I think that one of the problems with trying to do any kind of research or thinking about this is that the term "sexual harassment" covers so very much ground. It includes everything from, yes desire-driven stupidity, to harassment that is sexual only because the victim is female, to violent misogyny, to male mob-mentality where the boys are primarily acting out for each other, to a whole bunch of other behaviours, driven by a range of motivations.

As well, a big part of it is workplace culture, which is highly variable, ranging from testosterone-fueled macho environments (oilpatch or fire hall) to socially inept/nerdy (tech) to highly stressed toxic messes (post office, academic institutions). Finally, it is a highly personal, subjective experience for both the victim and perpetrator: some women aren't bothered by things that others find highly traumatizing; some harassers are oblivious to what they are doing and others act with full intent and deliberate malice.

I am quite sure that in some situations acting more man-like might make things better, and others worse; and similarly for being more or less feminine. When you do research that looks for simple sweeping conclusions on a very broad and contextual phenomena, you are going to find that pretty much every explanation has some truth, because it does, some of the time in some situations.

Incidentally, of the last three cases of harassment I've had to deal with among my staff (ie fire people), in two of them the harasser was female (so was the victim, so far I have never personally seen a case of a female harassing a male). I guess it wasn't sexual per se, though the harassment was mostly around the victim's sexual personae; in one case the problem seemed to be that the victim was too girly, and in the other not girly enough. Go figure.

Here Trolls! Heeere Trolls! Free Troll Food! Come & get it! Yum Yum!

Dust off your "studies," sharpen your invective, ready the ad hominems, turn off the spell-check! Start pacing back and forth in front of the computer, mumbling and frothing at the mouth and gesticulating wildly!

My anticipation is palpable.

(Broadsheet does seem to be in a cheeky mood today!)

Speaking as a one-time anthropologist, I always love it when the mainstream media "discovers" an idea that is about oh 25 or 30 years old.

What is actually interesting is that while it is probable that women invented things like pottery say, likely often as an extension of basket-making, once it becomes a profitable trade good instead of something immediately useful, the men take it over and it becomes a "male" profession. As does basket weaving itself, for trade purposes. The pattern repeats again and again, women thinking it up and men making money out of it.

Mind you, it is unlikely women were doing much spear-chucking. Throwing things seems to have always been a bit of a male preserve (although trapping is usually much more productive). Go men! We're good at throwing things!

(Oh and re "daddy lit" Salon ought to have a policy whereby links to sites behind a subscription wall are few and clearly labeled as such.)

Laudable and so on, but really, the internet is a very big and wooly place, and the best defence against online luring/stalking/harassment is the same as in the real world, and amounts to the same thing as sex-ed: informed and educated young people. Young people with some information, young people taught some self defence. Why is it ok to teach your daughter to shoot a gun, but not how to use a condom, and why doesn't anybody think that "protecting our children" from the big scary internet is mostly a matter of teaching them some common sense?

Oh, and this is a little scary actually, given how sloppy MySpace is, I pity the poor souls who get mis-identified and find themselves on all kinds of watchlists and denied jobs and smeared and so on.

Some people made some reproductive choices. They have that right.

What right does ANYONE else have to opine on a particular family's decisions? I really really don't want you voting on mine, so I'm not quite sure that I have any vote on yours. Or the family's in question.

It isn't just basic reproductive rights, though it is that, it is the madness of crowds weighing in on what we know to be but don't want to acknowledge are very complex family matters where a whole lot of difficult and odd decisions are made for reasons that have little to do with strangers' ethical and political paradigms.

Show some courtesy and respect and let the lady be, is what I think. I rather doubt she needs anyone here's help.

It is called Choice, and to quote Jewel, it not yours, it is my own.

Has anybody else noticed that the consequence, importance and accuracy of any article Broadsheet links to is in inverse proportion the violence of the troll feeding frenzy that ensues? This article is a complete piece of fluff, its inanity only matched by its predictability, and Broadsheet's resident clusterfuck of trolls goes nuts.

If it were actually possible to identify people I would support removing the anonymity in comments, but it just isn't possible short of requiring credit cards and/or confining comment to Premium subscribers only.

What I totally fail to grasp is why the trolls hang here, day after day, obsessively reading material that they KNOW they are going to find violently objectionable.