The Locker rRoom and the Dorm Room...

This was another great article, that I really enjoyed reading. A lot of the issues brought up by Delliner and Williams were addressed the other week at the Sport, Sexuality and Culture Conference. This reading gave a great insight into different situations that look at sex and sexual harrassment completely different.

At the beginning of the article I was a little upset with how it took shape. There was a lot of information that continued to say that women got harrassed way more than men all the time, and that they are only the victim. Although I do agree that women are sexually harrassed a lot more, some of it has to do with how they behave individually. GIrls these days wear the most ridiculous outfits, make up and styles. Of course men are going to be more attracted and sexual when they witness that. It is human nature to be sexual and horny and I think goes for both genders.

The article then went on to describe how many women enjoy the sexual aspect of their job just as much as men. GIrls who work at Hooters, strip clubs, sex shows and as prostitutes really have a more confusing sexual harrassment line. When is it too much for them? Can women of these statuses actually be considered legit when their whole job is meant to take money from horny men. I just find it hard to be responsible for one thing and not the other.

Another concept that relates to this article has to do witht he idea of institutionalization. How can we blame the girls that copy movie stars and commercials or the guys that just behave like their idols? Both genders have to be included in this talk and then race comes up too. There becomes even thinner lines for race and sexuality and from male to female discrimination. The television tells kids how to act, while advertisements even have a subconscious effect ona dults. It just has to do with how our society is.

The compariosns of Womyn vs. Gentleman's Sohpistication were astounding as well. I had no diea some work environments were so open and fre.e. I think those companies have a good start of taking away much of the stigma attached with sexuality. Of course one is a porn mag and the other is a feminist magazine, but I really think it's a step in the right direction. The desensitization is much like how Europe looks at seuxlaity. If more people could embrace it, then take advanatge of it, we'd all be much better off.

The Influence of Race and Gender on Student Self Reports of Sexual Harrassment by College Professors

This was my first article I read and I was most excited to read about. I had heard of incidents of college professors witht heir students, saw these kind of related stories in movies and on television but had never seen any hard data whichw as supplied in this article.

The problem I had with this article was that I felt like the asnwers may not completely honest within the study. I thought of a movie we watched in Definition of Normality where children were coerced into their witness accounts. Friedman was being investigated for child molestation and many of the children's stories were differing, because of the police and community influence on their answers. In this article, I felt that the study was being forced into college students in a way that made them come with exaggerated answers and classifications of sexual harrassment. If someone kept asking and interviewing you about a topic, couldn't you concede and give an answer that they wanted?

I found the points about the men and women very intersting and agreed with the assessment that these answers may not completley accurate. SOme men may brush off instances, while others may lie and some women could exagerate or misremember some accounts. The study did its beast to find percentages of race and gender who have been harrassed by college professors, but it isn't foolproof.

The enxt part of the article that was very ifnroming spoke about the stereotypes associated with sexual harrassment. If someone is not only attacked about their sexuality, but their specific race related features, then their accounts may be misrepresented as well. The extremity of the situation could be doubled, just by having a racist comment be woven into a sexist one.

The last point I have about the article is closer to the end, but still seen throughout the body of the article. I felt that there were way too many numbers for such a objective study. A lot of opinion and bias goes into the answers for both men and women. There are so many factors, some which were represented int he article. I thought of the knicks sexual harrassment case where a women was awarded millions of dollars for claiming the organization was at fault and disgusting and a slum. If I remember correctly there was no hard evidence that Isiah Thomas, Stephon Marbury or the Knicks did anything wrong, yet they still settled to make the woman be quiet. The publicity was already bad enough and the token word "sexual" made this even more complicated. Sexual harrassment is no doubt a huge problem in our society, whether it is taken advantage of or a legit concern.