Someone's been harassing the English Language

[semperfiona]

I just spent a tedious half hour watching a sexual harassment prevention training video. Lots of blatant examples of bad behavior, but I am feeling the need for vengeance on behalf of the English language.

"Intimidating or demeaning language is automatically sexual harassment." Hello? It is most certainly harassment, and is very likely to be discrimination, depending on what was said, but in what world is intimidation part of sex?

An example from one of the vignettes: "What's the difference between Bigfoot and a smart woman? Bigfoot has been spotted!" Discrimination and misogyny, absolutely; harassment if it keeps up, certainly, but where's the sexual content in that? Yet the narrator kept insisting that it was sexual harassment.

Why can't they just say that harassment OF ANY KIND is unacceptable, without having to stretch definitions beyond their breaking point?

Comments

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

In English law, any unwanted conduct addressed to a man that would not have been addressed to a woman is defined by statute as sexual harassment, and vice versa. It's sex as in biological/legal sex rather than sex as in genital activities. The statute in question dates from 1975, before sex and gender were widely distinguished in officialdom (we'd got a bit better at it by the time we got round to passing statutes to protect trans people, which do refer to gender). From what your other commenters are saying, it sounds as if US law works similarly.