Sexual Harassment in the United States. Mary Welek Atwell

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Sexual Harassment in the United States - Mary Welek Atwell


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is impossible to imagine victims of any of those forms of discrimination being asked in court if they had provoked their harasser. Gwendolyn Mink argues that allowing evidence of past sexual conduct, dress, or speech is a form of casuistry—clever but unsound reasoning. She offers an alternative way to ←30 | 31→decide whether harassment had occurred. If a woman complains, the conduct was offensive, and if she was offended, she was harassed. Such a test might not be enough to merit a legal remedy, but it would suffice to show that she had suffered.56

      It may be true that Vinson did not get at the root of the problem of sexual harassment, even less at the roots of gender discrimination. The Court did not grapple with the idea that sexual harassment was not really about sexual attraction but that it is an exercise of power based on assumptions about what it means to be a man or a woman. On the other hand, every effort to bring about social change requires a foundation—a recognition that legal protections exist and that certain behaviors are prohibited. Vinson left many questions unanswered and many harms without remedies, but it did provide the Court’s ruling that sexual harassment is a form of discrimination based on sex prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Future cases would build on that foundation.

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      Notes

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