My group mates and I met with Glen Kendall on Thursday, March 3rd. He kindly gave us yet another perspective of a lawyer who has had to deal with sexual harassment and assault in a workplace environment. He helped us gain even more information on our topic, information that can only be learned from firsthand experience.

Mr. Kendall discussed many topics that related to sexual harassment, such as the power imbalance that often comes into play. The most common instance of harassment or assault in the workplace is an older, more senior employee harassing a younger, more junior employee. This puts the victim in a difficult position, causing them to stay silent about their experience due to fear of being demoted or even fired. Another thing we discussed is the two main types of sexual harassment. The first one is blatant harassment: unwanted touching or comments, unsolicited photos and videos such as non-consensual pornography, etc. The second type is what he referred to as a “quid-pro-quo.” This is when the offender asks for a sexual and/or romantic relation with the victim in exchange for some sort of promotion or raise. This information was extremely helpful to us and we will be sure to use it in the future.

Read more

On Friday, the 18th of February, my social justice team and I accompanied two other groups to the Paley Center for Media, where we met Rebecca Fisk, who talked with us about healthy versus unhealthy portrayal of women in things such as television shows and music videos. We held a discussion as well as watched multiple examples of females in media and how it affected the minds of others.

Some examples of unhealthy portrayals of women shown to us were Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time,” a music video where she and her background dancers wear overly-sexualized schoolgirl uniforms. Another music video was Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop,” where the women are objectified by the camera angles, the costumes, etc.

When it comes to television shows and movies, there were quite a sufficient amount of examples. The 1970 version of Wonder Woman played by Lynda Carter wore a sexualizing and impractical uniform as well as displaying a weak and feeble style of fighting. Another example was from the first season of Riverdale, where the character Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) is shown actively trying to objectify herself in an attempt to satisfy the male gaze.

However there were healthy representations of women as well. An example of this is the portrayal of Buffy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She is seen saving countless boys from vampires, turning the classic trope of “damsel in destress” on its head.

These representations of women were pretty much all catered towards entertaining male audiences and much less towards representing female ones. Modern media has done a much better job in accurately displaying female characters than in the past and I hope that we as a society will continue to make progress.

Read more

On Monday, February 21, my group mates and had the honor of meeting with Feminist and Attorney Gloria Allred, who has a long history of combatting the ever-lasting issue of sexual assault. She is known for her work involving the Bill Cosby case and defending some of the many women who spoke up against him. She has received much praise and criticism for her accomplishments over the years, but despite the continuous misogynistic and close-minded people and ideals that have tried to hold her back since the beginning of her career, she continues to march on the frontlines of advocating for equal rights, not just for women, but for everyone.

We learned about the perspective of a lawyer who specializes in this area and about the patterns that they notice when dealing with the accused. A lot of the time, a response to sexual assault victims speaking up against their assaulter is “she was asking for it.” This is because of a sense of entitlement to the woman’s body. This toxically masculine mindset is taught to boys at a young age and is the reason why misogyny and the patriarchy are still very much prevalent today. Ms. Allred’s work is dedicated to both helping women who have been victims of this mindset and to correcting and eradicating it all together. She is a truly inspirational individual and we are all glad that we got the chance to speak with her.

Read more

My group and I presented our slideshow on the topic of sexual harassment and assault (on the street and in the workplace) to the entire grade. We shared much of the research and statistics which we cultivated in an engaging manner and did a good job of getting our point across.

In the presentation, we shared many statistics on sexual harassment and assault. Here are just a few of them: “Out of every 1,000 sexual assaults, only 310 are reported to the police,” “only 25 out of 1,000 rapist end up in jail,” and “A majority of child sexual assault victims are between the ages of 12 and 17.”

Read more

On February 2nd, 2022, we had the honor of interviewing Kevin Samuelson, the CEO of Infor, and Laurie Forbes, his EA (executive assistant) about the topic of sexual harassment in the workplace. We attended an in-person meeting at the head quarters of Infor, where we were sat down in a conference room and recorded the entire interview. During the discussion, we reviewed the company’s zero tolerance policy on sexual harassment and what occurred when a case was reported. We discussed the power dynamic, how the offender was almost always a more senior employee, while the victim was a more junior one.

We are all very grateful towards both Mr. Samuelson and Mrs. Forbes for allowing us to come into their workplace and discuss this topic. It was truly an amazing experience to get yet another perspective on sexual harassment as a whole and to brainstorm even more ways to combat it. It was very important that we talked to someone who has had experience with sexual harassment, both as a bystander and as the person who administered the punishment to the offender. Everything that they explained to us about previous cases of sexual assault left me in shock. The fact that this is an issue in our society today and that countless people have to grapple with it on a daily basis is not okay. Something mush

Read more