Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not ask a lawyer instead?
A woman's or a man's lawyer?
Since when do lawyers segregate their practices by gender?
For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare
91–100 of 402 posts
Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare
#92I never knew BuzzFeed wrote exclusive longform (and interesting) content. Thanks for mentioning it.
Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do realise the shirt was given to him by a female colleague/friend right?
So what? If a black friend gives me a shirt with the N-word on it, that doesn't mean I should wear it at work .
If you're white, and your black friend gives you a shirt with the N-word on it, they aren't your friend.
Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do realise the shirt was given to him by a female colleague/friend right?
It was a friend, rather than a colleague, that made and gave him the shirt so they may well be unaware of how it would be percieved by his colleagues when worn in this context.
> so they may well be unaware of how it would be percieved by his colleagues when worn in this context.
Wasn't the controversy more about how the shirt was perceived by randos on twitter, not by his colleagues?
Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
The guy wore the shirt to a celebration after working with those co-workers for 10 years. It wasn't intended to look "professional" and I'm pretty sure none of those co-workers were offended. The reason the shirt was a bad idea is that it was easily misinterpreted by people watching the press conference. Edit: I didn't see it at the time, but this article exactly reflects my perspective on the thing. http://www.theat…
A shirt that depicts women as objects or objectized women is just plain wrong. I do not care about the celebration.
Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare
#96I must admit that I was genuinely surprised by this. I have worked in Astronomy (as a technologist) for over a decade, and I have never witnessed this sort of behaviour. Of course, I am male. There are, however, plenty of assholes in the world including in academia, and I have noticed that universities tend not to want to rock the boat, so I suppose that it is not entirely surprising that these things are occurring.
My wife is an academic (biology). Thankfully, so far as I know, she has never had to deal with sexual harassment. She did have an experience of dealing with an extreme bully during her PhD (who threatened her career and the like; pro-tip: individual assholes generally don't have the power to destroy your career). The university was not at all supportive, but her PhD advisor was, so things generally worked out in the end, but it was a lot of stress along the way. Besides that, she has suffered the occasional subtle discrimination for being a woman or a mother, generally from older males in the field, but all in all, I don't think she would say that harassment is rife. I think she would pin the problems on individual assholes rather than a systemic problem in science. You do need to look out for yourself, however, as the institutions generally won't, and I do find that a bit sad.
Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare
#97this: > Universities, Mia notes, have protocols for dealing with complaints of sexual harassment seems part of the problem. sexual harassment should be a 'go straight to police' offence, not a hr reprimand. if the problem is as widespread as it's made in the article, it cannot correct from within.
I don't think that you're quite conceptualizing the issue in the right way. This isn't necessarily about rape or sexual assault (though even those can be hard to get the police to take seriously). There's a huge range of behaviors that can make work awful for someone that don't rise to the level of criminal behavior.
This is about, say, a guy who could torpedo your entire career with a couple of phone calls making it clear that he'll be Very Disappointed if you make a big deal about him giving you a back rub when he thinks you look stressed. (Maybe you'd object, but last week you put up with it when he put his arm around your shoulders during a lab meeting: at the time, it seemed like he was just trying to comfort you about some buggy equipment. After that, will the rest of your lab think you were okay with this stuff? Did he take that as a signal that you were interested? Maybe it's best to just keep putting up with it and not risk getting on his bad side and flushing your career away. Oh, hey, looks like he just decided that your shirt is "in the way" this time.)
[If you're wondering if a scenario like that is realistic, I based it loosely on the pattern described here: http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2014/05/fed-up-with-sex..., which it turns out was in fact directly inspired by the repeated behavior of Geoff Marcy: http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-long-con.html]
Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
They aren't if someone has a problem with them. Because there are plenty of jokes you can tell that don't refer to genitalia?
While generally I would tend to avoid dick jokes in the workplace, primarily because they're not particularly professional, it's a poor argument that they are not appropriate because 'someone has a problem with them.' In a large workplace, 'someone' will have a problem with any joke about any topic.
Which is a great reason for why you should keep edgy humour out of the office. In the US, we value the right to make a living in a hostility-free work environment more then the right to say whatever you want at work.
Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what? If a black friend gives me a shirt with the N-word on it, that doesn't mean I should wear it at work .
If you're white, and your black friend gives you a shirt with the N-word on it, they aren't your friend.
These guys are probably friends.
http://realfunny.net/picture-3097-these-two-friends-wearing-...
They probably don't wear the shirts to work.
Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Objectification doesn't really apply to a still image. The whole trope was initially about women in media being the object of the male character's conquest. Essentially the women were turned into nothing more than props. A t-shirt depicting scantily clad women may be in poor taste and likely isn't professional, but doesn't really contribute to the objectification of women. Women are allowed to be sexualised (just as…
> Objectification doesn't really apply to a still image. What the what? Care to elaborate on how that works?
An image is literally an object. It's not a woman. Objectifying an actual woman would be more clearly immoral. Objectifying a shirt - which he literally, legally owns - is not necessarily a problem.