Bigstockphoto.com/Casual portrait of an african american business woman using technology in a bright and sunny startup with the team in the background
Getting human resources to accept and file a sexual harassment claim can be, unfortunately, rather difficult. Getting them to take action against the harasser can be even more difficult, and by the time all of the forms have been filed, the meetings have been held and the reprimands have been made, you could still have suffered plenty of abuse. In an ideal world, you wouldn’t even need to be prepared to deal with sexual harassment in the workplace, but this is not an ideal world. Furthermore, even the men who consider themselves “woke” can be decades behind on what it means to treat a female coworker with respect (or any female, really). Since we often have to fend for ourselves, here are ways to quickly neutralize sexual harassment in the workplace.
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Call him out in private
Give the person one shot to admit they didn’t realize they were making you uncomfortable, should that be the case. Even if a man doesn’t think he’s sexually harassing you at work, the mere suggestion that he could get in trouble or face some sort of trouble with human resources could make him stop his behavior. It doesn’t matter if you get him to agree with you or see the wrong in his ways; it just matters that he understands there could be consequences, and stops.
