't seem to advocate that, since you take some attention as
a compliment. 

To get back to the beach scene, it seems to me that the consenus has
been that the first and third men were harassing, and the second was
not. (And apparently she thought the same way, since she (perhaps
pointedly) spoke to him and not the third man (wasn't that a movie?) 
when she left.) The critical point, I think, is that the first man assumed
an intimidating position, and the third man was apparently annoying her
after she refused him. 

Here's a question for the women - if you could be absolutely sure that a
man would respectfully back off and go his own way after you refused his
attention, would there be any such thing as harassment, as the term was
used in the beach scene discussion?

					Jeff Winslow