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What is the threshold for sexual harassment in the US?
I came from a country where a threshold was sky high. Faculty regularly attempted to invite female students and residents "to sauna", and tried to snoggle us at any opportunity. I usually would either sleep in the nurses room, or would not sleep at all when oncall after a friend of mine woke up in the middle of the night with the attending cosying up to her.
Now having spend several years in the UK, I find myself uncomfortable with male attendings patting me on the back or trying to grab my shoulder or eyeballing me and suggesting that they "would love to do a caesarean" on me. Granted, these are OBGYN attendings, and I have never experienced anything remotely similar with any other specialties. I just grunt and bear, and count days (11 more days to do, btw!) to the end of this rotation. I mean, what do you expect if a recently appointed attending just gave birth to a son of another attending - and the said baby was conceived when the male attending was married to another woman, and the female attending was a fellow under the guy (quite literally, under him as it turns out)?
My husband thinks in the US this kind of gestures would form a basis of a successful sexual harassment suit. But he is not a physician, and in fact only worked in corporate environment in the US, dealing with IT. Kind of different environment and different type of people. So, I am wondering if things are different in medicine? I mean, after watching Gray's Anatomy, one gets impression that interns do not do anything other than banging other interns, attending or patients all the time.
I came from a country where a threshold was sky high. Faculty regularly attempted to invite female students and residents "to sauna", and tried to snoggle us at any opportunity. I usually would either sleep in the nurses room, or would not sleep at all when oncall after a friend of mine woke up in the middle of the night with the attending cosying up to her.
Now having spend several years in the UK, I find myself uncomfortable with male attendings patting me on the back or trying to grab my shoulder or eyeballing me and suggesting that they "would love to do a caesarean" on me. Granted, these are OBGYN attendings, and I have never experienced anything remotely similar with any other specialties. I just grunt and bear, and count days (11 more days to do, btw!) to the end of this rotation. I mean, what do you expect if a recently appointed attending just gave birth to a son of another attending - and the said baby was conceived when the male attending was married to another woman, and the female attending was a fellow under the guy (quite literally, under him as it turns out)?
My husband thinks in the US this kind of gestures would form a basis of a successful sexual harassment suit. But he is not a physician, and in fact only worked in corporate environment in the US, dealing with IT. Kind of different environment and different type of people. So, I am wondering if things are different in medicine? I mean, after watching Gray's Anatomy, one gets impression that interns do not do anything other than banging other interns, attending or patients all the time.