I do not believe any reasonable company “fires first and investigates later.” We just had a sexual harassment claim and HR and all the production managers spent two days investigating the whole situation. In the end, the man (the offender) was terminated but he claimed throughout that the “relationship” was consensual though the text messages and eye witness accounts clearly showed it wasn’t. It was the only claim we have had in 5 years and we are a very male dominated industry.
If people were prudent, they would simply stop texting, period. This whole "texting" thing is just the next wave is our de-evolution from a civilized and "We-generally-have-it-together-society" to a stupid one. Duh! People, stop texting!
I never said there is no real victims of sexual harassment or sexual harassment never really happens. And actually I believe #MeToo really didn't do much more for real victims. So one can stop give ten thousand examples of "oh she got this and this" and "that man really did that and that". All I am saying is the definition and standards of sexual harassment is not unambiguous and contains criteria that can be exploited and manipulated for personal gain and there is not much defense to them and that's why we are seeing what the title of this thread is stating. You can't put a bad law out there and trust that the executor that law would always be able to interpret it and execute it fairly and justly. That's all I am saying.
Again there is banter back and forth in sexual comic nature, there is flirting, there is innuendos, cmon who you kidding and women are bantering back as much as men. It’s just 2018 human nature. Sexual harassment is when someone feels uncomfortable by your comments which may or may not be accepted when someone else may say it or not. It should not be used when all of a sudden 18 years later you feel like getting back at your male colleagues which is what we see more and more of today and probably the reason for the stat that sig is suggesting. Sorry there might be one or two idiot men but for the most part what you see is mutual consensual back and forth.