4 ms·

In the present day and age, where PhD supervisors are given massive amounts of power over their graduate students, such incidents are all too commonplace. Put

In the present day and age, where PhD supervisors are given massive amounts of power over their graduate students, such incidents are all too commonplace. Put more institutional safeguards on the process of awarding doctoral degrees to protect both sides of the inequality.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
manyxcxi 11y ago
I wonder, and this me genuinely wondering without an assumed answer, if some of the issues we're seeing with gender inequality in 'traditionally male dominated' lines of study and work might be due to the type of people drawn to those fields. I'm not going all men's rights or saying anything is acceptable but if you took a (painfully?) stereotypical set of physicists, technologists, etc. they would probably be male, on the autism spectrum/socially awkward in general, and likely have spent the majority of their time around the same types of people (smart, socially awkward men/boys). Could part of it be from social cues they may not have learned along the way since they likely spent a good portion of their time out of the 'normal' stream of socialization? Another thought, and anecdotally, I played multiple sports in high school and aspired to play college football. When I walked into a CS or advanced physics class in high school and college I was the something is not like the rest; sauntering in at 6'4", in a cutoff t-shirt and sweats having just come from practice or lifting weights. There were multiple times where when I screwed up I was called a dumb jock, or something like that. If I was instead a woman, might they have just called me a dumb girl? Now they are being misogynistic for sure, but couldn't you attribute it to the fact that they pick out the difference between you and them and attack on that? Isn't that what most groups do in a "you don't belong, you're not our kind" kind of mentality? I shook most of it off pretty casually because I could look into myself and a) be sure I was just as good, if not better than the majority of 'them', and b) I knew I could physically destroy them and it made 17-22 year old me smile inside. As a Type A, incredibly outgoing and social individual, I've been reminded many times of how annoying I get to a lot of the people who studied with me and work with me because they are very typically not. Growing up with one foot in nerd life and another in jock life (taking the non-pejorative easy to describe route with nerd and jock) it was very clear the group social difference between both sides of my friends. I, frankly, had a much easier time fitting in with the sports oriented/popular crowd and felt almost, hesitant, maybe, in larger groups in my CS/Physics studies. It was a weird, unnerving feeling for someone who spent most of his life dropping into social situations and just rolling with it. It was almost as if I was communicating at a _just_ different enough baud rate that we could work together, but it was taxing for a long time. I could imagine if I was a woman who maybe couldn't draw on their physical dominance to provide a sense of safety, how much more stressful those years would have been.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  > I'm not going all men's rights or saying anything is acceptable but if you took a (painfully?) stereotypical set of physicists, technologists, etc. they would probably be male, on the autism spectrum/socially awkward in general, and likely have spent the majority of their time around the same types of people (smart, socially awkward men/boys). Could part of it be from social cues they may not have learned along the way since they likely spent a good portion of their time out of the 'normal' stream of socialization If this were some sort of low-budget situation comedy, maybe, but we're talking about the real world here. Go read about, for example, Geoff Marcy: """“He would stroke my arm or my neck while going over information, standing very close,” Borland told BuzzFeed News. He would also play with her hair or brush up against her with his legs, she said, “often resulting in his crotch touching me.” Because Marcy was a vocal supporter of women in science, “it was contradictory in my head that he could have bad intentions,” Borland said. “But at the same time, it just felt so uncomfortable that after a few times I had to tell him to stop.” """ (note I haven't read the buzzfeed article as I've been following this story on astronomy blogs such as http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2016/04/sexual-harassment-changing-system-i.html http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2016/04/sexual-harassme...)
  - manyxcxi 11y ago
    I want to be clear that I'm not brushing off the incidences or saying they're in any way acceptable. It's more of a thought exercise asking why these guys think the behavior is acceptable. Why are they doing it in the first place? Are some of them just predatory, knowing it's not acceptable and think they can get away with it? There are certainly plenty of examples in all fields where people in a power position think they can simply get away with it due to the resources available to them. I've worked with, and hired, plenty of women and it's never crossed my mind to behave that way, not ever. Is it because I've not ever felt that I had the power to make the problem go away, ignoring what I know is right and wrong? Is it because I went through 'normal' socialization channels growing up? Is it because I do not feel socially awkward in different environments that would allow me to court a woman in a more acceptable fashion? Is it because those 'normal' socialization channels helped me figure out (even through trial and error growing up) what an acceptable fashion even is? Are 'normal' people just wired up to innately feel how an action such as touch could make the other feel in a given context? One of the hallmarks of autism spectrum is an inability to read social cues for example, so if people in these fields have a pre-disposition to be on the spectrum, is it possible this plays a factor? Hearing the victims' descriptions of what they had to deal with genuinely makes my skin crawl, and that's why I floated the questions/ideas in the first place. I can't put my head into a place where I could see why these guys would do it, and I'm wondering if the general wiring of the types of people that gravitate to and achieve in these fields might pre-dispose them to socially abnormal behaviors like this. Are the incidences of this type of behavior greater than in other fields, say teaching, that have historically been more equal or female lead? If so, is it because the intent is generally predatory (in that the offender generally knows it's wrong and doesn't care), or is it that they don't get how wrong it is? Again, going back to an anecdote of being in both social circles... One of my best friends from my CS studies at university was a delight one on one, or in the small circle of our group of CS friends. But whenever he could gather himself to come to a party that was filled with pretty much no one like himself he had no freaking clue how to behave. A lot of female friends said he creeped them out- stared too much, said weird stuff, etc. No physical violations by any account I can recall. I asked him about it one day and his response was pretty much what I expected: he had no freaking clue how to connect to these people, women in general scared the shit out of him, and he shared no real social point of reference with my other friends that would allow them to connect. It's personal experience like that that makes me wonder if some of it is attributable to wiring/social disconnects, not just pure predation. Again, their actions whether with bad intent or out of ignorance are no more acceptable and do not magically inflict less trauma to these women. I'm just wondering aloud if there exists some common thread that might explain why this might happen more in some fields than others.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

manyxcxi 11y ago

I wonder, and this me genuinely wondering without an assumed answer, if some of the issues we're seeing with gender inequality in 'traditionally male dominated' lines of study and work might be due to the type of people drawn to those fields. I'm not going all men's rights or saying anything is acceptable but if you took a (painfully?) stereotypical set of physicists, technologists, etc. they would probably be male, on the autism spectrum/socially awkward in general, and likely have spent the majority of their time around the same types of people (smart, socially awkward men/boys). Could part of it be from social cues they may not have learned along the way since they likely spent a good portion of their time out of the 'normal' stream of socialization? Another thought, and anecdotally, I played multiple sports in high school and aspired to play college football. When I walked into a CS or advanced physics class in high school and college I was the something is not like the rest; sauntering in at 6'4", in a cutoff t-shirt and sweats having just come from practice or lifting weights. There were multiple times where when I screwed up I was called a dumb jock, or something like that. If I was instead a woman, might they have just called me a dumb girl? Now they are being misogynistic for sure, but couldn't you attribute it to the fact that they pick out the difference between you and them and attack on that? Isn't that what most groups do in a "you don't belong, you're not our kind" kind of mentality? I shook most of it off pretty casually because I could look into myself and a) be sure I was just as good, if not better than the majority of 'them', and b) I knew I could physically destroy them and it made 17-22 year old me smile inside. As a Type A, incredibly outgoing and social individual, I've been reminded many times of how annoying I get to a lot of the people who studied with me and work with me because they are very typically not. Growing up with one foot in nerd life and another in jock life (taking the non-pejorative easy to describe route with nerd and jock) it was very clear the group social difference between both sides of my friends. I, frankly, had a much easier time fitting in with the sports oriented/popular crowd and felt almost, hesitant, maybe, in larger groups in my CS/Physics studies. It was a weird, unnerving feeling for someone who spent most of his life dropping into social situations and just rolling with it. It was almost as if I was communicating at a _just_ different enough baud rate that we could work together, but it was taxing for a long time. I could imagine if I was a woman who maybe couldn't draw on their physical dominance to provide a sense of safety, how much more stressful those years would have been.

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
> I'm not going all men's rights or saying anything is acceptable but if you took a (painfully?) stereotypical set of physicists, technologists, etc. they would probably be male, on the autism spectrum/socially awkward in general, and likely have spent the majority of their time around the same types of people (smart, socially awkward men/boys). Could part of it be from social cues they may not have learned along the way since they likely spent a good portion of their time out of the 'normal' stream of socialization If this were some sort of low-budget situation comedy, maybe, but we're talking about the real world here. Go read about, for example, Geoff Marcy: """“He would stroke my arm or my neck while going over information, standing very close,” Borland told BuzzFeed News. He would also play with her hair or brush up against her with his legs, she said, “often resulting in his crotch touching me.” Because Marcy was a vocal supporter of women in science, “it was contradictory in my head that he could have bad intentions,” Borland said. “But at the same time, it just felt so uncomfortable that after a few times I had to tell him to stop.” """ (note I haven't read the buzzfeed article as I've been following this story on astronomy blogs such as http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2016/04/sexual-harassment-changing-system-i.html http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2016/04/sexual-harassme...)
- manyxcxi 11y ago
  I want to be clear that I'm not brushing off the incidences or saying they're in any way acceptable. It's more of a thought exercise asking why these guys think the behavior is acceptable. Why are they doing it in the first place? Are some of them just predatory, knowing it's not acceptable and think they can get away with it? There are certainly plenty of examples in all fields where people in a power position think they can simply get away with it due to the resources available to them. I've worked with, and hired, plenty of women and it's never crossed my mind to behave that way, not ever. Is it because I've not ever felt that I had the power to make the problem go away, ignoring what I know is right and wrong? Is it because I went through 'normal' socialization channels growing up? Is it because I do not feel socially awkward in different environments that would allow me to court a woman in a more acceptable fashion? Is it because those 'normal' socialization channels helped me figure out (even through trial and error growing up) what an acceptable fashion even is? Are 'normal' people just wired up to innately feel how an action such as touch could make the other feel in a given context? One of the hallmarks of autism spectrum is an inability to read social cues for example, so if people in these fields have a pre-disposition to be on the spectrum, is it possible this plays a factor? Hearing the victims' descriptions of what they had to deal with genuinely makes my skin crawl, and that's why I floated the questions/ideas in the first place. I can't put my head into a place where I could see why these guys would do it, and I'm wondering if the general wiring of the types of people that gravitate to and achieve in these fields might pre-dispose them to socially abnormal behaviors like this. Are the incidences of this type of behavior greater than in other fields, say teaching, that have historically been more equal or female lead? If so, is it because the intent is generally predatory (in that the offender generally knows it's wrong and doesn't care), or is it that they don't get how wrong it is? Again, going back to an anecdote of being in both social circles... One of my best friends from my CS studies at university was a delight one on one, or in the small circle of our group of CS friends. But whenever he could gather himself to come to a party that was filled with pretty much no one like himself he had no freaking clue how to behave. A lot of female friends said he creeped them out- stared too much, said weird stuff, etc. No physical violations by any account I can recall. I asked him about it one day and his response was pretty much what I expected: he had no freaking clue how to connect to these people, women in general scared the shit out of him, and he shared no real social point of reference with my other friends that would allow them to connect. It's personal experience like that that makes me wonder if some of it is attributable to wiring/social disconnects, not just pure predation. Again, their actions whether with bad intent or out of ignorance are no more acceptable and do not magically inflict less trauma to these women. I'm just wondering aloud if there exists some common thread that might explain why this might happen more in some fields than others.