'It is easy to know what is unwanted - by reaction.'

Ah, but it's too late then pelican!

'It is up to the person making the sexual advance to fully know BEFOREHAND whether or not sexual behaviour would be welcome by the other person in the workplace. If you don't know for sure, DON'T DO IT!
'

'I have a habit of touching people (not sexually) on the arm and am naturally affectionate, but obviously if someone said to me please don't touch me, I would know that for that person it is not appropriate. '

But as other posters said, you're blaming the victim! You cant expect the meek and the shy to tell you that your advance is not welcome. People should be able to enjoy a 'safe working environment'.

You - are - guilty!

BTW pelican. I'm in no doubt that your touches on the arm are extremely sensual. What is to say a young bloke doesn't misinterpret these touches for sexual contact. As most of the posters seem to agree, the law says...

'Sexual harassment is unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature which makes a person feel offended, humiliated and/or intimidated where that reaction is reasonable in the circumstances.'

Now leaving out the ridiculously subjective 'reasonable' that others seem perfectly happy with, you may have 'made' a person feel offended or intimidated (I was going for humiliated too, but decided not to guild the lily).

Therefore, you - are - guilty!

Based purely on the feelings (however irrational) of this young man. How do you 'feel' about that?

PS: Please, don't blame the victim will you.

Houlley
That is a bit of a stretch.

We all seem agreed there are grey areas but there are also some pretty obvious areas where most reasonable (I stress the word reasonable) people mutually accept certain behaviours as grossly inappropriate at work eg. groping, grabbing breasts etc.

If a person does not know their behaviour is unwanted eg. me touching your arm, and I am told that this is not wanted and I don't stop then I am just being obtuse.

It is not necessary to know beforehand what behaviour is unwanted. How does one know it is unwanted (barring the obvious behaviour mentioned above)? There is room for commonsense in this debate.

PS: my touching an arm is usually done as an unthinking way of reassurance, I am not doing it in a sexual way, but if someone mentioned it was not wanted I would stop. In fact I tend not to do it unless I know the person well enough and there is already an established rapport - thankfully where I work part-time now we are a huggy sort of bunch so it is not an issue.

'There is room for commonsense in this debate.'

That would spoil all the fun.

I prefer quotes like

'It is up to the person making the sexual advance to fully know BEFOREHAND whether or not sexual behaviour would be welcome by the other person in the workplace. If you don't know for sure, DON'T DO IT!

Not hard to understand! Unless one has an "agenda". Or unless one is terribly thick.'

Dear Pelly and Suze,

Thanks for your rationality.
I feel that you've both covered the topic
rather well in your last posts.
There's nothing much more to be said,
except to watch and see what happens
in the Fraser-Kirk case at the end of this
month.

Dear antispetic and benk,

Thanks for your rationality.
I feel that you've both covered the topic
rather well in your last posts.

It's always noice when people look past
the status quo and question the assumptions
our laws are made on, the societal constraints
they make and the unintended consequences of
regulating inter-personal interactions, and
the pitfalls of making laws based on subjective
terms and feelings.

Not every topic should be constrained to the
specifics of the case that prompted the
discussion with such a narrow focus on the
most obvious and worse case
scenario, which would be unlikely
to even be in contention, thus
making the topic redundant in the
first place as an opportunity to explore
more deeply our society's laws and assumptions.