Any form of sexual misconduct, sexual assault or harassment is never okay.
Sexual misconduct
Sexual misconduct means any unwanted or attempted unwanted conduct of a sexual nature and includes but is not limited to (i) sexual harassment; (ii) sexual assault; and (iii) rape. It is an umbrella term used to represent a range of related behaviours, examples of which are provided here but are not exhaustive. This includes misconduct through any medium, including, for example, in online environments.
Examples of sexual misconduct include:
Engaging or attempting to engage in sexual intercourse or sexual acts without consent.
Kissing or any other inappropriate physical touching without consent.
Recording a sexual act without consent and/or sharing intimate images or recordings of another person without their consent.
Unwanted conduct of a sexual nature that violates the dignity of another person or has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.
Arranging or participating in events aimed at degrading or humiliating those who have experienced sexual misconduct, for example inappropriately themed social events or initiations.
Distributing indecent images or accessing pornographic materials via university computing systems or any other means
Consent
Consent is agreeing by choice and having the freedom and capacity to make that choice. A person is free to make a choice if nothing bad would happen to them if they said no. Capacity is about whether someone is physically and/or mentally able to make a choice and to understand the consequences of that choice.
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment is unwanted and unwelcome words, conduct, or behaviour of a sexual nature that has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, embarrassing, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the recipient. It is a misuse of personal or institutional power and often based on a person’s gender although it is rarely about sexual desire.
Whether or not the harasser intended to be offensive is irrelevant. A single incident or persistent behaviour can amount to harassment.
Sexual harassment can range from behaviour that stems from obvious to anyone or subtler behaviour less obvious to either the person responsible for the behaviour or to the recipient. Often the impact is not felt or witnessed immediately. The impact may go beyond the recipient to people who see or hear what happens or who try to offer support.
Sexual harassment can include but is not limited to: catcalling, following, making unnecessary and unwanted physical contact, sexual jokes and comments, giving unwelcome personal gifts, wolf-whistling, leering, derogatory comments, unwelcome comments about a person’s body or clothing, unwelcome questions about a person’s sex life and/or sexuality, engaging in unwelcome sexual propositions, invitations and flirtation, making somebody feel uncomfortable through displaying or sharing sexual material.
Sexual harassment does not necessarily occur face to face and can be in the form of emails, visual images (such as sexually explicit pictures on walls in a shared environment), social media, telephone, text messages and image based sexual abuse, such as revenge porn and 'upskirting'. Many of these acts are also criminal offences.
If you think you have been the target of sexual misconduct, a sexual assault or sexual harassment, it may be hard to know what to do or how to feel. What happened was not your fault. What you do next is your choice.