Fair point. I wonder if there is any male-dominated subgroup that isn’t known to get rapey.
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Eunuchs?
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nearly every teen-school-coming-of-age-mainstream-comedy from the 80tis are creepy. even if you were cringing back then, you just sort-of overlooked it, cause it was “normal”.
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Just want to say up front, none of this is directed solely at you, but rather using part of your comment to discuss some things.
As I understand it, Tyson acknowledges the events described by Ashley Watson, the cheese and wine nightcap followed by his supposedly Native American “handshake”, and Katelyn Allers, his raising her sleeve to look for Pluto without asking, and differs only in his male privileged perception of the appropriateness of those events. The only one Tyson categorically denies is raping Tchiya Amet in the 80’s. The fourth woman is not named in the article and AFAIK Tyson hasn’t remarked on it.
FTA:
After about two hours of discomfort, Watson said she had to leave. He told her he had to give her a “Native American handshake” and asked her to extend her two fingers while he extended his so that they could feel each other’s “spirit connection.” They locked gazes for 10 seconds, Watson says, before she felt too uncomfortable to continue. Before she left, standing between her and the door, Tyson held her by the shoulders and said, “I want to hug you so bad right now, but I know that if I do, I’ll just want more.”
The next evening, when he told her she was too “distracting” to make it as a producer, Watson decided she couldn’t work for him anymore.
So even just going by what Tyson himself has acknowledged, he’s transgressed boundaries, made hesitant overtures to a subordinate (who is and was then married no less, not that it would be okay is she weren’t).
I’m someone who does not want to be touched without asking and has been unable to rebuke colleagues, usually male superiors for doing so. Some people are miseducated that unsolicited physical contact is a way of bonding, rather than what it really is, a dominance signal, whether it’s sexual or not (and it seems clear it was with Watson, which does make it sexual harassment). And I have the protection of my male privilege, which these women did not. People need to ask before touching, and held to account when they don’t.
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I know you’re joking, but it’s perhaps worth pointing out that the problem with sexual harassment isn’t the sex aspect, it’s the harassment aspect, which is about exploiting, consciously or otherwise, a power imbalance as a form of manipulation or outright coercion. As such, there’s literally no grown-ass adult essentially incapable of it, and the greater the relative privilege, the greater the opportunity for it.
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goddamit! I really forgot about that “native american handshake”; I can suddenly see my biased perception now. aww, shit! that doesnt feels good.
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I hear ya. Tyson is one of my personal role models (yes, I still have a few) and this betrayal sucks, though not as much as it sucked for the women whose boundaries he failed to respect.
Ironically, based on his “I’d want more” comment, he probably believed erroneously that he was being a gentleman.
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I knew I preferred Carl Sagan’s version of Cosmos for a good reason…
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The way he frames it that definitely seems to be his (utterly clueless) thinking, not just in the moment but to this day. The “logic” appears to go like this:
If I refuse to hug this woman who hugs everyone, and tell her it’s because she’s so hot that hugging her would make me horny, why, I’ll be a hero for keeping my pants on!
It really is very disappointing that someone so smart can be so clueless. It shouldn’t be terribly surprising, through. Nothing much can surprise me anymore.
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This is the real key to the whole issue, and why “don’t dress so provocatively” arguments get such rage responses. It’s not about sex, it’s about power. Period.
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I’d very slightly amend that to say that sometimes it’s also about sex, but it’s never not first and foremost about power. For example, none of the harassment I’ve been subjected to was sexual, whereas it clearly was with Watson. But in such instances, sex becomes another hierarchical power dynamic that adds to the other privileges at work.
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I have heard rumors of toxic behavior long before this at a party with a lot of stem students from a school with a highly ranked physics program. I didn’t know the term at the time, but I think looking back I was participating in a “whisper network”.
I wasn’t told of rape, but the picture I got was of an angry entitled man. If four separate people are complaining, I am inclined to believe them.
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Wait what about Bill Nye? 
Bernie has critisized Israel, when there are many states that violate human rights. A little anti semetic he’d pick a jewish one to pick on 
this is what someone once actually told me
I have a problem with the “period” in this statement. Power, in its most abstract definition, does nothing other than give people the means to get what they want. It’s the disorder of human desire that is the real problem – and which is made worse when it gets free expression (which is why "absolute power [seems to] to corrupt absolutely).
The other thing to say about the “it’s just power” thesis is that it’s a counsel of despair. If it’s power itself that is the problem then there is no way out. Whatever weapons we forge to unthrone tyranny will transform the wielder into the next tyrant.
Mere semantics do not negate the harm caused by one individual’s desire to possess and/or exert power over others, especially their physical bodies.
Give it a name; call it ‘control’ or ‘dominance’ or whatever - it’s still at the root of all assault, sexual and otherwise.
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I think we’re in agreement. It’s that corrupt desire that is the real problem, the “power” which enables the expression of it is secondary. Hence we sometimes see glimmers of relief where people in power use their power for good or even surrender their power in the name of justice.
Given your first comment regarding “human nature,” I kinda tend to doubt that.
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