The 2% problem

Passionate advocacy can distort one's perception of reality and makes reasoned conversations, much less ameliorative actions, that much more difficult. Such is the puritanical, verging on hysterical, conversation around harassment. There is a real underlying and persistent issue that needs to be addressed in terms of coercion and force but the conversation now encompasses everything from slights, insults, and reconsiderations to misremberances and misperceptions.

Getting to agreement on definitions and clear measurements is a good first step. I think this article from the New York Times is intended to fuel the hysteria but I suspect it actually points in a different direction. From We Asked 615 Men About How They Conduct Themselves at Work by Jugal K. Patel, Troy Griggs and Claire Cain Miller.

It almost feels like they are working hard to find evidence to support a conclusion they were absolutely confident was true, and then discovered that the evidence wasn't there.

There is a whiff of a Victorian ladies lounge parlor in this survey. There also feels like a significant class bias in their assumptions and approach. Prim old church-going ladies do a survey for the New York Times and find that men are shocking, especially blue-collar men. Really? I am guessing that this all sounded like a good idea at the beginning, but once they got the results, they were stuck with a sunk cost issue and they had to make the best of a bad situation.

Eight out of the ten behaviors are anodyne at best and are heavily dependent on context and intent in order to determine whether there is harassment. As a management consultant, I have worked across multiple industries and from the C-suite to the ditch diggers. Conversations that are entirely acceptable to men and women at the work center cannot be transferred to headquarters without someone there considering it harassment. You have to know context. You have to know intent. You have to know actual outcome (people who did take offense rather than actions that could cause offense.)

Patel, Griggs and Miller cast the net extremely broadly (jokes that could cause offense), set the bar extremely low (once in a year), strip out context, ignore intent, and fail to address actual outcomes.

The behaviors which they ask the men whether they have performed at any time in the past year:

Told sexual stories or jokes that some might consider offensive?

Made remarks that some might consider sexist or offensive?

Displayed, used or distributed materials (like videos or cartoons) that some might consider sexist or suggestive?

Made attempts to draw someone into a discussion of sexual matters even though the person did not want to join in?

Made gestures or used body language of a sexual nature, which embarrassed or offended someone?

Continued to ask someone for dates, drinks or dinner even though he or she said no?

Made attempts to establish a romantic sexual relationship with someone despite that person’s efforts to discourage it?

Touched someone in a way that made him or her feel uncomfortable?

Made uninvited attempts to stroke, fondle or kiss someone?

Offered or implied rewards if someone engaged in sexual behavior? Or treated someone badly if he or she didn’t?

This bar is exceptionally low. What joke isn't potentially offensive? Particularly now that we have made taking offense a competitive sport. To lump joke telling in to a continuum that includes taking retaliatory action against someone for declining sexual advances rather obfuscates the issue.

As the NYT acknowledges, there is not only a context, but there are other aspects. They acknowledge that frequency of incident is an important metric. One off-color comment in a year is a non-issue. 5 might be an issue. Daily off-color comments are almost certainly, but still not necessarily, an issue.

Legally, harassment is considered problematic if it is severe, like groping or offering favors for a sexual interaction, or if the behavior is frequent and continuing, even if it is not severe.

“In general, frequency is the most important component,” said Louise Fitzgerald, a leading researcher on sexual harassment, who for the past 30 years has advised on the issue for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice. “Even milder forms of harassment can be extremely damaging if they happen frequently and continue over time.”

Again, the NYT sets the bar exceptionally low.

In the Times polling, 12 percent of men said that they had either engaged in at least three of the listed actions [the ten items above] in the past year, or performed the same action at least three times. Excluding jokes or remarks cuts that figure in half.

So, one joke every four months that might cause offense gets you onto the list of potential harassers?

Which comes to the as-important issues which are omitted.

The population of people who did take offense is often much smaller than the population of people who could take offense. The men are being asked whether actions they have taken could be seen as harassing when it would be useful to know whether people did take offense.

The findings, even with these extremely broad definitions, even ignoring the did/could issue, even omitting frequency, etc. seems extraordinarily low.

69% of men did or said nothing that could be remotely interpreted as causing offense to anyone.

Among the 31% who did something that could cause offense, only 2% did things that were coercive in nature.

My inclination is that we ought to tackle that real problem - No one should be coerced based on their sex. The rest of these issues; accidental/intentional touching, off-color jokes, crude language, seeking social engagement, etc. are too context- and intent-dependent to be easily, or even at all, policed.

Further subverting the New York Times' effort to fuel the hysteria is this acknowledgement, deep in the article.

In separate, smaller surveys, women were only somewhat less likely than men to admit to harassing behavior, even though men, in polls and in formal complaints, are far less likely to say they’ve been sexually harassed. It could be that men and women see the same behavior in different ways.

In summary, coercive harassing behavior is rare and is practiced about equally by men and women.

It is not much ado about nothing. Where harassment happens, it can be consequential. But it is much ado about a minor thing. And it is much ado about a minor thing which both men and women do.

That doesn't sound like the outcome Patel, Griggs and Miller were looking for.