A lot of white people were stunned by the sheer viciousness of the racist revanchist assaults on President Obama. I believe a lot of men are going to be equally stunned by the crudity and volume of the assaults on future President Hillary. A. Hope Jahren, in the NYTimes:
OVER the past two decades as a professor, I’ve grown thousands of plants, studying how their biology shifts in response to our changing environment. Soon I’ll begin to design and build my fourth laboratory; I’ll teach classes and take on more staff members, as I do every year. Like all professors, I also do a lot of extra jobs for which I was never trained, such as advising former students as they navigate the wider world. Last year, after one of my most talented students left to start her next adventure, she would text me now and then: “This is such a great place,” “I am learning so much here” and “I know his is where I am supposed to be.”
Then, a month ago, she wrote and asked me what to do. She forwarded an email she had received from a senior colleague that opened, “Can I share something deeply personal with you?” Within the email, he detonates what he described as a “truth bomb”: “All I know is that from the first day I talked to you, there hadn’t been a single day or hour when you weren’t on my mind.” He tells her she is “incredibly attractive” and “adorably dorky.” He reminds her, in detail, of how he has helped her professionally: “I couldn’t believe the things I was compelled to do for you.” He describes being near her as “exhilarating and frustrating at the same time” and himself as “utterly unable to get a grip” as a result. He closes by assuring her, “That’s just the way things are and you’re gonna have to deal with me until one of us leaves.”
Women are no longer a minority within higher education. According to the most recent statistics released by Unesco, women’s enrollment in graduate education in the United States has been greater than men’s for each of the last 30 years; as of 2012, there were 13 women enrolled for every 10 men. Yet, every school year, science, technology, engineering and math programs — known as the STEM fields — shed women the way the trees on campus lose their leaves in the fall…
In the rare case when a female scientist becomes a faculty member, she finds herself invested in the very system that is doing the weeding, and soon recognizes that sexual harassment is one of the sharpest tools in the shed. My own experiences as a student, scientist and mentor lead me to believe that such harassment is widespread. Few studies exist, but in a survey of 191 female fellowship recipients published in 1995, 12 percent indicated that they had been sexually harassed as a student or early professional. My experiences have also convinced me that sexual harassment is very rarely publicly punished after it is reported, and then only after a pattern of relatively egregious offenses.
The evasion of justice within academia is all the more infuriating because the course of sexual harassment is so predictable. Since I started writing about women and science, my female colleagues have been moved to share their stories with me; my inbox is an inadvertent clearinghouse for unsolicited love notes. Sexual harassment in science generally starts like this: A woman (she is a student, a technician, a professor) gets an email and notices that the subject line is a bit off: “I need to tell you,” or “my feelings.” The opening lines refer to the altered physical and mental state of the author: “It’s late and I can’t sleep” is a favorite, though “Maybe it’s the three glasses of cognac” is popular as well…
The comments over there, of course, are a thesis on Margaret Atwood’s quote: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
And keep in mind — these male scientists are obviously not “stupid” or “ignorant” individuals — they’re just as unconscious of their own sexism as a fish is of the water through which it swims.
Baud
We have several STEM women here. Schroedinger’s Cat is one that comes to mind. This should be an interesting thread.
Brachiator
Future email from Putin to President Hillary Clinton.
I couldn’t help the moment of absurdity.
The actual topic is quite serious. Of course, Clinton, if elected, will be subject to idiotic opprobrium.
And water is wet.
And haven’t there been stories about a couple of very prominent male scientists recently making a total fool of themselves with respect to harassment of female colleagues?
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
This part jumped out at me in particular:
The threat with just a teeny coating of deniability. Sort of like the way, when I worked with domestic violence, abusers’ favorite threat was: “It’s payback time!” It’s not actionable as a threat, but the victim knows exactly what it means.
divF
@Brachiator: Yes, two very recently – Geoff Marcy at Berkeley, and Christian Ott at CalTech, both in astrophysics. Both make my skin crawl.
trollhattan
Think I wrote a day ago that being female, Democratic and a Clinton will release fury upon Hillary the likes of which we haven’t even seen against Obama. I think she probably understands, but is still not prepared for the intensity of what’s to come.
Given Obama’s election created the environment that allowed the teabaggers to thrive, what fresh hell awaits come next spring?
Frankensteinbeck
My position has been that Hillary will face less fanatical obstruction than Obama, but more open, direct insults, with less attempts to disguise the bigotry. Racists think black men are scary criminals and must be stopped. Misogynists think women are victims, and assholes attack vulnerability. Plus, being publicly accused of misogyny carries much less stigma. They won’t feel the need for even thin deniability.
debbie
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think you’re right. I’ve already started to get chain emails from family members with side by side photos of Hillary and Captain Kangaroo.
Elmo
Can I just say how incredibly fortunate I think I must have been throughout my professional career? Women tell stories like this with such depressing regularity, along with accounts of marginalization and dismissal. These are bullets I’ve somehow dodged with no particular talent or effort on my part.
Are there other women here who’ve been lucky this way?
Baud
@debbie:
I don’t get it. Are they supposed to look alike?
nutella
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:
Definitely a threat.
Ruviana
@Elmo: I’m one, even as I’ve had colleagues and friends who did have problems with harassment. Sometimes it is just luck. I even had male advisors who were kind, helpful, professional and treated me like an intellectual equal. I know I’m lucky.
Shantanu Saha
As a man, I have to say,
Men are pigs.
divF
@debbie: I would welcome such a comparison with pride. Captain Kangaroo was a stand-up guy, as was Bob Keeshan, the actor who played him.
trollhattan
@Frankensteinbeck:
Recalling the Bush matriarch felt perfectly comfortable saying “rhymes with witch” with the cameras rolling, and nobody batted an eye.
Juju
@debbie: what does that even mean? That she has big pockets and a moose that drops loads of ping pong balls on her head?
debbie
@Baud:
Hillary was wearing a navy blue suit with white piping.
I’m already dreading the holidays.
gex
@Elmo: Yes. I have been lucky. Although I think being a lesbian helps a lot. I’m a programmer and have worked most of my career in a small company. Being one of two people in the IT department is also helpful.
I did have an experience early on in my career where I was a lead technician in a support group. I’d regularly get field techs (men) who would refuse to work with me. I was young and not very aware of the true depths of misogyny in our culture. I’d just transfer them to one of the dimmer dudes on the team and wait for the call to come back to me. Then I’d help them fix the problem while making sure to let them know they wasted their own time by refusing to work with me.
Adam L Silverman
Anne Laurie: I have to take one exception. The male scientists in question are well educated, are good at test taking – regardless of format, and writing in a way that is technically acceptable for their fields and disciplines. This does not preclude them from being stupid or ignorant. And I say that as someone with a Y chromosome, a joint doctorate and a pair of masters’ degrees.
debbie
@debbie:
I’m also trying to find a jpg of Goofus (of Highlights for Children magazine fame) to pair with Kasich (their hero).
El Caganer
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: Yes. I have no idea whether these sciencebros are aware of their sexism or not, but they damn sure seem to be aware of their power over their victims’ personal and professional lives.
Iowa Old Lady
I was once on a committee that fired a tenured professor for harassing a junior faculty member and a student whose thesis he was directing. It was grim work.
I’ve been lucky, mostly.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
One of the big differences will be how many women will take part in the misogyny against Hillary, whereas only a handful of staunch conservative AAs attached Obama.
@debbie:
Jeez, that’s dumb.
Helen
This post makes me sad. Yesterday I went to a celebration dinner for my best friend’s daughter Megan. Megan wants to be an engineer has been accepted into Bronx Science High School!!!!!! YAY Megan. She is smart and funny and just absolutely wonderful. We have discussions all the time about Hillary becoming President and Megan can’t quite grock that up until now women just were not allowed to do that. It is beyond her brilliant 13 year old mind.
I fear what she will have to face going forward.
But in the meantime YAY YAY YAY MEGAN!!!!!#@#ELEVENTY!!!@#
kc
Anyone who is surprised by the viciousness of GOP attacks on anyone hasn’t been paying any attention for, oh, the last 30 or 50 years.
O. Felix Culpa
@Elmo: Nope.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Best thing one college professor ever said:
“If common sense was so common, more people would have some of it”
I took this to mean that you could be intellectually as smart as anyone else or smarter than everyone else but if you were ignorant of how the world around you works or is even supposed to work then you were really about as smart as a block of cheese.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
I don’t think this is remotely true. I don’t think that people, including some liberals, have even acknowledged the depth of racism unleashed at Obama’s election. This is not only rage directed at Obama, but at his family, and at all black people and is generating a new civil war.
The worst white people want to see women controlled. The worst white people want to see all black people dead.
LAO
@Elmo: When I was starting out as an associate at a small criminal defense firm, clients would often be uncomfortable around me, censoring their language or description of the offense. One of my bosses, would look at these guys, squint and say “that’s no lady, that’s your lawyer.” I adopted that as my mantra. To this day, I love him for that.
But being a woman in a male dominated field is weird. Once during a sentencing with my other boss, the client would not stop sobbing, he was having a full on breakdown. The judge stopped the proceedings to ask whether I had any tissues. I was so young, I immediately asked the federal judge “why, because I’m a woman?”. My boss was pissed at me, but I was so taken back by the judge’s question, he hadn’t asked my male boss if he had tissues.
Prosecutors used to ask whether I really “wanted” to look at crime scene photos or autopsy reports. As if it weren’t my job. They would never ask a male defense attorney.
I have a million examples, all of which boil down to whether I was competent to do my job. And that is extremely aggravating.
Skerry
@El Caganer: This. A thousand times. This.
LAO
@Baud:
Agreed.
debbie
@Baud:
It’s what passes for conservative humor. Very grown up.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@Adam L Silverman:
I think that calling this behavior stupid or ignorant is being over-generous. This guy clearly understands that his behavior is not consensual and not OK. He just doesn’t care, because he figures he can get away with it.
Starfish
@Baud: I am a STEM person turned stay at home parent. I keep in touch with my STEM enough to have read this article a few days ago. Sometimes I get outrage fatigue.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
As one who’s never soft-pedaled Obama’s reception, I’m flat predicting you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Adam L Silverman
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: This is part of a larger societal and cultural issue in the US. Since we still haven’t reached broad consensus that women are fully autonomous individuals/human beings. This is evidenced by the over 500 cases, which is definitely an undercount, of women who’s health and welfare was criminalized as a result of their pregnancy by law enforcement officers, health care professionals, prosecuting attorneys, and/or judges who determined that the (pregnant) woman’s rights to bodily autonomy and integrity are not inviolate. Rather they can, and often are, subordinated to the rights of the gestating fetus. If women don’t really own their own bodies, if they really aren’t fully autonomous individuals/humans because they either could become, could be, or are pregnant, then this will continue. As long as this is the case, then some men, and, unfortunately, some women, will think this behavior is acceptable.
http://jhppl.dukejournals.org/content/38/2/299.full.pdf+html?sid=b0811f36-d4e4-4b51-a830-e175e6eee40c
schrodinger's cat
For all the talk of women in sciences, its still a hard slog.Sisterhood is overrated, women are not particularly nice to each other either, in fact they can be openly vicious, whereas men in general are oblivious oafs. Overall, I find men easier to deal with than women.
O. Felix Culpa
@O. Felix Culpa: Nope.
FYWP won’t allow me to edit my comment. I only experienced direct sexual harassment once, very early in my career. More typical over the years – in academic, corporate, and nonprofit settings – was being dismissed, rendered invisible, treated as less than, definitely paid less than because working while female. And sometimes the converse, regarded as a threat because being competent while female. Sexism takes multiple forms, some more overt than others.
Peale
@debbie: granted I’m not a fan of piping, and I had a b&w TV set when I watched him, but wasn’t his coat maroon?
max
@trollhattan: Given Obama’s election created the environment that allowed the teabaggers to thrive, what fresh hell awaits come next spring?
The same hell, re-purposed. (‘You thought the tribal witch doctor jokes were too much?! Wait til you see the _____ jokes!’)
max
[‘I could run down the joke inventory from knowing many men, but I’m not even gonna start.’]
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: Honestly, and I say this, partially tongue in cheek, as someone who grew up on a university campus as my Dad was a professor, and spent a good deal of his life on one, even four years on a specialized military college post: if we didn’t have universities to give faculty and grad students some place to work and do things, we’d have a very, very large population of very, very smart people wandering around homeless.
RSA
They may be unconscious of some aspects of their sexism, but they don’t live in a cave–I think we all recognize sexual harassment when we see it, and “I didn’t realize it would be considered sexual harassment,” as a defense, should be dead for a long time now.
More specifically, here’s a regulation at my public university:
My thought after going through the training program and test was it was so obvious that it was a waste of time. But now I’m thinking, maybe that’s part of the point. There are some bright lines, and in most cases it’s really easy to know where they are.
Adam L Silverman
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: I think you mistook my point of contention with AL. I wasn’t saying this particular schmuck didn’t know he was in the wrong, what I was saying was that, in general, being well educated or highly educated or technically skilled and capable doesn’t mean one can’t be ignorant, stupid, or both.
I know a lot of very foolish, unwise, and shallow people with a lot of alphabet soup after their name that don’t no much outside of their limited areas of expertise. And I know a lot of very smart, sensible, and broad (in terms of experience) people with little to no alphabet soup after their name.
redshirt
@divF: Marcy was such a shock to me, from the outside looking in. He seemed like such a nice guy, but BAM! Decades of serial harassment.
I think this will only fundamentally change when women represent a significant percent of leadership in education, and business, and society. It’s going to happen, but in the meantime, women get hurt.
gex
Can we have a moratorium on the “is racism or sexism worse in America?” debates? Why the need to rank them? They aren’t mutually exclusive. Of course sexist men don’t want women dead the way racist whites want blacks dead. They want us to make their dinners, raise their kids, clean their homes, and fuck them.
The racism that was unleashed when Obama was elected was massive and surprising to some. The misogyny that will be unleashed if Hillary is elected will be massive and surprising to some. Why participate in the divide and conquer tactics of cis-het white patriarchy?
Neldob
It seems to me these men are fully aware of their power, and are using it to be predators. Maybe a collection of their emails should be published online as looking forward to public shaming might give them perspective.
Starfish
@schrodinger’s cat: I think women in tech are in these male dominated spaces and find it hard to relate to other women. My last job was 50/50 and was so so hard because I was hurting feelings when I told people that their code was bad. Women take that stuff PERSONALLY.
schrodinger's cat
Coming from a culture that prefers sons over daughters and a field where men far outnumber women, instances of misogyny don’t surprise me much. I pretty much take them for granted and don’t really find all that shocking. That doesn’t mean they are pleasant to deal with, but its how things are.
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
I had a friend who was getting her PhD in linguistics who was told to her face that she would never get tenure anywhere because she got married and had a child.
The advisor who told her that was a woman, and there definitely seemed to be some pent-up resentment. The advisor seemed to feel that since she had been forced to give up having a personal life in order to have a career, she was damn well going to demand the same from her female students.
Steve from Antioch
When I saw this thread, I was sure it was going to end up being about the Dean at UC Berkeley’s law school: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/03/09/dean-of-uc-berkeley-school-of-law-sued-for-sexual-harassment/
TLDNR: Dean admits to sexually harassing assistant for over a year. UC Berkeley – the most head up their ass politically correct place in the fucking world – decides to “punish” the Dean by cutting his salary by 10%. No joke. That means he was barely clearing $400K after his punishment.
Assistant finally filed lawsuit.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodinger’s cat: Sadly true in the corporate world and nonprofit sectors as well. Early on I discovered that the few older women in management who could have served as mentors had no interest in being helpful and some were openly hostile to younger women. Not sure why, but it seemed they needed to pass on the very real hardships they experienced to the next generation: “I suffered, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t too” and all that.
Iowa Old Lady
@RSA: Those training programs may do some good in setting expectations, but they also serve as CYA for the employer because they can say they told someone not to do whatever it was.
Cheryl Rofer
@Elmo: I’ve been lucky, too, and not had to deal with this kind of thing. Although sometimes I wonder if I just missed the cues. I can be obtuse.
@LAO: I have had to deal with the kind of thing you describe, where women are expected to do men’s emotional work or just keep things running via such things as tissues and coffee. Microaggressions all the time.
There’s another case in the news, too: Brian Richmond at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. An additional feature of this case is that the reporter who wrote that article was abruptly fired this week.
My suspicion is that this became more of a thing after the sexual revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, and that the famous men like to prey on young things who they find more desirable and also less likely to report them.
ETA: Just saw Steve’s mention of the Berkely Law School dean. Michael Eisen, who is on the Berkeley faculty, has been covering Berkeley’s problems in this area, and is disgusted.
bemused
I can’t access the Times piece yet but the author’s blog, hope jahren sure can write is interesting from what I’ve read so far. Six Things You Can Do When People Say Stupid Sexist Shit to You.
Starfish
@Mnemosyne: A lot of older women have been through the academic system when it was even harder so they try to weed out women harder than men do so women do not waste time on these fruitless paths. It’s harsh and not something I agree with, but I could see why they do it.
So many women get penalized for having children in their mid to late 20s. In fields dominated by women, they expect that this is a thing that happens, but in tech fields…
schrodinger's cat
@Starfish: In my case it was not just a case of hurt feelings, those I can deal with.
@O. Felix Culpa:
That describes what I had to deal with to a T. I also had to deal with threats about my funding etc.
FlyingToaster
I haven’t been given much BS since I got out of grad school.
Undergrad and grad school, however, ran from annoying to lodging complaints with the department chair about the undergrad advisor. Since I was one of 100 women doing so, no retaliation was made, and he stopped being an advisor.
And professionally, I’ve spent enough time with the smelly men club* to be pretty clear on where they’d better fucking stop already. Cursing in several languages seems to help. Calling one repeat miscreant “dickslap” did wonders.
* Back in the 80s, at a lot of startups hereabouts, we had very talented programmers who didn’t always remember to go home and shower, and the pre-buildout Kendall Square office buildings were just warehouses with aluminum frames and drop ceilings. So no building showers, so the locked programmers area was, well, aromatic. Open offices have nearly eliminated that problem, if not the base misogyny.
Mike J
@Starfish:
Men do too. I try to never tell somebody their code sucks though. I try to show them how to improve it. It’s the price you pay for having junior staff (and not paying the economic price of hiring more senior devs.)
Mnemosyne
@Starfish:
It’s nice of you to try and give an excuse for that person but, no, it was pretty clearly, I resent that I had to choose between having a family and having a career, so I will now block your career from advancing in retaliation.
Cheryl Rofer
Linky for Michael Eisen’s disgust, so that my comment doesn’t go into moderation.
smith
@redshirt:
Yep. Harassment works best (for the harasser) when there’s a power differential. When I saw this article a few days back, I was wondering why we are mostly hearing about STEM, when there are more women in the humanities. Now, I’m sure there is plenty of harassment there as well if we look for it, but one thing that may temper it is that there are also more women faculty and administration in the humanities with more power to take meaningful steps to stop harassers.
James E Powell
@trollhattan:
Are any of us really prepared? We can be certain that the corporate press/media will treat it as normal, no big deal, both sides do it, and so on. We can be certain that “some Democrats” will always be around to agree with whatever bullshit is thrown at Hillary, and we can be certain that the judgment of nearly everyone will be that it’s all her fault.
MomDoc
@Elmo: I believe I have been pretty lucky as well. My main recollection of sexism was college physics where my professor (who had obtained his PhD at 16 and was at the time in his late 60s) did not believe that any women should be in his class. If a male student were to debate an answer with him, he would engage in a substantive and logical discussion; if a woman tried to have a similar discussion, it was met with condescension and a bit of ridicule. I was warned before I entered the class but I had to take physics to get into medical school. Most of the women in the class were there for the same reason — we had no other option. I tried to wait him out because he was old and was close to retirement but no such luck.
I am a doctor and for the most part, my male medical colleagues were actually protective of me — scaring off potential stalker patients (I had a few who would just come up to the clinic and hang around) or staying late to make sure I was not left in the clinic alone with a particularly concerning patient. I believe my height may have influenced some of the lack of overt sexism (5’11”). My habit at the time of dating athletes may have also played a role in keeping people in line.
LAO
@O. Felix Culpa: @schrodinger’s cat: Lucky enough not to deal with that. Older female defense attorneys were terrific. And it’s a great feeling, standing in the well of a courtroom and realizing there’s one other woman present -the judge!
schrodinger's cat
When I go to India the bitchiest comments about weight gain/loss, clothes etc come from other women. I don’t think women will have Hillary’s back like black folks had Obama’s.
Starfish
@Mike J: Well, in my case it was someone who was maybe decent in one programming language trying to write code in a different programming language the way that they would in their first programming language (like when Java code is written like C code because the person writing the code knows C.)
Captain Sunshine
@Ruckus:
As my dad used to say, “Son, you may know it’s rainin’, but you don’t know how to stop gettin’ wet.”
RSA
@Iowa Old Lady:
True, and I can see how that could lead to bad results, what with the typical university’s power structure.
Iowa Old Lady
Along with a cease to the which-is-worse-sexism-or-racism argument, I’d like a moratorium on women-are-worse-bosses-advisors-etc-to-other-women-than-men-are generalizations.
FlyingToaster
@Mike J: It’s nearly impossible to do when you have someone who is supposedly a senior developer who goes in and mucks up the code that the contractor optimized. (Customizable demo front end to their middleware, me & their IT had everything sandboxed.)
He threw a tantrum, then tried to blame me, and I handed the management the manual I wrote for their code. The VP of Engineering was able to customize a demo in an hour using the manual. Their intern took over and was doing most of them in 20 minutes.
Hasta la vista, you sensitive little twit. Next time read the RTFM. Or go work for [redacted publisher]!
Starfish
@Mnemosyne: I desperately want there to be some legitimate reason for it. That is all I can say about that.
schrodinger's cat
@Iowa Old Lady: So I should not talk about my lived experience because it does not fit your pet theories of rah rah sisterhood? Is it somehow OK for women to silence other women?
Mnemosyne
@Iowa Old Lady:
I think it depends on the field, to a certain extent. Where I’m at now (entertainment), I’ve had a lot of women bosses and most of them have been great. (And the one who sucked did not suck because of any kind of sexism on her part, she just sucked.) When I was at a medical center, I had two female bosses and they were also great.
Academia is its own animal and there really do seem to be some serious problems there. Not entirely sure why.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@Mnemosyne:
I call if “fraternity hazing syndrome,” the notion that “if I suffered it, you damn well better too, or my suffering’s for nothing.” Misery loves company, I guess.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodinger’s cat: This. I don’t understand censorship of lived experience in response to a question about lived experience.
debbie
@Peale:
The Captain’s photo is in black and white, so it looks as dark as navy blue.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
my wife recently went to a work-life seminar for women at the university she works at. in almost every workshop, the women leading them gave the same advice: ‘don’t say no’. outside of the general creepiness of the phrase, it makes you shake your head. would men give the same advice to other men? lol, no fuckin’ way.
Ruviana
@Adam L Silverman: LOL! True! But the way colleges and universities are being nibbled away we may have that yet!
HRA
Every other day someone with mush in their brain, will send me an email, message, etc. that is more annoying rather than scary IMO. Delete, erase, call it spam and it is gone.
I worked on a campus. I walked there daily for exercise. People would say hi, have a short conversation or ask for directions and even how to dress for the cold weather our area is noted for.
Soon it became evident one man was always at one or another points of my walk. I began taking different routes. Evidently it ticked him off. He somehow found a golf cart to use and came within inches of hitting me as I jumped into a door. Now I listened for the sound of an engine every time I stepped out of the building.
Even though you are encouraged to report it to the campus police, you know by prior reports from coworkers that it is very deeply frowned upon. The department head finds it amusing. Great! This was fear like I never ever experienced. Note: I have on different occasions lived in the inner city without fear.
divF
@debbie: Actually, his coat was navy blue until they switched to broadcasting in color. At that point, he changed to a red coat.
The coat in the Smithsonian is navy blue.
Iowa Old Lady
@schrodinger’s cat: Not at all. I’ve had crappy experience of my own. But here’s the thing. Everyone who lives in a sexist society absorbs sexism to some degree including women, which is why they can treat other women so badly. But absent data, saying women are worse in general (rather than in what you’ve seen) can easily be part of that sexism. I’m sorry I came across as silencing you. I didn’t mean that.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruviana: The corporate model now being followed is not helping matters. While there has been no way to actually operationalize the model and get empirical verification for the theory, the institutional anomie explanation of how things work in the US just seems to have more and more validity every day. If it can’t be monetized, it has no value.
http://www.amazon.com/Crime-American-Dream-Steven-Messner/dp/1111346968/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457825555&sr=1-1&keywords=crime+and+the+american+dream+5th+edition
debbie
@schrodinger’s cat:
Believe me, it’s not just in the sciences. My background is sales, marketing, and publishing; and back-stabbing bitches were fairly common in each. It drives me absolutely crazy that there are women who think that’s the way to get ahead (or trip up others).
TheMightyTrowel
@Adam L Silverman: Nope. Unacceptable. These men become serial offenders because they are savvy, they are supremely clever and they know exactly how to id and stalk the women who they harass. They choose subordinates, students and people in precarious employment intentionally rather than the other women they work with and around because these women are in a less secure position and will have less credibility if they complain. And even if the harassers were stupid and ignorant, their friends and colleagues allow this behavior to continue under their noses–even after multiple complaints have been leveled. Misogyny and sexual predation are not solely crimes of the dumb and saying so implicitly exculpates colleagues, department members and bystanders who could and should speak up.
schrodinger's cat
@Iowa Old Lady: Women don’t have a monopoly on either being good or bad, yes that I agree with.
schrodinger's cat
@Adam L Silverman: Education and healthcare are the two fields in which that model fails miserably, also government, that’s why we get situations like Flint.
Starfish
@Iowa Old Lady: Well, the deal with the women is that there are so few of them so we draw generalizations from the few women that we see. I basically had about one women professor a year in my academic career inside my STEM fields, and I believe that is because I was at a private university. (I believe there would have been less women at public universities.) The ones who were married and had functional lives looked like unreliable flakes because they were difficult to find. The ones who did not seem like flakes were usually childless.
And some of the women were not tenured and were putting up with crap that we as students were not typically seeing.
Like in graduate school, one of my professors who was decent enough was getting sexist student reviews from the students in her class so she was really upset about her student reviews, and there was no one in her department for her to talk to about these issues.
A lot of times the women had to teach the lower level classes filled which were much larger and filled with students who were going to be weeded out soon.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks for the clarification, and I agree with your general point that having a degree doesn’t preclude stupidity in other areas (see: Ben Carson).
But I’ve also noticed that in cases of harassment, and sometimes even sexual assault, the offenders will often reach for the “crossed signals” defense. They’ll insist that they’re somehow so unaware of normal human communication that they just didn’t understand that the victim wasn’t consenting. It can get to the point where they’ll have the victim second-guessing what she did to cause it. But as this guy’s email shows, they know exactly what they’re doing.
TheMightyTrowel
@Mnemosyne: my uk friends call this Maggie Thatcher Syndrome: ogling the ladder up after you when you break the glass ceiling – sociologically it’s a variant on model minority problems.
Adam L Silverman
@TheMightyTrowel: As I indicated in my response to Tara in comment 43, I think you mistook the point I was trying to make, but now that its happened twice I probably didn’t express myself clearly in regard to the point I was trying to make. I am not, in any way, shape, or form trying to or interested in letting these guys, or anyone else who commits sexual harassment, assault, and/or rape off the hook. Nor was I trying to indicate that these individuals were not manipulative nor effectively using the power structures they could manipulate to do what they are doing and get away with it.
What I was saying is that just because someone is well educated or well credentialed does not make them smart, nor does it make them sensible.
Feebog
I used to teach sexual harrasment classes to new supervisors. These were always mixed classes, and I would tell them that 95 percent of the class was directed at the males. I started by telling the men that there are only two type of guys; those that don’t get it, and those who get that they don’t get it.
Adam L Silverman
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: No argument there.
JanieM
@Adam L Silverman: This cracked me up. I can’t tell you how many times during my grad school years I muttered to myself, “At least it keeps ’em off the streets.”
OT, but I want to thank you out loud for the coverage of the Malheur affair. I am in as bad a state as the declared groupies, I’m just too much of a lurker to come out with it. Or I was. ;-)
Miss Bianca
I don’t really want to get into the chicken and egg game of “which comes first/f*cks things up worse in our society, sexism or racism.” But I do find it depressing, looking at the shit that got flung at President Obama, vs. the shit that has been flung, and is likely to be flung, at Sec. (President-to-Be?) Clinton. With the notable exceptions of guys like Cornel West and Ben Carson, I can’t think of a single African-American who doesn’t recognize and deplore the disrespectful,racist shit for what it is, or feels any investment in taking part in it. However, some of Sec. Clinton’s worst, most gleeful detractors and shit-slingers are going to be other women. There’s a solidarity in racial identity that there doesn’t appear to be in sex/gender identity. Why *that* should be, I don’t know.
ETA: Well, great. Between thinking about that and Adam’s point about women’s principal value in some eyes being walking incubators, so that the very idea of women’s right to bodily autonomy is kind of a cruel joke, I think I’ve managed to bum myself out badly. Time to play some music.
PurpleGirl
@Peale: His coat was bright, fire engine red but it had huge pockets. I found a picture of Hillary Clinton in a greyish striped top coat with huge pockets. I think it’s about her over coat outfits and possibly her hair compared his bowl cut with bangs.
(I don’t suggest looking for pictures of Hillary Clinton and Captain Kangaroo because some of what has already been photoshopped of her is disgusting. The people who created these images CAN NOT call themselves Christian, in any way, shape or form.)
I need some brain bleach now.
Adam L Silverman
@JanieM: High Janie, there’s coffee and cookies in the back. Let the group know when you’re ready to share.
LAO
@JanieM:
Welcome. We are a friendly group of addicts.
smith
I had some of the same reaction as Old Iowa Lady to the discussion of women bosses, in part because it’s a rather hoary sexist trope that women who succeed are back-stabbing bitches to other women. I’ve had a couple horrendous women bosses myself, but I think the most parsimonious explanation is that there are female assholes just as there are male assholes.
TheMightyTrowel
@Adam L Silverman: but what I’m saying is that this has little to do with credentials except as proxies for power and, in fact, i think that these serial harassers are very smart and savvy as can be seen in the specific shorts of harassment campaigns they’ve developed, the types of people they target and the communities of supporters they’ve cultivated. Arguing that harassment is a stupid behavior, while emotionally satisfying, does not reflect the realities of these examples or the long term perpetuation of misogynustic harassment in professional contexts.
Saying this is stupid behavior frees men (and women and others) to remain wildly blind to harassment carried out by people they deem intelligent (whether credentialed or not) and sets up an argument to discredit any victims who come forward.
Skerry
It saddens me that almost every discussion of sexual harassment in the workplace goes to a discussion of how women are mean to each other.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: You’re still taking on new support group members as a sponsor, right?
O. Felix Culpa
@TheMightyTrowel:
I’m sure you didn’t mean “ogling.” ;) But, your point is well taken. I think the shock (in my youth) with respect to some women in the workplace was discovering they were not necessarily natural allies. That, contra my expectations of sisterhood and mutual support, some targeted other women with particular hostility. But my best boss ever was a woman fifteen years younger than me and I’ve had some really bad male bosses. So both sides do it. :P
Oregon Rose
@James E Powell: I can hear it now – the talking heads chuckling and say, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” For the past 8 years I’ve been furious about the disrespect shown to PBO, and I guess I’d better be ready to be furious for the next 8 years as well.
Adam L Silverman
@TheMightyTrowel: I honestly think we’re talking past each other because I’m not making the point I was trying to make clearly enough. Clarifying doesn’t seem to be helping, so I’m just going to leave it with: there is nothing in what you’ve written in your reply that I disagree with at all.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: I can’t serve as sponsor until I break the Bundy’s hold over me. But I can be an enabler.
TheMightyTrowel
@Adam L Silverman: fair enough. And fwiw some of the dumbest people I’ve worked with have multiple higher degrees and major grants and fellowships.
gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
Considering when women “dress to impress” they seem to be trying to out do other women, I do not find this surprising.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: I’m going to have to bring in a specialist as a guest blogger.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: @LAO:
“Hi, LAO, my name is MB and I am a Sagebrush Rebellion addict. I have come to realize that i am powerless over my addiction. Only a Higher Power, and the High Country News, can help me deal with it.”
ETA: Oh, great, look at the cover of the latest HCN…I think I’m gonna have to steal it from my friend…
Mnemosyne
@Skerry:
Unfortunately, I think that’s because it’s not just that some women are mean, but that some of them feel they have a vested interest in supporting the existing power structure and do so wholeheartedly. There are a whole lot of conservative women who are more interested in propping up male power than they are in supporting other women. So it’s difficult to talk about institutional sexism and harassment without discussing the role of other women in supporting that structure.
TheMightyTrowel
@O. Felix Culpa: puliing the ladder up. Pulling. Stupid android autocorrect.
But yes. Me too. I’m an academic and in my field there are very few women in senior positions – almost none in Australia where I’m currently employed. Of those who are, maybe 10% value mentoring other women. The rest are either oblivious or outright hostile because spending time with women or acknowledging sexism makes them look soft and female and they clawed their way up the ranks in a severely macho field by being more macho than the men.
I’m early-mid career and my cohort are spending a lot of energy developing p2p mentoring since we can’t trust any of the senior academics to pull us up so we’re linking arms to keep more of us afloat.
O. Felix Culpa
@Skerry: Perhaps because it happens? The phenomenon makes me sad too. I would rather not have experienced it. And yes, there is the more generalized phenomenon of assholes of whatever gender being assholes. I have learned to differentiate between the two without denying the reality of either.
bemused
Many years ago I was at a knitting class. During the lunch break the knitters chatted about their lives. One woman who took her knitting with her almost everywhere told a story about going back to college after her kids were older. During a lecture that didn’t require taking notes, just listening, she pulled out her knitting and worked at that while paying attention to the lecture. Evidently this annoyed the male teacher because when the class was over and everyone was leaving he said to her, “You know knitting is just another form of masturbation”. We all roared with laughter as she said she replied to him, “Well, you do it your way and I’ll do it my way.”
O. Felix Culpa
@TheMightyTrowel: Good for you and your cohort! Collective action amongst academics is a rarity (another generalization drawn from experience, so shoot me). I wish you the best of luck.
schrodinger's cat
@gene108: There is no need for bitchy comments when one steps off the tarmac after you been flying over several time zones for over 24 hours and your body clock is out of whack.
I also don’t need to be told what I am supposed to wear or have bangles shoved up my wrist, because that’s what married women are supposed to wear.
Bitch please, keep your hands off me.
TheMightyTrowel
@O. Felix Culpa: herding cats is simple compared to a roomful of academics!
LAO
@Miss Bianca: Welcome MB, to a safe place where no one will judge you, or cure you …your very own copy of the HCN should be arriving shortly.
bl
I attended a large STEM graduate program 35 years ago at a public university which was over 95% male. Over the 10 years that I was involved or had friends still in the program, there were less than 10 women altogether. All but 2 had to deal with sexual demands from their professors as a condition of obtaining a degree.
Back then there were no sexual harassment laws, and there was little you could do about it.
I have since worked in mostly male dominated environments. Sexual harassment is ubiquitous.
Matt McIrvin
A couple of the regulars at Lawyers, Guns and Money are really starting to work themselves up into a lather of doom-wailing about how Hillary Clinton is the worst politician in history. Cole has nothing on them. It’s getting hard to read.
hitchhiker
Ugh.
Hillary is 5 years older than I am. I majored in civil engineering in the 70s before switching to math. I have been harassed and discriminated against when working as a
lunch waitress (you need to wear a girdle)
bowling alley waitress (let’s see how you look in these hot pants before we hire you)
student (tenured linguistics prof hitting on me in his office)
bartender (customers encouraged to think of me as a sex worker by the owner)
cost analyst (customer asking me to have sex with him while he was in town)
ops manager at fedex slc (mechanic asking me in front of my work group if I wore panties)
ops manager at fedex boeing field (being given the nickname “weenie” to designate me as a whiner — which I wasn’t. God forbid. My Hispanic peer was called “beaner,” by the way. The white guys who used these nicknames didn’t have nicknames themselves; one of them was my boss.)
Those are just the highlights, and every single one of the men involved would describe themselves as good guys who mean no harm. I think that a year from now we’ll be looking at a f*cking FLOOD of horribleness aimed at Hillary Clinton.
planetjanet
@smith: Yes. Yes. Yes. I don’t like the generalization. I don’t know that I have had many people who I would consider allies in my career. I have never felt I could talk about possible problems. I did have one rather blatant conflict with a harasser, but my management handled it well. Though we never spoke of it as being sexist at all.
Cacti
@Tracy Peters, Jr.:
Did you get lost on the way to somewhere stupid, dear?
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: She’s an okay campaigner and a solid debater/townhall performer. At the end of the day no one is voting for someone to be a candidate for the next four or eight years, they are voting for someone to be president.
People need to get out of their own heads more often.
LAO
@Cacti: if you wish to engage the teabagger, he’s holding court in the previous thread. It’s pretty amusing.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@LAO: LOL. My friend for whom I once worked as an associate at his defense firm had a vehicular homicide case. When the scene photos were provided, he handed them to me and said “look at these and tell me if I’ll be able to look at them.” I went through the whole batch and told him without hesitation “not a chance.”
They were graphic in an unusual way but it was well beyond his comfort zone. And he totally trusted me to know that and be honest, as well as having no doubt that I could look at them. So the questions about whether women can see the “gory” stuff, when it’s part of the job is at once both offensive and comical to me.
ThresherK
@Elmo: (I have to remember that your nym here doesn’t indicate your gender.)
I’m a male, not young, and I remember seriousness (for want of a better owrd) on the women in engineering when I was an undergrad. My very limited experience hints that STEM was not something women seemed to be encouraged to do, back then, if they didn’t know what they wanted to study, whereas males were not actively dissuaded from taking it up. Correct me as needed.
The XKCD cartoon says it all, and it’s so well-known I’m not even linking to it, even though it came out decades after my observation..
C.V. Danes
Having spent my formative years in the nuclear navy, and then IT, the whole bromance world is quite real. What I will say, too, is that IT has quite a lot of boys who never become men, and a lot of very smart man-children who are socially inept and for whom women are the utmost mystery.
PurpleGirl
@Starfish:
A lot of older women have been through the academic system when it was even harder so they try to weed out women harder than men do so women do not waste time on these fruitless paths. It’s harsh and not something I agree with, but I could see why they do it.
If the older women in the field would support and mentor the younger women then the paths forward would not be so fruitless, ya think?
(I began college as a chemistry major, not pre-med chemistry but chemistry for chemistry. I washed out because my mathematics ability was sorely lacking but I know that a number of professors tried to help me because I was there for chemistry and I was a female.)
Joel
I’m in the field. This shit happens far too much for my liking, and I have unfortunately first hand experience with it. The thing that’s unsaid is that academia is almost totalitarian. Your advisors write letters for you along every step of the way. If you burn them, they can fuck you years down the line. The system needs to be torn down and rebuilt.
Mnemosyne
@LAO:
I especially loved him using the Bible quote to support his stance while sneering at the idea of making decisions based on emotional appeals. That’s some tasty cognitive dissonance right there.
smintheus
The oafish behavior of male faculty in the sciences appears to be worse and vastly more pervasive than in other disciplines such as the humanities. In fact it’s common for humanities departments to be predominantly female.
Also ought to be said that it’s far from unknown for women faculty to treat males poorly. As a job candidate I experienced several instances of gross unprofessionalism by female faculty or administrators who objected to giving any consideration at all to a male candidate, and there was one really crude come-on from one Chairwoman. It’s the feudal nature of academia that puts nearly all power in the hands of people who are nearly unaccountable for their treatment of those who want to advance into the field.
schrodinger's cat
@Skerry: It comes up because having more women in the workplace is treated as a panacea to the problems women face. Women can be the face of misogyny too, sad but true.
Joel
@bemused: I will say this; people knitting at lectures bug me. But nowhere near as much as people with their laptops open, and that ship sailed way too long ago.
C.V. Danes
@Tracy Peters, Jr.:
Perhaps if the gubmint concentrated on creating some jobs, your problem would fix itself, no?
LAO
@Mnemosyne:It’s pretty ridiculous. Frankly, it’s a good thing I live in NYC, cause I fcking hate these people. As long as I avoid Staten Island and Long Island, I can avoid these smucks. 7+ years of this. Can’t wait for the Hillary blowback! Not really.
Cacti
Seems appropriate for this thread:
Michelle Fields of Breitbart News files a misdemeanor battery complaint with Jupiter, FL Police Department against Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
Naturally the editor at Breitbart has ordered others to…stop defending Michelle Fields.
LAO
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): lol. When will men figure out, we’re tougher than them?
WarMunchkin
Surprisingly a large number of negative stereotypes about women in this very thread. Here’s a thought: more and diverse women everywhere – and diverse not meaning just race – but backgrounds, incomes, dispositions. Some will necessarily be mean just like men. But on balance, more reflective of the human experience.
I note with amusement that there’s an uptick in demand for unrepentant, violent women antihero characters in novels nowadays. Also Dietland is a great Django-esque portrayal of a group of discriminated-against women.
mclaren
@Adam L Silverman:
The quotes from that male professor don’t sound stupid or ignorant. It sounds more like the guy has an uncontrollable crush on her and he’s so entitled that he just can’t wrap his head around the concept that she isn’t interested.
Maybe this will call down the wrath of every woman on this blog on my head, but as a guy I don’t see a problem with someone telling a woman he’s attracted to her. The problem occurs when: [1] the guy is in a position of power — then it’s totally inappropriate and he shouldn’t do it. But that doesn’t apply to a professor and a professional colleague who is also a professor; [2] After the woman makes it clear she has no interest. At that point, the guy should shut up and go away. Period. Instantly. No mas. There’s also the issue of whether it’s good judgment to ask out a woman you’re working with. As a general rule, it seems to me that workplace romances are problematic, but maybe that’s just me.
The creepy aspects of that male professor’s behavior seem to me to involve the implied blackmail when the guy lists all the things he’s supposedly done for her and phrases it as “I couldn’t believe the things I was compelled to do for you.” That’s bizarre stalker language. Ditto when the guy says he was “utterly unable to get a grip.” So, what, she should carry a taser around with her at all times? That’s not even creepy, that’s just plain scary. It sounds like a post-rape confession. “Yeah, I had to rape her, I was unable to get a grip.” If I were that woman I’d be scared spitless of that professor.
The creepy undertone of power dominance also makes the male professor’s quotes unutterably slimy. “That’s just the way things are and you’re gonna have to deal with me until one of us leaves.” My response would be: “Or until one of us gets his ass fired for sexual harassment.”
None of that strikes me as ignorant or stupid on the male professor’s part, just deeply entitled and privileged and creepy.
Mnemosyne
@Joel:
As a knitter, I’ll tell you something that will sound counterintuitive: it can actually help me concentrate better on the lecture if I have something to do with my hands. It may be a manifestation of my ADHD, but it’s not uncommon.
If it’s something I’m going to be tested on, I will take notes, but if it’s something I’m listening to for information, knitting something uncomplicated can help me pay better attention. I do usually try to make a point of keeping my head up and watching the speaker to make it clear that I am actually listening.
Steeplejack
@debbie:
Goofus and Gallant.
Google:
Goofus "Highlights for Children"
(including quotation marks), then click the Images tab. You’re all set.
C.V. Danes
@debbie: Indeed. I’ve listened to my wife more than once rant about how she much preferred working with men than women.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: I often remind people at the gym I go to, that proportionately (as in relation to their mass, height, weight, structure), the strongest and toughest people in that gym consist of the following six women – who’s names I wont’ disclose here. What they have to do, proportionately for their structure, makes what I do look easy.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Emailing a colleague to tell her you have a crush on her is creepy and vaguely threatening. Stick to the old-fashioned method of flirting in the coffee room until you have a chance to ask her out. Asking her out by email is a little borderline, but can be fine if you keep it neutral and don’t make it into a list of all the things you’ve done for her that now require her to reciprocate by going on a date.
C.V. Danes
@WarMunchkin: Diversity, period. I like working with people with different backgrounds, because I think we’re stronger for it.
Skerry
@schrodinger’s cat: I understand this. It just bothers me that discussion of sexual harassment (which is what AL started this thread as) can’t be about sexual harassment without spending so much time talking about “women on women violence”, if you will. It seems a bit of both-sides-do-it to me.
(For reference, I was an engineering undergrad in the ’70s and in grad school in the early ’80s. Worked in the profession until just a couple of years ago. I’ve seen and experienced harassment and sexism in many forms and from many sources. I also did my best to mentor younger women. The example AL gives about the “feelings” email is not the first I’ve seen.)
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
And the above sounds like something a future stalker would write.
C.V. Danes
@Mnemosyne: Note that a lot of men in STEM are somewhat socially inept. They don’t always know what’s creepy. Not giving it a pass. Just saying.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@LAO: It’s among the things I adore about that particular man – he has no doubt. So many of the rest aren’t going to get it.
JanieM
@Mnemosyne: “it can actually help me concentrate better on the lecture if I have something to do with my hands”
I totally get this, only for me it has always been doodling. Googling “doodling makes you smarter” yields lots of article, so I don’t think I’m imagining it.
(I see people knitting in meetings/lectures far more often than I see people crocheting. Do more people knit in general? Or is it easier to knit while looking elsewhere than to crochet while looking elsewhere?)
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, that was my take on it too. That stuff about “dropping a bomb on you” sounds like the guy can’t work up the courage to flirt with her, which spells trouble. Rule of thumb: if you can’t find an innocuous way of letting a woman know in person that you’re interested in her, shut up and walk away and put her out of your mind. I’ve seen cases where a guy gets totally obsessed with a woman even though she’s done absolutely nothing to provoke it, and it’s pathological. That is definitely NOT okay.
Asking a woman out for a cup of coffee seems OK to me. Emailing her out of the blue to confess that you’re totally in love with her seems bizarre, stalkerish, and frankly the kind of thing you’d expect to read in an arrest report.
redshirt
@mclaren: Are you in academia, mclaren?
mclaren
@C.V. Danes:
Also there’s the issue that men in STEM find themselves in classes that are mostly male, with only a handful of women. So their options for dating are more limited than, say, a guy who is an English major, or an anthropology major, or even in pre-med.
That doesn’t excuse this kind of stalkerish behavior, though. I mean, what the hell — we’ve got tinder now, craigslist, all kinds of other options.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@mclaren:
With the caveat that I haven’t read the NYTimes piece, the guy sounds like a monster to me. The tone, the willingness to send her an e-mail saying this, the implied threats, all say to me that he’s done this (or something like this) before. It’s not an extraordinary crush, it’s a pattern (even if he hasn’t acted on it this way before).
Senior professors are supposed to have lived long enough to have life experiences that teach them how to mentor young students and researchers. Far too many men in positions of power seem to think that “Penthouse Forum” letters are real and are instruction manuals for how to start a relationship and have a healthy sex life.
J was harassed in grad school by a fellow student in her research group. When she reported it to her group leader, he acted as if she had to be more understanding because he was from Korea. When she threatened to sue because it was continuing, the school administration slowly acted, but she still had to work with the student while he (a little more) quickly finished his degree. And then she was told that she wouldn’t be able to graduate until she had a firm job offer (while she had to keep working for the professor without getting paid).
Years later, J got a letter of apology from the student. She never got anything like that from her advisor.
Yes, academics have huge power over their students and younger people they’re supposed to mentor. Their letters of recommendation make or break careers. And they too often think that being brilliant in a particular (often tiny and insular) field means they’re brilliant at everything and thus people should cater to them and enjoy any form of attention.
“Don’t you know who I am?”
I think the first and most important lesson in any sexual harassment course is: “Would you do or say what you’re thinking about doing or saying to your mother or 14 year old daughter? If not, stop thinking that way, and treat the people around you like human beings – not your property.”
Cheers,
Scott.
mclaren
@redshirt:
Nope. You don’t have to be in academia to see cases of men who become inappropriately and bizarre obsessed with female colleagues in the workplace, though, sad to say.
mclaren
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Problematic. I would not ask my mother or my 14 year old daughter out on a date.
Should we construe what you’re saying as: “No male should ever ask a female out on a date”?
mclaren
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
The recent rules that professors should have no sexual contact at all with their students seem wise to me. Ditto academic rules that professors or graduate advisors should not express romantic interest in their students. The power differential is just too extreme.
So in the context of academia or some other workplace situation where there’s a tremendous power differential twixt a woman and a guy, I would agree wholeheartedly that the person in a superior position just should never flirt with or ask out on a date or express admiration for her attractiveness, or anything else of a sexual nature, to a person in a subordinate position. Period.
As a general rule of thumb, though, among people of approximately equal social status or power, asking a woman out on a date doesn’t strike me as sexual harassment, provided the guy does it once and quits once she makes it clear she’s not interested.
So academia strikes me as an altogether different situation than the ordinary workplace.
schrodinger's cat
@Skerry: There is other types of harassment besides sexual. The problem is the power differential. Your adviser can totally screw up your life without making a pass at you. When it is a woman who goes around giving lectures about how to be more inclusive of women in STEM but treats the women that work for her like crap compared to the men. Its tends to stick in one’s craw. Too bad it doesn’t comport with what you want to hear on this thread.
planetjanet
@mclaren: The case described is more than stalkerish. The clear threat that “this is just the way it is until one of us leaves” should make you hear sirens in your head. This is not something you say when seeking a real relationship with someone. There is no concern over whether there is shared interest or not. Her feelings are completely irrelevant. His desire is the only thing that matters. You may say it is due to his cluelessness about normal human behavior, but that is just an excuse.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@mclaren: A senior colleague who is serving as a mentor should never ask out the person being mentored. There’s too much of a power dynamic there.
If she’s really the love of his life, and he her’s, then he or she needs to transfer so that the power dynamic isn’t in play.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
PurpleGirl
@Tracy Peters, Jr.: I have a friend who finally applied for foodstamps. He’s in his 60s, is disabled (brain injuries which keep him from being a nurse) and he looks able-bodied. He receives about $100 a month in benefits. How much work and what work would you suggest he do to get his benefits?
ETA: Also many of those people do not have the training to do work. Again, what work do you suggest?
O. Felix Culpa
@Skerry: I’m afraid I don’t understand this stance. Blog discussions flow, sometimes in odd, sometimes in logical directions. That, in this instance, discussion of male harassment of women in the workplace expanded to include discussion about some women in power treating other women badly in the workplace does not negate the heinous reality or significance of the former. It’s just another dimension of lived experience which we have the right to discuss in an open forum and which should be discussed if anything is to change.
I have mixed-race children, one of whom was being taunted with racist epithets in school when he was younger. When I brought this situation to the principal’s attention, he responded that nothing of that sort could be happening in his school. He didn’t want to hear about it. Sadly, denial of an inconvenient truth doesn’t make it any less real or harmful. The same applies to truths one might find tiresome. The best way to render them less tiresome is to change them, not to suppress discussion of them, in my view. Open, honest interchange is what can make sites like BJ so valuable.
Aleta
UC Berkeley law school Dean Sujit Choudhry resigned yesterday. Last summer, after he admitted sexually harassing his assistant (and there had been others before, in the law school), the provost decided the appropriate response would be to dock him !0% of his more than 400,000$ salary for one year; make him write an apology letter; ask him to take the university training in s.h. that he had previously refused to do; and have him take a one year leave from being dean (while remaining as a professor). The woman he harassed (almost daily) was told by the provost that he did not fire Choudhry because it might damage Choudhry’s career. Later she learned there had been other women, and at that point she decided she must take legal action. (Before any of that, her complaints to supervisors were ignored.) Choudhry came from a position at NYU law school, and before that Toronto, I think, and has/had an award-winning career. He did not resign until the civil suit went public a few days ago. (Again, he did admit his actions (you can look them up) but disagreed that they had happened almost every day, saying they only happened about twice a week, if I remember right.)
Mnemosyne
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
It can be weirdly analogous to being an athlete — as top academic, you’re bringing in research dollars and other donations, so nobody wants to call you on your bad behavior.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: Once a professor has tenure, it is almost impossible to fire them.
mclaren
@planetjanet:
Agreed. That statement was alarming. It sounds like an implied physical threat.
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Yes, absolutely. And the real red flag to me is…how the hell could this woman be the love of this guy’s life if he’s never spent enough time talking to her and getting to know her that she doesn’t realize how he feels? If the professor is “dropping a bomb on her” by telling her, then by definition he doesn’t know her very well. That’s not love, that’s something out of a stalker film.
schrodinger's cat
@Starfish: You sound like you approve of the typical abuser dynamic, I am abusing you for your own good. Lovely.
Mnemosyne
@Aleta:
If UC Berkeley was letting Chowdhry skip his mandatory annual sexual harassment training, they’re going to be in big trouble with the state of California. That training is mandated by law for everyone in a supervisory position in the whole state, both private and public employers.
Aleta
@Aleta: By the way, the school has a 0 tolerance policy, and the provost had previously explained to the woman that there were grounds for dismissal, but he believed Chowdhry would mend his ways, if I remember right.
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Honestly, I think that’s often used by universities as an excuse to not do anyone about serial harassers. If a tenured professor was convicted of murder, would they be required to keep him on the payroll?
Aleta
@Mnemosyne: Dean of the law school, UC Berkeley, good grief.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: Probably not, one hopes.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@mclaren:
The usual rule (in the training I’ve had) is that it becomes harassment when it’s “unwanted”. It could even be a unwanted by others in the office who aren’t in the relationship (e.g. there was a story years ago about people fornicating in their office and someone who worked there was upset about it and filed suit – she won, IIRC). Making an innocent, or a socially awkward, remark once isn’t harassment on its own.
But even among equals, dating at work can be problematic (or worse) because of the tensions created if the relationship ends badly, of course.
Cheers,
Scott.
mclaren
@Aleta:
How the hell can the kid-gloves treatment Chowdhry got qualify as a “zero tolerance policy”?
Aleta
@Mnemosyne: Perhaps he did not “refuse'” as I wrote (wrong word choice on my part). Perhaps it was said that he had postponed it more than once.
Mnemosyne
@JanieM:
I’ve never been able to figure out crochet, but I think you do need to look at it while you do it. With knitting, you can let the needle be your guide, which is why some blind people can still knit.
Cheryl Rofer
@Mnemosyne: Tenured professors can be fired for cause. Contracts vary from one school to another, but there is usually something about “moral turpitude” or updated words to that effect. There may be extended procedures to go through.
Mnemosyne
@Aleta:
It’s an annual requirement, so he couldn’t have postponed it for long. Unless, as I suspect, Berkeley decided that their star professor shouldn’t have to be bothered with such trivia and figured out a way to fudge the records.
Aleta
@mclaren: I just can’t think of an answer to that, not even a funny one.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
I wouldn’t say that’s all that tongue in cheek. Have you ever talked to homeless people? I’ve talked to a few, mainly because I volunteered in the field for a few yrs and because I walk a lot. In my neighborhood now and far more where I used to work I’d see/be among homeless face to face on a daily basis. Most of them have serious problems, but a not insignificant number are quite intelligent. Somewhere life failed them, be it their own making or just circumstance. From my personal experience it’s a lot easier to end up homeless than people think, having not been all that far away myself, not all that long ago. Another couple of bad breaks and who knows. And clawing your way back is much harder than getting there, especially in today’s work environment.
Elmo
Lots of great comments. I don’t consider the following story as harassment, but directed at another woman it might have been:
When I was a young lawyer, my firm was involved in a sexual harassment case in which there were pictures of the accused’s wedding tackle. My office was in the law library, and I had one of those big sheets of protective glass on top of my work table. So one day, I came back from lunch to find that copes of the pictures had been slid under the glass, so they were my new desktop. I couldn’t get them out until building maintenance could come lift the glass.
Okay. Here we go.
So that night, I worked up a letterhead from the CA State Bar ( this was before Adobe or Photoshop) and wrote a scathing letter about various imagined ethics violations. I had it folded and put in his business mail the next day. He spent a week in terror before I pointed out that the Business and Professions code sections were random cites to the rules governing Podiatry.
mclaren
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
This is the new academic rule of thumb, as far as a know. That’s problematic, because how do you know flirting or a compliment or asking a colleague out or whatever is “unwanted” until you do it?
I’ll outsource the criticism of that guidelines that vague to a 2015 Atlantic magazine article:
Source: “The Coddling of the American Mind,” The Atlantic magazine, 2015.
Let’s be clear: sexual harassment is a real and serious problem in academia. Rules against sexual harassment so vague that they can allow a harassment investigation because some guy compliments a woman on her hair, though, aren’t helping.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@mclaren:
Just to be clear – I never claimed to be an academic. I’m not.
The earliest sexual harassment training I recall having was in the late ’80s or early ’90s. I doubt that it has changed much in broad outlines since then. This 22 page .PDF from Vanderbilt seems very similar to what I recall from back then.
Cheers,
Scott.
scav
A) He’s an entitled manipulative creep, and my bet is not only not unaware of his sexism, he’s likely proud of it, albeit probably naming it slightly differently.
Still this bit “He reminds her, in detail, of how he has helped her professionally: “I couldn’t believe the things I was compelled to do for you.” ” made me really want to ask him and his ilk if all the professional help he/they dole/s out to male colleagues means he/they want/s to sleep with them too. Puts a whole new spin on the old boys network, no?
PurpleGirl
@JanieM: I think it’s easier to knit a simple pattern than to crochet even a simple single crochet. Knit is hanging a loop on a loop, crochet is actually putting a knot on top of another knot.
LAO
@mclaren:
I don’t want to sound pedantic but do you compliment a male colleague by telling him his hair looks nice?
Ruckus
@Mike J:
Was going to say, helping someone get better works far better than just telling them they suck. I try to use failure as a learning experience, a point to pivot on getting better rather than a just an accusation. Even if the accusation is correct that their work sucks, it will be taken personally. Fix it, learn from it. That’s how you turn someone who isn’t up to speed into someone that is. And we all benefit.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: @schrodinger’s cat: He or she could, and most likely would, be suspended until the final outcome of the trial. Most tenure agreements have an out for bringing the university/college into disrepute and moral turpitude (or whatever it is called these days). If their is a decent faculty union, the faculty union’s job is to protect the accused from job related reprisals, such as tenure being stripped and termination, from the administration. This is provided the accused requests it. When my Dad was the head of the faculty union at USF the Sami al Arian thing was spooling up into full swing (full disclosure: my Dad was one of three faculty members, and at the time was head of the faculty senate’s investigative committee, that had looked into what al Arian was doing with his teaching and research center at USF after students began to complain. So he had unusual knowledge of what was going on, what al Arian was being accused of, what the university had done, etc. Also, I have a publication, in conjunction with Ken Wald, PhD and Michael Schiccitano, PhD of UF on the al Arian case and trial.). Dad’s job, had al Arian availed himself of the union and its resources was to protect al Arian from the administration, though not from Federal law enforcement. Professor al Arian chose not to seek union assistance and my Dad was no longer union president at the point that the al Arian case broke into the big time. Though it would have been amusing to watch my Dad go on the O’Reilly Factor. Based on how he treated my Dad’s successor, had he treated my Dad the same way, my guess is that O’Reilly would still be taking his meals through a straw.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: I’ve volunteered in plenty of soup kitchens, so I understand exactly what you’re saying.
scav
@Mnemosyne: My mother knit at meetings at Microsoft for the same reason, sometimes even with her hands under the table to be less distracting. I’m pretty sure either she or I ran across studies supporting the habit. (Granted, I assume she was working on some plain work in the under the table stuff, not fair isle or aran etcetera. I don’t think she’s that good at it. Even though basic patterns do get embedded into your fingers after a bit.)
Bobby Thomson
@Aleta: hurting his career is precisely the fucking point of Title VII. Jesus titty fucking Christ, are they trying to drop even lower in the law school rankings?
Isobel
@Adam L Silverman: Holy crap, that paper is downright scary. And it was written before Tennessee passed its terrible laws designed to punish pregnant women who do anything drug or chemical related that could possibly be construed as maybe harming their fetus. This law is set to expire this summer, but is currently in the legislature to be amended to become permanent.
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/18/456459420/tenn-law-targets-pregnant-women-who-are-drug-addicts
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
ROFL, we’re do you work?
Does it meet the following
1) is the target of the comment female?
2) did she complain?
If that’s meet, it’s harassment. End of discussion and been that way since the 90s.
Ruckus
@PurpleGirl:
It isn’t the work that’s important to this person, nor to the people on his/her side of the political aisle. Somewhat it is that they think that welfare/foodstamps is the largest item in our budget, so cutting that cuts their huge taxes. But far more than that it is spite and punishment. Pure spite and punishment. It’s the same people who are now very, very silent on drug testing welfare recipients after they found out that the programs cost dramatically far more than they saved. Now they are just looking for a different delivery method for the spite and punishment.
Mnemosyne
@LAO:
In my case, at least, if I already feel that said male colleague respects me and my work, I am happy to accept compliments on, say, a new haircut. If I already think the guy is a creepy asshole, “Good morning” is going to be suspect coming from him.
At an office party a couple of years ago, I wore some leopard-print leggings (what can I say, it was an 80s-themed party). I got a couple of compliments from male colleagues, but they didn’t bother me because they were polite, restrained, and respectful, not creepy or leering. Because we already had that baseline of respect, I was more pleased to know that I still had good legs at 45 than upset by them.
Steve from Antioch
@Aleta: You don’t say.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: You noticed the word “once”, right?
Of course, it depends on the statement and actions. But saying to a coworker at work, “Would you like to get an ice cream after work?” is not harassment if she says “No” and you don’t ask her that again.
That’s what I was trying to get at.
Cheers,
Scott.
mclaren
@LAO:
Okay, then, compliments are sexual harassment. So all interactions with colleagues must be limited to criticism.
Huh.
LAO
@Mnemosyne: I get what you are saying and absolutely agree that context is a major factor in evaluating how to interpret a comment/compliment. (I have a male colleague with fabulous Kennedy hair and I often compliment him on it, it’s our thing). I was merely pointing out that the assumption that male compliments on women’s attributes are always welcome and should be considered trivial is not a standard we apply to men in the workplace.
mclaren
Obligatory Laura Kipnis article:
“Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe,” (pdf), The Chronicle of Higher Education, Laura Kipnis, 13 September 2015.
I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, she makes some solid points…the absurdity of the sexual harassment seminar she describes, for instance. On the other hand, she seems to go out of her way to dismiss some very real concerns that affect a lot of female students.
Also, Kipnis comes from a film studies background. My impression is that the most serious sexual harassment occurs not in the arts or soft sciences, but in the hard sciences departments where the faculty and student populations are mostly men. So I’m guessing that Kipnis doesn’t know how bad it really gets in, viz., the physics or engineering or astronomy departments.
Isobel
@JanieM: I often crochet in meetings/lectures. It helps me think. Unfortunately, many crochet patterns are more intricate in their stitches and you can’t always feel exactly where to go without having done the pattern many times before. I say this as one who both knits and crochets, though I do prefer crochet.
LAO
@mclaren: see my comment at 199. All I’m suggesting is that, in the workplace, compliments about our physical appearance can make women uncomfortable.
ETA: sometimes it’s not about the intent of the speaker but how his words are received.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@mclaren: Read the Vanderbilt PDF I pointed you to above.
There is a “reasonable person” standard, and the person receiving the comment/action must (usually) say “stop” or something similar (dropping one’s pants doesn’t require the other person to say “stop” for it to be harassment or creating a hostile environment). An innocent comment is not something that one would get in trouble for.
And if you do the “would I want my mom/daughter to hear that” then any seemingly gray areas become a lot less gray.
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@Isobel: I know. Its a mess.
marcion
@LAO
How often do women complement men on their appearance rather than the other way around?
For better or worse, men are still the primary initiators in relationships. If you don’t like it, encourage women to ask men out more.
mclaren
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
The problem is that the 2013 federal Title IX guidelines for sexual harassment in academia abandon the “reasonable person” rule. This bodes trouble for academe, methinks.
Just speaking for myself, I avoid complimenting women on their appearance because…you never know. Better to stay on the safe side. YMMV.
The Other Chuck
@marcion: I’m not certain that workplaces are really the best venue to be effecting such a shift in behaviors. Some people do like to keep those worlds separated, especially when in a position where not playing along can get you fired, or at the very least demeaned and belittled.
(Not suggesting you were implying anything otherwise, but that’s what the thread’s about after all)
chopper
@mclaren:
this doesn’t sound like it would be a change for you.
mclaren
@marcion:
That’s due to the gross differential in the way women are sexualized and objectified in American (Western) society, as opposed to men.
How often are attractive men used to sell consumer products? How often are male comic book characters drawn wearing revealing costumes that show lots of skin? How often are sultry male voice-overs used in TV commercials, as opposed to sultry women’s voices? How many men’s magazines do you see with articles on the cover touting “get yourself ready for swimsuit season” or “how to make yourself more sexually alluring to your mate”? How many young men exhibit chronic pathological self-cutting or binge-purge behavior, as opposed to young women?
JanieM
@Isobel: @Mnemosyne: @PurpleGirl: @scav and anyone I missed:
Thanks for the feedback. One of my grandmothers crocheted a lot, and one of my sisters does as well. They could/can crochet while talking, watching TV, etc., although I have no idea if my sister could do it in a class or meeting. (My grandmother was strictly a stay-at-home matriarch.) I learned the basic crochet stitches when I was a kid, and though I’ve never taken up the craft as an adult, I can still string together something simple like a potholder if I take a notion to. On the other hand, I was never able to get the hang of knitting. So it’s interesting to me that people generally feel like knitting is more…portable, shall we say.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@mclaren: My reading of the DOEd guidelines from 2014 still has the “reasonable person” language. Google cache:
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
mclaren
If you want a hilarious and eye-opening example of sexism in our society, check out The Hawkeye Initiative.
A bunch of men drawn using the provocative poses and ridiculous costumes typically used for female comic book characters. Sort of a visual equivalent of the Bechdel Test.
mclaren
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
From the Kipnis article:
For me, common sense would suggest that the prof should’ve nixed the student’s suggestion of going to an art exhibit together. But that’s just me.
As Kipnis points out:
One girl I went out with told me “If I ask a guy to touch my left breast and he touches my right breast, that’s sexual harassment.” Another girl I went out with wanted me to choke her until she passed out during sex. In both cases my reaction was: “hasta la vista.” The point is that not everyone agrees on what is “reasonable.”
Adam L Silverman
@mclaren: She did understand that those things travel in pairs and hang out in close proximity?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@mclaren: There are always questionable examples. Life isn’t binary.
But the “reasonable person” standard still applies in federal sexual harassment rules [at least the ones I’ve been able to find]. Just as in the “reasonable doubt” standard in juries, there’s no guarantee that the correct result will always be the final outcome. But it works as a standard in the vast majority of cases, and most importantly, there doesn’t seem to be a better one.
It sounds like you made the right decision in both cases you mentioned. Until we all become Thad Sarner and record everything in our day, there are always going to be questions about who is telling the truth in a disagreement about what happened (or didn’t happen). Putting oneself in a sexual situation with unbalanced strangers is rarely a good idea.
Cheers,
Scott.
mclaren
In other news, looks like the world’s best Go player is no longer a human. Google’s DeepMind Go playing program just beat Lee Se-Dol (world’s best Go player) a third time out of five with no losses.
Can sexbots be far behind?
That will wreak a change in human society we haven’t seen since homo sapiens started living in caves and making fire.
Aimai
@gex: very well said.
MoxieM
Also–as a former academic myself–I will testify that harassment takes many forms. In my case I (apparently) inflicted Narcissistic Insult on a Very Important Person in my supervisory food chain. In addition to withdrawing direct support from me & my work, she was powerful enough within the field to yank and/or influence other people to stay away….I had a hard time finding an outside reader (she told several I approached that she wanted them as book reviewers, they they couldn’t pass on that opportunity.) Finally an equally powerful friend from another orbit rescued me, but it left such taste of vitriol in my mouth that after 10 years of school and 5 more years working in basic research, I’m done for good–that was 10 years ago. My field was in the social sciences, and was at elite institutions. To call the environments toxic would be like making toxic some how nice. It wasn’t. I’ll spent the rest of my life wondering why I thought I could manage to work with those people, and wasted so many years trying.
Adam L Silverman
@MoxieM: Sorry to read that.
I’ve seen this before. I am constantly amazed, male or female, by the large amount of people with tenure, and therefore almost complete job security, who then decide that instead of that freeing them up to look out for folks they have instead been liberated to crap all over people.
J R in WV
@LAO:
I don’t think any of my male co-workers ever had attractive hair ;-)
My wife of 45 years was always – um buxom, I guess. She was also one of the first women in her field, and worked hard to advance. She became a news reporter for the Associated Press about 6 years after graduating in Journalism. The Bureau Chief began to refer to her – in her absence – as “The Bod” and he cheerfully went on in his career imagining that she didn’t know that.
30 years later, he was far away from our WV location and at his retirement party, one of the highly regarded women staffers in that Bureau asked him, loudly, “Name, is it true that you used to call Mrs J “The Bod” when you worked together 30 years ago?” Much laughter! He knew it had been stupid, and reports that he turned bright red were just wonderful for her.
Wife put up with tons of sexist abuse her whole career, so I won’t be surprised by the additional tons of BS that will be flung at Hillary Clinton – she has already coped with more tons of crap than anyone but Bill Clinton and the Obama family have suffered from. I try not to imagine the newly invented “humor” that Republicans will unveil over the coming years.
There is a reason that very little successful republican comedy has ever been broadcast. Obviously.
And that professor – he knows what he’s doing, they all do. Denial is for self-protection. They aren’t socially awkward, they are evil users of power to manipulate others for their own pleasure. Disgusting little perverts, no matter their physical size.
Tehanu
@Aleta:
But … isn’t that where John Yoo works?
SFAW
@Chales P. Mcdermott:
Oooh, look, a five-year-old found the internet!
mclaren
I guess one way of looking at it is that we lucked out that it took so long for a sexist thug to show up and shit all over this thread.
(Sigh.)
Anne Laurie
@SFAW: @mclaren: That was Cole’s personal stalker. Must’ve scrounged up another IP address.
dantanna
@Starfish: Oh sure, just like being a condescending jerk to someone for whom English is a second language. Totally justified.
fuckwit
@Mnemosyne: Why is that? Is it some kind of Stockholm Syndrome? Like, why are there Republican women at all? Fundamentalist christian women? Fundamentalist islamic women?
I mean, there’s a small minority of self-hating Jews who, rather than maintain solidarity with the tribe, seem eager to do harm to their own people and culture. There are the few oddball black conservatives who show up on FAUX “News” all the time, and there’s the crabs-in-a-bucket syndrome of some black folks who try to succeed being called “Uncle Toms” by their peers and discouraged from trying to do better.
But being a guy, I just don’t understand the phenomenon of women who actively seem to hate other successful women and who try to submarine them. Why? Why doesn’t sisterhood prevail in those situations?
Anne Laurie
@fuckwit:
Partly because, just as with other ‘one of the good ones’ self-dismissing minorities, there’s real benefits available to women who present themselves as “hating” other women. If a woman doesn’t want to struggle along with every other woman to be smarter/prettier/more assertive/harder-working, she can always find a man or men to reward her for proclaiming that she’s “not one of those horrible man-hating feminists”. Sure, there’s a few Alan Wests or Dinesh D’Souzas who make their livings hating on other not-white-guys, but any woman can probably find at least a few men in her social circle who’ll buy her a drink/offer her a promotion/ ask her to marry him if she doesn’t mind feeding their egos by publicly sniping about those ugly, selfish, probably lesbian females who don’t know what a man likes.
And, you know, that’s still how far too many women (as well as men) are raised to behave. When you watch a few hours of American television — and I include “news” programs — the surprise isn’t that so many women have internalized this kind of misogyny, it’s that so many of us have managed to escape it!
Starfish
@dantanna: She had been working on this project for TWO YEARS before I got there and did not care to learn the programming language that she was working in. How long do you have to work on something you don’t understand before you pick up a book and decide ‘Hey, it is my job to understand this so let me see if I can do it?”
Starfish
@schrodinger’s cat: You sound like you are reaching and adding to the women being mean to other women dynamic.
Cathie from Canada
A little late to the party, but I had one suggestion for a way that something like this could be handled: shocked amazement at how the senior professor’s email account had obviously been “hacked” by someone who wanted to make him look ridiculous in front of his colleagues!
Call it the Anthony Weiner Offense Defense — print out the email and take it in person to the department head’s office and say “someone has obviously hacked Professor X’s email account because I received this completely inappropriate, strange and creepy email last night, purportedly from him, and he couldn’t possibly have written something so odd! Please have the IT people check this out right away!” Then drop into his office to give him a copy of the email as well, to say the same thing to him directly, also mentioning that the department office has already been informed about it and you have already asked for IT to check on who hacked his email. Make sure you mention it “casually” also to as many of his staff and other grad students as you can possibly manage to rope into the conversation, stating “isn’t it awful how someone’s reputation can be so threatened by an email hacker, we should all change our passwords right away to make sure they are secure!” Then if any other emails are received, go through the same production. I think the chances are there won’t be anymore, once he sees the potential embarrassment he is risking and how much the rest of the department condemns his behaviour.
Yes, its lying.
Yes, it lets him get away with it.
And yes, when there is a significant power differential, it maintains a non-confrontational safe space for the victim while also sending the message to both him and the department head about how inappropriate and creepy he really is.
Joel
@mclaren: I know this thread is dead but.. damn, these are my thoughts exactly.