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The Most Important Tag Challenge You'll Ever See

This tag challenge was created to talk about something very important and very sensitive. Reading it might make you uncomfortable, and, if you are sensitive to certain triggers, it might make you more than just uncomfortable, but it is also crucially important for you to read this if you are uninformed about what sexual harassment is or what to do when it happens, and it is also crucially important for you to pass this on if any of your Wattpad followers are uninformed.

If you are one of the people who are sensitive to this trigger and you are still reading, I understand if you would like to stop. If you choose to continue anyway, I would like to deeply thank you for helping us to spread awareness to others.

For everyone else: I sincerely hope you don't stop reading this chapter just because it's unpleasant to think about. It's because it's a difficult topic that it is so important for us to be taking this effort. By reading this and passing it on, you might end up making a world of difference in your life and in the lives of others.

I'm sure you've all heard of sexual harassment, but there can be a lot of confusion and misinformation about what actually "counts" as sexual harassment. A person who is sexually harassing others might swear up and down that he or she was only joking, that she or he thought that the other person really wanted what was being done, or that what he or she did was perfectly normal and acceptable. A person who is sexually harassing someone will tend to do everything in her or his power to continue controlling the victim, including persuading him or her that what is being done to her or him isn't sexual harassment at all. Such a person will also tend to do everything in his or her power to convince other people that there is nothing wrong with what is being done. And sometimes these people can be so good at manipulation that witnesses, bystanders, and even the victims will believe these lies.

That's why it's important to know exactly what sexual harassment is and to know it so well that you will never allow yourself to be manipulated into thinking otherwise. Harassment is any kind of behavior that disturbs or upsets another person. It's characteristically repetitive, meaning that the behavior happens over and over again. Sexual harassment is any behavior of a sexual or romantic nature that disturbs or upsets another person.

Now, the most important part of that explanation is this: "disturbs or upsets another person". Sexual harassment is not defined according to what the behavior is. You can't look up some list that will tell you what specific actions count and what do not. Nor can you look up a list of what words or gestures count and what do not. It counts if it disturbs or upsets a victim. The person who gets to decide when it counts as sexual harassment isn't the person who did it. It isn't any person who witnessed it or heard about it and wants to give an opinion. The only person who gets to say whether it counts as sexual harassment is the person who suffered because of it. If it is making the victim uncomfortable, it counts.

That being said, we can give some general examples of what sexual harassment might look like on a site like Wattpad. First of all, sexual harassment can occur without any actual sex being involved. It might be the case that a person is sending messages that repeatedly ask the victim to give up his or her address so that they can meet there and have sex. It might be the case that all of the interactions are online and the person is pressuring the victim to send nude photos or to engage in sexual roleplaying.

It might not even be as closely linked to sex as that. The word "sexual" can also refer to things that most of us would commonly refer to as "romantic". It can be sexual harassment if the victim is being pressured into simply going on a date or returning feelings of affection. Sexual harassment might start out looking just like an innocent confession of romantic interest where the person being confessed to does not return the interest. It might not become a problem until the victim begins to feel uncomfortable or upset because he or she has already told the other person that she or he is not interested and still that person continues to send messages asking the victim to reconsider or trying to pressure the victim into saying something romantic in return or agreeing to start dating. It can even count if the person doesn't seem to be asking for anything but is still sending romantic messages after the victim has asked for it to stop. If the person is saying or doing anything after the victim has said that it upsets him or her, it is definitely harassment.