Sexual blackmail A boss threatens tofire an employee unless she or he is sexual.
If, for example, a male vice-president threatens to fire a female secretary unless she has sex with him, it is in the company’s best interest to get rid of him. Why? If a vice-president is willing to get rid of someone who is helping the company make a profit, he’s betraying the company for sex. Almost every vice-president knows she or he would be fired if even the slightest evidence of sexual blackmail were proven. Which is why sexual blackmail so rarely happens in major companies
Sexual bribery An executive promises a promotion in exchange for sex. This can be explicit or implicit
The company stands to lose a fortune if less competent employees are promoted by an executive in exchange for sex. It is, therefore, in the company’s self-interest to fire that executive. The employee who accepts sex in exchange for a promotion, though, should not be allowed to sue if things don’t turn out well later Rather, she or he might be sued by the person losing the promotion.
Workplace prostitution An employee Is sexual in exchange for a promotion; a salesperson is sexual to win a sale The sex can be given or just promised
For example, if a female employee promises sex to get a promotion and a man accepts, both might legitimately be subject to class-action suits from all employees — male and female — for discrimination against them, they lost equal opportunity to get the promotion through legitimate means.
Similarly, if a woman promises sex to win a sale from a potential customer and succeeds, then, first, the customer’s employer shouldy? re him — especially if, just to enhance his sex life, he bought a product he would not otherwise have bought Second, the woman should be sued. By whom? By the companies competing against her They were competing against the illegal sale of a female body — not exactly fair competition.
Workplace incest Consensual sex among employees. The workplace, like the family, has lines of authority which sexual bonding tends to blur. Workplace incest occurs in two basic forms:
Employer-employee sex When it is consensual, employer-employee sex has one of the same problems of parent-child incest: it undermines the ability of the employer to establish boundaries because the employer often feels needy of the employee. It is this same problem that is at the core of parent-child incest: parental authority becomes undermined because the child senses it has leverage over the parent. When only one employee has this leverage, it is also a setup for workplace jealousy and resentment.
Peer sex. Peer sex is to the workplace family what sibling incest is to the family in the home.
The sexual bond often leaves other employees feeling excluded. If the sexual relationship is kept secret, it can be crazy making. It is best revealed, with the feelings it creates discussed openly.
Workplace incest makes the company and other employees vulnerable.
Sexual harassment Repeated sexual advances at work after an employee has said no.
For legal action to be successful, the “no” would probably need to be in writing, otherwise it cannot be distinguished from the courtship-in-the — workplace process participated in by almost all single male and female employees (and many who are less than single!). Why this distinction between a verbal "no" and a written “no"? This is explained below.* ‘See chapter 14, The Iblitics of Rape
Workplace flirtation Suggestive dress, flirtatious eye contact, a combination of touching and eye signals the types of-indirect initiatives Cosmopolitan encourages working women to take at work. A workplace flirtation is a workplace invitation to think of or do something other than
work.
Flirtation can be to the workplace what a virus is to a computer, both screw up the intended program It leads to less than honest feedback for fear of undermining a potential romance. It leads many male executives to hire for reasons that undermine the company’s goals
Workplace porn Pinups, lewd jokes, and sexual innuendos made in groups (without flirtatious eye contact directed at a particular person).
Workplace porn — such as lewd, sexist jokes and pinups — is largely a male style of testing the waters, and also pan of what the EEOC has defined as sexual harassment It can cost a man career advancement. Workplace flination — more a female style of indirect initiative-taking (see Cosmopolitan examples) — has been totally ignored by the EEOC and, therefore, can be done by women, free of risk. Here’s the twisted result. . .
Guy wrote to me that he had taken a picture of a woman at work who was sitting seductively in a miniskirt with her blouse unbuttoned enough to expose her bra (and some breast). He pinned the picture up on a file cabinet. The woman’s face was turned away so she wasn’t immediately recognizable.
Guy’s boss immediately called him in to his office and ordered him to remove the pornography from the file cabinet. When Guy explained, tongue-in-cheek, that it was “just a real-life picture of our work environment,’’ the boss caught the joke and laughed, but still ordered him to remove the picture. The woman, however, whose picture was the ‘pornography,” was not asked to dress in a less pornographic manner. The workplace reality created by some females is, when photographed, the workplace pornography protested by other females.
Months later, Guy was called in to the office again. His boss told him he was being fired from work because of complaints that he was too interested in men’s issues. None of these complaints documented any interference with his otherwise exemplars’ work history. And Guy worked in a male — dominated profession under a male boss.
Guy’s workplace pom was not expected to get the woman sexually turned on, yet Guy was fired despite the fact that a purpose of female flirtatious dress is to sexually activate men like Guy. Workplace porn (the male style that bothers only some females) is condemned while flirtatious dress (the female style that actively disturbs the great majority of the males) is prtxected.