Since my recent post on the accessing of porn at work and links to sexual harassment in the workplace there has been a few interesting cases in the news from the US and Australia that relate.
Following the suspension of a CEO of an auto company in Houston Texas for watching porn at work (similar story from the UK), KRIV News pulled up some recent stats (2010 Nielson) on porn use at work in the US. The Nielson report claims that 29 percent of working adults -that’s around 21 million in the US- admitted accessing adult websites on work computers.
Part of the case will determine whether a woman can sue under the Australian Federal Sex Discrimination Act for being exposed to male colleagues viewing computer pornography at work. And it seems she could have a strong case. Under the Sex Discrimination Act, engaging in unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature which a reasonable person would anticipate that a person could find offensive, intimating or humiliating constitutes sexual harassment. Through case law this has been interpreted to include situations where women are subjected to porn wallposters in the workplace.
Her lawyer has already indicated this as a route for the pursuit saying “there is case law establishing that women exposed to pornographic posters at work can pursue claims of unlawful discrimination… we see no reason why the result should be different where the pornographic images and video content are on display on computer screens of colleagues and managers.”
Industrial relations lawyer Peter Vitale makes a similar statement. “I think there’s some suggestion that this might be a revolutionary solution, but it seems to me a natural extension.”
I like Vitale’s attitude here. It is a natural extension. To belittle how serious and unpleasant it is to be subjected to pornography at work, is to ignore the humiliation and degradation of women in pornographic content and to ignore the significant role it plays in many incidences of sexual harassment in the workplace.
Related posts:
online porn = sexual harassment…yes!!!!! it is extremely uncomfortable to be in a place of work or in one case a public library (happened recently) and being subjected to online porn. The scary part was the library was right across the street from a middle school. the guy was reported but took off running when caught by staff
Today I threw away a colleague’s cigarette lighter because it depicts a pornified image of a woman on it. He thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to pass this lighter around to female colleagues on a group cigarette break. He’s an otherwise quite considerate person, but his lack of forethought and lack of respect really made me furious. He probably has no idea that it is offensive, and this is probably because porn is just so mainstream these days.
Who smokes in this day and age? That’s as antiquated as paying for porn.
http://www.news-leader.com/article/20111119/NEWS01/111190352/Lawsuit-Porn-made-hostile-workplace
Below is from the anti-pornography feminist site Pornography And The First Amendment. Twiss Butler of The Washington NOW said to me that women who support pornography and call themselves “feminists” are supporting sexism and woman-hating and are *NOT* feminists,and she’s totally right they are traders and hypocrites! And pornography has always been commonly used to sexually harass women in the work place even before the internet men would often hang up pictures from pornographic magazines are show them to their female employess or co-workers and sexually harass them with sexist comments and their behaviors
Women’s Institute for
Freedom of the Press
Pornography and the First Amendment
Twiss Butler
from her chapter “Why The First Amendment Is Being Used to Protect Violence Against Women,” in The Price We Pay, The Case Against Racist Speech, Hate Propaganda, and Pornography, Laura Lederer and Richard Delgado, eds. (NY: Hill & Wang, 1995)
“Twiss Butler argues that men’s control of institutions of communication and education allows them to support speech that harms women and to suppress speech against that harm. She observes that the publishing industry funds legal, journalistic, and nonprofit organizations endorsing a First Amendment absolutist position. She contends that the industry’s defense of pornography as protected speech serves the double purpose of dignifying misogyny and establishing the First Amendment as the publisher’s product liability shield.” (p. 160)
“When feminists criticize pornography as graphic misogyny, they are attacking not only the system of sexism itself, with its economic and social pay-offs for men, not only Playboy’s advertising rates, but also publishers’ broad First Amendment shield against liability for any harm caused by the products that they produce and sell.
“The publishing industry and the men in it therefore have a conflict of interest in reporting a critique of pornography as inimical to women’s civil rights (unsecured as those rights are by the Constitution). We need to consider how that conflict of interest distorts the information we receive through journalistic coverage of public debate and action on this issue.
“Publishers protect their liability shield either by silencing feminists while granting speech to those who vilify them, or by misrepresenting the feminist critique of pornography. Women are given credibility and access to speech to the extent that they say what men want them to say. Stray from the script and you will be attacked, misquoted, or simply go unheard. As power brokers in a large industry profiting from sexism, publishers disguise this censorship as selfless concern for the First Amendment and freedom of speech. (p. 163) …
“In the news business as elsewhere, men have long relied on the weapon of pornography to avoid having to compete on their own merits. The role pornography plays in keeping women journalists at a disadvantage is evident in the experience of Lynn carrier, an editorial writer for the San Diego Tribune who sued the paper in 1990 for sex discrimination and harassment. Men coworkers attempted to intimidate and segregate Carrier by displaying pornography in the office, using sexual insults when talking with her, and asking her to run out and buy a copy of Playboy for her supervisor–who also wondered aloud what she would charge Playboy for posing nude for photographs. Carrier won her civil suit (refusing, incidentally, to accept a secret settlement), but the outcome was typical–she no longer works at the Tribune, but is employed instead as a smaller paper in the area. (p. 164) …
“To protect pornography, women’s speech must be carefully controlled. When Linda Lovelace said she loved starring in pornographic films, she was treated as credible; when Linda Marchiano said that she had been beaten, raped, and coerced into making those films, her credibility was questioned. No risk is overlooked. At a National Press Club speech by Christie Hefner in 1986, I addressed her ‘as a pornographer’ in a written question about her lawsuit to censor testimony from a federal hearing that referred to Playboy as pornography; when my question was read aloud by the club’s president, these three words were deleted.” (pp. 166-167)
[This chapter by Twiss Butler alone is worth the purchase of The Price We Pay, The Case Against Racist Speech, Hate Propaganda, and Pornography. The entire book is excellent and highly recommended.]