There is in fact a pattern

I saw this

https://twitter.com/MenAtWork_MC/status/1318579917488082945

So I looked it up. What is ACAS? Google says:

The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service is a Crown non-departmental public body of the Government of the United Kingdom. Its purpose is to improve organisations and working life through the promotion and facilitation of strong industrial relations practice.

Under Workplace Problems they have Discrimination, bullying and harassment, and under that they have Sexual harassment, and sure enough under that they have the anyones.

What sexual harassment is

Sexual harassment is unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature.

It can happen to men, women and people of any gender or sexual orientation. It can be carried out by anyone of the same sex, opposite sex or anyone of any gender identity.

Now…wait a minute. Back up. It isn’t that simple. They’re leaving out the whole power imbalance aspect. The larger category, to repeat, is Discrimination, bullying and harassment, and what do all of those involve? A power imbalance. That’s how these things work. The peasants can’t bully the lord, the workers can’t discriminate against the owner, the women can’t sexually harass the men.

Ok there are exceptions, as MenAtWork says. A rich and powerful woman boss can sexually harass a subordinate, and people are weird so no doubt there are such cases, but there is also a fundamental power imbalance between women and men, and women are the ones with less power. ACAS could say there are exceptions, and make it clear that men can report sexual harassment too, without occluding the pattern altogether.

The law on harassment

Harassment includes bullying because of certain ‘protected characteristics’ and is against the law.

Sex is one of the protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.

The full list is:

  • age
  • disability
  • gender reassignment
  • pregnancy and maternity
  • race
  • religion or belief
  • sex
  • sexual orientation

So that has to mean “sex” as in “female sex.” It can’t mean both sexes, because that would be incoherent.

So why is their advice on sexual harassment written as if it’s a toss-up which sex is generally the one being harassed?

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