The Harassment Game Sex, Power, and the War on Human Nature

By Robert Ziehe

There are few topics today that trigger more automatic outrage, blind agreement, or fear-driven silence than sexual harassment. It’s the loaded gun in every office, the shadow behind every compliment, the ghost in every HR training. And yet, despite decades of exposure, nobody seems to fully understand what we’re really dealing with.

We hear the usual slogans: “Believe women.” “Zero tolerance.” “Silence is violence.” And we nod. Out of fear, not agreement. Behind that nod is confusion, unease, and a question we’re not supposed to ask: What’s actually going on here?

This booklet is not written to defend abuse. It’s not written to protect predators or to trivialize the experiences of anyone who has suffered real harassment. What it is, is an attempt to restore logic, honesty, and clarity to a conversation that has been hijacked by ideology, corrupted by money, and repackaged for mass consumption.

Where It All Began

Sexual harassment, as a concept, is a modern creation. The term didn’t exist before the 1970s. It wasn’t in courtrooms, HR manuals, or news headlines. It was named by a group of female office workers at Cornell University in 1975. Before that, it was simply life. Unfair, messy, often cruel, but unnamed.

With the rise of second-wave feminism, the term gained traction. Activists like Catharine MacKinnon pushed it into the legal system, framing it as a form of sex discrimination under Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act. In 1980, the EEOC officially recognized it. In 1991, Anita Hill’s testimony against Clarence Thomas dragged it onto television screens. By the time the #MeToo movement exploded in 2017, the term had become gospel, a weapon and a shield, depending on who was holding it.

How It Evolved

The original idea wasn’t wrong. Nobody should have to trade their dignity for a paycheck. Nobody should be forced into silence by a boss with a zipper problem. But as the idea spread, it mutated. It moved from backrooms and courtrooms into boardrooms, classrooms, and algorithms. Companies didn’t embrace the issue out of empathy, they embraced it out of fear. Fear of lawsuits, fear of public backlash, fear of social media mob justice. And where there is fear, there are profits to be made.

HR departments institutionalized the language of feminism, corporate workshops turned ideology into procedure, and accusations no longer needed evidence, only perception. If someone says it was harassment, then it was. Intent was irrelevant. Context, dead. The accused? Often guilty by default.

And while the rest of us adjusted, something else happened in the shadows.

The Parts Nobody Talks About

First, there’s the sex industry. While politicians and HR departments condemned power imbalance as sexual abuse, porn producers were cashing in on the exact opposite. “Boss seduces intern.” “Hot secretary punishes strict CEO.” These are not fringe categories. They are some of the most searched fantasies in the world. The same structure society condemns in the office is fetishized in private. Outrage sells. So does forbidden pleasure.

Second, there’s the feminist industrial complex. What began as a movement for equality gave birth to an economy built on grievance. Professional feminists, columnists, consultants, influencers, made careers not on solving problems, but on ensuring they never go away. The more danger they could project, the more demand for their services. “Toxic masculinity” became a brand. “Mansplaining” a punchline. The message was clear: we don’t want your cooperation, we want your guilt.

Third, and perhaps most dangerously, came the erasure of human nuance. The workplace became sterile. Men were taught to fear eye contact, jokes, compliments. Women were taught to interpret every awkward moment as a threat. The natural messiness of human interaction, flirting, misunderstanding, chemistry, humor, was recoded as misconduct. Sex was pathologized. Trust replaced by legal disclaimers.

And all the while, someone was making money. From compliance software. From online courses. From clickbait headlines. From porn. From fear.

The Truth We’re Not Allowed to Say

This isn’t just about harassment. This is about the redesign of human connection. We are witnessing the industrialization of behavior, the sterilization of expression. The very instincts that make us human, attraction, risk, desire, initiative, are being rebranded as crimes.

And the result? We are more disconnected, more paranoid, more alone than ever. We watch fantasies online that we would never dare attempt in real life. We self-censor, not out of politeness, but self-preservation. And the tragedy is that the real victims, the people who are truly harassed, violated, threatened, are getting lost in the noise.

What We Should Do Instead

We need to stop pretending that fear is protection. We need to stop outsourcing justice to hashtags. We need to reclaim human judgment.

Sexual harassment is real. But so are false accusations. So is political exploitation. So is fantasy. If we want a fair world, we need a system that distinguishes between them.

That means:

• Evidence over perception.

• Proportionality over panic.

• Conversation over condemnation.

• Education over indoctrination.

Let’s stop punishing people for being human. Let’s start punishing those who manipulate systems for power, money, or revenge.

Conclusion

The sexual harassment discourse was born from pain. But it grew into a product. A weapon. A spectacle. It no longer seeks resolution, it seeks submission.

The only way forward is truth. Not emotional truth. Not social justice truth. Just truth, grounded in evidence, shaped by reason, and guided by integrity.

We are not fragile children in need of safe spaces. We are adults. Let’s start acting like it.