difference between harrasment and bullying



Harassment
Workplace bullying
Has a strong physical component, eg contact and touch in all its forms, intrusion into personal space and possessions, damage to possessions including a person's work, etc Almost exclusively psychological (eg criticism), may become physical later, especially with male bullies, but almost never with female bullies
Tends to focus on the individual because of what they are (eg female, black, disabled, etc) Anyone will do, especially if they are competent, popular and vulnerable
Harassment is usually linked to sex, race, prejudice, discrimination, etc Although bullies are deeply prejudiced, sex, race and gender play little part; it's usually discrimination on the basis of competence
Harassment may consist of a single incident or a few incidents or many incidents Bullying is rarely a single incident and tends to be an accumulation of many small incidents, each of which, when taken in isolation and out of context, seems trivial
The person who is being harassed knows almost straight away they are being harassed The person being bullied may not realise they are being bullied for weeks or months - until there's a moment of enlightenment
Everyone can recognise harassment, especially if there's an assault, indecent assault or sexual assault Few people recognise bullying
Harassment often reveals itself through use of recognised offensive vocabulary, eg ("bitch", "coon", etc) Workplace bullying tends to fixate on trivial criticisms and false allegations of underperformance; offensive words rarely appear, although swear words may be used when there are no witnesses
There's often an element of possession, eg as in stalking Phase 1 of bullying is control and subjugation; when this fails, phase 2 is elimination of the target
The harassment almost always has a strong clear focus (eg sex, race, disability) The focus is on competence (envy) and popularity (jealousy)
Often the harassment is for peer approval, bravado, macho image etc Tends to be secret behind closed doors with no witnesses
Harassment takes place both in and out of work The bullying takes place mostly at work
The harasser often perceives their target as easy, albeit sometimes a challenge The target is seen as a threat who must first be controlled and subjugated, and if that doesn't work, eliminated
Harassment is often domination for superiority Bullying is for control of threat (of exposure of the bully's own inadequacy)
The harasser often lacks self-discipline The bully is driven by envy (of abilities) and jealousy (of relationships)
The harasser often has specific inadequacies (eg sexual) The bully is inadequate in all areas of interpersonal and behavioural skills

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