Recently, on the Internet, more and more often you can find the word "harassment". Many people who are not familiar with English terminology ask the same question: "What does this word mean?" If you also belong to such people, then do not worry! The meaning of the word “harassment” is just 5 kopecks, and even a person who is not a linguist will understand it. Especially for you, we wrote a whole publication in which this topic is fully dedicated.
Harassment. What is this?
As you can already understand, harassment is a purely foreign language term that has come to the media space of the CIS countries from the West. Particularly active in Runet and the media began to use it in 2017. In English, the word “harassment” translates as “harassment”. Actually, the translation of this word fully reflects the meaning of the same name. The word harassment most often means sexual harassment of members of the opposite or their own sex. Read more about this below.
What is related to sexual harassment?
Harassment is a very complex and confusing topic in which there are many pitfalls. Many men and women who decide to delve deeper into this problem are asking the same question about what actions can be attributed to sexual harassment. In order to fully give an answer to it, we decided to make a list of the types of harassment that victims most often encounter:
- Insults. If someone makes insulting comments in the direction of a person (or a group of people) that make fun of his biological gender, then this is a harassment. These include obscene remarks (for example, obscene epithets, “all women think only of one thing,” etc.), obscene jokes towards the opposite sex, and obscene inscriptions in public places (for example, drawings of male or female genital organs on the walls).
- Offer to have sexual intercourse. It can be abusive or coercive. Examples: repeated invitations to dinner, which include not only eating at any catering establishment; direct coercion to sex; calls, SMSs, messages on social networks with a proposal to engage in carnal pleasures.
- Promises. They are made in order to persuade a person to have sexual intercourse. For a better understanding, imagine the following picture: the head of the company wanted to enter into intimate contact with one of his employees. She always refuses her boss, which is why he is trying to buy her with a pay raise or a new profitable position. Promises of this kind are harassment.
- Coercion to sex through blackmail or threats. This type of harassment differs from the previous ones in that there is already a direct aggression towards the victim. For example, the previously mentioned boss begins to threaten his subordinate with dismissal or demotion if she does not have sexual intercourse with him.
- Touch. This can be touching, pressing in the elevator, stroking, etc.
- Other Examples: an invasion of a person’s personal space, obscene compliments about his appearance, negative comments about his clothes and appearance.
Mysterious Russian Harassment
According to professional sexologist Dmitry Novikov, in the Russian Federation the synonym for the term “harassment” is often an office romance. D. Novikov and his colleague Katerina Shatskaya assure that this kind of relationship, as a rule, does not lead to anything in the end. Even if the relationship between the partners is mutual, then over time it can still cause serious problems at work.
Another important factor is that these intrigues are often carried away by married adults. For them, an outside partner is simply temporary fun, which they will sooner or later get rid of.
Harassment Punishment
Is harassment punished by law? This question is also very popular among many people. It is clear that the Russian Criminal Code does not contain any “Law on Harassment,” but you can find its analogue in it, namely article 133, which presupposes the compulsory incitement of a person to acts of a sexual nature. If the guilt of a person is proved, then he is threatened with corrective labor, prohibitions and restrictions related to work, or several years in prison.
How to punish the guilty
What does harassment mean? We think that we were able to give a detailed and complete answer to this question. But how to punish the person guilty of sexual harassment? Well, we just have to figure this out.
In Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union, it is very difficult to convince representatives of the rule of law that this or that person sexually harassed you. To punish the culprit in all the severity of the law, one thing is necessary - evidence. These include videos that capture moments of harassment, audio recordings of the same nature, photographs, testimonies of witnesses, medical evidence (in the event that there has been violence against the victim). It is because of the lack of evidence that many victims decide to come to terms with the harassment of their colleagues and not take any action.
It is important to understand that harassment is a matter that cannot be left unpunished (especially when there are direct threats to mental and physical health). If a person continues to remain silent, then in the end it will not lead to anything good.
Known harassment cases
Kommersant, Arguments and Facts, Komsomolskaya Pravda, and many other media representatives (both print and audio-visual) broke out in Hollywood about sexual harassment in late 2017. It all started with the accusations of actresses and models towards the producer Harvey Vanstein, who was previously accused of harassment of women, triggered a series of accusations against famous actors, musicians and politicians, which is worth mentioning that this hype is still ongoing at the time of writing.
Now you know about the meaning of harassment, as well as its examples from real life. We hope that this article was of interest to you and you gathered a lot of useful information from it.