"Harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision"

Seems pretty clear-cut to me?

"Frequent" and "severe" are definitely not legal terms.

If you ask somebody out to dinner, and they say they're busy, is it ok to ask them out again in a week? Is that frequent?

Everything is context driven, which makes things very difficult to write hard and fast rules about. For instance, it is usually sexual harassment if you link somebody to a page of with pictures of models in lingerie on it. If you work for an online clothing shop, it might be perfectly normal. "Every time anybody rates this item, it throws an exception in the server logs. Is there anything special about it?"

To me there is a very clear difference between asking a fellow coworker out to dinner, and propositioning a subordinate for sex on their first day on the team.

You keep coming up with all kinds of examples, but in real life most people know (or should know) what constitutes harassment and what doesn't.

> but in real life most people know (or should know) what constitutes harassment and what doesn't.

That's a very dangerous statement.

First, in this case, we're obviously not dealing with most people. If you want clear cut rules, you're not going to find it.

Second, these things are culturally dependent. You can go topless on a beach in France and nobody will bat an eye, do so in an asian country and you'll be gawked at, and in any conservative Muslim country you'll be jailed.

Simply saying "You should know" is not a legal justification for monentary sanctions and/or accusations.

>>First, in this case, we're obviously not dealing with most people.

Of course we are. Most people don't go around sexually harassing others. That's why you hear about it when it happens.

>>Second, these things are culturally dependent.

Again not sure how that's relevant. We aren't talking about a foreign employee who was temporarily visiting the company's San Francisco headquarters. If we were, then you could make the argument that such behavior may be acceptable where the employee is from, but it isn't here in the US.

>>Simply saying "You should know" is not a legal justification for monentary sanctions and/or accusations.

Last time I checked, saying "I didn't know that was the law" was not an excuse.

You aren't sure if something may be perceived as sexual harassment? Then don't do it. It's really that simple.

> Most people don't go around sexually harassing others.

A high proportion of programmers are on the autism spectrum compared to the general population. The law should apply to everybody equally, but this sort of thing is extremely hard to pin down. Something appropriate in one situation is not appropriate in another, and it takes discernment.

> If we were, then you could make the argument that such behavior may be acceptable where the employee is from, but it isn't here in the US.

We're talking about the law in general, about how it's especially not clear cut and black and white in this case. Your arguments aren't relating to that point at all.

> You aren't sure if something may be perceived as sexual harassment? Then don't do it.

That is ridiculous. Most people don't know the law backwards and forwards

It's stupid to think that people are responsible for all of the perceptions people have of them, especially people who are on the spectrum, as I have alluded to earlier. Would you just cut all people with social disorders out of any sort of human interaction, because by your logic, they can't do anything?

There is no hard and fast rule, as I have said before. There are standard deviations from the median, and it's hard to draw lines in human behaviour, a nuance that seems to escape many people.