Even when sexual harassment is reported, many institutions are not equipped to cope with it. My own alma mater achieved a certain degree of notoriety a couple of years ago when a committee I was chairing organized a "No Means No" date rape campaign. Male students in a campus dorm responded with giant signs in their windows bearing such slogans as "No Means Kick Her in the Teeth" and "No Means She's A Dike."

While this behaviour was clearly atrocious, the university administration's response was equally appalling. Instead of immediately taking disciplinary action against the boys involved, I was told by some that a less incendiary slogan should have been designed for the campaign. I was told that it was all a joke, that boys will be boys. It was only when the media was informed and the story attracted national attention that the university began to acknowledge a problem. At the risk of sounding cynical, I suggest that the male-dominated administration considered women like me the real problem.

While sexual harassment of the kind I describe above is truly frightening. it is not unusual on university campuses. Panty raids, Lady Godiva rides, and the blatant misogyny of a number of engineering newspapers are other examples of a kind of public harassment aimed at the general community of university women and often institutionalized by time and tradition. But there is another kind of psychological harassment which, by its very nature, is less publicized and probably even more prevalent. Again I offer my own experiences as an illustration of the kind of behaviour I am talking about.

Mid-way through the final term of my Master's degree I became the object of unwanted attentions by a fellow student. Although we attended a seminar together, we were by no means friends. I had never spoken to him in the hall or gone out for coffee with him. I had no reason to suspect that anything was up.

On Valentine's Day, however, I found a series of poems in my campus mailbox. The poems were about women's underwear and were inscribed to me and accompanied by a long, handwritten letter detailing their genesis and explaining their apparent classical allusions. The guise of professionalism was thin. One poem in particular set up a seminar scenario in which the speaker undresses a female student with his eyes. Although the names were different, the references were clear. Both the poems and the letter were explicitly sexual, and the poems were specifically anti-feminist. I was terribly upset and embarrassed. What on earth had I done to invite this? I didn't wear provocative clothes to school. This man and I weren't friends. We hardly knew each other. He was much older than I, and I knew he had a wife and children. I was scared, and I felt guilty.

In retrospect, I understand that many of my reactions were fairly standard. Like so many women that experience this kind of psychological violence, I was confused and disoriented. I wondered if I was making it all up. Instead of feeling victimized, I felt guilty. I was so mortified to think that I had somehow generated these twisted thoughts that I wanted to hide behind a giant rock and never come out.

The scariest thing about my experience was the way that it made me question myself. Ironically, just when I needed to believe in myself the most, my own values and feelings; seemed unstable. As I think back on it, I realize I that this is really at the heart of psychological violence. This was a secret violation that seemed to paralyses me. Before I could do anything about it, I had to have the faith that I was right, and I had to be willing to show his hateful poetry to other people.

Often harassment develops in unequal power relationships, either perceived or real: professor/student, employer/employee. In my case (and probably in many others) the situation was more complex. He was an older man, I a younger woman. Although I would never have realized it if the harassment hadn't occurred, I felt slightly cowed by this man. He was probably my parents' age, in the military, a father and husband himself. Could he really be doing what I thought he was doing? Would anybody agree with me? But in another way we were equals, peers in the classroom, and this man's actions were an attempt to exert power over me. He seemed more interested in asserting his will than in seducing me.