Do men know when they're doing it?: Linda Grant asks if sexual harassment is merely a misunderstanding between the sexes

TWO colleagues, a man and a woman, away in a strange town on a course, walk back to their hotel together late at night. Is the woman leading the man on, indicating they might become more than just friends at work? Or does she merely not want to walk home alone in the dark?

Dr Michael Haughney, a BT executive, claimed at an industrial tribunal recently that he was unfairly dismissed from his job for sexual harassment. He argued that Leesa Lemm, a workmate, had encouraged his advances. Why had she walked home with him, and danced two slow dances with him, if she wasn't interested? Two dances do not an affair make, Ms Lemm countered. Stunned by her version of events, Dr Haughney withdrew his case.

Come off it, Dr Haughney, my friends (of both sexes) and I said to ourselves. Thirty years after the sexual revolution, a man would have to be thick, or a High Court judge, not to know that these days no means no. Wouldn't he?

Perhaps not. Last month, the journalist Philip Norman entered a plea on behalf of men today. They are bewildered and disoriented, he wrote, no longer understanding the sexual signals of the Nineties. 'No man knows, and no legislation yet tells him, where proper appreciation ends and sexual harassment begins. The message that men no longer call the sexual shots is everywhere.'

It has never been my own impression that there was all that much distance between men and women when it came to knowing what was and was not unacceptable behaviour. In my experience, men know what women don't like, and some of them do it anyway. But I began to wonder if I might be wrong. According to a survey by the Industrial Society, half the women in Britain claim to have been sexually harassed. Is this high figure the result of a technical glitch in communication between men and women?

So, in a highly unscientific study, I asked 11 men, aged from 27 to 59, if they were confused about how to relate women these days. They ranged from the most right-on man I know - who does about 75 per cent of childcare in his household - to the man in a suit who brokered my mortgage and reads the Financial Times. One or two had a sophisticated understanding of feminism, one was described by his wife as 'the original male chauvinist pig', most of the others were somewhere in between.

It was immediately apparent that some men were confused, but none of these was under the age of 40. 'Sexual signals are very clear and unambiguous - though it's more subtle than how someone dresses,' said James, 38, a surveyor from Oxfordshire. 'It's more to do with eye contact, something that builds up. There can be ambiguities, but you know when someone is coming on to you. Then you can push things along to another stage to clarify the situation.'

Damian Franklin, a 27-year-old London Underground signalman from Uxbridge, said: 'You know when you've got the come-on. If you want a one-night stand, you have to be upfront, and if she says no, that's it. You've got to be straightforward. If a woman likes you, you can just ask her.'

This confident knowledge of the rules of the pick-up seems to be a product of the sexual revolution. In the Fifties the rules of courtship were these: it was a man's job to initiate, a woman's job to resist. The art of seduction involved persistence and making judgements about when you were on to a good thing or a loser. 'You had to tell the difference between the meaningful signals and the ones that were just about display,' says Liam, 59, an elegant and flirtatious librarian.

'You had to start the ball rolling or the woman would stand there like a dummy forever. And you had to do this on the evidence as you interpreted it, so sometimes you could make mistakes. But you had to persist because you had to overcome a severe inhibition in the woman. This was understood and it was in no way thought of as harassing. Their show of resistance was part of the mating process.'

For such men, the sexual field of the Nineties is littered with hazards. Television producer Udi Eichler, 51, has successfully navigated a new relationship with a woman in her thirties, but finds the dating rituals of younger women a mystery. 'When I think of all the young people who go to Camden Market every Saturday, I don't know how they get into bed with each other. What are the steps, the signals? I don't know. Both parties seem to know without saying or making gestures that the moment has arrived. I wouldn't know how to initiate a relationship now. I'd feel very intimidated because what would come naturally to me would be prone to misinterpretation.'

The younger the men I spoke to were, the more they censored their behaviour in accordance with what they believed would be unacceptable to women. 'If I see a porno magazine at work I'll pick it up, but if a woman came in and saw it, it would be out of order,' Damian says. 'I'd never address a woman as sweetheart or darling. That's being a prat. I'm just not that cocky. We've got a closed-circuit screen and sometimes the older men will shout out, 'Look at this', and you go over to see what all the fuss is about; it turns out to be a blurred picture of a woman in a miniskirt.'

The men who worked in offices, in particular, seemed to have internalised a set of specific rules for what is acceptable behaviour. Gareth, 38, runs a small financial services company in central London, with five staff, two of whom are women. 'Pin-ups in the office aren't on,' he says. 'There was an episode of Resnick which dealt with that last week. I wouldn't expect a female employee to wear a miniskirt and low-cut blouse to work because it's not professional - I wouldn't expect a man to wear a T-shirt that showed off his muscles either. We have a system of rewards here and when someone gets one, we all go out for a drink together. So if I asked out one of the female staff on her own I would expect her to misconstrue it.'

But for the older men I interviewed, it is harder to internalise the changing codes. John, a 47-year-old local government officer from Hertfordshire, likes to be able to touch other people, but has recognised he has to modify his behaviour: 'I like the chumminess of it because it denies certain barriers. But sometimes it gets confusing and I would no longer touch someone I worked with.' But Liam resents having to modify the habits of a lifetime.

'I touch people on the arm or head to be sympathetic or to grab their attention. My wife says I touch people's bottoms but I don't regard it as sexual. And I think it's fine to compliment a woman on her appearance. I'm damned it I'm going to stop doing it because some people think it's harassment. You can't utterly subdue the differences between the sexes, and I suppose I do give offence when women expect to be treated as a man. I find that impossible.'

I had asked all these men a series of questions about what could be defined as sexual harassment, ranging from addressing someone as Darling or Gorgeous to groping at the office party. By and large, most of them knew what the 'right' answers should be. Needless to say, if I they had been asked by a man, the response might have been very different. But if they were telling me what they thought I wanted to hear, at least they knew what the 'correct' response was.

To me, the message was clear. Men know what is acceptable and what is unacceptable to women: they recognise that social interactions take place within a context, and this establishes the difference between appreciation and harassment. Those men who don't, I was told, are either lying or completely socially inept. Misreading the signals was regarded, by the younger men I spoke to, as a hoary old excuse.

On the whole, the men I'd asked passed the right-on test with flying colours, but then there was a surprise.

When I asked whether they ever looked at a woman's breasts while talking to her, all my interviewees - from Armani suit to Greenpeace T- shirt wearer - agreed that this is the one habit that men would never stop. 'You can't turn your sexuality on and off like a tap,' said James, the surveyor. 'But it all depends how it's done. There is nothing wrong with seeing a woman as a young, sexy girl, but it's what you do with that image. It's about whether you simply view all women as sexually available.'

And there was one area where men felt that they were disadvantaged: the old nexus of a man persisting and a woman resisting had changed only half way. It is still a man's job to initiate. It is women's job, said Edward, a 38-year-old academic, to be clever about setting up the situation in which men can then act. 'My rule was always: if in doubt, they're not interested. Then virtually all the girlfriends I've had would say later, when I invited you in for coffee why didn't you make a move? The man has to take the risk because his reputation isn't going to be compromised.' I found little evidence in the experience of the men I talked to that it is women who now call the sexual shots.

Men and women do have different sexual styles, says Dr Richard Stevens of the Open University, a psychologist and specialist in relationships: 'The male still has to push pretty hard because he can expect a degree of reserve on the woman's part. There are a lot of cultural inhibitions on her. But the real issue is sensitivity and social skills. In the BT case, what seems to have happened is a kind of obsession, a projection of the man's own feelings. Just because a man is turned on he doesn't have to take action.'

Denise Kingsmill, a lawyer specialising in sexual harassment cases, agrees that the argument that men and women misread each other does not wash. 'People sexually harass to exercise power, to intimidate, because they are bullies. They say they didn't mean to give offence but it doesn't ring true. They just hope they can get away with it. They're like little boys pinching apples - when they're caught they make every excuse they can. At present there is a limit of pounds 11,000 on damages in such cases, which may change. Only when the damages are open-ended will there be real sanctions.'

After two days of talking to men, I came to the happy conclusion that by and large they have taken on board what women have been telling them. The message has got across. And the next time I come across a man who thinks there's nothing really wrong with putting his hand on a woman's knee when he is talking to her, I'll have 11 witnesses to tell him otherwise.

Some names have been changed