Hugs and dirty jokes — US people differ on acceptable behavior

NEW YORK — US citizens differ widely in their views of what constitutes sexual harassment, with age and race as well as gender throwing up the dividing lines, posing a challenge for those who police such conducts in the workplace.

The issue has been thrown into the national spotlight as a string of prominent men in US politics, entertainment and the media have been felled by allegations of sexual misconduct in recent months.

A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll, released on Wednesday, asked 3,000 US adults to consider eight different scenarios and then prompted them to decide if they would personally label each to be an example of sexual harassment. The variation in responses showed a need for employers to spell out expected standards, employment experts said.

While most adults in the Dec 13 to 18 poll agreed that acts such as intentional groping or kissing “without consent” amounted to sexual harassment, they disagreed over a number of other actions.

When asked about “unwanted compliments about your appearance,” for example, 38 percent of adults said this amounted to sexual harassment, while 47 percent said it did not.

Some 41 percent of adults said they thought it was sexual harassment when someone told you “dirty jokes” but 44 percent said it was not.

And 44 percent of adults said that nonconsensual hugging was sexual harassment, while 40 percent said it was not.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency that enforces workplace discrimination laws, says sexual harassment can include unwelcome sexual advances as well as other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that affects an individual’s employment, interferes with their performance or creates an intimidating or hostile work environment.

Workplace cases

But courts have disagreed on when individual actions cross the line into harassment. And many workplace sexual harassment cases are settled by employers before they ever reach a court, so there is not a constant judicial airing of standards.

Since people come to work with different ideas of what is appropriate, managers should train their employees and develop clear lines of conduct so that there are no misunderstandings, said Suzanne Goldberg, director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School.

“The onus is on employers” to set the tone, Goldberg said. “Even if the co-workers don’t object or go to management to complain.”

In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, for example, 19 percent of men said that touching someone intentionally without their consent was not sexual harassment, compared with 11 percent of women. The poll did not specify exactly what was meant by nonconsensual touching.