Originally Posted by
lil brown bat
That is correct. However, as in a workplace, it's prudent to also think about folks who overhear you and not just those that you're addressing directly. If another person comes into my cube and holds a detailed conversation with my cubemate about how they're going to swap bodily fluids, how I feel about the conversation is somewhat at issue -- it affects my workplace even though I'm not being addressed directly.
Now, of course BF isn't a workplace, and people are here voluntarily, so there are some differences. However, remember too that sexual harassment didn't start out as, and isn't exclusively, a legal definition. An unwelcome advance to a co-worker was sexual harassment before there was a law making it illegal in the workplace; likewise, in an internet forum such as BikeForums, there's still such a thing as sexual harassment, despite the fact that it's rarely (if ever) legally actionable.
Another downside of the exclusive focus on legal definitions is the fact that people are less able (willing?) to recognize plain old-fashioned objectionable behavior for what it is, simply because the behavior is within the bounds of what's legally allowed. It isn't illegal in the United States to walk down the street and refer to some random stranger using a derogatory racial or sexual epithet. It is crude, crass, antisocial and objectionable, but if anyone says so, immediately half a dozen people bellow about the crude, crass, antisocial, objectionable person's legal rights to free speech. It erodes civility. When we care only about what's legal and have no concern for what is right, that's what creates a society where you need to have things like sexual harassment laws, rather than being able to count on people to behave in a civilized manner.
This is well said. May I add my two cents' worth -- don't err on the wrong side of the law regarding sexual harassment at work. First, the corporate sexual harassment policies are set up by the corporate employer to protect not YOU, the employee, but the corporation, from lawsuits from employees who believe the company did not protect them sufficiently from co-workers who harass them. Second, the language of those policies allow an employee to lodge a complaint about ANYthing that ANYone has said or done to "make the workplace a hostile environment". And finally -- this is gender-biased, since most harassment comes from men: if a woman accuses a man of harassment in the workplace, then he's perceived as guilty, regardless of his guilt or innocence. That man's good name is gone, period.