By now, you’ve all heard about the unpleasantry between Monica Byrne and Bora Zivkovic. Bora screwed up. He let his personal desires interfere with his professional obligations and he wrecked what could have been a productive interaction.
I’m happy that he has come forward and openly expressed contrition. We all screw up — what’s important is that we recognize it and try to better ourselves.
Janet Stemwedel has an excellent response in which she takes a broader view.
We should hold each other to high standards and then get serious about helping each other reach those standards. We should keep tinkering with our culture to making being better to each other (and to ourselves) easier, not harder.
Being good can be hard, which is one of the reasons we need friends.
I stand with others who have been harassed. And I hope, as a loving and honest friend with high expectations, I can help bring about a world with fewer harassers in it.
Meanwhile, we men (because it’s mostly us who have the power tilted in our favor) should just assume that every woman has laid out Kathleen Raven’s set of rules. Make those your base assumptions in every professional interaction.
Just as an exercise, when you read those rules, try imagining applying them to interactions between two professional men. That they would virtually never have to be stated tells you quite a bit about the differences in how women are treated.
Also, if you plan to protest that it’s unfair to expect men to behave this way, or that it’ll interfere with your love life, or that some women might like being treated specially in the office, please go read Chris Clarke’s metaphor. If you don’t get it, and don’t understand what he’s talking about, you’re not smart enough to converse here yet, and you should just read quietly until it sinks in.
First, let me apologize for the use of the word “unpleasantry” above — I was going for what I thought was obvious understatement, and it wasn’t read that way. I think this is a terrible, awful, miserable thing that Bora has done, and I sincerely hope he can do better.
Other news: Bora has resigned from the ScienceOnline board.
While I agree his apology was forthright and seemed sincere, there are other women coming forward who have said that he did the same to them or to a friend. I am afraid that this will turn out to be a pattern of behaviour which will render his apology a lie.
Re embertine @ #1
Citation needed.
You’re right, sorry colnago. On Monica Byrne’s original post, which is PZ’s first link, in the comments.
I’ve been saying this one hits me harder than the others have, because he has such a great reputation and has done so much good. I’m sorry for all of the bloggers who are friends with him and now have to figure out not just how to move on in their own relationships with him (PZ included), but also have the burden of feeling it necessary to figure out public statements to make as well.
Sorry PZ, but if you read the comments on Monica Byrnes’ blog, several women have come forward to state that this asshat tried the same thing on them. His apology is pure unalloyed bullsit until he apologizes to all of the other women he has harassed.
Shit. Shitshitshitshit. Repeat some large number of times.
That’s all I got.
If there are more cases, then he needs to apologize for all of them. Why are you saying this as if it counters what I wrote?
Wow, just wow. Before reading Kathleen’s set of rules, I was expecting something a bit more subtle, like maybe it was inappropriate of me to invite two female coworkers (the one who actually did the work and her boss) to dinner for the extra effort they put in helping me with a shipping issue that wasn’t part of their job.
I’m still not sure if it was inappropriate, so if it was, please someone here, let me know.
I’d be upset if even one of the things on Kathleen’s list happened much less all of them. I can’t imagine ever doing or saying any of those things to someone at work and the idea that the men saying that shit are protected by management pisses me off even more.
Reminds me of a story my wife told me about her old boss at True Value corporate HQ. He made the women in the accounting department kneel on chairs so he could measure their skirts to see if they adhered to the company policy. No one ever said anything because they were all afraid of losing their jobs.
@PZ:
I’m not sure anyone was saying that. However, his “apology” explicitly says:
That appears to be untrue.
I think, PZ, that the problem is in this line from the apology:
“It is not behavior that I have engaged in before or since”
As that’s looking less and less likely to be true, that doesn’t seem like sincere contrition to me. That seems like “continuing to lie as long as I think I can get away with it, just like I harassed women as long as I thought I could get away with it”.
I’m sorry to be so cynical and I would love for the additional stories to not be true, but from past expereince we will find it is even worse than initially portrayed, not better.
pschoeckel
Did you invite them as professionals?
Did you treat them as fellow professionals?
Would you have invited male coworkers if they’d done it?
If all three answers are “yes”, then what’s the problem?
Giliell,
I can answer yes, yes and yes. Since I’m not in a position of authority, but I ask a lot of favors from other groups, I like to do stuff for them depending on what they did. I’ll bring pastries, take people to lunch or dinner, or send flowers, if it is for someone I’m also close friends with outside of work. Not sure if there is a problem, but there’s always the perception of coworkers and rumors.
I can’t quite put a name to the feeling that arises when I remember how fervently Zivkovic supported John Edwards before the latter’s under-controlled sexuality destroyed his political career in ’08.
It is possible that “not before nor since” means that there was a particular period of time when life was bad and his marriage had problems, and all of the reports fall within that period. How long that period is, though, could indicate something of the validity of it. Even so, though, although I can understand him being lonely and depressed and trying to find some kind of escapist way to deal with it that involved fishing for a relationship, doing so within the framework of a power differential is a pretty bad thing. :(
… “Unpleasantry” and “mistake”? Really?
I suggest looking again. From Monica Byrne’s account: (bolds mine, and the phrase “without naming names” is out of date now.)
and speaking in comments:
Sorry, PZ. Not even Bora deserves the automatic presumption against all odds that this was an isolated incident or a simple error in judgement. He’s an accomplished adult whose career is built on communication. He has done harm already, and almost certainly has done more, or Byrne would not have spoken up about it at all. Apologizing by claiming he’s never done that “before or since”? Would that hold up from any other professor or author or scientist who wasn’t someone y’all personally respected?
And whatever his superiors did to ensure the behavior wouldn’t continue, if anything, well it doesn’t seem to be working. And that’s par for the course, too. Apologizing for a supposed single incident will not reassure women who have to work with him that they won’t be unpleasanted upon, nor that reporting the next incident(s) will do any good, for them or the women he works with in future. Bora, and his organization, have to go much further than that.
There’s a comment on Byrne’s post claiming Bora’s behavior continues to this day.
http://monicacatherine.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/this-happened/#comment-1540
@15: … “Unpleasantry” and “mistake”? Really?
This. Once might be charitably euphemized as a “mistake”. But it’s pretty weak sauce that really doesn’t assume responsibility for one’s own actions. Mistakes are what you make in spelling and arithmetic. Extended interactions, not so much. And repeated “mistakes” aren’t errors, they’re a pathology.
This made me happy.
Then I came to comment and say that it made me happy and I realized from past experience that there will, by now, almost certainly already be a comment from someone who really needs this advice, and won’t take it (I haven’t checked yet). And that made me unhappy.
Where did this claim that it was characterized as simply a mistake come from? I didn’t say it — I think Bora screwed up, that it wasn’t just an error, but that he actively did harm.
@19: To be clear: I’m blaming Bora, not you, for the “mistake” bit.
PZ @19, that was me – as far as I know, “mistake” and “screw up” mean exactly the same. (and “mistake” comes from Bora’s apology; you only used the latter term.) And I didn’t read any overt acknowledgement that he did harm to anyone in your post – just that his professional obligations and productive interaction were messed up.
I think I can see where you’re coming from if I mentally replace the phrase “screw up” with “actively do harm” but is that really how it reads?
Come on, PZ, you know better than this. The “unpleasantry between Monica Bryne and Bora Zivkovic”? WTF? Zivkovic sexually harassed Byrne: why not say so straight out? It wasn’t some sort of mutual misunderstanding. And as several others have pointed out, there are other women in the comments to Byrne’s post saying he’s done the same on other occasions, including one who alleges an ongoing campaign of harassment, which if true, makes Zivkovic’s apology an insincere piece of damage limitation. And how likely is it that it’s false? Doesn’t what we know about the typical behaviour patterns of harassers, the reluctance of victims of harassment to speak out, and the effect on victims of not being believed, mean we should credit these further claims unless and until we have good reason not to?
Sorry, for “Byrne” @22 read “Bryne”.
*scrolls back up*
*clicks on link again*
*scrolls down beyond 1st comment this time*
:-o
Gah.
How many of us screw up in such damaging ways? How many of us have that combination of desires, willingness to use power, lack of shame, and lack of knowledge or care what it all does to the other person?
Not very. Let’s see how far my imagination reaches.
Sure, Byrne (not Bryne) and the other victims that come out in the comments could be out to destroy him. But several of them say they don’t want to do that. Sure, maybe it’s a concerted action (or they’re all sockpuppets), maybe that was put in to make it look more realistic or even because the sockpuppeteer is genuinely conflicted…
Nah.
To come up with a scenario where the allegations are false, I need to pile assumptions upon assumptions. Ockham’s Razor says no. I have no reason to think the allegations are false.
Sorry, incorrect self-correction@23. Thanks David@25.
I am unsurprised at the tone of the OP. It is the ECO’s SOP to be very generously forgiving for friends but not at all for random people on the internet.
I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing, but it is what it is.
Sorry, Chas, what does ECO stand for in this context? OP I get and SOP I get but ECO has only ever meant Equipment Control Officer to me.
Evil Cephalopod Overlord.
PZ, I am sure this is hitting you hard on top of an already bad week. I apologize for being harsh towards a friend of yours and towards someone who has contributed to the science community.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a pattern of harassment on his part. His behaviour was unacceptable. His apology to Monica Byrne is a good start. He needs to come clean and apologize to the other women he allegedly harassed.
He has resigned from Science Online. Statement
Thanks for posting this, carlie.
I opened this tab to comment and hope that with this event and the apology that it could be this great example of a person learning from past mistakes, communities overcoming an individual’s mistake, and general hopefulness of that kind. BUMMER with the reality.
Why is this always a pattern of behavior and never some isolated incident that could be a model? (rhetorical)
To answer the almost immediate demand of “citation needed” at comment #2 by slc1/colnago80, a second woman, Hannah Waters, has come forward with her experiences of Bora’s unprofessional behaviour towards her: The Insidious Power of Not-Quite-Harassment
I don’t consider either Byrne’s or Waters’s stories to be ‘not-quite-harassment’, since it seems clear Zivkovic behaviour towards them was predicated entirely on them being women rather than men; but what makes it harmful is that Zivkovic was in a position of considerable power to affect their immediate writing careers. Which is often how leverage is applied in these situations.
That is harrowing to read.
David @ 29
Thanks!
PZ, thanks for the clarifying update. I appreciate it.
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Via Gawker’s summary, Knight Science Journalism’s article includes a statement from Sci Am:
http://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2013/10/scientific-american-blog-editor-admits-s
Another account via Stephanie Zvan. There’s really no explaining this away.
https://medium.com/the-power-of-harassment/3e809dfadd77
Very powerful experience reading the “ripples of doubt” storify. Modern life is so fucking fraught and fucked up. Self examination: I have always been way too introverted and raised-polite to have ever harassed or even not-quite-harassed anybody IRL. But I have stood by with no more than a facial expression of disapproval while it happened in my presence. And I fear I may have skated close to the line a couple of times online. Even stuff like that, I am learning, can cause debilitating ripples. More consciousness moving forward.
I am surprised that others seem surprised that somebody can be at once sincerely supportive of equality and professional advancement for women generally yet skeevily sexual and objectifyingly harassy in personal interaction with particular women. Whitman ws not the only person to contain multitudes.
I found Christie Wilcox’s post especially affecting.
Bora has resigned from SciAm.
Statement here.
jeez.
Since I linked that, I guess I should also link this.
curiouser and curiouser. I cannot grok the ways of (some) extroverts.
And since I linked that, and have thought about that post some more, I now want to link this. Zvan’s post bothers me for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on.
For one thing I agree with Laden(!) that it sets up what seems to me an egregious false equivalence. Aside from the gender-switch, drunken behavior by a graduate student at a party is just simply very different from serial attempted predation by a trusted mentor/employer.
For another, to me it comes off as a gossipy mean-girl tu quoque. It’s hard for me to discern much in the way of potentially constructive purpose there (and Zvan’s self-serving rationalizations are just par for her course imo).
(I’d say this over there if I wasn’t banned.)
Pteryxx and Chas,
thanks for the follow-up comments.
Hm, this story ended up in one of the major papers over here (online version). Probably because he’s a Serbian immigrant.
http://www.jutarnji.hr/seksualni-skandal-u-americkim-znanstvenim-krugovima-bora-zivkovic-dao-ostavku-u-upravi-znanstvenog-casopisa/1133753/
…Yeah.
:-o
That one doesn’t even compute. Like… I can’t empathize. Blue-and-orange morality? Always Chaotic Evil? I don’t get it.
I won’t put any spoilers here. Follow the link, everyone who hasn’t yet.
I can’t see anyone drawing such an equivalence. The point is made in the comments: even without the power imbalance, harassment still does real harm.
Not Zvan’s fault that people only start talking about the missing stair now. Not her fault that she only found the courage after two years.
Yay, the next layer of unpleasantness. *black comicbook cloud above head*
David,
It could be “one of ours” reporting. Reads pretty neutral.
Good.
another update
but not very informative.
? “People”? It wasn’t “people”, it was just Zvan, in this case.
? “Courage”? Looks to me like it wasn’t “courage” she (we’re still talking about Zvan, right?) lacked so much as a percieved reason to get catty.
David, thanks for that Missing Stair link. If I’ve seen it before, it had completely escaped from my memory; but now I’ve got it bookmarked.
For later.
‘Cause we all know that there will be a later.
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