The last couple of days I’ve seen maybe two names a day added to the list of people who are being identified as sexual harassers/abusers. I share your skepticism, but the pace (and the acceleration of that pace) is giving me some hope that Hollywood is coming to a turning point.
That being said, I don’t see how a day of reckoning for the entertainment industry is going to help people stocking shelves in grocery stores, working factories, getting loans from banks for their small businesses, going to school, going to church, and on and on. Fox News probably wants to pretend this is a Hollywood problem, but it’s an everywhere problem.
Agreed. It’s a societal problem, not just hollywood liberal elite problem. I’d like to see a similar reckoning in other fields, too. I hope that comes soon. I guess the hope is that if people can come out about powerful and famous people, that less powerful people can also be taken down. But we’ll see.
The academic/scientific fields, from what i understand, is really bad about biases against women and harassment. The thought of brilliant and productive women being forced out because of male behavior, or just having them tolerate that kind of treatment really upsets me. Knowledge and productivity is basically being lost or delayed because of scummy behavior by people that know better.
My supervising Professor impregnated at least one of his grad students, before my time.
The real breaking point in our working relationship came when I expressed my disapproval of his treatment of one of my colleagues [1]. To my shame, the main reason I found the courage to do so was because I was drunk at the time.
[1] Not harassment, just sexist douchebaggery. Which contributed to the relapse that put her in a psych ward for two months.
I genuinely don’t think there’s any reason to be ashamed of this. Drugs have their uses. If it takes a few drinks to tell to the truth to power, I’m buying.
Ugh… that sucks. It’s too bad stuff like this happens, because it’s not like there aren’t great men in the field on the academic side, doing great work, and wanting to encourage women of all races and people of color as well. It’s just that people like this make it harder to do so.
I have a close friend whom I didn’t stand up for when our supervisor told her, verbatim*, “You must decide what you want to do with your life. Do you want to do a PhD, or get children?”
And didn’t have the courage, at least in years to follow, to tell him what I thought of that - even when I was drunk.
I left that particular lab, and gave away my first chance to a career in academia. (Gave away some more, later.)
A friend of mine was working on her PhD in chemistry since I’d first met her. Finally, she finished it and one of the first notes of congratulations to her “I am now officially Doctor Smith!” post on Facebook was “Now you just need the title of Mommy!”
She’s actually got two kids now, but boy. Way to dismiss a woman’s huge achievement because you think she should also be procreating.
Women who know how to play the system, by the rules, are probably often changed by the system.
Or they were assholes in the first place. The must be female assholes as well.
I hope someone told the poster to sod off and mind their own business, and also that they could stuff their own children where the sun doesn’t shine (assuming they procreated). That’s the kind of response this deserves. Same level: abysmal.
