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For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare

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Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare

#241

Post by graycat »

ksenzee wrote: post #233
graycat wrote: post #212

I've been a prof: Academics is awash in non-objective pushing and shoving that, yes, affects careers. In academics, even high end universities, a lot of the nasty behavior of middle school is still alive and well. Added to that is grown up politics, professional jealousy, professional competition with sabotage, and, also, no doubt, sexual harassment as in the OP. I can't speak first hand about sexual harassment becau…

"Honey"? Who on earth do you think you're talking to? Please tell me this post is performance art and not the way you actually talk to women in your real life.

Again, over again, yet again, one more time, once again, this time just for you, I clearly, clearly, clearly, more than once, clearly, very clearly, fully unambiguously, said, fully clearly, right there,

"... honey, and I say this out of 100% affection, caring, and respect"

And I said "honey" with "100% affection, caring, and respect".

100%. Clearly.

> Please tell me this post is performance art and not the way you actually talk to women in your real life.

I wrote this post here in this blog for just the right reason, to be helpful and in response to the OP. The OP was all about personal, feminine, intimate things, and "constant nightmares", and I responded in a corresponding way. That is, the women were having "nightmares" and, as men, we are supposed to be and should be concerned, to be protective, to have sympathy and empathy. And I do, and did, and so posted here.

My response was fully appropriate for and corresponding to the content of the OP -- fully.

Or, again, once again, over again, the OP was about some intimacy and correspondingly so was my response.

For "in your real life", the OP was not much like what women would talk about in real life around an office, which is the professional context of the OP, and neither is my caring, sympathetic "honey". For my post here, there is nothing, nothing, Nothing, NOTHING wrong with "honey" -- instead, "honey" is fully appropriate, affectionate, what one would say to a daughter, sister, niece, or any girl or women having "constant nightmares".

Your response is not against the content I included. You said nothing about my content. That content is not easy to discover, and I posted it to help those OP women with "constant nightmares". My content should help them a lot. I know some things about anxiety in women -- what I posted should help, a lot. E.g., as I posted, I've been a prof and seen a lot in academics, and also in business, IBM, GE, FedEx, and more, and only a tiny fraction of readers here at HN have the advantages of that background to post in response to the OP here. What I posted should be seen as darned helpful. But, you are attacking me, me, personally, not the content of my post, and based on your assumption of something about my behavior in real life and not in my post.

You are extrapolating for no good reason. You owe me an apology and a retraction of your attack.

Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare

#242

Post by snowwrestler »

vkou wrote: post #142
stcredzero wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- asking someone out on dates repeatedly, even if they've already said "no" There's some kind of weird disconnect in our society here. I've been in the position where I've asked a colleague out to a movie, but she gave a plausible sounding excuse each time. I stopped asking when she finally definitely said "no," but she did so with language that made me feel like she thought me a rapist. No means no, but white lies s…

If she really wanted to see the movie with you, but she actually had to take her dog to the dentist, she would have counter-offered a time and date. She was trying to brush you off, hoping you'd take the hint, without appearing confrontational. It obviously didn't work. You continued with the unwanted advances, and it made her uncomfortable.

I think this is true, but it's important to understand that there is more to harassment than just missing a few hints.

I'm sure she was annoyed, but that doesn't, by itself, make the situation harassment. He can easily recover now by simply acting polite, pleasant, and professional with her--essentially, acting like it never happened. That's hard, but the right thing to do.

If he retaliated--by treating her badly, talking shit about her to other people, trying to harm her career, etc.--that would be a clear step into harassment land.

Yeah, it feels unfair, but that's life. People get annoyed at each other all the time in a typical workplace, often for reasons that seem unfair. Everyone is still expected to act maturely and professionally.

Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare

#243

Post by stcredzero »

fweespee_ch wrote: post #210
stcredzero wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) He is clearly hiring based on a fetish he has. That's a pretty strong, even in terms of your analysis. Would you have thought he had a fetish if all of his hires were black men?

> That's a pretty strong, even in terms of your analysis. You do understand the probability of the strongest hire in 12 separate rolls of the die being female and asian is absurdly small right? We are talking thousandths of a percentage point here. The odds of that being a "natural" distribution is absurd. Similarly, I know from one of them that he has engaged in the sort of sexual harassment behavior I'd expect from…

You do understand the probability of the strongest hire in 12 separate rolls of the die being female and asian is absurdly small right?

We are talking thousandths of a percentage point here. The odds of that being a "natural" distribution is absurd.

There are a bunch of places that hire out of whack to the natural distribution of the population.

If one of them mentioned sexual harassment

That's much stronger evidence in combination. But I think it's weird you led with the population distribution in your account, not the reported behavior.

Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare

#244

Post by babygoat »

emp_zealoth wrote: post #174
babygoat wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because sexual harassment is comparable to a dispute relating to McNuggets?

Yes, because there are special snowflakes who find anything and everything offensive/sexual harassment and the like. I have mild autism and am less than welcome in most civil interactions. Do i get to sue everyone and bitch about everything everyday? That would be a NO. Disclaimer: I do not condone any really disruptive, actual harassment like touching/real verbal abuse.

>Yes, because there are special snowflakes who find anything and everything offensive/sexual harassment and the like.

Let's just ignore it then because they're probably imagining it.

>Disclaimer: I do not condone any really disruptive, actual harassment like touching/real verbal abuse.

But you don't seem to give a shit if it happens.

Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare

#245

Post by graycat »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #230
graycat wrote: post #212

I've been a prof: Academics is awash in non-objective pushing and shoving that, yes, affects careers. In academics, even high end universities, a lot of the nasty behavior of middle school is still alive and well. Added to that is grown up politics, professional jealousy, professional competition with sabotage, and, also, no doubt, sexual harassment as in the OP. I can't speak first hand about sexual harassment becau…

This is what "being part of the problem" looks like.

For "being part of the problem", look at yourself. You are profoundly confused, mixed up, misled. The women in the OP are suffering, from "constant nightmares", and I gave them some powerful, difficult to obtain, wise, helpful advice.

Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare

#246

Post by ownagefool »

homogeneous wrote: post #218
ownagefool wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never really liked the the logic that the rest of us can't do a certian thing because there are some other people can't be trusted. Here's a thought, instead of messing with every guy or girl for an innocent joke, just you know, deal with the person who takes it too far?

My point is that determining what constitutes "too far" is fraught with ambiguous subjective analysis. Who is the arbiter of what is too far in terms of comedy? Pretty much nobody has an issue with "an innocent joke" by definition, but sexually explicit comedy often tows the line of "innocent" (which is usually what makes it funny), and attempting to disentangle the clever sexual comedy from the inappropriate sexual…

> My point is that determining what constitutes "too far" is fraught with ambiguous subjective analysis.

Well true, but I think we have a massive problem with getting outraged for the sake of being outraged. I actually can't fathom why so many people were able to find themselves getting upset over the floppy disk comment. I suspect that we're mostly just sticking up for "someone else" because it's the right thing to do when in reality, the someone else doesn't actually exist.

> Just keep sexual jokes and commentary to yourself in the office.

I'm Scottish and asking me to behave myself is culturally insensitive. ;)

Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare

#247

Post by rosser »

oldmanjay wrote: post #216
scott_s wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very next paragraph: "Harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can include offensive remarks about a person’s sex. For example, it is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general." This is what the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission considers "sexual harassment". You may not like these definitions, but this is the government's definition of "sexual…

You can define anything to be anything when you're in the outrage porn business, but unrealistic descriptions meant to stoke emotion don't help to solve actual problems, they just make for more outrage porn.

I'm, personally, strongly inclined to discount the opinions on bullying and harassment and the like offered by someone who uses the phrase "outrage porn" unironically.

Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare

#248

Post by grillvogel »

Declanomous wrote: post #238
goodcanadian wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you are saying; however, I have not witnessed this behaviour (perhaps, because I am male). If it was really a cultural, systemic problem in astrophysics, I feel like I would have noticed. [EDIT: I don't mean to imply that the problem is not real, only that I am surprised and disappointed] As for the diversity of the field, I believe it is getting more diverse. The gender ratio of graduate students in astro…

I realized I wrote a wall of text in response. I'm not picking on you, but I think you brought up a point that I think is really worth responding to in depth, because I felt that way in one point in time, and I've slowly realized how wrong I was. I used to believe that I would surely notice if I was in an environment that fostered harassment. Over time, I've realized that harassment is a problem, but I was just looki…

>In both cases, it's really easy to dismiss criticisms with the platitude "Those things happen to everyone."

see the majority of the comments in this post for examples.

Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare

#249

Post by babygoat »

woodman wrote: post #202
wfo wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, fortunately you are incorrect here. While certain kinds of sexual harassment are not criminal, groping is certainly a crime. I'm pretty sure threatening to destroy someone's career to force sex is a crime. If you succeed, it's rape which is quite a serious crime. Even if you just file a report, it's important to establish a pattern of abuse for when the person inevitably crosses the line and goes to court.…

Describing an assault as sexual harassment is ridiculous. That is like describing a murder as impolite driving... that resulted in the flattening of a person who you happened to want dead. We are talking about different things here, and conflating them isn't going to help anybody.

It sounds like you want a separate designation for inappropriate comments. Just fucking stop.

Re: For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare

#250

Post by clevernickname »

vkou wrote: post #142
stcredzero wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- asking someone out on dates repeatedly, even if they've already said "no" There's some kind of weird disconnect in our society here. I've been in the position where I've asked a colleague out to a movie, but she gave a plausible sounding excuse each time. I stopped asking when she finally definitely said "no," but she did so with language that made me feel like she thought me a rapist. No means no, but white lies s…

If she really wanted to see the movie with you, but she actually had to take her dog to the dentist, she would have counter-offered a time and date. She was trying to brush you off, hoping you'd take the hint, without appearing confrontational. It obviously didn't work. You continued with the unwanted advances, and it made her uncomfortable.

If the socially awkward male stereotype is to be oblivious to hints and the way your actions are interpreted, then the socially awkward female stereotype is to be misinterpret and overanalyze everything people do and think you're being very clear with your intentions when you really aren't. This is something I've seen repeatedly in many women, in their interactions with everybody in all kinds of situations, yet people rarely comment on it the way they do the bumbling male nerd.

My theory on why tech seems to be an outlier in terms of gender-related disputes (other than that stories about it generate lots of clicks) is that rather than being an environment of "evil misogynistic geeks wreaking havoc on well adjusted females," it's really an environment of developmentally stunted socially awkward people all around, a perpetual comedy of errors of oversensitive idiots overreacting to bumbling fools.

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