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Vicki Schultz^
It's a form of harassment every time I pick up a sledgehammer and that prick laughs at me, you know. It's a form of harassment when a journeyman is supposed to be training me and it's real clear to me that he does not want to give me any information whatsoever. He does not want me to be there at all .... They put me with this one who is a lunatic... he's the one who drilled the hole in my arm .... It's a form of harassment to me when the working foreman puts me in a dangerous situation and tells me to do something in an improper way and then tells me, Oh, you can't do that! It's a form of harassment to me when someone takes a tool out of my hand and said,... I'll show you how to do this, and he grabs the sledgehammer from my hand and he proceeded to try to show me how to do this thing . you know, straighten up a post . . it's nothing to it, you just bang it and it gets straight .... It's a form of harassment to me when they call me honey and I have to tell them every day, don't call me that, you know, I have a name printed right on my thing.... Ah, you know, it's all a form of harassment to me. It's not right. They don't treat each other that way. They shouldn't treat me that way. It's a form of harassment to me when this one asks me to go out with him all the time. You know, all this kind of stuff. It's terrible.1
How should we understand sex-based harassment on the job? Its existence is now part of the national consciousness. Over the past twenty years, feminists have succeeded in naming "sexual harassment" and defining it as a social problem.2 Popular accounts abound: Newspapers, movies, and television programs depict women workers who are forced to endure sexual advances and decry the fact that these women must contend with such abuse.3 The legal system, too, has recognized the problem. The Supreme Court, on two separate occasions,4 has affirmed that workplace sexual harassment violates Title VII of the Civil...