Sexual harassment (B1/B2)

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Warmer

1. Is work a good place to find a partner? Did anyone in your family?

2. Has the line of acceptable behaviour at work moved in your lifetime? Name something normal then, impossible now.

3. Who should define the line: the law, the company, or the receiver?

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Vocabulary

Make sure you know these before reading:

to flirt / to cross a line / unwanted attention / a power imbalance / to file a complaint / consent

Which two expressions describe the receiver's experience, not the sender's intention? Why does that distinction decide almost everything here?

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Read the article. Whose side does the writer take — or is it balanced? Find your evidence.

Company bans after-hours messages — and office romance

A consulting firm has introduced what staff call "the Rulebook": no messages to colleagues after 8pm, no comments on appearance "unrelated to professional context", and a requirement that any romance between a manager and a team member be declared to HR within two weeks.

The policy followed a tribunal case the firm lost expensively. A junior had received months of late-night messages from a senior colleague — each harmless alone: a joke, a song, a "you looked nice today." Together, the tribunal ruled, they formed unwanted attention she could not safely refuse, "given that the sender wrote her performance review."

Reaction inside the firm is split. "Finally," said one senior woman. "The rule isn't against romance. It's against homework: juniors managing a boss's feelings at midnight." A younger colleague rolled her eyes: "Two partners here are married to each other. The Rulebook would have prevented three marriages and zero creeps. Creeps don't read policy documents."

An employment lawyer offers the summary the firm printed on page one: "It is not complicated. Attention becomes harassment when it continues after the answer was no — or when the other person cannot afford to say no in the first place."

Comprehension

Discuss

1. Why did each message seem harmless alone but not together?

2. What does "she could not safely refuse" mean here?

1. "Creeps don't read policy documents." So who are rules like this for? Are they still worth having?

2. Would the tribunal have ruled the same if the sender had been the junior and the receiver the boss? Should it?

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Language: prepositions

Complete the sentences with the correct preposition: at · about · with · between · of · for

1. There's a fine line _______ friendly and overfamiliar.

2. She complained _______ the messages to HR.

3. Nobody should be laughed _______ for reporting.

4. He was accused _______ crossing the line repeatedly.

5. It takes courage to raise this _______ a manager.

6. The company was criticised _______ protecting the senior man.

Now use "a fine line between..." in a sentence about any other topic in this series of lessons.

Where do you stand?

Mark each: agree / disagree / not sure — then defend:

1. Intent doesn't matter; impact does.

2. Intent matters enormously — or every clumsy person is a criminal.

3. One polite invitation is always acceptable; the second one is the choice that reveals you.

4. Power changes everything: the same words from an equal and from a boss are different acts.

5. The new rules make men afraid to mentor young women — and that harms women's careers too.

6. If you're unsure whether it's welcome, that uncertainty is your answer.

Your call

Harassment, clumsy but innocent, or fine? For each case, apply the lawyer's test from page one — does it settle the case, or just start the argument?

1. A colleague compliments your presentation. — Your smile. — Your legs.

2. Someone asks a colleague out. She says no. He asks again a month later, politely, once.

3. A manager adds a heart emoji to a junior's holiday photo, once. — To every photo.

4. Two interns date, break up, and now one keeps requesting the other on every project.

5. A client, not a colleague, makes the comments — and the company needs the client.

6. Everyone at the office party has had wine. Two equals flirt. One is married. Nobody complains. Is there a case here at all — and whose business is it?

7. An anonymous staff survey finds that everyone knows who "the problem" is — and that nobody has ever filed a complaint. What should the company do with a fact that officially doesn't exist?

Homework

Draft the three rules you would print on page one of a company Rulebook — rules a creep couldn't ignore and a decent person wouldn't fear.

"Attention becomes harassment when it continues after no — or when no is unaffordable." Does that one sentence solve every case — or just relocate the argument to the word unaffordable?

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