Sexual Harassment & The Ford Motor Co

Q: I visited "http://www.overlawyered.com" today, and there's a very good "blurb" on the recent sexual harassment goings-on at Ford Motor Co. I strongly suggest you head over to the site and read the article that Mr. Olson has written about the repercussions of this deal. Mr. Olson's site also refers to this excellent article about the situation from the Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/09/10/fp1s2-csm.shtml And people have wondered why I've advocated that American men avoid social interaction with American women, plus keep dealings in the workplace on a purely business level. Well, are we getting a clearer picture, here???

A: Actually most case law has evolved the exact same way law is evolving on SH. When a new situation crops up, it gets evaluated under old guidelines, which means that the guidelines must change to accomodate new situations. Just think for a moment how property rights have changed since the advent of computer tehnology. The same is true for harassment law. That employers don't feel comfortable doesn't prevent murder law or sexual harassment law. Actually, this is a fairly radical departure from most of history. For about 9700 of the last 10,000 years, work was a part of the social fabric. People tended to work in groups (either hunting, gathering, or doing other tasks). It was not until the industrial revolution that westerners developed this sharp segmentation between work and personal lives (which has done a lot of damage to father's relationships with their families, and now is doing the same for mothers). I actually enjoy working in a group that shares some of their personal lives. you bring up this "evolution" thing a lot. Let me present a point to you. When feminism was gaining steam in the 1960s and through the early 1970s, women fought to gain equality in the workplace. They wanted to be treated the same as men. They fought to repeal such laws like those that prevented men from swearing in front of women, etc. They indeed *wanted* to be thought of as "one of the guys" when it came to the workplace, etc., because they didn't feel women should be coddled because of their sex. For instance, they fought to be educated alongside men. Now, however, the modern incarnation of feminism wants to re-create those separations, and go back to preferential treatment--and have men pay terrible penalties should they so much as question anything

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