Most of the time, when anyone hears the corporate buzzword sexual harassment, it conjurs up images of two things :

1.)  Possibly huge lawsuits and fear on the part of the “offender”

2.)  A hapless woman being sexually harassed by a bullish male coworker who doesn’t know the meaning of the word “no” or buzz off.

Most of the time when we think of sexual harassment, we think of this as a wrong that happens only to women, but in fact it can also happen to men.  Sexual harassment is, by definition, attention or conversation that is unwelcome and uninvited, which creates what’s called a “hostil work environment” for the sexually harassed victim. 

Sexual harassment can actually be perpetrated by someone without that person really even understanding that what they are doing is committing sexual harassment.  A perfect example of this would be a man, or woman, telling a sexually charged joke or talking about a coworker in a sexual way. 

I’ve seen this type of thing happen all the time in the workplace, and it happens to both men and women, although I do have to say most of the time I’ve seen it happen to women. 

Usually what I’ve seen has not been so egregious that it could be blatantly called sexual harassment, but rather they have been incidents that could have been construed, by definition, to be sexual harassmend in the legal sense of the word, if not by the person it happened to.