How to go to the bathroom in South Dakota

It’s a surprisingly fraught issue, and it may get worse. The South Dakota legislature wants to pass House Bill 1008. The Republicans there seem to be obsessed with who is using the bathroom.

FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to restrict access to certain restrooms and locker rooms in public schools.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA:
Section 1. That chapter 13-24 be amended by adding a NEW SECTION to read:
The term, biological sex, as used in this Act, means the physical condition of being male or female as determined by a person’s chromosomes and identified at birth by a person’s anatomy.
Section 2. That the code be amended by adding a NEW SECTION to read:
Every restroom, locker room, and shower room located in a public elementary or secondary school that is designated for student use and is accessible by multiple students at the same time shall be designated for and used only by students of the same biological sex. In addition, any public school student participating in a school sponsored activity off school premises which includes being in a state of undress in the presence of other students shall use those rooms designated for and used only by students of the same biological sex.

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Now it’s anthropology

I’m beginning to feel like an anomaly, because somehow I’ve gotten through 30+ years of teaching without ever groping a student. Harassing students seems to be a common thing. Now Science reports on a big case of sexual misconduct in the field of anthropology, a field that has had reports of problems before.

Although the most recent high-profile cases of sexual harassment in science have arisen in astronomy and biology, many researchers say paleoanthropology also has been rife with sexual misconduct for decades. Fieldwork, often in remote places, can throw senior male faculty and young female students together in situations where the rules about appropriate behavior can be stretched to the breaking point. Senior women report years of unwanted sexual attention in the field, at meetings, and on campus. A widely cited anonymous survey of anthropologists and other field scientists, called the SAFE study and published in July 2014 in PLOS ONE, reported that 64% of the 666 respondents had experienced some sort of sexual harassment, from comments to physical contact, while doing fieldwork.

Even a few years ago, the research assistant might not even have aired her complaint, as few women—or men—felt emboldened to speak out about harassment. Of the 139 respondents in the SAFE study who said they experienced unwanted physical contact, only 37 had reported it. Those who remained silent may have feared retaliation. Senior paleoanthropologists control access to field sites and fossils, write letters of recommendation, and might end up as reviewers on papers or grant proposals. “The potential for [senior scientists] to make a phone call and kill a careermaking paper feels very real,” says Leslea Hlusko, a paleontologist at the University of California (UC), Berkeley.

You should also read Rebecca Ackermann’s personal account of what it’s like to be targeted for harassment.

This is a gigantic problem for science. It’s not just a few people here and there — it’s pervasive across all disciplines, and it means we’ve lost an unknown number of excellent researchers over the years for an arbitrary reason that only benefits abusers.

I think I can skip this one

The Minnesota Republic is another of those fringey conservative student newspapers that get surprisingly well funded by the Republicans, and aren’t at all representative of the campus as a whole. This one is on the Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota, and they get enough money that they’re bringing in a couple of well-known speakers to discuss an issue of concern.

That issue is feminism.

And to discuss it, they’re flying in two people. Guess who? Hint: they’re not well-informed experts. They have more of a reputation as anti-feminist ideologues. Try to come up with the two worst names you can imagine.

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I never have to smile

I don’t. I could stop smiling forever right now, and it would just make me a Very Serious Person. I remember job interviews — what I had to do was convince the committee that I had what it takes to do the job. “Ingratiating” could be a perfectly alien concept to me, and I could still function perfectly well.

So it’s eye-opening when Sady Doyle flips the table.

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No Roosh

Do I need to mention Roosh, he of the books full of rape stories, he of the cunning plan to end rape by legalizing it on private property, he who announced a world-wide set of meetings of his fellow pick-up artists, he who cancelled all of those meetings as people around the world learned of them and laughed at him? Yes, I do, but I’ll be brief. He had a “press conference”, that started like so:

All right, so the world has gone insane in the past week. Why? Number one, I had organized meet ups around the world for men to enjoy a social happy hour to meet in private and talk about anything. Work, politics, girls, just to meet. Okay? Number two, a year ago I wrote an article How to Stop Rape. This article, to a 10-year-old, was obvious that I didn’t intend to legalize rape or cause harm against women. But starting on Sunday, a lot of you have lied by saying that I am a pro-rape advocate. He wants women to get hurt! And then the third thing, you said the meet ups are about rapists. They want to gather to learn how to rape. They are going to exchange tips. Some of you have called it a rape rally! What the hell is that? A rape rally? So because of that I’ve been all over the world in terms of the news. Over 100 articles have been written.

I think Dave Futrelle has Roosh’s history covered. Social meetups are not the problem. The problem is that Roosh brags about traveling around the world “banging” women who are drunk, unconscious, or otherwise unable to consent, he publishes recipes for tricking women into sex, he regularly disparages women, and yes, he published a bizarre article in which he suggested that rape would go away if the law disallowed charging men with rapes that occurred on their own private property — after all, the woman consented to entering his rape cave, therefore she consented to anything he might do to her there. So basically his “press conference” was all about lying about what he does.

But the operative sentence is that last one: Over 100 articles have been written. That’s exactly what he wanted. His plan was a success.

Therefore, I now declare Pharyngula to be a Roosh-Free Zone. I won’t be mentioning him in the future. I’m entering his name into the blacklist, so don’t even bother trying to mention him in the comments. Defending him will be grounds for an automatic ban.

Beware of snakes in your ovaries!

The Abolitionist Society of Fort Worth is one of those organizations that encourages the vicious goons who stand outside of Planned Parenthood, screaming and waving placards of photos of bloody embryos at women trying to get medical care. They are going to be distributing a pamphlet that is the graphical equivalent of their incoherent shouting, and here is one of the informative illustrations from it.

ovariansnakes

You’ll probably have to click to get a larger size, and even then it’s going to be a difficult read: who thought that a wall of small all-caps sans serif text would be readable? Probably the same people who thought their hate tactics were rational.

Hey, maybe those women aren’t going in for abortions, but to take advantage of Planned Parenthood’s ovarian snake removal services, did you ever think of that, huh?

(via Beth Presswood)

It’s not just astronomers

Add molecular biology to your list of fields that have a sexual harassment problem. A biologist at the University of Chicago (where only a quarter of the senior faculty are women, the article points out) has resigned in the midst of some damning accusations.

The professor, Jason Lieb, made unwelcome sexual advances to several female graduate students at an off-campus retreat of the molecular biosciences division, according to a university investigation letter obtained by The New York Times, and engaged in sexual activity with a student who was “incapacitated due to alcohol and therefore could not consent.”

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