Caltech plays hardball

Two graduate students at Caltech complained that they were being sexually harassed by their advisor…and the administration took them seriously!

The Institute followed its formal procedures for evaluating the allegations and per policy the allegations were communicated to the chair of the division. This resulted in a comprehensive investigation of the situation by a faculty committee that reported to the provost. The faculty committee concluded, and the provost concurred, that there was unambiguous gender-based harassment of both graduate students by the faculty member. The faculty member was placed on unpaid leave for a full academic year, and he is restricted from coming on campus. Importantly, in order to make sure that the two students involved and other students are protected against continuation or new instances of such behavior – while also endeavoring to ensure that their academic progress is not adversely affected – communications between the faculty member and members of his group are being carefully monitored. In addition to these professional and financial sanctions, the suspended faculty member must undergo professional coaching and training in how to mentor students before returning to campus. A demonstrable change in behavior and mentoring approach will be required before unmonitored interactions with students can resume. Structural changes in the division’s advising approach are being put in place to ensure that students are properly and effectively mentored. The faculty member appealed these imposed disciplinary actions, but the appeal was denied.

Ouch. First thing I noticed was the penalty: no pay for a year, and booted off campus. If the faculty member was sufficiently prestigious, they may have multiple appointments at other campus so it isn’t the total kiss of death, but still, that’s harsh. Which is good.

The other thing, though, is that it’s not just about slapping down Dr. Handsy — it’s also about making institutional changes that help these students and others. Read the rest of the memo, especially the part about instituting changes in the divisions of the college. That’s how you do it.

Why, yes, I have strong opinions on this matter, but demanding I do something about it will accomplish nothing

I have been told that I must deal with a “misogynistic” statement expressed on Freethoughtblogs by Lux Pickel. They said, “Centering our pro-abortion rhetoric around women is inherently erasing of the existence and needs of trans individuals.“

I have two points to make here.

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Space will not be white and full of penises

I bet you didn’t know that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a social justice propaganda film. I didn’t either. I thought it was a nostalgia movie with a recycled plot, but one thing it doesn’t do is hammer you with didacticism. But this guy watched it, and all he saw was a woman and a black man in lead roles, and it made him furious.

The Force Awakens is spectacularly replete with the handiwork of the avowed Social Justice Warrior JJ Abrams. So where can I possibly start in my criticisms? From the casting, which puts minorities and women incessantly and ridiculously in your face to make a political point (not tell a story), to the laziest of all space battles, the problems with the Episode 7 are more than numerous.

Whoa. More than numerous? That must be, like, a lot.

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Solnit sings

Rebecca Solnit has written a wonderful essay that resonates beautifully, especially after wading through the rage of white men in my mailbox (which, as a white man myself, is really weird.)

There has been a lot said this year about college students—meaning female college students, black students, trans students—and how they’re hypersensitive and demanding that others be censored. That’s why The Atlantic, a strange publication that veers from progressive to regressive and back again like a weighty pendulum recently did a piece on “The Coddling of the American Mind.” It tells us that, “Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke,” with the invocation of these two white guys as definitive authorities.

But seriously, you know who can’t take a joke? White guys. Not if it implicates them and their universe, and when you see the rage, the pettiness, the meltdowns and fountains of male tears of fury, you’re seeing people who really expected to get their own way and be told they’re wonderful all through the days. And here, just for the record, let me clarify that I’m not saying that all of them can’t take it. Many white men—among whom I count many friends (and, naturally, family members nearly as pale as I)—have a sense of humor, that talent for seeing the gap between what things are supposed to be and what they are and for seeing beyond the limits of their own position. Some have deep empathy and insight and write as well as the rest of us. Some are champions of human rights.

But there are also those other ones, and they do pop up and demand coddling. A group of black college students doesn’t like something and they ask for something different in a fairly civil way and they’re accused of needing coddling as though it’s needing nuclear arms. A group of white male gamers doesn’t like what a woman cultural critic says about misogyny in gaming and they spend a year or so persecuting her with an unending torrent of rape threats, death threats, bomb threats, doxxing, and eventually a threat of a massacre that cites Marc LePine, the Montreal misogynist who murdered 14 women in 1989, as a role model. I’m speaking, of course, about the case of Anita Sarkeesian and Gamergate. You could call those guys coddled. We should. And seriously, did they feel they were owed a world in which everyone thought everything they did and liked and made was awesome or just remained silent? Maybe, because they had it for a long time.

Exactly.

Your mission this morning

Read this long essay, An Unbelievable Story of Rape. Or don’t. Some of you might think it’s just a little too believable, and would rather not suffer through the misery.

Here’s the short version to help you decide. A young woman with a troubled history is attacked in her apartment one night. She’s in shock. She reports the crime to the police. The police pick at little discrepancies in her story, pressure her to recant. Full of self-doubt and stress, she does…she wonders if maybe she dreamt it all. The police drop the case, and then decide to prosecute her for wasting their time.

Later, in another state, more diligent police officers track down and ultimately arrest a serial rapist. In his room, they find his “trophies” — he collects underwear and takes photos of his bound and terrorized victims. And there in his collection, they find a photo of a young woman they don’t recognize.

Guess who?

It’s a terrible story of gaslighting and a criminal justice system that would rather sweep crimes against women under a rather large and strangely lumpy rug. This is the story of false rape accusations a lot of people would rather you didn’t hear.

What if I don’t know how to fix it?

As a dad, I sympathize with the sentiments in this video, but I don’t know what to do about the problem.

"Dear dad" (english) from Jakob Strom on Vimeo.

It is a real problem, and here we are on the internet where the problem has been amplified a thousand-fold, and giggling man-children hide behind their anonymity and gleefully, darkly, maliciously vomit up misogyny at will. I can protest, and I do, but it just broadens the target of their hatred to include me.

I don’t think the solution is more paternalism. It has to involve allowing more women the power to use their strength.

O Glorious Truth

This is perfect: someone has taken Scott Adams’ own words, as he tends to dump them on his blog, and pasted them onto his money-makin’ comic strip as MRA Dilbert. They sync beautifully. Somehow, the words of a pedantic jackhole with an ego problem fit into a dystopian comic strip about a workplace detached from reality as if they somehow emerged from the very same rather stupid brain. Who would have thought it?

mradilbert

Any guesses on how long it will be before Adams commands a winged army of screeching lawyers to descend upon it?

Only read Thoughtcatalog when you want to be dumber

So don’t read this link to an article titled 15 Men React To The Idea Of Taking Their Wife’s Last Name After Marriage, in which 15 men who are almost certainly as real as the guys writing in to Penthouse Forum give their reasons. One sample should be enough:

“If hoards of men started taking their wives’ surnames, it would be an unfortunate and perhaps irreversible step towards a matriarchal goddess culture, which blows for guys because those cultures used to routinely kill male infants and treat males like slaves. In a world where there are already very few incentives for men to get legally shackled, this is one slippery slope I wouldn’t want to slide down.”

I want to believe that that is intentional irony. I’m afraid that it isn’t.

The very definition of patronizing

Dr. Samantha Decombel is a British geneticist who was invited to give a talk at a conference in Brussels. Then the organizers learned that she was pregnant, and they revoked the invitation. Because, they said, they were concerned about the risk of travel to her health.

You know, European Commission, pregnancy is not usually considered a disease, and it’s awfully patronizing of you to make health decisions for people you haven’t met, and for whom you have no knowledge of their actual medical condition.

What’s next? Will you decide to withdraw invitations to scientists who are too fat, too old, who are afraid of flying? Do you only make executive decisions about the health of speakers who are women? Have you considered asking invited men about the status of their families? Oh, you can’t come, your wife is 7 months pregnant and you should stay home to help her; no, no, you’ve got two young children, it would be irresponsible of us to ask you to part from them for a few days, they desperately need you.

I can pretty much guarantee those scenarios never happen.

There’s a general principle involved here, that we should allow people to make their own reasonably well-informed health decisions. Except, apparently, in the case of women, who are too innocent and childlike to be trusted with their own bodies.

What years of sneers and lies can do to you

I think I may have reached peak cynicism. I found this story of a teacher who got an anonymous note from a student sort of amusingly predictable. Here’s the note the student sent:

just wanted to let you know that I don’t have any respect for you as a teacher, not a professor, I refuse to call you that. And the reason I don’t have any respect for you is because you obviously have no self-respect at all. How am I supposed to respect you if you can’t respect yourself at all. And you know what really kills me about it is that you don’t feel bad about how you look or how you .. put yourself out there. You don’t look good. You need to take better care of yourself. And people do care what you look like. You’re a slob. You’re the size of a car, Kar-a. Now fuckin’ fix it. And I just gotta say that you’re not good as a teacher … you’re not confident. You can’t be confident being fat. Fuckin’ A. I hate you and everything you stand for. Your fuckin’ feminism is autistic. Nobody thinks it’s cool. You’re not special with your fuckin’ feministic beliefs. Go do something original and stop being a trendy whore. Bye-bye.

So, so familiar. I get that kind of thing every week, and at this point, I’d just laugh and laugh. Maybe I’d post it and mock it.

But I shouldn’t. This kid has real problems: he’s become a toxic sludge monster, loaded with terrible opinions and contemptible prejudices. That’s a real loss. The teacher it was sent to, Kara Waite, still has some little bit of hope left in her, and can still feel some pain and sympathy.

I cried for a world in which an intelligent, qualified woman can’t do something as simple as assign a little light feminist theory without being called a fat whore.

I cried because I had no idea which of my male students had left the message; it could have been any of them, and that thought made me terribly sad. I cried because female academics are the target of a truly insane amount of sexist behavior and bias. I cried because there are women in my life and past versions of myself who’d be crushed by a message like that. Women whose days would be wrecked by that hateful, cowardly bullshit. Women who’d think of it and start another crash diet, who’d remember it mornings in the shower, pinching their belly rolls and sobbing.

Me, I’d just write the student off as an irredeemable asshole. Some days, I just can’t muster much concern for the bearers of vicious toxicity.