Sexual Harassment/Assault in the Service Industry

           What I like most about both Truitt’s blog post and the Weiss article was the fact that they touched on very important issues about rape culture, and how we can close some of the gaps of the discourse surrounding rape. As Truitt mentions, looking at the phenomenon of rape in a one sided way, “it’s easy and understandable to slip into essentialist language when talking about the issue, to paint all victims as women and all perpetrators as men. By missing parts of the reality, we’ve left space for folks like Men’s Rights Activists to fill” (Truitt, 2013). While Weiss’ article attempts to remove this space and put research into an area that desperately needs it, she fails to acknowledge the very different experiences of men and women when it comes to instances of unwanted sexual touching, and the difference in how society has taught men and women to react to these instances.

            What I found most problematic about the Weiss article were some of the victim’s responses that were used to describe men’s experience with sexual assault, and definitely had to “check myself” many times as Randi described in class. While defining sexual assault in “examining men’s sexual victimization experiences,” (Weiss, 2010), Weiss states that “NCVS narrative also reveal that men are victimized by a broad range of sexual assaults that include incidents in which they are grabbed or touched “inappropriately,” sexually threatened, or even “flashed” (Weiss, 2010). What I find troubling about including being touched “inappropriately” or being “flashed” is that many women deal with instances like this quite often. I am in no way attempting to minimize these men’s experiences, because no one should be touched or grabbed if they do not welcome it, but if we are to label inappropriate grabbing and touching as sexual assault then the statistics for women who have been sexually assaulted would sky rocket.

            While these are not Canadian statistics, MSNBC did a study on sexual harassment in the restaurant industry and found “found ‘endemic’ levels of harassment, with more than 90% of women working in restaurants as tipped employees dealing with it in some form” (MSNBC, 2014). As someone who works in the service industry, these numbers do not surprise me. Being “grabbed or touched inappropriately” is a regular Friday/Saturday night, with past Managers explaining that “I should take it as a compliment” or, “He’s a regular and he tips well, just deal with it.”  The report also found that “uniforms play a huge role in setting the tone in a restaurant,” (MSNBC, 2014) and that more revealing uniforms tended to bring about sexual harassment. In light of this, it is not atypical, and I would argue that it is the norm, to see female servers dressed in as little clothing as possible. Drawing from the Bar that I currently work at, the managers have set the bar low for sexualizing their employees as “G.I. Joe and his Hoes” will be the costumes for our servers this upcoming Halloween.

            While I think that Weiss’ article attempts to close the gap that Truitt speaks about in her blog, and covers a topic that truly needs more research done on it, I feel that some of her descriptions could be stretching it. Yes we need to tell men that this is not okay when done to them, conversely, we need to teach men that it is not okay when they do the same to women. Most importantly, we need to continue to tell women that being grabbed or touched inappropriately is not something that they should have to put up with in their everyday lives.