Sexual harassment in the workplace

Your topic should be in the general area of sexual harassment in the workplace, sexual assault, or a related topic. Below I’ve listed some potential research questions. In some cases I inserted links to recent NY Times articles that did a good a job of succinctly summarizing basic feminist arguments. NOTE THAT FOR THIS PAPER YOU NEED 10 ACADEMIC ARTICLES or books and NY Times articles are not academic. These articles are here to quickly and efficiently describe topics. If you are uncertain if a source is academic or not, send me an e-mail. In general, if you get your article from Jstor you are safe. A book should be published by a university press or Routledge Press. If you have a book that you think might be academic but is not published by one of those, please check with me. QUESTIONS REGARDING THE EXPERIECE OF SEXUAL ASSAULT What are the personal losses and gains associated with reporting sexual assault/harassment? That is, what actually happens to people who report? What are effective ways to respond, in the moment, to an inappropriate advance? Do different social groups have different tools at their disposal? How much of sexual assault is about sex, how much about power, what’s the difference, and how do you know? Is sexual assault a separable dynamic, a crime committed by some men, or is it an integral part of a larger system of male domination? http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-%e2%80%9cmale-bonding%e2%80%9d-of-brett-kavanaugh%e2%80%99s-youth-had-a-human-cost/ar-AAAHwwT https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/opinion/kavanaugh-misogyny-epistemic-worlds.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/opinion/kavanaugh-white-male-privilege.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage How is the molestation of boys and men related to the molestation of girls and women? In the case of boys, heterosexual men are the largest group of predators. Why would a heterosexual man assault a boy? Are there any personality characteristics that are associated with being a perpetrator of sexual assault? A victim? That is, are blondes more likely to be attacked? Or African American women? Or women who wear certain kinds of clothes? MEMORY, EVIDENCE, AND PROTECTING THE INNOCENT

What rules of evidence are there that would accommodate the special circumstances of sexual assault? Those special circumstances include: the frequent lack of evidence of physical coercion, the tendency to report only years later, the reality that panic can cause memory to be fragmentary and internally contradictory, the frequency with which survivors remain in social contact with perpetrators, and even pretend that nothing is wrong. If survivors respond to sexual assault with “irrational” behaviors like remaining friends with the perpetrator, how then do we know an assault has been committed? Newspapers seem to have agreed that whether a woman talked about an assault to friends back when it happened is important evidence. Is it? Are there other kinds of evidence that be used? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/sexual-assault-women-kavanaugh.html?module=inline make my sexual assault count by mara gay https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/opinion/rape-friend-sexual-assault.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage readers respond: when your friend is your rapist https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/opinion/kavanaugh-christine-ford-sexual-assault.html why sexual assault memories stick by Richard friedman https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/health/memory-rape-trauma-survivors.html They Say Sexual Assault, Kavanaugh Says It Never Happened: Sifting Truth From Memory https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/opinion/letters/kavanaugh-memory.html letters: the kavanaugh case: memory, truth and politics https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/24/opinion/sunday/sexual-assault-victims-lying.html when sexual assault victims are charged with lying. How do you recognize when a child has been sexually assaulted, if the child is nonverbal or has other reasons for not speaking out? How should parents protect children given what we know about how frequent molestation – at the hands of priests, uncles, teachers, coaches, babysitters – is? What shapes who we believe in cases of accusations of sexual assault? Do race, gender, and class characteristics of accuser and accused matter, and if so how? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/opinion/brett-kavanaugh-hearing-himpathy.html CAUSE AND PREVENTION All those signs you guys now see and workshops you have: do they help? What is the science behind them? If they don’t help, what might? What’s the relationship between drugs, alcohol, and sexual assault? Why are fraternities seen as a special problem? Is it correct to see them as a special problem? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/brett-kavanaugh-drinking-blackouts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/us/kavanaugh-fraternities-prep-school.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage Some have argued that in not teaching girls self-defense en masse we are socializing them to become targets. Is that true? Some have argued that in teaching men to be combative, to seek winning and conquest, we are setting them up to be predators. Is that true? The charges against Kavanaugh last semester have often been compared to the charges against Clarence Thomas in the 1990s. What has changed over the years? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/opinion/anita-hill-clarence-thomas-brett-kavanaugh-christine-ford.html