Sexual harassment okay as it ensures humans breed, Russian judge rules

[ccharles000]

By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Last Updated: 1:12PM BST 30 Jul 2008

The unnamed executive, a 22-year-old from St Petersburg, had been hoping to become only the third woman in Russia's history to bring a successful sexual harassment action against a male employer.

She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss.

"He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word," she earlier told the court. "I didn't realise at first that he wasn't speaking metaphorically."

The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.

"If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children," the judge ruled.

Since Soviet times, sexual harassment in Russia has become an accepted part of life in the office, work place and university lecture room.

According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.

Eighty per cent of those who participated in the survey said they did not believe it possible to win promotion without engaging in sexual relations with their male superiors.

Women also report that it is common to be browbeaten into sex during job interviews, while female students regularly complain that university professors trade high marks for sexual favours.

Only two women have won sexual harassment cases since the collapse of the Soviet Union, one in 1993 and the other in 1997.

Human rights activists say that Russian women remain second-class citizens and are subjected to some of the highest levels of domestic abuse in the world.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/2470310/Sexual-harrassment-okay-as-it-ensures-humans-breed,-Russian-judge-rules.html

[Ellen Forradalom]

1. Christ on a mother fucking crutch

There are no words. Thank God I don't live there. Things are bad enough here.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

2. "If it wasn't for date rape I'd never get laid" from Sublime song

The judge is clearly operating from that same mentality. The sad reality is that a lot of men have never experienced genuine enthusiastic consent from a woman. It's as alien to them as being on another planet. Therefore, they have no qualms about using coercion or whatever means necessary to get sex.

[Ellen Forradalom]

3. Talk about a vicious circle

Nothing like the threat of coercion and violence to make enthusiam evaporate.

[varkam]

4. WTF?

If it wasn't for harassment we wouldn't have children? I think someone missed the logic train...

[ccharles000]

5. I agree.

[Canuckistanian]

6. Is it any wonder there are so many Russian mailorder brides?

I saw a documentary about Russian and Ukrainian women who are desperate to get married to a non-Russian/Ukrainian man.

They say the lack of respect for women is getting worse.