Some call it sexual harrassment

When Eve told Adam why she ate the apple she explained that she was beguiled by the serpent and he influenced her to make an unwise choice. So called Lucifer, the son of the morning star, must have had powers of suggestion, some sort of compelling appeal, charisma. He used those along with his other talents to change the course of creation. To this day this sort of influence continues all across the network of humanity.

A little third grade boy gives up his favorite dessert from his lunchbox to a little third grade girl for no other reason than she influenced him with some sort of fascination with her personna and appearance.

Some years ago the corporation where I worked for thirty years required that I attend a conference that was dedicated to sexual harrassment in the work place. I spent a week in a luxury hotel listening to a team of hired specialists that represented a hired consultant organization that had developed training on this subject. I was required to sign a document that stated that if I ever became aware of any sort of sexual harrassment in the workplace that I had a singular responsibility to report it to our human resources department.

Why do you suppose that they would go to all that expense and effort to lay down such a footprint on the conduct of business? The answer is clear and concise. There had been many instances of supervisors intimidating female workers into embarrassing situations that surrounded their jobs and the security of their jobs. Some had filed law suits successfully and had received large awards for having had to endure these unsolicited advances. Once a person had attended one of these seminars they were locked into a dangerous place. An off color joke, a ride in a car unchaperoned with a person of the opposite gender or a compliment on appearance could land you in some hot water. The female person only had to raise the spectrum of impropriety. If they threatened a lawsuit the corporation was safe because they had held a work shop on the issue. You see Mr. John Doe attended our workshop and agreed that he would abstain from such tomfoolery. Here is his written affadavit that he would eschew such a practice. You can go after Mr. Doe, who incidentally doesn't work here anymore, but you cannot pursue us because we have done all that is necessary.

The roll out on all this over the years has been interesting. Did it curtail fooling around in the work place? Not hardly. To me it seemed like it put the whole work place into absolute role reversal. It was always presumed that the more aggressive male workers were the culprits. I have personally seen that it seemed to make women much more bold. They seemed to become more aggressive. Not only in their new supervisory positions but in their speech and actions. It seemed to me that whereas males were on alert as to anything that they said and did might be interpreted as sexual harrassment, women went just the opposite direction.

I have been out of the workplace for almost ten years. I work by myself and have not thought much about all that until the headlines of this morning and Mr. Cain's predicament brought it back to my mind. In the court of the people's minds, the accusation has only to be raised and the perpetrator is considered guilty. Mr. Cain is most likely guilty of repeating a joke delivered in bad taste. If you are the boss, welcome to the world of sensitivity of the female mind. "Why, I was appalled by his comments. I was made to feel diminished, small, an object of lust and derision." I have been in the presence of females who have unabashedly told a joke or made a comment to which they have no accountability. If you were a man and went to human resources reporting that you were sexually harrassed by a female co-worker you would be laughed out of the office. Yet we all know it goes on and have experienced it at one level or another.

At the heart of all this is the tort system that protects some of us and throws the rest of us under the bus. The same book I read the stuff about Lucifer and Eve I also read a quote about lawyers and hypocrites. And so it goes in this fallen, ever worsening world that we live in. You just have to wonder what is next?