Harassment – In a situation where you feel harassed and cannot make a call, send a message to friends or family.

Harassment – In a situation where you feel harassed and cannot make a call, send a message to friends or family.

Harassment – Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates or embarrasses a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and moral reasonableness. In the legal sense, these are behaviors that appear to be disturbing, upsetting or threatening. They evolve from discriminatory grounds,[citation needed] and have an effect of nullifying a person’s rights or impairing a person from benefiting from their rights.[citation needed] When these behaviors become repetitive, it is defined as bullying. The continuity or repetitiveness and the aspect of distressing, alarming or threatening may distinguish it from insult.1

The above is the opening definition of the word harassment from Wikipedia. The definition in Wikipedia goes on to describe 10 types of harassment:

  • Workplace
  • Sexual
  • Psychological
  • Racial
  • Religious
  • Online
  • Police
  • Electronic
  • Landlord
  • Power

For our purpose here, we will explore only the most common types of harassment, workplace, sexual, religious, racial, psychological and online. For more information, please click on the reference link below this article.

Workplace

Main article: Workplace harassment

Workplace harassment is the offensive, belittling or threatening behavior directed at an individual worker or a group of workers.[26] Workplace harassment can be verbal, physical, sexual, racial, or bullying. [27]

Recently, matters of workplace harassment have gained interest among practitioners and researchers as it is becoming one of the most sensitive areas of effective workplace management. In some East Asian countries, it has attracted substantial attention from researchers and governments since the 1980s, because aggressive behaviors have become a significant source of work stress, as reported by employees.[28] Under occupational health and safety laws around the world,[29] workplace harassment and workplace bullying are identified as being core psychosocial hazards.[30] 2

Sexual

Main article: Sexual harassment

Further information: Sexual harassment in education and Sexual harassment in the military

Sexual harassment is an offensive or humiliating behavior that is related to a person’s sex. It can be a subtle or overt sexual nature of a person (sexual annoyance, e.g. flirting, expression of sexuality, etc.) that results in wrong communication or miscommunication, implied sexual conditions of a job (sexual coercion, etc.). It includes unwanted and unwelcome words, facial expressions, sexual attention, deeds, actions, symbols, or behaviors of a sexual nature that make the target feel uncomfortable. This can involve visual or suggestive looks or comments, staring at a person’s body, or the showing of inappropriate photos.[23] It can happen anywhere, but is most common in the workplace, schools, and the military. Even if certain civility codes were relevant in the past, the changing cultural norms calls for policies in to avoid intentional fallacies between sexes and among same sexes. Women are substantially more likely to be affected than men.[24][25] The main focus of groups working against sexual harassment has been the protection of women, but in recent years awareness has grown of the need to protect LGBTQ (for right of gender expression), transgender women and men.3

Religious

Verbal, psychological or physical harassment is used against targets because they choose to practice a specific religion. Religious harassment can also include forced and involuntary conversions.[22] 4

Racial

Main article: Racial harassment

Further information: Racism

The targeting of an individual because of their race or ethnicity. The harassment may include words, deeds, and actions that are specifically designed to make the target feel degraded due to their race or ethnicity.5

Psychological

This is humiliating, intimidating or abusive behavior, which is often difficult to detect, leaving no evidence other than victim reports or complaints. This characteristically lowers a person’s self-esteem or causes one to have overwhelming torment.[18] This can take the form of verbal comments, engineered episodes of intimidation, aggressive actions or repeated gestures. Falling into this category is workplace harassment by individuals or groups mobbing. 6

Online

Main article: Online harassment

Harassment directs multiple repeating obscenities and derogatory comments at specific individuals focusing, for example, on the targets’ race, religion, gender, nationality, disability, or sexual orientation. This often occurs in chat rooms, through newsgroups, and by sending hate e-mail to interested parties. This may also include stealing photos of the victim and their families, doctoring these photos in offensive ways, and then posting them on social media with the aim of causing emotional distress (see cyberbullying, cyberstalking, hate crime, online predator, Online Gender-Based Violence, and stalking). 7

Distribution of cyberbullying venues[16] used by young people in the US as of 2008, according to the Centers for Disease Control[17] 8

But what does all this mean to you? Basically, harassment can happen anywhere and at anytime, at work, while socializing, in daily life. While in-person harassment is the most concerning as it is happening in real time, with the Here I Am app on your phone in the time of harassment you’ll be able to send an emergency message to three of your contacts/friends, that you need help. At which point one of your contacts can make their way to intervene/pick-you-up or 9-1-1 can be called and the authorities sent to your location to end the harassment being perpetuated by the harasser. With the Here I Am App on your or members of your family’s phones you’ll be letting friends and family know when you or they need help and will be able to direct 9-1-1 to your or their exact location saving time and perhaps both physical and emotional detrimental effects.