Reach behind the news headlines to explore the intense debates surrounding one of the most explosive social issues of the nineties.
For years, sexual harassment in the USA (and in the UK) remained shrouded in mystery, cloaked by social neglect and ambivalence, until allegations against Supreme Court nominee Judge Clarence Thomas brought vivid accounts of unwanted sexual advances into every living room in America, forcing the nation to admit both its ignorance and confusion.
What exactly is sexual harassment? What is its nature and causes? How and why does it occur? Are unwanted sexual advances a product of dark forces in human nature or a learned social behaviour? What sorts of actions should count as examples? Are offensive jokes, leers, gestures, and unwanted requests to be judged on par (morally or legally) with blatant physical aggression? What, if anything, can be done to prevent it? The questions are obvious; the answers are not. Highlighting the work of social theorists, feminists, psychologists, and legal scholars, this collection separates fact from emotion, focuses on opposing views, and outlines the legal and moral complexity of a debate that is only now taking shape in the public mind.
The contributors include Douglas D. Baker, Sherry B. Borgers, Martha R. Burt, Bob D. Cutler, Nancy S. Ehrenreich, John C. Hughes, Leanor B. Johnson, Alan Charles Kors, Catharine A. MacKinnon, Larry May, J. P. Minson, Camille Paglia, Ellen Frankel Paul, Stephanie Riger, Linda J. Rubin, Sandra S. Tangri, David E. Terpstra, Nancy Tuana, and Edmund Wall.
Edmund Wall is a philosophy instructor at Santa Barbara City College, California.
262 pages paper ISBN 0-87975-787-6