Canadian Safety Reporter

2 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2015 CSR | September 2015 | News Reports of sexual harassment against men on the rise Male victims often face harassment as form of bullying, enforcing gender norms BY LIZ BERNIER WHEN THERE'S TALK about sexual harassment, people usu- ally think of female victims and male perpetrators. It's a com- mon assumption, especially since women are three times as likely to report experiencing sex- ual harassment at work, accord- ing to a 2014 Angus Reid poll. About 43 per cent of Canadian women reported they have been sexually harassed at work, com- pared with 12 per cent of men, found the poll of 1,504 people. But the sexual harassment of men has long been a neglected area of research, according to Susan Strauss, a workplace ha- rassment expert and investigator in Minneapolis, Minn. "We don't know as much about the sexual harassment of men as we do about the sexual harassment of women," she said, adding that it's an area ripe for further research. "There's probably more men who are sexually harassed then men who come forward." Further complicating the is- sue is the fact there are many harassment or bullying behav- iours, particularly hazing-type behaviours against men, that would not have been considered harassment a few decades ago. But reports of sexual harass- ment against men have doubled over the past 15 years, according to the United States Equal Em- ployment Opportunity Com- mission (EEOC). And that number may rise as employees develop a greater understanding of what actually constitutes sexual harassment. Not just wolf-whistles, winks We generally imagine sexual ha- rassment to involve unwanted comments, contact or attention of a sexual nature — and when men are the victims of such con- duct, it's often considered more of a punchline than a problem. The workplace is notorious for not taking it seriously if a man complains of this type of harassment, said Roberta Chin- sky Matuson, president of Ma- tuson Consulting in Brookline, Mass. "Other men in particular look at it and think, 'Well, you've got a compliment. Someone's mak- ing advances at you,'" she said. "I think a lot of that's probably due to the media." But the realization that men can be victims just as much as women is starting to gain more traction, said Strauss. "I can remember when I first started to get into this business — you didn't even think about men as targets of harassment. And now, of course, we're find- ing out that they are. Still not to the same degree as women, and the kinds of harassment that they are subjected to differs, usually, from that that women are subjected to," she said. Our understanding of what harassment can mean has broadened, and it's now under- stood sexual harassment is not always sexual — it can also be about gender, said Strauss. "And, very often, the sexual harassment of men is done by other men. Not that women do not sexually harass them — they do. But we see men sexually harassing men with more regu- larity. And, very often, it deals with gender stereotypes — that they're not masculine enough." 'Gender policing' Quite often, the sexual harass- ment of men is actually about "policing" gender norms, said Strauss. "Some of it is overtly sexual, but some of it is not as sexual so much as gender-based," she said. "That's not to say that men are not sexually harassed in the traditional sense either, because they are. But, often times, men are sexually harassed by straight men. It's not gay men sexually harassing other men, it's straight men harassing other straight men." In fact, according to research on the subject, male-target sexual harassment is often not about sexual attraction at all, said Mar- garet Stockdale, chair of psychol- ogy at Indiana University, and study author of The Sexual Ha- rassment of Men: Articulating the Approach-Rejection Distinction in Sexual Harassment Motives. "Who is the kind of person who sexually harasses a man? For a long time, the belief was these are homosexual men who are sexually harassing other men for sexual purposes. And we've tried to debunk that myth. My- self and other researchers in this field (have found) the type of ha- rassment that men experience from other men tends not to be romantic, with a physical motive or sexual attraction — it's more of a dominance kind of behav- iour as a form of bullying or what we might call gender policing," she said. And it wasn't recognized as bullying or harassing behavior until recently, said Stockdale — it wasn't until the late 1990s that researchers started looking more seriously at male sexual ha- rassment. In large part, men are begin- ning to feel more comfortable speaking out about their expe- riences with harassment, said Strauss. "Men are feeling more of a freedom to speak out about it, particularly as we look at the expansion of what it means to be masculine and feminine, and the influx of more acceptance of LGBT people," she said. "They're feeling more freedom to come forward and complain." But some organizations are more receptive to such com- plaints that others, she said. "When I go to organizations that are predominantly male, I tell them that they are at an in- creased risk for both bullying and harassment, particularly sexual harassment," she said. "Both genders are at an in- creased risk for being targeted because of the male infrastruc- ture. The male infrastructure, it's got more of that machismo. "They're afraid they will be la- beled a 'pansy,' et cetera, if they come forward and complain." Training, education So what should employers do differently? First and foremost, any claim of harassment, wheth- er the victim is male or female, has to be taken seriously, said Chinsky Matuson. "And, in most situations, the managers don't have the skills to do that. They need to take it to their manager or to HR," she said. Training and education are also of critical importance. "It's a good practice to have… people understand where those lines are. I've done a lot of inves- tigations around sexual harass- ment and nine out of 10 times, the person who's being accused of harassment will say, 'I didn't know that what I was doing was harassment.' And the majority of times, almost every single time, I honestly believe them," said Chinsky Matuson. "They really didn't know. That doesn't make it right… but had that person been coached or had access to training, might that "Very often, the sexual harassment of men is done by other men... And very often it deals with gender stereotypes — that they're not masculine enough." Harassment > pg. 8

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