When does it become harassment?

BANGALORE: Can a `friendly'' backslap, `innocent'' touch or `closing'' in on a female colleague to drive a point home during discussion at work, translate into acts of sexual harassment? Where does one draw the line? Rather, how much is too much in the workplace?
Or, consider the hand stretched out for that vigorous handshake, completely out of place in seven out of 10 cases, and often out of context.It passes off for office etiquette. But scratch the surface, and the intentions are not so gracious after all.
It does not stop there. Take the `simple'' eye contact. There is more to that look than meets the eye. A loaded gaze can sometimes be more devastating than `casual'' touch or words expressed.
There is more. If humour packs in punch, and laughter is the best medicine for balance, there are gender-benders who will bend the rule to vexatious limits. Like when a sense of humour becomes sugarcoating for sexual innuendos. `Innocent'' missives dashed off can sometimes be so provoking as to take the wind out of the sails of the unsuspecting target. All for a laugh, to start with, but it goes beyond just tickling the laughing bone. The `hidden sexual message'' beneath the flotsam can be unnerving, to say the least. At worst, it dents the soul.
Taking it further from there is the Internet and the scope for gross misuse. Take the reams and reams of literature passing off for Internet Humour in cyberspace, which become grist for crooked minds. It arouses the sadist allowing him to peak the zones of sexual perversity covertly. In the name of a joke!
The modus operandi is simple as it is misleadingly innocuous: clutter the email inboxes of targeted colleagues with loaded jokes from the Net, and then sit back and enjoy the `pleasure'' of seeing them react to it. To begin with, it''s humour with a touch of the ribald, which gets more and more perverse and audacious with passage of time, till it plumbs the depths of propositioning the female colleague, in language not so revealing or easily decoded.
Then of course, there is the other form of sexual harassment. It rears its ugly head in ungainly competition, stymying the woman''s career graph and isolating her from core sectors or significant positions -- merit not the consideration here as the gender factor. It takes its roots in ingrained social factors - where the man, perceived as breadwinner and head of family is therefore the accepted `superior'' force. In the jostle for space at the top and the clamour to climb the rungs of success, male brusqueness takes charge, trampling on the womans strengths and her contributions.
However, there is the upside to this pervasive trend of male one-upmanship in the workplace. That is the woman''s quiet evolution and her fortitude not to take things lying down anymore. She fights her battles with womanly grace and equanimity. And now she has the backing of the law to assist her in her struggle. Only, how many women have the grit to take the battle to court and fight it to the finish?