When does banter become harassment?

How very sad I find your post Milly - so you think that it’s always perfectly ok for a man in whatever position of power to make any comments he wants jokingly or otherwise about a woman’s appearance and she should be grateful for the attention? That he should never have to consider whether or not it’s appropriate or wanted?

Oh dear I have just realised I may have harassed a young man years ago. I was in my 40s and worked in an office with a young trainee who always came in looking dishevelled I would fold down his collar, straighten his tie, tell him to comb his hair etc. No doubt these days he could accuse me of harassment. In my defence if he had to go see the boss he would often come to me and ask if he looked OK. I don't think it did him any harm because last time I saw him he was running his own successful company and was happily married with several children.

I worked in the office of a factory. I remember being very embarrassed when fellow office workers made comments about my hourglass figure as I was very shy. One day I was asked to accompany a male colleague onto the shop floor, I can’t remember why, and was horrified at the behaviour of the female factory workers towards my colleague, a boy of about 19 or20. Words I didn’t know and howls of laughter at our discomfort. After that experience I didn’t feel so bad at the banter I was on the receiving end of but I wouldn’t want my son or daughter at that age to have had to put up with either.
Like others of you I escaped rape several times by the skin of my teeth, endured getting touched up in packed underground trains and was assaulted in the street twice but would never have thought of reporting on any occasion. I was also wolf whistled at a lot but unlike many of you didn’t like it as I blushed easily.
I see it as a slippery slope from banter to touching to assault.
We may know the difference between flirting and ill intent but are not always in a position to get out of the situation when it turns nasty.
I could write a book about what has happened in my family but suffice to say that two men went to jail and it’s a very sensitive subject. I just want to see a different climate develop where we see each other firstly as people rather than sexual objects and no one is afraid for whatever reason to speak up when they have been assaulted.
I have been reading this book online. I wish all men in particular would read it. books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Macho_Paradox.html?id=TZs-PBVD_p8C&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y

I’m sorry. My comment didn’t really answer the question. It just all came pouring out☹️

So pleased I'm not the only one who thinks some of these claims of assault are ott. A young woman was interviewed the other day and asked to describe her assault she worked in a pub and bent over to carry a box of spirits from pavement into the pub as she did so a man walking by tapped her on the bottom she has joined a support group to get counseling ........really. I must have been assaulted lots of times and probably guilty of it too.

I used to head up a team of younger men & girls & believe me it was the lads that got harassed. They were all very nice people but the girls would make all sorts of smutty remarks to the boys & all they ever got back was a bit of cheek.
It was a very happy team & everyone gave as good as they got- even me! I got teased about being older a lot & gave it right back. Maybe things have changed in last 12 years but it was a happy , healthy working environment where everyone looked out for each other & enjoyed the banter.
Sometimes the lads would say one of the females looked nice that day & it was taken as a compliment not a come on. We worked hard & played hard often finishing up in the pub at the end of the day & I was very sad when the company folded & we all went in different ways.
If any of the boys had been inappropriate I would have dealt with it but it was never an issue - I did have occasion to tell the girls to behave several times- all in good fun but they went too far sometimes.
It goes both ways. If there had been an older man in the team maybe it would have been different- I don't know but let's not confuse banter with serious sexual advances. I'm sure most girls know the difference & can deal with banter!

One only has to remember the Carry On films of the '50s, '60s and '70s which were HUGELY popular and shown regularly as fun family entertainment.

Yes, today they are deemed naff and sexist but both men and women flirted outrageously and innuendo was the norm. We laughed at them. I don't remember people being insulted or offended.

It's good that we have moved on. Evolution happened and women gained equality but women of my time did use feminine wiles, dress provocatively and men did comment on a heaving bosom and a pert bottom. It was all suggestive.

I am glad we don't behave like that today but what a strange society has evolved.

Pornography online is easily accessible. Behind closed doors everyone, men and women are permissive and animal-like lust is acceptable and filmed, so the coarsest sex acts are out there. Drunken youngsters engage in crude acts on the streets in most towns on a Saturday night.

Years ago filmed sex was for frustrated men or seedy perverts and there was the pretence of a woman being chaste so sex acts were behind closed doors, even if they were car doors and away from prying eyes. There was a 'decency' about behaviour even though flirting was rife.

The balance has tipped but not in a healthy way, imo.

My daughter and her friend went with me on a break to a Mediterranean city. Aged 16, they were horrified by bottom-pinching (and they were/are not easily shocked). I had been somewhere similar at the same age, and thought little of it.
I am now disgusted at the idea of an adult pinching a teenager's bottom. Indeed I see that as harassment in 2017, even though I didn't decades ago.

Which heading does this fall under?

Surely banter becomes harassment when the people who are bantering can see that one or more of the other people is not enjoying it, but they carry on doing it anyway.

But some people either wilfully ignore the discomfort of others or actually quite enjoy it. Why don’t we just treat people with respect? It’s perfectly possible to have a fun, jokey conversation with colleagues without any questionable comments being made

My (late) second husband started his working life as an office boy in a huge supermarket accounts office where the ratio was probably about 100 women to every 1 man. He said the women made his life a misery until one of the managers told him to give back as good as he got. Can't imagine it these days mind you.

My first job in the 70s was in a very male environment, but usually well disciplined. I learnt to stand up for myself. However there were moments when a male member of staff would get out of hand. Once when the boss was elsewhere one afternoon, a new guy who had been transferred in, walked past my open office door flicking elastic bands at a certain part of my anatomy.
I was only 19, and young with it but I dealt with it.

But no one should have to put up with anything like that at work.

NB the guy that did the elastic band flicking was about 38, 39 and a married man.

Very simple way to judge if touching etc is OK - how would it be if it was a man being touched in the same way? Friendly hug/greeting =OK. Creeping hands = not. Same with banter.

A friend's husband says the best bit about Strictly Come Dancing (I am not a fan but have sat through it occasionally) is the way the camera-person films the duo running up the steps to the other level after the performance. He said he has a jiggle-ometer for their breasts which are often on show. His wife scolds him with faux rolled eyes but he tells her every 'bloke down the pub' that he speaks to, forced to sit through Strictly, says exactly the same thing.

My partner says it's natural to survey bathing beauties/skimpily clad women on the beach. Look but don't touch or comment....I have been known to check out a line of male bottoms at the bar if sitting waiting for a drink. I wouldn't pinch them though. I have been known to discuss the same with girl friends.

Natural instincts? We are never going to stop noticing, are we?

Who is saying we mustn’t notice?

Oh the good old days when men had the well paid jobs and they only employed younger women with nice figures to work in their offices! What larks we had. Pity there were no opportunities to be trained up to do the well-paid jobs!
There's a lot of confusion on this thread between a senior colleague of opposite sex who says "That's a nice jacket" and one who says "You look hot today". (which is probably today's terminology) Switch the genders and see how that plays. Workplaces in the past were massively unequal settings in which women were kept pretty firmly in their place. And just like the stereotype of the oppressed negro servant of the past who would have said "Yes'm boss'm" and smiled, to keep the white folk happy, young women responded to the flirting of older (often married) men, who were in more powerful positions, but flirting right back. However it's not right when the power is unequal, just as it's not right for male teachers to flirt with sixth formers. In my first year of teaching one of the male teachers put his hands on my waist from behind in a crowded corridor. I said in a loud voice "Keep your hands to your self (add his surname here)" . The head of that school used to invade everyone's personal space - male and female - by putting hands on arms and round shoulders. Everyone hated it but nobody ever said "Keep your hands to yourself" however much they wanted to.
Harassment is defined by whether the action makes someone feel bad. It therefore behoves older, senior people, especially men, to be careful not to invade anyone's space or to treat them like an object.
Forty years ago there was no acceptable name for what they used to call "wife beating" and there was no acceptable name for sexual harassment. There were "gropers" "ladies men" and "sex pests" And God help me they are still using the term "sex pests" sin the mainstream as well as the tabloid media.

I worked in education for 40 years and didn't experience any of this personally or knew of others who had. If I asked my caretaker to go and buy sex toys I would expect to get sacked banter or no banter. Indeed if I was caught fiddling my expenses I would also expect to get sacked.

I agree vampirequeen that things have definitely changed since we were young. On the bright side, young people don't need to learn to negotiate the minefield it could be fighting off the kind of colleague who we used to say should be fitted with four-wheel brakes.

Everyone now yells "sexual harassment" at the slightest provocation, which is all right, but compliments, flirting and remarks that brightened our day, such as " you look nice today" are being thrown out with the bath water.

Some years ago (only four or five) I was watching the last night of the proms on TV and when the young female violinist came back on stage for the second half of the programme in another and much more becoming evening gown than she had worn before the break , a man called, " I like your frock!" Is this to be considered unacceptable behaviour today? I hope not.

As to what sexual assault is or isn't, in Scotland at least, I think it is the term used to cover any attempt at rape, that was thwarted. The procurator fiscal's office would also use the term "sexual assault" if it was open to doubt whether the woman actually had been raped and to cover any other of what Scots Law used to call "lewd behaviour" that the one party either was forced into doing, or managed to avoid by protesting or defending herself (or even perhaps himself!)

Like all the rest of you, I have no intention of condoning rape, sexual assault or those in positions of authority or with a duty of care who proposition those working for them or under their care, but it's a sad world if we can no longer flirt light-heartedly.

I've not read all of the comments here but I do wonder where this will all stop. We lived in a very different world where if we wanted we could certainly make it clear that something was not acceptable to us. I'm not talking serious sexual assault, but things like pinched bum, whistled at, etc

I do worry that there is such a blame culture these days people see harm in even the most trivial incident and jump on the bandwagon.

A line has to be drawn under what a person can deal with themselves - a verbal dressing down for what they consider inappropriate - and what is a criminal offence. Grying wolf is happening too much these days.

It does work both ways and I've not seeen any men coming forward saying they've been sexually assaulted by a woman!!

Very few women do more than try to shake off the memory of those handsy men, except perhaps warning other women in secret. Reasons why include today's info that Damain Green MP, accused of unwanted touching and texting, is now consulting libel lawyers. Only the rich can afford to bring libel claims and in this case it's a his word/her word situation, so the men are making it dangerous for anyone to complain. Complain at the risk of being made bankrupt?

Perhaps if you read the whole thread you might understand better what is being said by some of us. This will stop when men learn that they cannot behave with impunity towards women. In the past even more, not less was tolerated ( viz all the comments about the BBC and ‘acceptable’ behaviour in the 70s. A pinched bottom is unacceptable full stop - so it’s not rape, so what????? How dare any man think it’s ok to do that? By blame culture you actually mean holding people to account for unacceptable behaviour and having to take the consequences - well bing it on, women shouldn’t have to deal with unacceptable behaviou4 themselves - why should they? The person doing the unacceptable behaviour should change, and yes I know some woman behave inappropriately with men - just as bad, OK?

My post was to jimmy

Yep, what happens if men pinch men's bums?

Yes Pam it will be interesting to see where the DG case goes won’t it? He wouldn’t be the first to rattle the big libel stick would he? Jonathan Aitken anyone?