Culture, complaint and confidentiality: an autoethnographic exploration of sexual harassment

ABSTRACT This article explores the impact of sexual harassment on one teacher – the paper’s author and, in doing so, opens up conversations about the micro-realities of gendered harassment in educational institutions. By using autoethnography as a method of inquiry and writing from the unique perspective of the survivor-researcher, the author sheds light on how sexual harassment is enacted through gendered language, the normalization of sexist practices, and power-relations in ways that inform whose voice is heard and whose gets silenced. By placing personal testimony and documentary evidence within a poststructuralist theoretical framework, feelings of powerlessness are merged with critical reflexivity and scholarly reflection to offer insights into the ways that institutional discourses and practices nurture and/or neuter individuals’ efficacy and career potential.