Sexual Harassment and Its Effects on People

Sexual harassment is described as any form of unwanted sexual behavior, sexual acts or sexual discrimination that affects all kinds of people, male or female and it is against the law, where harassers violates humans whole being and its rights. Others think that males cause sexual harassment but what they don’t know is that females can also be the cause of the harassment. There are lots of happenings where a male is sexually harassing a female, a female sexually harassing a male or people harassing other people with the same gender. Sexual harassment, as what we have said is caused by all kinds of people and sexual harassment can affect people in lots of different ways. Sexual harassment is very evident in today’s world wherein it can occur in many different settings such as our home, school, workplace, public places and etc.

The practice of sexual harassment has no realistic beginning. It forlornly stretches back as far as recorded history. One of its early and dreary example were the sexual assaults made by the owners to their African American slave. Sexual discrimination has only been made illegal since the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But even after this, the first case was only brought during the 1970s and the issue was only considered by the Supreme Court during the 1980s. Despite these laws, harassment was still visible up until to this day. It can happen anytime and anywhere you go, even inside the school premises, workplace, home, and even in the churches in either of the gender.

Sexual harassment comes in a myriad of examples ranging from abuse, maliciousness and the uncontrollable desire of a person to violate and conduct sexual misconduct towards an individual. It is not just a simple catcall or a slightly inappropriate gesture rather, it is a huge problem that many people, especially women suffer around the world. For instance, the common victims as of today includes children, adolescents, and adults. These can be felt, seen, experienced both privately and publicly. In addition, the effects it may bring can cause severe trauma and stress for it chooses no perpetrator, rather it is present everywhere. Researches state that sexual harassment causes emotional instability, for it brings upon the violation pertaining to one's sexuality, personality, and upbringing. According to an article written by Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer on livescience.com, there are six ways sexual harassment can damage a woman’s health. First is by causing Post-traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD; rape and other sexual assaults are a major trigger of this problem which greatly diminishes a person’s way of thinking. Second is by heightened blood pressure; experiencing sexual harassment is very stressful. This added stress can cause victim’s blood pressure to rise, which could later cause various cardiovascular diseases, as stated by the results of a survey in a 2008 study. Third is depression; constant experiences of sexual harassments and developing depression. Depression can trigger the next ways which the fourth one is sleep problems; by experiencing frequent harassments and developing depression, the victim may also suffer sleeping problems. This can be very detrimental to a person’s health as we all know sleep is an essential part of our health. Fifth is physical pain; with all that stress, and emotional pain and instability someone has been keeping inside from the constant experiences, those manifest into physical pain such as neck pain, bone and other muscle pain. And lastly, is suicide; a lot of people, particularly women had attempted suicide with reasons involving sexual harassment. Sexual harassment can make victims think they are useless which inevitably results in suicidal attempts. Sadly, those who are perpetrated still experience worst cases up to this day, for people who first witnessed such, were violated by relatives, people who share the common blood, and the like.

These days or even way back before, being sexually harassed have made a major and biggest impacts into people’s mindset, sometimes with just simply tapping someone else’s shoulder could be a trigger to someone because we do not know if they’ve been harassed before or not. It can be carried out by an individual or group of individuals. What more if it is a sexual harassment? Where else could it lead us to if the action of harassing someone still lives up until today? How could we fight back for our own dignity if it is being taken down by someone else just because they don’t know what is right from wrong? Above all, based from case to case basis, women are much more likely to be victims of sexual harassment precisely because they don’t have that much courage and they lack strength to do such things, but we can’t just point out which gender has more amount of population who harasses the other gender. Nevertheless, based on vox.com, they’ve gathered data which used a national representative sample of about 2,000 adults, 81 percent of women and 43 percent of men say they have experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault in their lives. People with disabilities were more likely to report experiencing harassment and assault than others, and gay and bisexual men were more likely to report these experiences than straight men. In addition, the existence of sexual harassment is commonly mistaken with what women wear. Catcalling, whistling, or any other type of verbal assault is already considered a sexual harassment. These kinds of practice should not be tolerated and deserves to be taken an action. It is because these so-called “little things” they do, could lead them to do much worse things like physical abuse and rape. Basically, the act of sexually harassing someone else still lives and exists up to this day just simply because the people who do this aren’t aware of the difference from what is right and wrong. These people needs to be disciplined and educated so that they could realize that what they are doing are ruining the lives of a lot of people, especially those who have big dreams that they want to achieve someday. If only this kind of atrocity didn’t happen to them.

As sexual harassment have so many negative effects, it is most important for us to prepare so that we could prevent it from happening. As said from www.americananthro.org, what we can do in advance to prevent it is by knowing more and attaining more knowledge about sexual harassment policy, the process for the implementation of this policy, and the people who are responsible for doing so at your workplace or anywhere. As part of our official responsibility, we are bound by law to keep in mind what constitutes sexual harassment anywhere; what classes of people are covered by your institution or workplace's sexual harassment code; and if given patterns of manner or classes of people are not covered by the sexual harassment code, and what policy does pertain to them. We should also learn to recognize the patterns of sexual harassment we could encounter. A harasser is often skillful at defending himself or herself from public disclosure, going only so far and no farther, discouraging complaints from those he harasses by implicit or explicit threat or reward, and relying on the silent involvement of his colleagues, who all know about his behavior but does nothing about it. And lastly, it is important to take preventive action against sexual harassment by communicating with an officer or talking about it among the people around us so that we could raise awareness.

To summarize, sexual harassment is a form of a sexual discrimination that affects a person negatively. It has no definite start-date and had already existed centuries ago. Despite existing for a long time, it has only been made illegal in 1964, and has only been considered in 1980s. It is still a common occurrence nowadays, and it was discovered to have caused severe trauma, stress and other damages to one’s health. According to some sources, eighty-one percent of women and forty-three percent of men experience sexual harassment. It was also said that the person who commits this crime doesn’t know how to differentiate what is right from what is wrong. They should not be tolerated. However, they should take responsibility of their actions and they should be given more knowledge about it so that the harasser will be able to reflect on his/her own actions. We cannot always prevent this kinds of events so it’s also better if we are prepared. Some tips of preparedness includes knowing policies about it, learning its patterns, communication, and having a basic knowledge about self defense.