Repercussions of Harassment

in News Releases by Margo Smith — April 9, 2010 at 3:36 pm | 0 comments

Many women know and to a certain extent come to accept the fact that they will be cat called occasionally. It may be the construction workers, someone driving by, or some annoying men at a fast food restaurant or a number of other places. For some women, they get a kick out of it but most do not. Some women feel embarrassed, uncomfortable and even worse, but yet it still continues to happen.

Now researchers have found that cat calls and sexual comments are hurting their own gender. University of Connecticut’s Stephanie Chaudoir and Diane Quinn looked at the feelings and reactions of women who saw and heard men making derogatory remarks to other women and the results weren’t good. Out of 114 undergraduate female students most felt upset and the study found that the women took the remarks as insults to their gender. So that means that these women were angry with these men and what they were doing, but they’re more likely to take their anger out on men in general.

While it’s easy to understand why these women are angry, they shouldn’t be taking it out on all men. Unfortunately, sexism will never end. Despite all of the steps that are taken there will still be some low life that will make some sexual comment and the wrath will start and then it will be taken out on some innocent guy later on. The problem is that there isn’t really anything that can be done. If women make a comment back then most likely things will get worse. But if women don’t say anything then they might continue to do it and they will continue to make comments to other women.

So there really isn’t an easy solution. Most women try to leave the situation as quickly as possible while others as the British say get “cheeky.” But the annoyance is the same. But one fact that has come to my attention is that a lot of it is in the delivery. If a handsome guy tells a woman she looks very nice then it will probably go over alright but if a man tells the woman something that isn’t tactful or they do something like whistle, howl or something else it most likely isn’t going to go over well.
In America there are a lot of lawsuits based on sexual harassment. Not just in the workplace but also in personal situations.

The main thing to learn from this study is that women hate being cat-called and it gives all men a bad rap. And when women see or experience harassment, they just take it out on other men later. So harassment isn’t going to help anyone. But men should remember that women love compliments, so if they want to compliment a woman that’s easy to do without offending the woman. Remember: it’s all in the delivery.

Tags: harassment men and women psychology repercussions research and findings