Sexual Harassment and Teens
What it Is, How to Cope, and Ways it Can be Prevented
Sexual Harassment is unwanted attention of a sexual nature that makes a person uncomfortable or embarrassed.
Who is being harassed? Fifty-eight percent of 8th -11th grade girls report being sexually harassed often or occasionally. Thirty nine percent of them report daily harassment. (Stats from Stats and Facts: Sexual Harassment). Though sexual harassment is typically thought of as something that happens to women and girls, boys are increasingly becoming targets as well.
Anytime sexual behavior or comments is intended to humiliate someone, anyone, or continues despite requests to stop, its sexual harassment.
How did this become such a big problem? One theory is that our hyper sexualized culture exposes kids to age-inappropriate images and behaviors they may not have the maturity or skills to properly process. This incompatibility between environment and developmental level can cause confusion among young people regarding appropriate limits and sexual expectations. Kids may feel pressured into certain behaviors because of what they see around them. Many incidents may be labeled sexual harassment that are actually disconnects between the ability to form the intent to harm someone and a lack of understanding about the impact of one’s behavior. Kids see sexually charged images all the time, so they often don’t understand why their behavior is a problem. And the images they see are getting more and more provocative all the time.
What kinds of behavior are we talking about? Sexual Harassment can be broken down into three categories. These categories and some common examples are listed below:
- Visual Harassment includes dirty pictures, sexual gestures, suggestive letters or email, obscene graffiti.
- Verbal Harassment includes sexual names and jokes, comments about one’s body, rumors about sexual activity, sexual intimidation, sexual noises or sounds.
- Physical Harassment includes touching, groping, and pulling on clothes, shanking, blocking, rubbing up against someone, hugging.
Things kids generally don’t realize about SH:
- Sexual Harassment isn’t about feelings, sex, or liking someone. It’s about holding power over someone and not respecting their decisions and limits.
- Kids can sexually harass others of the same sex. Whenever, for example, a girl calls another girl “ho” or “slut”, or a guy calls another guy a “fag” or yanks down his pants to embarrass him, that’s sexual harassment.
- Being friends with someone doesn’t preclude the possibility of sexual harassment. Sexual boundaries can still be disregarded, even between friends.
Not just flirting. Flirting is welcome behavior that goes both ways, and usually makes someone feels flattered. Sexual harassment, on the other hand, is unwanted behavior that is one-sided and uses the power of words and actions to make someone feel humiliated or dirty. Intent and reciprocity are two key clues that teens need to consider in deciding whether a behavior is sexual harassment or not.
Setting and respecting healthy boundaries. Kids need to learn how to set sexual boundaries they are comfortable with, and to stick to them. Giving mixed messages through words and behavior only adds confusion to what may be an already murky situation. Kids also need to learn to respect boundaries: no means no. Those who purposely violate those boundaries need to be reported to the appropriate authority. Kids need to know that sexual harassment is against the law, and that severe consequences exist in both schools and in the workplace for this type of behavior.
For tips on how you can work with kids to prevent and cope with sexual harassment, see Preventing Teen Sexual Harassment. Also check out the blog Sexual Harassment: The Blame Game.
