This sounds like a cherry-picked piece of a much larger issue. Where I work, there have been many lawsuits for sexual assault and harassment. And the way it always evolves is this… First, some senior employee scumbag with a lot of clout egregiously harasses or assaults someone (or multiple people), usually repeatedly, and management does nothing (or more commonly, punishes the victim(s)). Eventually, a lawsuit happens, which begets years of litigation and millions of taxpayer dollars spent on lawyers. During the entirety of time, management digs in its heels that nothing wrong happened, and it’s the victim’s fault (their lawyers instruct them to do this). After a couple of years pass, a settlement is finally reached which generally includes paid retirement for the accuser, and the accused agreeing to walk away from the job never to return or discuss the matter. It also ALWAYS includes several hours of court-mandated training for all of the remaining employees. The training is outsourced to some company that specializes in this and has a decent reputation.
Now, having taken probably a hundred hours of such training over the years, I have observed that it is invariably pretty decent, and full of real-world scenarios with suggested ways of handling them. Both the laws, and the gray areas, are discussed, also with general guidelines for helping reduce the likelihood that such misconduct will occur (or, that related lawsuits are less likely to occur). I usually find myself irked that these trainings invariably are packed with repeated admonitions of going to management/HR to resolve any issues, as if they are the annointed beacons of light when in my experience they are the ones that can be least-trusted to actually try and stop such problems (they are more likely to want to cover it up and avoid any admission of trouble, lest they be sued). But I digress.
Cherry-picking any single item from this process is likely to sound strange. I could easily see one of the given scenarios starting with “Jane walks by Jim’s cubicle every day to work, and is bothered by Jim staring at her for long periods…” bla bla bla, and ending with “… Keep in mind that starting for more than about 5 seconds can make someone uncomfortable or be misconstrued.” But what great fodder to be wrapped up in a typical Fox News hit piece (ok, National Review, same difference) so that the angry white guys can rant SEE!? SEE!? Now the snowflakes made a RULE saying I can’t look at someone for more than 5 seconds! Geez, it’s tiresome.
