You heard me. In a recent case in Ohio, a guy fired his dental assistant
because he'd grown attracted to her and was afraid he'd start cheating on his
wife. The all-male court agreed that this was a sensible decision, since the
termination was motivated by "feelings" rather than gender. This reminded
me of a Canadian case in 2009 in which a
woman was terminated after telling her employer she didn't like being called
"Boobie girl."
The similarity lies in the fact that
in both cases, the issues were deemed not sexual harassment on the basis that
the employers did not actively pursue or expect sexual favors. The guy from
Ohio fired his dental assistant because he was concerned about his growing
feelings towards her, while the woman from Ontario didn't mean "boobie
girl" in a sexual way, just a... fun? Cute? Way to refer to her
subordinate in front of other employees, superiors, and customers.
Here is my issue with both of these
rulings, and why I think they open the door to more harassment in the
workplace. In both cases, the person terminated was removed for something they
have no control over, and in both cases the sexuality of the plaintiff were at
the core of their termination.
The problem is that these decisions
intentionally disregard the purpose of legislation meant to prevent
discrimination, be it based on race, gender,
sexual orientation, or whatever else. The point of such laws is to prevent an
employer from mistreating or terminating an employee for reasons outside of
their performance. One of the reasons cited in the Ohio case was that
since the employee was terminated after the employer's wife saw a few texts the
two had exchanged, the employer was justified in terminating her “because of the activities of her consensual personal
relationship.” Here in Canada, we'd like to think such a ruling would never be
accepted since an employee cannot legally consent to a relationship with a
superior because of the authority the employer holds over the employee.
However, the
Ontario case does nothing to suggest the rights we have as employees are
sacrosanct. In the "boobie girl" case, the supervisor called a
subordinate the aforementioned title on a regular
basis, supposedly as a joke. Since she had no sexual interest in the
person, it was not considered sexual harassment, merely retribution when she
complained and was terminated, for which she was compensated. The issue here
lies in the fact that while her supervisor was apparently not interested in her
subordinate sexually, by calling her that, she was in fact turning her into a
sexual object in the workplace.
If someone were to
point out a person's body part to you, would your first instinct not be to
look? Does it not make it seem to other employees that this may be acceptable
behaviour? What if other people in the department began to call her that as
well? What if she was sexually harassed as a result of this when another
employee took the joke too far? Would the courts still feel this harassment
wasn't sexual in nature?
To compare, there
was a case prior to this in which a religious woman sued her company for sexual
harassment (and won) when the secretary's husband dropped off her forgotten
lunch and kissed her on the mouth on his way back out. Since this was
considered a sexual element in the workplace, even though the plaintiff was not
in any way related to the instance and the contact was between a married
employee and her non-employee spouse, she won her suit.
Granted, the court
decided that while she was prima facie right, she wasn't entitled to any
damages (and what possible damages could there have been in that case?), but
the precedent was set. Bringing in sexual content is not appropriate in the
workplace, and retribution against the employee who complains is absolutely
against the law, which should mean that neither of the cases
above should have happened, but here we are after all, in 2013, still talking
about employers being "justified" in firing an employee because they
feared their own impulses, as if that is the employee's fault or problem.
Get some therapy,
dude.