Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2003
DOI
https://doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300098006.003.0007
Abstract
This chapter discusses an enormous achievement of the campaign against the harassment of working women, which is the establishment of a set of facts about sex at work that had previously been denied, mocked, and misunderstood. It is now understood that sex can be unwelcome, that unwelcome overtures are neither harmless nor fun, and that consent to sex demanded on the job does not shift the behavior from the category of unwanted sex to the category of the welcome. On the other hand, one of the most ferocious complaints against the establishment of sexual harassment as a legal wrong is that, now, relationships at work are spoiled. Recently, new and more sophisticated critiques of harassment law have made their way into the debate — ones that do not deny the existence of harassing behavior but focus instead on its scope, and particularly its relation to sexual activity.
Disciplines
Labor and Employment Law | Law
Recommended Citation
Carol Sanger,
Consensual Sex and the Limits of Harassment Law,
Directions in Sexual Harassment Law, Catharine A. MacKinnon & Reva B. Siegel (Eds.), Oxford University Press
(2003).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/4358