The term "Sexual Harassment" needs to be more defined

189 points•153 comments•submitted by TheMogician to r/unpopularopinion

Incident: A girl in the lab got a burn blister on her hand due to improper handling of lab equipment. There is this loner guy in the lab who worked with her. He asked the girl if she was alright because she "audibly made a pain noise" and also asked if she wants him to check her hand. The girl said no. Technically, these injuries should all be treated outright but it isn't uncommon for some of the small injuries to just go ignored until the end of the day since it isn't anything serious. I didn't think much of it and just kept working. A bit later, according to the guy, the girl was visibly having trouble working, so he decided to go check the girl's hand. He pulled the girl's hand and asked to check her hand. The girl started yelling sexual harassment and started a huge fuss. It quickly gathered a crowd as the lab is usually a quiet place. The girl started yelling and the guy seemed pretty quiet. She called him a creep and sexually harassed her. In all honesty, the guy is a quiet person and we don't interact much so I can't tell if he is actually one or not. The argument quickly devolved into the girl said the guy pulled on her arm twice and the guy started to defend himself saying he only pulled her arm once because it looked like she had trouble working.

The next day, the girl's brother called me and asked me what happened. I told him about the incident. It seemed like he got a bit heated when he was talking, as he asked how can I allow his sister to get sexually harassed in lab. It isn't really my duty to watch over his sister since we are all adults here, I don't want to preemptively convict the guy of sexual harassment so I told him so. The brother then proceeded to tell me the girl had trouble sleeping and is traumatic for all the time fearing retribution from the guy. Now, I know the quiet guy is not capable of doing stuff like that since he's always been really meek for all the time we were together, he would barely raise his voice even when he gets into an argument so I told him they probably don't have to fear any type of retribution at all. It also seemed to me that the girl is exaggerating as the guy just pulled her arm (I didn't tell the brother about this since I don't want to convict the girl of acting just as I don't want to convict the guy of sexual harassment). He then told me they will probably seek law advice (no idea why he told me that since I am not the lab head).

In all the madness going on, I just wish the term "sexual harassment" is more defined. I think sexual harassment should be punished but I just don't know if this issue qualify as sexual harassment. What do you guys think about this? Is this sexual harassment?

Edit: just for clarification, I think the guy shouldn’t have touched the girl in the first place without her okaying it but is this truly sexual harassment?