May I add a non-money related one?
Coworker sees me pouring in my coffee milk from a recycled juice bottle, inquires about it, and I explain him I ain't drinking that dairy-fluff stuff they give for free, because it's not actual milk and I prefer knowing what I drink. He looks conspiratorially at me and asks me "Is it your own milk?". The guy next to me almost spit his coffee. (And no, I'm not lactating)
That's sexual harassment.
Nah, the guy is gay, and from a culture that didn't explain him much about female anatomy. He just has no clue how the female body works.
That doesn't make it not sexual harassment. Gay men can absolutely sexually harass women, just like straight women can sexually harass women.
Harassment is always in the eye of the beholder. If she didn't feel harassed, it wasn't harassment. There's no point in trying to convince someone to get offended at something that didn't offend them.
Just in case she was offended at the time and was then trying to rationalize it away after. Rationalizing rape away is common; why wouldn't it be for harassment?
Yeah the guy should be stoned to death, minimum.
Harden the f*ck up people, and give the poor gay guy a break, how dishonest is to put "rape" in the conversation here?
Wow, way to reducto ad absurdum. There are plenty of misunderstandings about definitions and lots of rationalizing in lots of situations. I gave an example, and you went to a weird place.
Perhaps he/she went to a weird place, but I hate it when people use a drastic example as a way of shutting down a discussion. My aunt flipped out when she found out I was a Christian because she doesn't believe that someone should be able to sin and then just ask for forgiveness and be absolved, her example was, "What if someone rapes my daughter," and then pointed at her 3 year old, and then glared at me as if expecting me to defend any such action.
I think some people are misunderstanding maco's comment. The "drastic example" situation that MgoSam brought up usually goes something like this:
X is bad.
Rape is bad.
Therefore X is as bad as rape.
Which is a dumb argument. But this isn't what maco said. They said something more like this:
X is bad.
Rape is a lot worse.
Even though rape is really bad, people often rationalize rape after the fact as being not as bad as it actually was.
If people can rationalize away the badness of rape, they can easily rationalize away the badness of X since it's not as bad as rape.
See? Not the same thing.
I think it's offensive and unfunny. It's not sexual harassment as I would define it, but it's unpleasant. People targeting others with jokes about personal/sexual subjects is all too common, and after the thousandth time or so, it gets old, so old. Also people saying "Lighten up" and "It's just a joke!" Maybe one time, it's just a joke. After dozens and dozens, it feels like bullying. Now, maybe you don't think so, and maybe you think it's funny or harmless or good clean fun or whatever. But recognize that some people don't. My response to the "joker" would be, "What is wrong with you?"
UPDATE:
The guy was deadly serious when he ask me if it was my milk. I would have been pissed if he was joking about it, but he wasn't.
Anyway, I mentioned milk today in a different context and he told me he wanted to explain his comment for the other day: He was asking me it was milk from my farm animals, as some months earlier I mentioned that my DH wants to get a cow or a goat. But his English is not perfect (he's latino), and it came out wrong, and when everybody started laughing he was too embarassed to explain himself.
Yeah I wasn't sure what all the hoopla and lynching from the other posters was about. I was led to believe at first it sounded like what people thought of as sexual harassment. But when I read and thought about it a bit more, I realized that maybe it was cow milk or something and maybe she had a cow or something. We didn't know the whole background story that kitsune didn't provide so I thought, well you do put cow's milk into drinks so maybe that's what it was but we don't know. Anyways I refrained from drawing conclusions until all explanations/evidence was presented...you know, innocent until guilty.
I wonder if that's something wrong with our culture. It's impossible to convey all details, tone, imagery, of something happening at a particular moment in just text, few do that very well. We're so quick to lynch people, hang'em on the cross by putting words into peoples' mouths to details we're missing. I mean we weren't there so we can't cast judgement on the guy. Kitsune knows it better than us that it was sexual harassment. That's why she said it wasn't harassment.
It's an issue I'm seeing in comments from media and stories. Guilty until innocent. Fiction over fact. Too many news stories I've watched where details are omitted or slanted to a direction to tell a specific narrative to generate shock, anger, and confirmation of their viewers' prejudices, biases. You fill the details to fit your "idea" of what happened instead of what actually happened. Like the Columbia student and the mattress looking to win the court of public opinion, and not the court of law. We likely will never know what happens in these events so we fill in it ourselves based on our opinions.
It's why I can't stand strongly opinionated people, "extremists...I guess?" Feminists, misogynists, conservatives, liberals, etc. They already tell you the story w/out knowing what it is. They jump to conclusions based on what they believe, not what it actually is and try to buy/manipulate thoughts/minds/influence that way which is really dangerous and the power of US media. People let emotions and personal beliefs guide the facts on other peoples' stories they don't know about. It's judging others w/out the background to judge to validate their world view w/out actually knowing the world. Making people feel like they know everything and when in agreement, collect clicks and money.
This happened to me before on MMM forums. I made a post some took offense to. People lynched me. I explained what I was better trying to say and actually said. They all apologized and understood and some even agreed w/me later. There was balance. There's too much jumping to conclusions these days. Unless you were there to experience it, we can only conjecture, not make firm statements.
Quite shameful and sad really.