Sexual Harassment In America Essay

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Sexual Harassment plagues America’s society because the citizens are ignorant as to what it is and how it damages a person. Many men, women, and children in America today are victims. It happens either at their workplace, school, homes, or out in public. Not only is it immoral, but it is humiliating and could lead to the normalization of rape and possibly even human trafficking. Today’s society needs to be educated at a young age about consent, and the consequences of committing the crime. An article by Jennifer L. Berdahl and Vicki J. Magley describes sexual harassment as repetitive, unwelcome, motivated by the victim’s gender, and can possibly lead to damaging psychological outcomes (529). It can be sexual jokes, comments, gestures, or looks, touching, grabbing, pinching, intentionally brushing past in a sexual way, flashing, mooning, spreading sexual rumors, pulling clothing, or showing or giving sexual images (Stone and Couch 2). Sexual harassment can be as small of an incident as a cat-call to as large of an incident as molestation or rape. Both have a long lasting effect on a person. Side effects of harassment include: drop in …show more content…

This is why men are more likely to harass women, because most of the time they are in positions of power, whether in the workplace or society (Berdahl and Magley 527). Although harassment can happen to males, females are usually the target of such abuse because they are still seen as fragile compared to males. In the article, “Sexual Harassment of Men”, Berdahl and Magley discuss why this could be, giving partial blame to the media: “…popular sexual images of men usually portray them as powerful and in control, in direct contrast to images of women, which typically portray them as helpless and wanting to be overpowered.” (Berdahl and Magley 532). This gives not all, but many men a distorted view on what women and men’s roles in America should

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