Sexual harassment laws have made the workplace so bland and passionless that, figuratively speaking, the American workforce looks nervously around the room whenever someone uses the word "abreast," writes an alternative newspaper columnist here.
"My workplace and millions of workplaces around the country have been bled of life, vitality, joie de vivre, the pulsating sexual tension, the double entendres, the dirty dozens, the Hepburn, the Tracy, the snappy, edgy repartee that made America great," laments Boston Phoenix columnist Kris Frieswick.
In a piece called "Sexual Harassment: You'll Miss It When It's Gone," Frieswick says sexual harassment "has been given a bad name" by "a few rotten apples" like bosses and other strangers, but that there's nothing wrong with friends exchanging randy repartee and not having to fear for their careers, families, and reputations.
It's okay, she writes, "for people who like and trust each other to say completely disgusting, inappropriate, and sexually oriented things to one another in the workplace. For many, it is the most interesting part of the day."
In some work environments, commentary such as that could, conceivably, get Frieswick herself facing sexual harassment charges. She says that, thanks to society's throwing out the baby with the bathwater yet again, sexual harassment laws have done little besides make people try to compartmentalize their sexual selves.
"These laws perpetuate the mantra for the new millennium: Sex is bad. Be afraid of sex," Frieswick writes. "Sexual-harassment laws, while protecting men and women from malicious, unwanted sexual advances and job-related retaliation, also prevent employees from forming the bonds of friendship that only a daily dose of sexual tension, vulgar conversation, and bawdy verbal taunting can create."
