The thin line between flirting and harassment
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Loading... - Adla Sibale
- 29 Mar 2022
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He smiles at her, every chance he gets. Frequently checks on her via text and calls. Always wants to buy her lunch. Always checks her Whatsapp and Insta stories, religiously, yet stays lurking silently in the background of her multitudes of viewers list.
She smiles back. She is polite and nice… until she is not. She politely turns down one lunch, then another and to her relief, the lunch offers get lesser and lesser by the day.
Then it is once a week, until they stop altogether.
She’s so relieved. She was so concerned about how she would gently get this gentleman off her back. He is so many rungs above her pay grade and the reality of what turning this man down harshly could do to her job security is nothing but terrifying.
Silence. A week passes. And then another. And then a third one. Then he texts her and says how very deeply he misses her.
She replies “But you barely know me. How can you miss someone you barely know?” Deep down though, she means every ounce of that question but because she doesn’t want to come off as crass, she throws in a “lol” and a couple of laughing emojis to keep the mood light.
She then proceeds to do her best to turn him down and tells him that she does not fraternise or date colleagues and married men. He tries to make light of those responses, taunting her and finding her stance righteous.
“Are you trying to tell me you have never dated your boss? Or a married man? Not even as a favour?” Now, she’s raging mad. She politely tells him to take his narcissistic opinions and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine.
Next thing she knows, she is hearing a couple of very interesting stories about who she may or may not have fraternised with to get into her position.
Then the sad reality that she can’t really do much to reprimand him hit her and she is told to toughen it out. Women, especially career women, tend to bear the brunt of the situation.
It is never the man who crossed the line. It is usually the woman who may have seduced him. “Check how you smile at him when he talks to you” or “Did you really need to add that smiling emoji at the end?” and my personal favourite, “But you were always flipping your hair whenever he spoke to you.”
Now do not get me wrong. I have been my fair share of a flirt and on occasion, been called a serial flirt. I do not claim to be an angel.
However, where work and one’s career reputations are concerned, the line between flirting and harassment is so scarily thin that many organisations struggle to create proper governing policies and action plans.
It has been argued time and again that harassment is relative to each individual but I do believe the environment and work culture does play a significant role in defining the scopes of harassment.
Flirting vs harassment
Flirting or coquetry is a social and sexual behaviour involving spoken or written communication, as well as body language, by one person to another, either to suggest interest in a deeper relationship with the other person, or if done playfully, for amusement.
However, harassment is unwelcome conduct that is based on race, colour, religion, sex (including sexual orientation, gender identity, or pregnancy), national origin, older age (beginning at age 40), disability, or genetic information (including family medical history).
In Tanzania, the National Environment Management Council (NEMC) defines harassment as unwelcome advances, requests for favours, or other conduct by way of words, acts, or comments that would embarrass, humiliate, intimidate, demean or compromise a reasonable person at whom such advances, requests or conduct were directed. Read More...
