Sexual harassment vs. Sexual assault
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Disclosure
dcavalli — 11 years ago(November 30, 2014 05:43 PM)
"Disclosure" came out 20 years ago. Nearly all reviews of the film (and the novel by Michael Crichton) described it as a film about "reverse" sexual harassment (female boss harassing male subordinate).
Meredith alleges that Tom forced her to perform oral sex on him. This wouldn't be sexual "harassment" but sexual assault, more precisely, sodomy. In fact, any unwanted sexual penetration is considered rape or sodomy under the law. Did any reviewer or writer bring this up back then?
Instead of offering Tom "a lateral move to Austin," Garvin and Blackburn should call the bleeping police (even if Meredith didn't want to press charges). Sending Tom to another branch would be like how too many Catholic bishops handled sex abuse by priests, offering them lateral moves to another parish. (I'm practicing Catholic and lean to the right.) In fairness to the film and the novel, calling the police was not always standard procedure for businesses and other organizations, who naturally preferred to handle problems (including work-place assault) in-house without publicity.
Sexual harassment would be what Clarence Thomas was accused of doing. If you remember, his accuser, Anita Hill, never accused him of touching her inappropriately. (For the record, I believed Thomas then and still do.)
A lot of behavior that was once considered "sexual harassment" such as groping, unwanted touching, etc. has been upgraded to "sexual assault." If you remember Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon, a liberal, pro-choice Republican who was the darling of the pro-choice lobby and feminists such as Gloria Steinem, he admitted he grabbed, groped, and kissed dozens of women. At the time, this boorish behavior was described in the media as "sexual harassment." Today, it would be "sexual assault."
I would add that when most people hear the term "sexual assault," they immediately think of rape and sodomy and not the lesser offenses. -
andyd-1 — 10 years ago(February 01, 2016 08:04 AM)
that's a very good point, I must have seen the film and not wondered that at the time.
Actually when I was younger, I had a curious idea that stuff like assault and theft were somehow the responsibility of the company I worked for, as opposed to anyone could call the police if a crime occurred - the first company I worked for did deal with a drunken assault internally, with a fudging of the issue of course.