Was I being sexually harassed?

November 22, 2023 11:59 AM

I'm a late 20s female in a new role at a prestigious healthcare organization. A man I had just met touched me multiple times, then asked for my phone number and immediately tried to get me to go to his office.

Ok, I think reading the blurb you're like "duh! That is sexual harassment!" But I have doubts.

I am in an admin role at this org and this Man is in a senior admin position and has been there for over a decade. It was my first time running a faculty meeting solo, and he was there as well. He is well regarded and I already knew his name so when he introduced himself to me I was happy to meet him.

He immediately asked to exchange numbers, which didn't put up a red flag for me. Everyone here texts instead of using teams or slack or whatever.

Then there were tech difficulties, so he was trying to help me, and in the process put his open hand on my upper arm for multiple seconds at a time. He did this about 2-3 times and there was no real reason for him to do this. His manner was very gentle and he was being really nice, in the moment I didn't really feel anything about it but thought "ok he's touchy."

After the meeting, I was talking about a project I was trying to work on and he said "I have some templates for that. If you want, we can go over to my office later and we can look it over."

I said sure ok but I need to go to a different meeting now. He departed and then later he texted me "Hi if you want to meet later today to maybe put together a draft. Feel free to text me." At this point I was weirded out by his insistence and did not answer the text.

Overall I'm feeling weird and uneasy about this. I don't think the touching is normal, but I also got the sense that he could possibly be gay? He was nothing but nice and has a good reputation here. I could be reading too much into it but it felt icky and I'm upset about it as well. I am brand new to this org (which is my DREAM JOB) and want to get an outside perspective.

posted by anonymous to Human Relations (16 answers total)

PLEASE DON'T TOUCH ME. THANK YOU.
posted by cyndigo at 12:10 PM on November 22, 2023 [15 favorites]

I don’t want anyone touching me for any reason at work. In my mind, it’s inappropriate (at least in the U.S.) no matter what the intent.
posted by sugarbomb at 12:19 PM on November 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

I wouldn't worry about whether it is sexual or not. You don't like it and you can tell him not to do it again. His motives are not as important as the impact his behaviour has on you.

FWIW I have had a similar-ish experience, except that I have a very strong startle reflex and visibly jumped when touched. I dislike being touched at work. I told him politely not to do it again and then (to the best of my ability) tried to stop thinking about it.
posted by plonkee at 12:29 PM on November 22, 2023 [9 favorites]

People shouldn't be touching you at work, but you're right that this seems really equivocal absent any other information. I can think of two men I've worked with who were very emotionally open, very happy to help and mentor, etc, and could have done these things without having any but the most benign intent. Is he in a role where he could conceivably normally be interested in helping new people, like a department manager or something?

Another question to ask yourself - what is the general office vibe there? I've been in jobs where arm-touching would have been a personal quirk but not a red flag and jobs where it would have been so out of line with the general culture that it would be an immediate red flag.

My feeling is that this is a watchful waiting situation and also a "please don't touch me" situation if it comes up again. Do you have a lateral colleague to ask about him?

On re-read I am not wild about this just because it sounds like your roles don't really normally connect a lot and you didn't, eg, have a long conversation while setting up where you discovered your mutual love of sous vide cooking or something - I find myself asking why he is taking this particular interest in someone in your role.

It is crummy that you have to consider this at all.
posted by Frowner at 12:40 PM on November 22, 2023 [9 favorites]

Trust your gut. It is telling you something. If later your read turns out to be wrong, you can always warm back up.

To me, this reads like a guy trying to flirt while taking advantage of plausible deniability. "I didn't ask her out, we just all share numbers in the office. I didn't ask her to meet after hours, I just wanted to help with her project. I didn't touch her without reason, we were just trying to solve some technical difficulties."

It's a lot for one day. You're right that he's being pretty insistent about it. It may or may not rise to the level of sexual harrassment, but it's obviously making you uncomfortable, and that's an excellent reason to tell this guy to back off.

A couple rounds of "I've got it, thanks" with a no-fuss attitude would be my starting point, and then maybe escalate to "please don't touch me" or similar.
posted by danceswithlight at 1:14 PM on November 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

To answer your question, "Was I being sexually harassed?"

In my opinion, No, you weren't.
posted by Lucky Bobo at 3:56 PM on November 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

Your gut is telling you this could be a danger - some awful people are careful and subtle in the first steps of harassing. The obvious ones are easier to avoid than the charming polite creeps.

Saying directly “oh I startle easily so don’t touch me, thanks” is a good barrier. Non-creepy people don’t take offence and creepy people realise you’re not a soft target.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:10 PM on November 22, 2023 [11 favorites]

If your a decent man in a position of power over a younger woman, you go out if your way to make sure they’re never made to feel uncomfortable by you. At the very least he didn’t do that, and it’s pretty easy to not make someone feel uncomfortable.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:26 PM on November 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

This feels like a well-practiced grey area. I would expect it to escalate unless you explicitly stop it. If you focus on the details of individual events, it's very easy to say it's not harassment. If you take a step back and look at the frequency of avoidable uncomfortable events, it's much harder to brush off.

It's like the way a magician holds a cup at the bottom when they're doing that trick with appearing and disappearing balls. You can't really see what's going on because they're slick and well-practiced, but if you stop and think for a moment you realize that nobody holds a cup like that unless they're doing some slight of hand.

Also, why does your office need to have staff share personal mobile numbers in order to collaborate on work? Where I work, only the people that recruited me (and therefore communicated with me prior to my joining the business) have my personal contact details. This is not a safe policy.

I would suggest you don't let a single additional uncomfortable thing slide. This is not a gradual escalation. You're well on the way to becoming a boiled frog.
posted by krisjohn at 6:16 PM on November 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

So, some of this sounds like the kinds of things I, a friendly but potentially overenthusiastic woman, would do for a newly-met brand-new-to-the-org junior colleague of any gender [except for the touching; I was taught in first grade to Keep Hands, Feet, and Objects to Self]. I think a very reasonable approach would be, the next time you see him, to tell him that he weirded you out the other day and that you want him to refrain in the future from touching you. I think that his response to this will give you some good data on how to proceed.
posted by heatherlogan at 7:46 PM on November 22, 2023

I think you don't need to conclude whether or not he sexually harassed you to conclude he's acting inappropriately.

He did not sexually harass you - at no point did he proposition you explicitly, and you did not decline any of those propositions. He also did not use his position to influence you sexually.

You should still feel comfortable asking him not to touch you and to not have contact with him outside a work setting. Any HR person would support you doing so.
posted by saeculorum at 8:24 PM on November 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Lotsa confusion in this thread about sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is a legal term, and it does not require an explicit proposition. It can consist of creating a hostile work environment. On its own, nothing you've described here sounds like a hostile work environment, so you shouldn't consider filing a lawsuit. It does sound like to makes you uncomfortable, and that's enough cause for you to decide to avoid him, ask him to stop, etc. My recommendation would be to keep a friendly distance until you're more familiar with his style, the office culture, his reputation, etc.
posted by equipoise at 11:33 PM on November 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

If you're not sure, perhaps not a bad idea to document while still fresh in your mind. Times, places, who was there, what was done, what was said, how you responded. Just in case. Hopefully turns out to be completely unnecessary.
posted by sarah_pdx at 11:53 PM on November 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

You can tell gay men not to touch you. You can tell nice people not to touch you. It's fine.

Gay men, other women, and even children don't get a free pass to touch our bodies without consent. (My phone autocorrect wanted to change that to consequences, neat!) Boundaries are for everybody.

Please don't feel even remotely bad about this.
posted by phunniemee at 5:32 AM on November 23, 2023 [11 favorites]

I have spent a lot of my career in these environments. I would NOT confront this directly as a new person dealing with a well respected senior leader. I would be extremely polite but not warm. If he touches you again you can shift away but don’t make a big deal out of it.

I agree this sounds like practiced boundary testing and you can communicate that you’re not into it without saying “don’t touch me” or having a confrontation about it (both of which have a strong chance of making you seem weird/over reactive).

This isn’t right or ok, but the reality is that making a fuss about something so nebulous is likely to blow back on you more than him.
posted by jeoc at 8:11 AM on November 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

Just as a point of perspective: I am now an older man. I'm 54, but sometimes it feels like 94 when dealing with younger people. The "generation gap" is a very real thing.

When I was growing up, I was taught (in multiple contexts) that this sort of touching was a way to create a connection with other people. In classes and books, etc. I was told that briefly touching people on the arm or the upper back was a normal social thing. And from my memory, back in the 1980s and 1990s it was far more common than it is today.

Now, having said that, cultural norms have shifted a ton. People touch each other much, much less than they used to. And in the past ten years, a lot of things that seemed perfectly innocent when I was young have come to be interpreted as something else. As a result, I've personally gone to almost zero touching except with people I know, and I'm sure that's how everyone else here operates. (And I've noted that people touch me much less often too. It used to be a regular almost daily occurrence; now it's extremely rare.)

Last month, I was at a conference. I met some new people and enjoyed my conversations. During one of the conversations, I was a little buzzy but laughing and enjoying myself. I caught myself touching a younger woman (she's maybe 28) on the upper arm, just like I used to. I had no sexual intentions whatsoever. It was relexive, just me feeling connected. But as soon as I noticed I was doing it, I stopped. I was alarmed. Thirty years ago, I wouldn't have thought anything of it. In 2023, I was worried that she might be freaked out by it. (In the end, it was fine. Although I stopped this sort of "social touching", she did it a couple of times to me during subsequent conversations, which was relieving.)

Also, I should note that in my life there have always been certain people that were more "touchy" than others. It's just how some people operate. My girlfriend, for instance, touches people a lot without being aware that she does it. My guess is that these folks are accustomed to people asking them to tone it down from time to time.

All this is to say: I don't know if you were sexually harassed, but it could very well just be a generational thing. Regardless, it's perfectly fine to politely and gently let him know that this bugs you the next time that it happens.
posted by jdroth at 8:25 AM on November 23, 2023 [12 favorites]