Mandatory Anti-Sexual Harassment Training: A Survivor’s Tale

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I’m currently temping at a financial services company and this week was required to take an online course about sexual harassment. The hour-long ordeal began with an explanation of the difference between gender and sex, in which the two categories were stated to be completely separate from each other. An assortment of biological males and females, some in drag or kitted out androgynously, explained in aggressively informational tones that they were assigned a certain gender at birth and now identify as either the same thing or as something else. Once the primacy of gender ‘identity’ over biological sex had been dogmatically established, the video turned to a discussion of harassment based on gender ‘expression’, which the voiceover said was different from identity and was always connected to sexuality. So far so cognitively dissonant.