What is sexual harassment?

On a learning-based justice system

The learning gap: The unequal marriage  (source)

Can a child sexually harass? Is sexual harassment that was received willingly as courtship considered sexual harassment (the same act itself)? Is the same act of harassment/courtship/teasing sexual harassment solely according to the perception of the recipient (and here one can imagine strange scenarios)? And is intent relevant to sexual harassment (and what if you "intended" only to harass in general, or perhaps to try to propose marriage)? Can repeated marriage proposals to someone who is not interested be sexual harassment? The offense of sexual harassment is one of the newest moral offenses, and therefore can serve as a test case for moral and legal learning, because its development and learning have not yet concluded. Old offenses like "thou shalt not steal" and "thou shalt not murder" have already become quite established, while ancient offenses like "thou shalt not commit adultery" and "thou shalt not covet" have already undergone a total value reversal to become commandments and religious enhancements, and have gained wide legitimacy. Adultery is permitted - harassment is forbidden. Why, actually?

In accordance with the philosophical paradigm of the era, namely the philosophy of language, the offense of sexual harassment underwent a unique shaping - as an offense of language and communication. Harassment is a lack of communication, or improper communication. Even if actual groping occurred, the focus of the offense is shifted to communication - to the lack of consent, and to the question of consent (which is of course a question, meaning it occurs in language - language is the test for the offense). As a logical continuation of the move within the paradigm, the philosophy of language shifts even the tribunal into language - into discourse, into communication as a body (media), into what is permitted and forbidden to say (politically correct), into what she said and what he said (not in court but in the media, and then in the discourse itself - on social media). And so we received a linguistic sexual moral system, despite the enormous distance between physical sexuality and language, with all the mismatch and ridiculousness in that (but what do we care, we believe/don't believe what she s-a-i-d about what he s-a-i-d, or what he said about what she said about what he said, and so on). And what wonder about proposals to transfer the offense to a more rigid linguistic medium, namely to writing - to an electronic consent form on a smartphone before any sexual contact. After all, the consent form is the most common legal-linguistic solution in today's world, designed to mark everything as "okay" (you already click on such a form with every website entry... so why not with entry to a woman?). The offense is not the act itself, but an act that was not arranged in language.

In the ancient world, when we tried to shape sexual morality we turned to ontology. In a relatively unusual way even for our "primitive" Torah, the sotah ritual or the garment of virginity shape a judgment that is in the body itself, and therefore the punishment was also in the body - in the thing itself. And even in less direct physical cases, the legal system was perceived as reaching to reality itself, to the body of the thing - according to two witnesses or according to three witnesses "a matter shall be established" does not mean epistemological testimony (as shaped by the Sages later in cross-examination), but that reality itself is determined by them (therefore conspiring witnesses bear the same punishment in body - this is an ontological form of punishment of an eye for an eye). In fact, the idea of the monotheistic God itself stems from the need for a judicial system that is not epistemological but absolute and ontological, for He is all-knowing and also all-powerful, and therefore the commandments (the law) are simply part of the structure of the world's operation. Punishment in the Bible is a physical result of sin - that's how the world works. Knowledge and punishment are not a question in doubt: the meaning of the word Elohim [God] is judge.

This judicial picture is almost incomprehensible to us, because in the world of law of the epistemological period, which is the most familiar picture of law to us, the big question is already the question of knowledge. We no longer have direct access to reality itself, and we only have procedures for knowing the truth, such as evidence and estimates and presumptions and arguments and claims (virginity is no longer the garment itself - but the claim of virginity). Knowledge becomes increasingly complicated and becomes the essence of the law - bringing the truth to light. The witnesses are the eyes, and the judges are the reason, and justice must not only be done, but also be seen to be done. And let's compare this to the world of sexual harassment of our time, in which it also doesn't need to be seen, but mainly to be said and heard.

The century of language no longer believes in law as reaching knowledge, but in the language of law, which was shaped as a kind of autonomous language spoken by verdicts and lawyers (a simple person is better off keeping his mouth shut in court, because he has no idea what the meaning of his words is in legal language, which is deliberately disconnected from the meaning familiar to him: he does not speak this foreign language). Therefore, the current era has shaped a long series of linguistic offenses (intellectual property, privacy, defamation versus freedom of expression, and so on), and tries to shape even sexual morality in language, despite the result being an epistemological and ontological catastrophe, which arouses absolute distrust. But is the epistemological way still open to us? (The ontological - certainly not). Can we at least go back? Can we still "believe her" (the complainant, the justice system, epistemology)? The very categorical demand "I believe her", without examination, already shows that epistemology has turned from a living system into a fossilized article of faith, into ideology, just as happened to religion when secularization began to arrive, which is only then that it became "belief" (in the modern, epistemological sense, and not the original, emotional sense, of giving trust. "And he believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness" is not epistemological belief in God's existence - God had just spoken to him a moment ago. Abraham - the knight of faith and the first believer - believes Him, and does not believe in Him). And when epistemology died and became theology - the damage to trust in justice became a central theological question (see also: Bibi the idol).

This faithful turn of the faithful public of the justice system comes precisely after modern memory research has shown that no one can be believed (even if he himself is completely convinced of his memories, and even in the strongest and most formative memories). She cannot be believed. He cannot be believed. And both cannot be believed, no one and no one. There is no more public trust - faith threatens to destroy justice, as it destroyed the religious question and focused it on belief, instead of learning, that is, pushed it towards the epistemological, when the question itself becomes irrelevant and uninteresting (because contrary to the epistemological perception, a world dies when its questions die - and not when they are open. Precisely because learning is the criterion - and not knowing the solution). After all, today one who denies is philosophically outdated, because the very idea of denial is epistemological, and so is one who believes (and is not afraid...). The relevant conceptualization for our time for a denier is one who does not learn, is not interested, for whom religion is not part of his world. Not secular - but those lacking interest. The reactionary calls to go back to the courts, to epistemological defense, will not save us from the epistemological crisis, and we will remain (perhaps) in skepticism.

If so, how can the philosophy of learning conceptualize sexual harassment? How will justice in general look in the learning paradigm? Well: Sexual harassment is a lack of learning. The harasser is one who does not learn - the learning refuser. Learning is the ethical criterion: it's not that because he doesn't learn he does evil, but the very lack of learning is doing evil. This will solve many paradoxes related to the idea of the offense, which derive from the basic question: Is it possible that the same act has two different punishments? How is it possible that the same act itself receives a different legal meaning depending on the doer, isn't this discrimination? And why should there be a different law for an unattractive guy, is he to blame that he's ugly and his courtships are not answered? Why does a harassing woman have a different law than a man? And why is the act so dependent on age, and how can we even conceptualize its gradual severity at different ages and gaps, without it being contrary to all equality before justice? After all, what's the difference between an 18-year-old and an 81-year-old, if the criterion is awareness and ability to know and distinguish between permitted and forbidden (namely the epistemological criterion, which is why criminal responsibility was set at maturity and epistemological ability precisely, that is, as the threshold of knowledge)?

Well, if the problem is not a wrong word or a wrong act, but wrong learning, the same act itself can have two completely different legal meanings. It's not the intention before the act that is the ethical criterion, nor some change or something within the act itself that needs to be somehow detected (artificially in order to distinguish between acts, as the law currently does), and not the result after the act - but the learning before and after it. The meaning of an act is only as part of a learning sequence, and as part of a learning system. Therefore the same act itself, if it repeats itself, is completely different - because learning did not take place (and this is true both in harassment and in any other offense). Therefore a 14-year-old boy, who for the first time starts with a girl, is different from a serial harasser. All these learning considerations, which occur in the justice system mainly outside the official law, in actual punishment - when the epistemological hubris of the law cannot cover its miserable results, and therefore must resort to what actually works (learning) - need to be the basis of the law, and not "considerations" for punishment, early release or plea bargain.

Therefore the guy that women don't really want needs to learn and understand his situation in the world - that he needs to start with them in a different way, more careful and indirect, and therefore he needs to learn that it's probably not appropriate for him to bother every beauty he doesn't know. The same goes for someone who starts with someone half his age, or a married plus three who starts with a single woman (that is: there is meaning to what a reasonable person should learn). Therefore there is no symmetry between men and women, and therefore the guy whose courtships are not answered needs to learn how to court, and not repeat himself, and if he sends approaches to girls on Facebook and does not l-e-a-r-n anything from the responses - this is where harassment is created. This is exactly the reason that every guy goes through a learning process (see: puberty), which lasts years, and therefore what is permitted to a calf is forbidden to Jupiter (who should have learned long ago). Hence what is learning in a child is an offense in an adult, and that there is an inherent graduality in the level of severity according to the age gap, which should correlate with a learning gap (also on the injured side, it is not possible to treat a girl and an adult woman according to the same learning requirements, and there is a difference in the offense threshold against them). The idea of equality before the law when knowledge is the essential condition for the offense (in the Bible even an unintentional offender receives punishment!) becomes an idea of opportunity for learning.

Therefore there should not be an artificial and binary legal threshold between the criminal and the human but a whole gradient. If in an ontological system we conceptualized the injury as a flaw in the world itself, and therefore the person as a sinner versus righteous, and in an epistemological system where we reached the truth we had a convicted criminal versus innocent, and in a linguistic system we were left only with guilty versus acquitted (for we have only a label and not knowledge), then we need a more delicate tool of learning gradient. Only the idea of learning justice will be able to save the justice system from complete loss of trust and loss of relevance resulting from a paradigmatic change, after we have already internalized that there is no completely righteous or right person, and so there is no absolute criminal. We have no access to such knowledge or such epistemological tools, and the linguistic stigma as a central tool of the justice system (publishing names that permits their blood in the Facebook era and is never forgotten in the Google era) is a particularly destructive tool (and anti-learning). The insistence of the law to get stuck in the past creates ugly linguistic lynching practices in discourse, outside the legal system, in accordance with the linguistic paradigm that dominates the current consciousness, which has not yet moved to the learning paradigm. In this sense - we have not yet seen anything from the damages of linguistic law, because judicial systems are very conservative, and therefore epistemological law is still quite dominant, and the process of transition to the linguistic paradigm in the world of law is in full swing - the worst of all is still ahead of us.

Therefore, the entire justice system needs to be built according to a completely different logic than exposing the truth (a cognitive task in which it fails miserably) or saying it out loud (as if it were a propaganda communication system, which mixes media with law) - under the understanding that there is no such pretension, but a modest learning pretension. The law does not reveal truth and what was, in the epistemological sense, and also does not express what should be, in the linguistic sense (legal discourse), already long disconnected from the truth, but deals with what will be: in study and learning towards the future. Learning does not reach the investigation of the past, but only tries to learn for the benefit of the future. Therefore injustice is obtuseness, that is, when there is no ability to learn, and justice is giving the possibility of learning, without it being abused (namely: in lack of learning. And understand).

The whole idea of punishment needs to undergo a fundamental change - and be replaced by a learning idea. Even the purpose of imprisonment should be learning, and this can even be intellectual and professional learning in certain offenses, or one that can be measured in another way (tests, papers, publications - etc.). If we indulge in an example, regarding a prisoner with average abilities let's say that in a first offense he is imposed to complete learning in the amount of a bachelor's degree in order to leave prison. In a second offense one must complete work in the scope of a thesis. In a third offense - a doctorate. And in a similar gradient regarding severity and so on. Imprisonment is going out to learn outside society, and perhaps even in certain fields (a serial harasser will be punished by doing a doctorate in gender studies... and one who killed a person by negligence - will perform arduous genetic research of orphan diseases and save a soul from Israel, which requires several years of investment from a reasonable person). Only if there is no potential for learning should time itself be used as a measure of change and learning, and even then try to diagnose whether such has taken place (there are many tools for measuring learning, and a significant part of them can also undergo technologization). If the problem is personality and emotional, there are even computer games that can teach and improve and learn patience, delayed gratification, perseverance, concentration ability, and more, whether in biofeedback or directly - and reaching exceptional levels in them should be set as a condition for proving learning. Surgery to lengthen the fuse. After all, what we want is neurological change, right?

Yes, in prison one should play, because that's how a person learns. The time spent in prison can be on average a few years - but one that is allocated in a certain learning achievement, and not as an amount of time, and therefore less opaque and purposeless. Punishment is not a dialogue between the person and society, as conceptualized in the ridiculous linguistic paradigm, because nothing is learned from such a "dialogue", but of course one learns from learning itself. Certainly punishment is also not deterrence and internalization of knowledge (epistemology) or retribution and revenge (ontology). It simply doesn't work. The purpose of imprisonment is that the person who comes out of it will not be the same person who committed the offense (just like in repentance) - because he has learned so much and changed. But from just taking the person out of society one learns very little and very slowly, and usually learns the wrong things (prison as a school for crime). Why not examine high proficiency in all the writings of the Russian classics, if the judge chooses so? Or learning a corpus of poetry by heart? Why not allow the judge a humorous punishment, that is, witty, according to the offense (this does not mean a light or not serious punishment, but a punishment that is both creative and heavy, and mainly - beneficial to the person's soul, spirit and mind).

Is it too naive to try a serious and arduous educational task, because only "real" punishment works and teaches? (Oh, actually it doesn't). Can a lesson and deterrence really be taught in behavioristic punishment? Who is naive here? Is the father who beats the child a better educator than the father who forces him to learn all of the Song of Deborah by heart? If criminality is culture and begins in culture, which is currently learned in prison, doesn't a cultural solution need to be given - alternative culture, which is learned in prison instead? Is the perseverance and self-discipline learned in memorizing Shakespeare or Spinoza less effective than a year in prison (which is currently a year of higher education in crime and violence)? And aren't passing difficult exams and arduous work in programming in higher correlation to rehabilitating a "small" criminal?

Once the punishment is educational and instructive and has a wide range, even the level of certainty in conviction (the epistemological idea of "reasonable doubt") can lose its meaning as the main criminal procedure. They also flog for not good reputation ("One who has a rumor come out about him that he commits offenses is flogged for not good reputation"). Once freed from epistemology, instead of focusing on the past, on what was, on a futile attempt at clarification and reconstruction of victimhood (which is also not good for the victim), and on the distorted binary conviction that wrongs both sides (guilty acquitted and innocent convicted) - one can focus on the future, and on a wide range of learning that the state imposes on those who have not learned how to behave, and on taking him out of criminal culture to the highest possible culture.

Therefore, the whole idea of the evil conviction should be challenged (which ultimately stems from bad literature: the worship of a symmetrical and primitive narrative of measure for measure, which of course must end in a closed and "beautiful" ending, that is, a punchline). The very setting of the guilty/not guilty threshold is mainly guilty of the main distortion of justice (for example in the plea bargain), and even its complication and inefficiency (torture of justice and length of proceedings), for in reality (that is, in learning) there is simply a range. We also do not "really" know (except to make a theater of truth), but estimate in different degrees of confidence. Even at the level of guilt itself there is a wide range, and there is really no righteous person in the land, and therefore there is also no righteousness: we all need a little or much better education, and a person whose level of guilt is low can come out of the judge even with a "ridiculous" punishment of learning a Chekhov story by heart and a computer exam (not good?). The epistemological construction of proof/refutation that leads to conviction/acquittal is a built-in injustice, which leads to an almost necessarily false "proof" practice in courts (legal language) - for there is no real "proof", but only a presentation of such (what is there? Learning of the situation by the judge - this should be the heart of the legal process).

And what is the rationale of punishment? Not some correspondence between the language of the law and the signified (the punishment), or some epistemological logical derivation from the act (the absurd mathematics of life), but the return of a person back to the education system, or even (in more severe cases) to pre-school parental education, because his education and learning failed basic and deep failures. A criminal is a parental failure not because of trauma that was imprinted on the poor thing at age two, but precisely because of learning that was not imprinted on him at age two, or mainly - negative learning. People learn to be criminals through imitation and apprenticeship from other criminals (hence also the paradox of the spread of offenses in the population by way of imitation precisely when the linguistic-communicative "discourse" deals with them), and therefore that's where the answer needs to be given - in learning.

Do children or adults learn in the form of behavioristic conditioning of reward and punishment, which is supposedly the "rationality" of the rationale of punishment? Very little. It's simply an incorrect and very primitive and therefore ineffective picture of learning (but common) - which is learning from the outside (and by the way, so is frontal learning!). It has no chance of competing with internal learning from examples and demonstration and chavruta [study partnership] and play and experimentation and autodidacticism (which is the highest and most educational form of learning - because it is self-education: the most internal learning). Therefore Tolstoy and Gandhi are for example educational figures for one who failed in learning at the high school level, and the criminal at the kindergarten level should be tried to be raised at least to the elementary level. In the absence of a systemic ability to replicate educational role models (if only), intensive learning by heart is a cognitive task that actually changes the brain, and learning biographies and hagiographies and autobiographies is prolonged exposure to exemplary figures. And who would we want to leave in prison for life? Exactly those who are not capable of learning and do not learn from anything - learning is our true rationale (and therefore seriality is the enemy). The idea of justice should be sent to the trash, wrapped in righteousness, and be denounced as one of the most harmful ideas in the history of human learning, which caused endless violence and atrocities (what murderer did not seek justice?). In this world, justice should be perceived as a primitive and blatantly irrational theological fantasy, which is worthy of being left to divine providence, just like retribution in the next world. There is no justice! And there never was. And there can't be. And there "should" not be. Only learning - and learning a lesson (lesson means teaching, not punishment).

In order to begin to carry out the systemic paradigmatic transition from pre-learning law to learning law, prisons need to initially become educational laboratories, where a captive research audience should be taught in a variety of methods and fields, and try to find those that teach more not to commit crime (yes, the system itself also learns - in a world of learning law. No one received the law from heaven!). And for those who fear the loss of the deterrent effect - learning is the greatest and deepest punishment for those who have not learned, because it requires enormous internal effort, and much greater internal change than external punishment, which is easy to disown and resist, and even natural not to internalize (what is the level of deterrence of an exam in Calculus 1?). Certainly at lower levels of crime, and most offenses are such, one should force those who have not learned to undergo learning within the community (passing exams at the level and scope of a bachelor's degree in feminism is a sufficient punishment for a significant part of harassment offenses), as atonement instead of prison or draconian fine (for example - of tens of percent of a person's assets). In minor cases of crime one can also suffice with passing a degree in philosophy, with an expansion in the philosophy of the second half of the 20th century - on probation.