Zach Weiner must be older than he looks. It’s the only way I can explain the insight in this comic. It’s almost as if he consulted (or propositioned) an old college professor and discovered the deep truth we’ve been keeping from you all.
The comic also makes me very happy. We’re having a wedding anniversary next week, our 32nd, not 50th. I am so looking forward to the next 18 years of the unholy and bizarre!
So well written.
Hang on, if he has been married for fifty years and the earliest marriageable age is around 16, he’s already over retirement age!
What if the woman had walked in with a squid? Could that raise her C to a B?
No. That would raise the squid’s grade.
Does anyone actually do this? Trade sex for grades, I mean.
It’s just so… bad porno script, you know?
There are good porno scripts?
You would be surprised how many sluts are willing to do this.
John, John, John…you know that once we’ve got tenure, we cling to our jobs forever.
Yes, this sort of thing happens. It’s not as blatant as the comic or pornography portrays it — it’s more like a tentative flirtatiousness that you can squelch pretty quickly just by not flirting back. It’s more like the student who isn’t doing well in the class coming by to talk about her bad grades showing up in something very tight and low cut that you’d never see her wear in class…and when you refuse to close the office door for a more private discussion, nothing more happens.
They’re people too. They’re frightened and a little desperate. That makes them less bold, not more.
Ah, I see DS is being its usual misogynic self. What a loser…
You would be surprised how many sluts are willing to do this.
I’m betting you don’t.
julian,
Point taken. :)
PZ:
Wow.
This strikes me as… very sad, actually.
You would be surprised how many sluts are willing to do this.
Fuck you, ds. Also, step on a lego and forget to neutralise your peroxide contact lens solution, thank you. Porcupines are kept in the shack just ’round the corner.
BTT: As soon as I saw the comic this morning, I KNEW it would end up on pharyngula. Seeing I was right makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Guess who just met the banhammer? Datasolution, that’s who!
PETC * will be coming after you, PZ.
* People fpr the Ethical Treatment of Cepahalopods.
Why isn’t Datasolution ever citing reputable sources?
What would the ‘male’ version of this look like, I wonder. Guy shows up shirtless, wearing jeans and sporting a rugged beard?
Guess it’s moot now! (I hadn’t refreshed to see him finally get banned.)
keenacat,
Kudos! I love your “step on a Lego!”.
@7 Well if you take the generally accepted modern definition of “slut” as anyone having more sex (and fun) than you are, then, in DS’s perception, we are all obviously sluts to the nth power.
DS perhaps you should consider counseling, this kind of anger and hatred is going to ruin your life.
@16 Julian, Actually tried this once,(more or less) it was lovely. (Though I really wasn’t looking for a better grade.)
Cyberpistols are cool for demos, but banhammers really get the job done.
PZ was indeed the first person I thought of after glancing upon this strip for the first time. I feel weird.
A charming comic, a reminder that PZ and the Trophy Wife are the sweetest couple ever AND datasolution finally gets banned? Now this is a lovely start to the day!
Doesn’t only happen to professors. I’m a female TA, and I had it happen to me once. It’s why I now have very strict self-imposed rules of 1) no meeting unsupervised by a third party with a student and 2) no meeting with a student for which I mark on a not-strictly-related-to-class basis.
Then there was the student who thought he could blackmail me with a nasty TA review. That was funny: He didn’t realize that of the 60 or so I TA every semester, there’s always two or three that place the blame for their failing marks everywhere other than where it belongs and so give me straight-1s on a 1-5 scale across the board and write nasty comments on my TA reviews (like bitch and cunt – after the first year doing TA reviews, the profs reviewed the comments before they were handed to TAs to make sure that blatantly abusive comments were redacted because some TAs were really hurt by the nasty types the first time ’round). I stopped giving a shit about those ones after my first term at the job and learning that you could fart gold dust and burp rainbows and these types would be pissed off that the gold dust wasn’t gold ingots and the rainbows didn’t sing so long as you refuse to give them As just because they deign to show up half the time.
I’ve had some students that I’ve logged some of the accusations in the phone calls. Though some of them were frankly ludicrous. So far I’ve never been sexually propositioned, whether this is because I don’t control enough of the grade, or because it is less thought of as a solution here, or frankly because I didn’t notice (I barely noticed being hit on by non-students looking to develop a relationship with me).
Of late I don’t have to worry about the shut door thing so much since in the building we’ve been in for a year all the doors are glass.
I assume that the One Professor’s Fantasy has already been linked here at some point. Though this isn’t wrt offered sex for grades.
Also *happydance* at datasolution finally being hammered.
Keeping the door open has one more benefit in addition to discouraging attempts at sex for grades, which is that they can’t get very far with falsely accusing you of demanding sex for grades, because at no time were you alone in private with the student in question.
Seriously, protect yourself.
I suspect Zach reads Pharyngula. The strip seems lifted from one of PZ’s posts – the one about a student who offered PZ sex for a better grade. Zach just used some artistic license in the response.
A search brings up this post: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/12/29/hot-forstudent/
The hammer was dropped on datasolution?!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
@julian – He shows up wearing enough cologne to knock out a mule, wearing tight pants and a button-down shirt thats artfully dishevelled. He leans over you at your desk, lick his lips and says, “I’m sure we can sort this out… somehow.”
To which I replied, “Well, sure! I know some tutors who would be happy to help you, our undergraduate chem society offers free volunteer help on some afternoons of the week, and I can help you out with the math at the end of the lab period if you like. There’s still eight weeks left of the semester, and this assignment wasn’t worth much so if you work really hard you could even pull yourself up to an A- or B+!” and followed it up with a fake clueless smile. Sometimes there are advantages to having a reputation for being a bit oblivious to social cues: When something is so blatant even I can’t miss it, I can still pretend I did.
… And yeah, I’m only a few years older than the student in question (and he was the type who could and probably did coast by on his looks quite a bit), but I agree with PZ entirely: I didn’t feel arousal, I felt panic. An “oh fucking shit this could end my career and maybe fuck up my entire life if I don’t handle it well!” panic. Hence my self-imposed rules: If I’m never in a questionable situation and have a reputation for avoiding anything that even looks like it has the whiff of something questionable about it, the question hopefully can never arise.
It’s funny: I’m so gun-shy of running into a similar situation again that that I don’t even make sex jokes at work. Most people at work think I’m some sort of religiously brainwashed innocent virgin about sex. I’m not exactly Queen Kink, but I’ve been living with my commonlaw partner for 3 years now and if you think I’m a still a virgin, I’ve got a nice bit of swamp land to sell you in Florida. :P
So datasolution was banned for calling that old guy in the comic a “slut”?
(wink wink)
Why do we have to be so mild in our ill wishes toward Derpsolution? Quite frankly, I wish he’d take a dive into a vat of acid, bob and thrash around a bit as he peels and burbles and melts, and then sink beneath the surface.
Thanks, PZ, for getting rid of him.
17 Drolfe “Kudos! I love your “step on a Lego!””
There is a special room in one of the circles of Hell for the inventor of Legos. It has a concrete floor with Legos scattered about, it’s dark and there’s a child crying in the distance. (Parents know what I’m talking about.)
PZ my parents have been married 57 years and they are pretty tight with each other. So I wish you and the Missus all the best on your anniversary.
Along with glass doors the sound proofing in our offices isn’t that strong. But I suspect I would take a similar approach to ischemgeek in the unlikely event of such a thing happening. I can do oblivious like nobody’s business.
I’d heard the lego one before, but I like the new peroxide insult. I’ve done that several times, and it’s really quite painful.
I’m a TA too, and I just wish my students would stop sending me messages on OkCupid. I mean, really? There’s no way they don’t realize it’s my profile, and yet they keep doing it. Do they honestly think this is going to HELP their grade?
Yes. This.
Huh. I expected the last frame to read, “I was just going to offer to mow your lawn.”
If I remember right Zach Weiner got married just a couple of years ago. Couldn’t help but wonder what’s already going on in his brief married life to make him write this cartoon. Shudder.
Congrats PZ and TW on 32. Here’s to many more. (At least until teh gays’ unnatural desire to share fulfilling relationships with one another destroys the entire institution irreparably.)
@Nutmeg – I deleted my profile on that site after having the vast majority of results be either 1) wannabe PUAs, 2) not even in the same part of the country as me, or 3) casual sex hookup requests (which is not what I’m into – if I weren’t in a relationship, I’d do friends-with-benefits, but casual sex isn’t my thing) from folks who saw “bisexual” on my profile and thought it meant “wants a one-night threesome with any two adults of the species Homo sapiens“. Which, erm, no. Bisexual just means I find both women and men sexually attractive. It means nothing about whether I want a threesome with complete strangers, nothing about whether or not I’m promiscuous and nothing about how kinky I am.
Though I suppose I should be glad that those folks at least admit that bisexual as an orientation exists – better than those who deride us as “barsexuals” or who claim we’re just confused or in denial They exist on both sides of the gay-straight divide, much to my irritation – nothing like going to the local GSA-type organization and being greeted by a gay man who in the first five minutes of conversation, sneers about bisexuals as he calls them immature attention-seeking children who *falsetto* don’t want to label themselves */falsetto* – though how we can give ourselves a label whilst not wanting to label ourselves, I have no idea.
When I called him on it by saying that for an organization that’s supposed to be safe and inclusive, he’s not making it very safe or inclusive, he told me that he’d never met a bisexual who wasn’t in it for the attention and who didn’t give the entire queer community a bad name. Nobody threw in with me, so I felt like I was supposed to be closeted in a fucking GSA club (and, for the record, I’m out in most aspects of my life and pretty comfortable in my sexuality – mom’s a fudagelical and would rather believe I’m straight because I’m dating a guy, but that’s the only person in my close life who doesn’t know it). After that, I left and didn’t return.
Apologies for the rant, but it’s a bit of a piss-off point for me.
His jokes are pretty predictable. Still a funny comic though.
Congrats on the 32!
I’d just like to QFT ischemgeek @#37. I’m bisexual – and unfortunately, in mainstream thought, that seems to equate with promiscuous, or ‘afraid to be a straight/a lesbian’, or interested in casual sex, or amoral, or non-monogamous, or any other completely unrelated Thing – it in itself ONLY means that when I experience sexual attraction and relationship-desire, the cause of that will not be down to a particular person’s gender. Not that being some, all or none of the above is a bad thing – but people shouldn’t assume.
Obviously here at Pharyngula I shouldn’t have to state this, I’m sure commenters here are more enlightened. But it’s the overwhelming view of bi people and I also find it very frustrating; people use it as a justification for either objectification (the endless ‘threesome’ leers-veiled-as-jokes) or rejection (the guy from the GSA in #37 above). I’m a regular commenter on PinkNews, and the general anti-bi comments are both common and depressing.
You didn’t give use much chance to guess. Couldn’t you have used spoiler tags or something?
Just a note – there are very few phrases more subtly yet insidiously mysogynistic as the phrase “young lady” when used to address a female adult. It’s almost always meant in a condescending way. Highly unprofessional and extremely rude. I’ve had people try to use that with me in both academic and professional settings, and I’ve put myself in a world of professional risk just by telling those people how inappropriate it was.
Ya know… just sayin’.
that calls for a celebratory beer with breakfast :-D
Jadehawk, #43,
You better not be implying that I don’t drink beer with breakfast already. I would take that as a slur against my very slurred character and would have to demand satisfaction to restore my honour! ;-)
As for the sudden banhammer induced Datasolution-lack:
But but but who will inform us of hordes of ravenous, sexually predatory women stalking the streets, waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting innocent man, force him to have Teh Secks, and then ironically accuse him of rape? Oh the HUGE MANATEEE! Won’t someone think of the men being attacked by those huge, huge hordes of sluts?
Sluts, I might remind you that are simultaneously cock-hungry, evil, self hating false rape accusing sluts AND unavailable, frigid, lesbian, castrating feminazis. I mean, I’ve heard women are good at multitasking, but WOW! THAT, THAT is impressive.
Without Datasolution who is going to tell us liberals, manginas, white knights and feminazis Teh Troof? After all the MRAs and sundry dribblers are so very, very rare. We never see them here. Nuh uh, not ever.
How will we cope?
Louis
beer… and sarcasm. The breakfast of the Horde. ♥
Pteryxx, #45,
And brunch, and elevenses, and lunch, and tea, and dinner, and supper, and a midnight snack.
Louis
Agree with Mijan at #44. It’s only a few steps above “Now you listen to me, little missy!” or inappropriate endearments like “honey.”
there’s beer, and then there’s celebratory beer.
Jadehawk, #48,
Ahhh EXTRA beer. An important, and oft forgotten food group.
The other beers being, of course, purely for necessity. After all, speaking as someone who is distinctly knurd, I do take a couple of brews to warm up to the world to the point where I can be relied on not to go on a rant for no apparent reason. ;-)
Louis
Another QFT for ischemgeek in #37 concerning bisexuality.
So many people completely miss the point of saying what “I’m bi” means. There’s already a problem with assuming that gays are automatically promiscuous/attention-seeking for some reason; you’d think a gay guy of all people wouldn’t stick that label on his bi brothers and sisters, but hey, everyone has their inexplicable blind spots I guess…
I just got straight-married yesterday. (No squid toys by mail, please.) He (and not that girl I had a crush on) was the first person I ever told was bi, before we were together or thought we ever would be together. A lot more people on the internet know than IRL. And a whole heck of a lot of people who do find out assume I mean I am into threesomes or just saying that for “internet attention”, as if I have a shortage of lonely teenage boys asking my twitter account for pics.
The biggest effect it’s seemed to have on my daily life is that I have a 0% annoyance level when my shiny new husband thinks some other girl is cute. I really enjoy how openly honest our relationship is, because neither of us feels the need to pretend we’re monosexual (unisexual? spousesexual?) for each other.
I’ve always found the idea of this sort of thing to be amusing not only because, as the comic points out, that keeping sex interesting in a long term marriage involves spicing it up such that a co-ed in a tight shirt bending over the desk to expose her cleavage isn’t going to be NEARLY as thrilling as she thinks… But also because sex with the same person over a number of years gets better and better. Communication skills, comfort level, accrued knowledge and experience build and after awhile you know how to get each other off in under 60 seconds if a quickie is necessary before the guests arrive. Personally, there’s no way in hell I’d risk it for a quick fumble that’s likely to be unsatisfying.
Alas, alas, my post vanished into the ether. There was a rather heartbreaking story about a student doing this over at the rateyourstudents blog. It was called “Doug from Daytona and the Shame of a Sundress.”
—
Yay banhammer! You are my favorite hammer of all. I was getting incredibly sick of datasolution.
It took my partner quite a while to realise this, and to become comfortable with the idea of my views of sex, gender, that I was perfectly fine with him looking at others…it’s a lot more comfortable now, and we are freer with conversation, ideas, roles, expressing boundaries, just talking about shit like that. I don’t see many couples communicate like that, and it makes me both sad and grateful.
[OT]
Louis @44,
The commenter with the ‘nym “matriarchy”.
Funny, when I read that comic on the SMBC website, the first person I thought of was PZ.
I’m slightly stunned how commenters like datasolution can be so consistently, unwaveringly wrong. There almost needs to be an Internet Law covering this.
If someone posts an objectionable comment on 2 or more consecutive topics, expect their comments to be objectionable on EVERY topic.
I knew it! I saw them from across the room, and it was like they were meant for each other!
I wish the new couple many years of increasingly kinky happiness.
John Morales, #54,
Oh thank the Baby Jesus and all his little cherubs, we are saved, we are saved. There is someone to help us through the dark, dark night of Ebil Feminismusisms and Teh Men Hatorz.
I was worried we might not have a guiding light. No, really. I was.
Almost.
Louis
I’m not a professor, but wouldn’t be interested in sex with my students even if I were. Not that I wouldn’t find any of them sexy, but that you don’t have sex with students. or employees, or subordinates in general. Just sort of a general rule.
Now as for keeping the sex life Interesting. . . can’t help you there, but I can say “don’t try anything involving creamy peanut butter. “
I agree wholeheartedly. Use only crunchy peanut butter. Jif Extra Crunchy is my favorite when doing the dirty with the missus.
Ouch!
I have the imprints on the souls of my feet!
Nice curse though!
Ok PZ, I have to ask.
Has anyone ever done the Raiders of the Lost Ark eyelid thing?
I’d like to know if that was ever tried in real life.
It seems like it would more likely happen in middle school then college but you never know.
No. Nor have they done the pantiless flashing thing.
Students are people, just like us. They have doubts and worries and want to be part of a community, in all of its complexities. Movies do them a deep disservice by reducing them to one-dimensional lust-bunnies and meat-headed jocks.
Speaking from the other side of the fence, yes, a lot of students are attracted to their professors. Older, brilliant, articulate and charismatic men who can hold an audience of a crowded room of people tend to appeal to most women. Odd, huh?
But as a student who has had crushes on many of my professors, even when I was single I would never think of risking their career, marriage and family by throwing myself at them. So yeah, while the odd student may temporarily lose their mind out of desperation and attempt something like this, the proportion of the number of women who are attracted to their professor compared to those who actually act on it is really disproportionately represented in popular media.
Congratulations!
Wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwhoa! That’s brutal! Rotting porcupines, fine, but are you sure data-insoluble-amyloid-plaque deserves that?!?
Full of win.
Few professors are charismatic, and few can hold a crowded room if attendance, or at least the exam, isn’t compulsory.
Nice save :-)
“…18 years of the unholy and bizarre! ”
You must post videos online for Rush Limbaugh!
I keep telling my fiance that I want to die, at the age of 150 in a “tragic trapeze accident”, just so the EMT’s arriving on the scene can be grossed out and say “eeeewwwww… they were trying that at their age?
I also want to come and go at the same time, like my hero, Nelson Rockerfeller…