Harassment is term that is defined as an offensive behavior, i.e. uninvited or unsolicited words or conducts that cause annoyance, irritation, or persecution. This offensive behavior can take any form. Any disturbing or upsetting behavior comes under the term harassment. Previously, this behavior was thought to influence only women, but over the recent few years it has been realized that this evil is not gender specific – means not related to any particular gender. However, we cannot deny the fact that women have always been harassed in one way or another by their male equivalents more than anyone else.
Harassment is of different types and forms. Given are some of the different types of harassment:
Bullying
Bullying is a form of harassment which is related to the unsolicited offensive, words or conducts and ill-disposed behavior which threaten a single person or group of people by means of repetitive offensive behavior. Bullying is a term that is associated with impulsive and insensible misuse of power or position which be seen in several different forms such as physical, verbal and non-verbal. Bullying involve viciousness that often results into patronizing, humiliating, threatening, sabotaging or disgracing the person.
Deformation of Character (DOC) Harassment
This is a type of harassment which intends to deform the character of a person by implying different means such as rumors, telling lies or through general character assassination. The purpose of doing all this is to damage or spoil sincerity, trustworthiness, and reputation of an individual in workplace, school or in society.
Disability Harassment
Disability harassment is a kind of harassment that involves the undesirable actions or conducts regarding disability, impairment or any other supplementary need. This type of harassment targets the individuals having some sort of disability. Different means are used to harass these people such as demeaning and offensive comments, inapt reference to disability, undesired or unwilling argument of the effect of disability, repulsing behavior towards working with disables or leaving the people with disabilities out from the social gatherings.
Electronic Harassment
As the name suggests, this type of harassment makes use electronic gadgets and devices to torment and bother the person(s). Electronic harassment may involve the full time supervision of a target person or persons. The means used to supervise the target may include bugs, wiretaps, tapped videos etc. There are certain other electronic devices and gadgets which are used to harass the target.
Gang Stalking
Gang stalking is a kind of harassment resembling to mobbing; however, gang stalking is a phenomenon which is done outside the workplace or school. It is a kind of sequel harassment through the classical conditioning. In this type of harassment, an individual is harmfully sensitized to any particular stimulus like color (e.g. red, yellow, white etc), sound (e.g. keys jangling), action (e.g. coughing, pen clicking, sneezing etc). The consistency is an important part of this type of harassment as it enforces a negative association to any color, action or sound in a person. It is often happened that the friends of the person are threatened to partake in these evil activities to assist the gang stalkers. Gang stalkers have a deep understanding and knowledge of the person’s behaviors and activities which are then targeted. In order to make their evil intentions work properly, gang stalkers often follow the person all the time. They always remain around the person to harass him/her to make certain that their plans work for them and the person becomes crazy, mentally suppressed and absurd.
General Harassment
It is a kind of harassment which involve behaviors, words, and actions which are normally taken as inapt and undesired. It can be anything from yelling, taunting and abusing to stares, and unwanted gestures etc that make the other person feels irritated and annoyed.
Moral Harassment
As the name suggests, this type of harassment has to do with the morals. It is defined as the recurring and protracted daily disclosure of the workers to awkward, shameful and demeaning incidents. It is something that is happened to a person while trying to carry out the assigned task. In this sort of harassment, the workers come across the characters in authority that are not known to possess moral or ethical conduct or mannerism. These authoritative figures put a display of unethical behaviors or actions which are then imitated by the workers to gain the favor or appreciation of those authoritative figures.
Racial Harassment
As the name suggests, this is a type of harassment related to the race, ethnic or national origin. Racial harassment can be either in verbal form or an offensive behavior that targets the race, ethnicity, color or culture. A person is targeted through abusive remarks regarding racial background, ridiculing, disparaging comments, racist jokes, damaging the property and so on.
Psychological Harassment
Psychological harassment is another type of harassment in which an individual is emotionally humiliated through undesired words or vexatious behaviors. The people are harassed through psychological games and torturing them mentally. A most suitable example of this type of psychological games is ‘this for that’ harassment.
Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment is one of the most common forms of harassment. For many people this sort of harassment is limited to women, but the fact is sexual harassment is common in both male and females, though the ratio is higher on the women side. This is a type of harassment where an individual is sexually harassed through different means such as physical touching, groping, or the invasion of personal space, sexual assault, rape and indecent exposure. Sexual harassment may also be verbal where undesired comments regarding sexual content such as personal attack on someone through abusive remarks, lewd or obscene jokes, denigration, evocative or certain other compromising invitations in the form of sexual favors. There are however non-verbal sexual harassments as well like sending explicit emails, gestures, leering or other evocative looks.
Sexual Orientation Harassment
Sexual orientation harassment is a harassment that involves the notorious or supposed sexual orientation. The undesired behaviors may take the form of name calling, assault, verbal abuse, offensive remarks, compromising sexual invitations, and son on.
Stalking online and off.
One of the most widely reported type of harassment is stalking and on and off. This is a type of harassment that based on bothering or nagging a person through different means such as simple writing, sending email, or through telephone. It also involves spying a person, threatening and tormenting them.
Street Harassment
Street harassment is a type of harassment which is often associated with the sexual harassment. The difference between is only that it takes place in the public areas, especially in urban places. It is often taken as a kind of harassment of females by males. If we talk about United States, the different forms of street harassment are talking to a stranger woman and tell her to smile, making sexually offensive or lewd remarks, or touching and teasing women.
Some of the other forms of street harassment involve following or spying a woman, touching a woman while passing vulgar remarks, exposing or calling disparagingly.