User:Guadaabxo/Sexual Harassment and Assault

Sexual harassment is the behavior portrayed by the making of unwelcome and inappropriate sexual remarks or physical advances in a workplace, private place or a social situation. Not to mention, there’s sexual harassment that can occur without even touching someone such as cat calling, asking for a sexual favor, or the uncomforted body language towards someone etc. Sexual assault is a criminal act, and sex crimes which are defined very differently under state laws. Several women or men go through sexual harassment a least once in their lifetime period whether it's a sexual remark or rape.

Harassment and Assault in the Work Field
Harassment and Assault has been in the work field repeatedly that they even made a law, called "Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964" which was mainly created to protect women. Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This act supports the idea that harassment is illegal when it becomes frequent or severe that it creates a toxic work environment and leaves others not feeling safe in their workplace. In 2017 the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission received over 26,000 claims in the workplace about harassment. More than 12,428 claims were about sex-based harassment while 6,696 were specifically about sexual harassment. Many women fear working for employers that are mainly male dominated because they may feel vulnerable. In fact about 1 in 3 women have been sexually harassed in the workplace. However, only 71% of these sexual harassment incidents in the workplace have been never reported, leaving these women trapped. The reason being is due to these women being taken as a joke after they reported the incident and some may result in losing their jobs.

Rape
A form of sexual assault is called rape, which means the non-consensual sexual intercourse which a person forces another person to have sex against his or her will. Rape can happen to anyone at any place, in fact the rapist can be someone you know. Half the time, the victim may not be too sure if they themselves were raped because it was done to them by someone they know or may be in denial. 1 out of 6 American women have been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. Many people like to believe that you're a victim of rape because of how you dress, or some may say you're "asking for it" when in reality clothing has no correlation to rape. Although it is seen more often that women are the victim while men are the rapists, the roles can be switched. In fact, 1 out of 10 rape victims are male. In addition, there are 433,648 victims, ages 12 and older, that go through rape and sexual assault each year in the United States.

What has/can be done
If you see something, say something! This is a very popular term that is heard frequently but many may be feeling scared to speak up. Although there may not be a strategy to completely get rid of sexual harassment and assault, we can definitely add more rules around us when it comes to preventing this. For instance, employers should adopt a clear sexual harassment policy that protects you to ensure you work in a safe work environment. In addition, teaching students about sexual harassment/assault is major because they are still in the process of learning from right and wrong. Therefore we need to verify that we prevent these incidents by teaching healthy, safe dating and intimate relationship skills.