Kinky Bastards at New Learning Media, LLC

I had to take an on-line sexual harassment test today for work. Some people bemoan our paranoid, politically-correct, litigation-addled, vicitimization culture. Not me. It makes life interesting, doesn't it? E.g. the fact that I took an on-line sexual harassment test today for work.

Preventing Sexual Harassment it was called. Copyright 2004 New Learning Media, LLC! Yes, the emphasis was on prevention, sigh.

The first part of the training module was educational, with lots of background information. This, I suspect, is the first step in preventing sexual harassment: freighting the idea of sex harrassment with so many definitions and prolix footnote-studded paragraphs that any of its imagined piquancy becomes lost. By the end of this portion of the program I would need to memorize the controlling opinion in the case of Faragher vs. Boca Raton (1998) in order to even attempt to sexually harass someone.

Sexual harasment was made against the law by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and is defined as "unwelcome sexual advances" that has at least one of two effects: either the creation of a quid pro quo [hereinafter known as 'a little sumpin sumpin for a little sumpin sumpin'], or the creation of a 'hostile work environment.'

Say, it's stuck with me. I guess the people at New Media Learning are pretty good at this pedagogy shit.

After being given sufficient background information and definitions to bold-face words, the program proceded to the test itself. This consisted of twenty or so scenarios where the test taker is tasked with deciding whether an instance of sexual harassment existed in each. A) Yes, B) No, C) Somewhere in between.

Invariably, A) was the answer. The test made it seem as though harassment was so pervasive that only through hyperawareness and immaculate mental hygine could it be avoided. The message was that if there was ever a moment of social awkwardness in the office, either you were just sexually harassed, or someone just sexually harassed you. Refill the toner? That's disgusting.

Most amusing though were the pictures that accompanied the individual questions. These pictures too were designed to act as some sort of deterrent against harassment, with both harasser and harassee so homely--ugly as if on principle--that the displayed harassment lent itself more to a shudder than frisson. Sidney Greenstreet pulls off five pounds of flesh from the doughy Midwestern bundt cake of an ass that happens to be in front of him. And same sex harassment too! The litigation that dare not speak its name! A man from the Johnson administration (skinny tie, Robert MacNamara thinning, combed back hair) corners against the watercooler a man from the Carter administration (fat tie, fat hair, a general look of malaise about him, 'lusting in his heart' to be out of his current predicament).

A score of 75% or less on the test would have consequences for one's employment. I would have thought that a score of 75% or less would have consequences for one's respitory and pulmonary function. My score of 100% merely denoted my sentience as a living being.

Perhaps a powerfully lame living being. Should it really have been so intuitive? Here's hoping the theory is more black and white than the practice. I mean if I have to go down for something, it might as well be for going down on...I'll stop right there. Double entendre interruptus.