Dear Isabel:

I hope that you are feeling better and that there is progress in your marriage. I read the latest exchange in your thread. The topic of fraternization in the workplace occurred to me earlier, but I didn’t care to address it because there were more urgent matters at the time. But since last we communicated was 8 days ago, for your benefit and for the possible benefit of anyone reading this, I want to address this topic today.

This term fraternization in the workplace is “defined as associating or mingling with others in a friendly or brotherly way, it most commonly means relationships, romantic or otherwise, between people who occupy different levels of authority or power. This generally means a boss and an employee in the workplace, or a teacher and a student. Fraternization can jeopardize the integrity of the official relationships among people, and many organizations develop policies to discourage it”, The Nest. com.

Wikipedia, on the topic: “Court decisions in some US States have allowed employers a limited legal right to enforce non-fraternization policies among employees, forbidding them to maintain certain kinds of relationships with one another. Since the 1990s, such corporate policies have been increasingly adopted in the United States in the pursuit of objectives such as protecting professionalism and workplace productivity, promoting gender equality and women’s rights, or avoiding and mitigating the impact of sexual harassments lawsuits. The decisions and the policies they protect have, however, been criticized on various grounds: as illegitimate constraints on individual freedom of association”, etc.

Back to your story: he is a married CEO (Chief Executive Officer), an older man and a grandfather; you are his subordinate, a married woman and a mother. You repeatedly referred to him as your “work colleague” which suggests that he is a fellow worker, a man of similar workplace power and authority to yours, but this is not the case. The two of you flirted in the office and he (a much older married man and your superior at the workplace) asked you (a younger married woman and his subordinate in the workplace), multiple times, to have sex with him: “there were multiple times he asked me to stay at his or meet him in a hotel“.

He has done this previously with other women in the company who were also his subordinates: “Pre Covid there were rumours he was up to this kind of stuff with other employees“, and you knew, before there was any flirting between the two of you, that you were probably one of multiple women: “I am probably one of many… I knew from the beginning that this behavior is something he would have performed multiple times, with multiple women“.

You were attracted to his position of power: “he is actually the CEO of the company, so I think it is more the attraction of ‘man in power’… Of course, always a person in power is attractive“.

As a result of the sexual exchange between the two of you (the flirting and the indiscretions), you felt very guilty, and hated yourself, but he did not feel guilty at all: “the guilt is still eating me up and I cannot shift the anxiety. I have so much self-loathing right now…. he said he didn’t understand and that he must be a selfish person because he doesn’t feel guilty“. As a result of the sexual exchanged, you suffered from lots of anxiety: “I had a bad night last night and work up having a panic attack and palpitations“, but no mention that he has.

About respect, you wrote: “I have massive respect from him, he is actually the CEO of the company… (I) was looking for comfort at the time and I found it in someone who had respect for me and saw the good in me“-

– I think the following: (1) This man has been abusing his workplace power for the purpose of satisfying his desire to have sex with multiple women, (2) Your respect for him (outside his professional abilities at work perhaps) is misplaced. I don’t understand how you can respect a married man who routinely abuses his power at work to sexually approach women. It is as if you don’t see wrongdoing on his part, (3) Your perception that he respects you (outside the context of your professional abilities perhaps) is misplaced as well because if he respected you as a woman, and as a married woman and mother, he wouldn’t have pursued you as a sexual object, (4) Regarding your perception that he sees the good in you: is him seeing you as a sexual object to pursue.. is that a good thing?

“My boss is not the issue“- if your boss did not pursue you sexually, all that anxiety, guild and self-loathing wouldn’t be there, would it, at least not to the extent that you suffered, so… your boss is an issue.

“It’s my actions that are the issue and the guilt I feel for those actions which is absolutely eating me up“- you take all the responsibility for the fraternization in the workplace you suffered from, and still suffers from, relieving the CEO from any and all responsibility.

“I have nothing to achieve by going to HR and this is the very last thing I would want to do“- I understand that you don’t want to go to HR, and I don’t expect that you will. Maybe going to HR will not benefit you personally, and maybe it will harm you (which is the reason many women and victims of fraternization in the workplace do not bring it up to HR), but it can benefit other younger women, maybe very young women, who are yet to be used as sexual objects by this grandfather with workplace power.

About Sexual objectification, (from Wikipedia):  it means treating a person as a commodity, or an object. It is “a type of dehumanization. Although both males and females can be sexually objectified, the concept is mainly associated with the objectification of women… Sexual objectification occurs when a person is identified by their sexual body parts or sexual function. In essence, an individual loses their identity, and is recognized solely by the physical characteristics of their body… Sexual objectification has been around and present in society for many but has increased with the introduction of social media”,

“Many psychologists associate objectification with a range of physical and mental health risks in women… increased self-consciousness, increased body anxiety, heightened mental health threats (depression, anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and sexual dysfunction), and increased body shame…. Body shame is a byproduct of the concept of an idealized body type adopted by most Western cultures that depicts a thin, model-type figure”, “More direct consequences (include) sexual harassment is one of the challenges faced by women in workplace. This may constitute sexual jokes or comments, most of which are degrading”.

anita

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by .