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Any copyright of ownership of this document is rejected. An attempt to define "harassment"dansk / danishIn as much as it may be considered to introduce or sharpen criminal legislation on harassment, a suitable definition of the concept of "harassment" ought to be given, so that it can not be abused as a kind of "joker concept" by which one could otherwise acuse anybody if one could simply claim to feel bothered by something. As a draft to such a definition I would propose the following: Definition: around a particular person or group of persons, by which the same person or persons are conceived of and treated differently than other people, with the deliberate intent to bother the person or persons in question. Examples: Harassment may typically have the form of the practice of portraying the victim in different ways: - F.ex. by making depictions of-, or rumors-, stories-, rhymes-, etc., about the victim. Harassment may typically have the form of the practice of exposing the victim to intense attention: - F.ex. by following the victim, imitating-, or directly or indirectly, to an excessive degree commenting on the victim's utterances, actions, appearance, etc. Harassment may typically have the form of the practice of sustaining the victim under a special category or conceptual frame: - F.ex. by calling the victim by a nickname, or by in speech and actions acting as if the victim was a different person, an animal, an object, or similar. Harassment may typically have the form of the practice of destabilizing the victim's mental and emotional balance: - F.ex. by disturbing the daily routines of the victim, or by filling the victim's everyday surroundings with "messaging" detectable by the victim more or less exclusively; such as by use of objects, images, text, etc. of special more or less personal symbolic or otherwise asociative meaning to the victim. Harassment may typically have the form of the practice of trying to dominate the victim: - F.ex. by atempting, through speech or acts, to seek to deminish the victim or assert oneself over the victim, by claim of f.ex. superior rank, status, popularity, success, etc., or by atempting to claim some kind of "ownership" of the victim, or by seeking to force or manipulate the victim in different ways. Harassment may typically have the form of the practice of atempting to prevent or hamper the victim's communication: - F.ex. by consequently and deliberately over- or mis-interpret anything uttered by the victim, or by consequently and deliberately interpreting anything uttered by the victim into a misleading frame of interpretation or set up such a misleading (typically; aiming at drowning the victim's utterances in indignation, amusement, or otherwise atitated sentiment; f.ex. competitively- or sexually toned-) frame of interpretation, deliberately aiming at encouraging and facilitating misinterpretations. Explanation: "a BOTHERSOME AND STRESSFUL situation": In order for a given social situation to be termed as "harassment" of course it has to be a fundamental precursor that the situation in question is bothersome or stressful to the person who is considered to be the victim of the harassment. For there exist undoubtedly a form of friendly teasing or other, which is not harassment, since the involved parties are consentive of the terms and are not bothered by it. Such as f.ex. calling a particular person by a nickname, although it is not done in any ill intention, and where the person in question is consentive of it and is not feeling bothered by it. "MAINTAINING a bothersome or stressful situation": By the word "maintaining" it is implied that not just any single act can be termed "harassment", regardless that it may possibly be intended to bother another person; but that it is required that such acts occur repeatedly and with some regularity, so that they not just temporarily bother the other person, but summarily maintain a more durable bothersome or stressful situation. "by which the same person or persons ARE CONCEIVED OF AND TREATED DIFFERENTLY than other people": Since harassment implicitly or explicitly is precisely making a particular person or group of persons its object, this may be a tautology. However it is here specified that the term "harassment" applies to any form of categorization of a particular person or group of persons by which they are conceived of and treated differently than other people, and is thus not exclusively applicable to categorizations which are commonly conceived to be "negative": Thus it does not make a difference wether the victim is being called "pig" or wether he or she is being called "beautiful", or wether the harassment for that matter consist of addressing the person who is made the object of the harassment as "lord" or "v.i.p" and bowing and scraping for that person when he or she pass by, or in pretending to be a kind of "servant" or "bodyguard" to that person; in as much as it is bothering the person in question, and that it is done precisely with the intent to bother the person in question. Wether the harassment is expressed through so-called "positively" or "negatively" loaded terms is of no significance, in as much as its function and intent is to bother the other person. "with the DELIBERATE INTENT to bother the person or persons in question": That the bothersome actions as a precursor intentionally aim at bothering the other person is already implied in the juridical principle of "mens rea", which is in any case presumed in criminal law; that popularly speaking, it was done "on purpose". The addition is included here in order to avoid having to include exceptions of such "bothersome or stressful situations" which may result from f.ex. official sanctions such as penalties or diagnosis or similar. Such situations may be claimed to constitute "maintaining a bothersome or stressful situation, by which the same person or persons are conceived of and treated differently than other people". Such official sanctions, however, are not applied with the specific PURPOSE of "bothering" the person or persons in question. Or more precisely; in as much as an official sanction upon a particular person or group of persons were asumed to have been applied with the specific purpose of "bothering" him/her/them, then that would indisputably constitute abuse of official authority, in that it would then precisely be describable as an expression of a form of "harassment" rather than of competent management of official authority. The here expressed is what I would immedietely consider to be a suitable definition of "harassment". It is quite possible that this definition will turn out to be in need of adjustment or changing; it is not thought to be a necessarily final definition, but merely as an immediate draft of or suggestion to a definition. Any copyright of ownership of this document is rejected. |