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The Homophobic Sexual Harassment Claim and Sexuality Discrimination
Author(s) -
Rocha James
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/raju.12076
Subject(s) - harassment , human sexuality , scholarship , double standard , criminology , psychology , sexual behavior , sociology , social psychology , law , political science
In sexual harassment law scholarship, it is often argued that the reasonable person standard should give way to a reasonable victim (woman) standard. Yet, this latter standard may unintentionally invite homophobic employees to attempt to use a reasonable homophobe standard to charge gay supervisors with harassment merely for being openly gay at work. In response, I argue that we currently act on an unjustifiable distinction whereby we treat sexuality behavior (behavior that indicates one's sexuality) as necessarily sexualized only for GLBTQ behavior. By disallowing this discriminatory treatment, we can preserve the reasonable victim standard and undermine the homophobe's warrantless charges.