“When Susan Peacher hung up her latex evening gown and wooden
paddle for a job with the federal government, the former dominatrix
thought she was done with abuse,” according to San Francisco
Chronicle reporter Elizabeth Fernandez.
The problem is that when this ex-dominatrix went to work at her
new job for the Treasury Department in San Francisco, she found
that one of her supervisors was a former client.
It could have been perfect: The former “Mistress Celeste” is
short on money and gets a job with a boss who’ll pay extra if she
slaps him around a bit over morning coffee and occasionally takes
him out during lunch for a fast spin on the bondage wheel.
Instead, everything blew up into a lawsuit, as explained by
Fernandez: “This man wouldn’t leave her alone, she said in a sexual
harassment and retaliation lawsuit, charging that he sexually
harassed her, attempting to kiss her in the elevator, telling her
she had ‘luscious lips,’ and repeatedly asking for ‘sessions.’”
Peacher additionally claimed that her client-turned-boss gave
her an unfair performance evaluation and that she was given little
to do after she complained to higher-ups. “Rather than sit idly at
her desk,” reports Fernandez, “Peacher spent her time studying
workplace harassment and labor law.”
In terms of dishing it out, Ms. Peacher had successfully
switched from whips to litigiousness. In this case, it was the
taxpayers who got the beating, to the tune of $60,000 — $25,000
for Peacher’s attorney fees and $35,000 in compensatory damages.
The settlement reached with the government also provided Peacher
with a job transfer, nearly 800 hours of leave, and a new schedule
that permits her to work at home one day a week.
A key problem in this case is that it was the taxpayers, not the
alleged male lecher, who were found financially responsible for the
sexually offensive verbal behavior, even though taxpayers didn’t
know it was occurring. Switch the location of this type of
incorrect speech and forbidden flirting between employees to a
lumber yard or an auto body shop and, again, it’s the business
owner who is expected to pick up the tab for any supposed damages,
not the alleged wrongdoer.
As the law is now written, it’s those with the deep pockets who
always and everywhere “should have known” about every off-color
joke in their workplaces, every incidence of incorrect flirting,
and every individual employee’s shifting and subjective definition
of what he or she may judge to be “offensive” or “unwelcome.”
That is, of course, a performance standard that business owners
can’t meet, short of employing a speech-and-behavior Gestapo.
Bottom line, the idea of “should have known” might be a great way
to fatten the wallets of lawyers, but for the rest of us it opens
the door to an unrelenting drain on job-creating business assets
and a systematic assault on free speech and privacy.
A second problem, less recognized, is that cases like Peacher’s
have the effect of turning back the clock for women. “What troubles
me about the ‘hostile workplace’ category of sexual harassment
policy is that women are being returned to their old status of
delicate flowers who must be protected,” asserted feminist Camille
Paglia at the time of the Clarence Thomas episode. “If Anita Hill
was thrown for a loop by sexual banter, that’s her problem. If by
the age of 26, as a graduate of Yale Law School, she could find no
convincing way to signal her displeasure and disinterest, that’s
her deficiency.”
The third problem is that we’ve turned too much to government
and lawyers to deal with issues that can be solved in ways that are
less bureaucratic and less confrontational. Again, from Paglia: “We
cannot rely on rigid rules and regulations to structure everything
in our lives.”
The fourth problem is that we have lottery-size damages for
“offensive” behavior and no definition of which incidents are a
crime. Bernice Harris, for instance, a longtime cashier in the U.S.
Senate cafeteria, was accused of harassment for calling her
customers “honey” and “sugar.” Being called “baby,” complained
Christopher Held, an employee of Sen. Mitch McConnell, was “real
bothersome.”
This much is clear: “Honey” shouldn’t be a crime, workplaces
shouldn’t be turned into litigious minefields, the most
thin-skinned among us shouldn’t be calling the shots, lawyers
shouldn’t be the first resort, and everything “unwelcome” shouldn’t
be a federal case.
