I’ve been here before. You care about your teaching, so you give the class a form asking for anonymous evaluations, with criticisms welcome…because you seriously want to hear what you can do to improve learning. And then there are always a few students who blow it off with stupid remarks and irrelevant ‘witticisms’ — I’ve been told the class needs more Jesus, for instance (I do not preach religion or atheism in my classroom).
But I’ve never had to face the special challenges of teaching while female.
Later that afternoon, I started going through the responses. It was encouraging to see that, in general, responses to the first two questions indicated I was getting better, which was gratifying given the amount of time and energy I spent re-developing the class. For the most part, students were surprisingly honest when responding to questions 3 and 4, showing they understood their responsibility in their progress, or lack thereof. Somewhere towards the end of the ~160 evaluations, I came across one that answered question #2 with: “Teach naked.” I can’t tell you what the rest of this evaluation said; this is the only part I remember. I was so angry, and embarrassed, and exasperated, and hopeless, all at once. I worked so hard. I am so knowledgeable. I take such care to present myself professionally. I care deeply about my students’ learning outcomes, particularly with respect to learning critical thinking skills. But none of that matters. I clearly will never be more than a thing to look at. How depressing is that? None of my work, achievements, or intentions matter to people like that—just because I’m a woman, an object. It’s maddening!
I can’t even imagine students sexualizing me, so I’d never had to think about how I’d handle such a problem. The Jesus thing? Easy. I just ignore it. But treating me as your own personal sex monkey? Never had to worry about it.
But now I know exactly how to respond to such an unlikely eventuality, and for those of you for whom it is far more likely, here’s an example of dealing with it strongly:
Almost two weeks later, before giving an exam, I announced to my class: “I want to take the first couple minutes to call out the person who used the anonymity of the mid-semester evaluations as an opportunity to sexually harass me.” The class was suddenly at full attention. You could hear a pin drop. My voice trembled. I felt humiliated having to admit that some people see me as an object. I had decided not to make eye contact, so as to not implicitly accuse anyone, and instead stared towards the back. I proceeded with increasing audible confidence:
“Now, I’m going to give you the benefit of doubt and assume this was not a malicious comment. Now here’s where the teachable moment comes in: these types of comments, as well as things like catcalls, are not taken as compliments. They constitute sexual harassment, which is a form of bullying, and like any bully, you are a coward. An adult would own up to it and face the consequences. For those of you who may have heard about it afterward and snickered, high-fived, or didn’t in any way condemn it publicly, you are complicit in condoning such cowardly behavior. Now, here’s a good rule of thumb if you are unsure whether you are harassing or bullying someone—ask yourself: would you do or say this to your mother, sister, or eventually your daughters? If the answer is no, then, it is inappropriate to do or say to a person you do not know very well.”
Bravo.
Hey, isn’t that a well-spoken truth even outside of the classroom?
I have to say I’ve been pleasantly surprised throughout the few years I’ve been teaching (I am a lady graduate student in computer sciences and have taught both introductory programming and a 500-level operating systems course) that I’ve never received anything like this. I do not know what I would have done, to be honest, and I’ll be saving this response as a reference in case this ever does happen.
Wish I didn’t have to say it, but many thanks to my mostly-male students for not being misogynist douchebags to me over the past few years.
I had a colleague receive the comment: “Her boobs are too big and her clothes are too tight.” on an evaluation. She handled it well – anger, incredulity, and humor. Unfortunately this was the typical end of term eval where you don’t get the results until the next term so she couldn’t handle it the way the instructor in the post handled it.
If anything like my uni she’ll be censured if not fired for the call out.
Our teachers where told they couldnt call out shit even if its a kid wacking off in class (actual example used)
I always get a little ‘Hooray for people!’ moment when someone does something incredibly just the right thing that I would never have thought of and that I can learn from. The students in that class are lucky to have someone that aware and intelligent, well, except for one douchenozzle, he doesn’t deserve any sort of professional instruction. Maybe instant karma’s gonna get him and he’ll be on a bridge when it collapses.
That is one great teacher who turned a derogatory piece of shit into a teaching opportunity. However there is one sentence wrong:
” An adult would own up to it and face the consequences.” Not necessarily.
And this is a clear cut example of adultism, an invidious comparison of adults and young people implying the young are ethically inferior.
The students may not be immediately aware of the insult but it is what it is and the her attitude is conveyed.
If she had said a christian would own up to it or a white person would own up to it, her bias would be immediately apparent and she would be roundly criticized. .
One problem: I have known plenty of people who, if asked would they repeat their insulting, harassing or overtly intrusive behaviour in front of or even to their mother or sister, immediately respond “Fuck yeah. I hate that bitch.” Admittedly, relatively few of these people were ones I met at university. But even so, this approach makes the assumption that there’s a certain universally-held baseline level of respect for others, and it doesn’t take long walking round in the real world to reveal that this is not the case.
ludicrous
Wouldn’t a fair definition of “child” be “one who has not yet reached an understanding (due to age-related lack of experience) of the full rights and responsibilities of a member of the community”?
No, it’s an assumption that young people are (generally) possessed of poor judgment or lacking in a fully developed sense of empathy, or, failing that, quite reasonably assumed to be ignorant of how to conduct themselves as, well, adults.
All truths.
To quote Don Draper, “Young people don’t know anything, especially that they’re young.”
I’m willing to soften it: some young people are complete prats. And some of them even grow out of it. But I maintain that all of us should be ashamed, to some degree, of who we were at 20.
(Fer chrissakes, our brains aren’t even done cooking.)
Damnit. *aren’t
I want to add something to the conversation, relating to the sub-conscious. I don’t think we can just use rational discourse to persuade the recalcitrant types.
Let me give an example of what i mean, based upon a recent experience. I walked out of a store onto the sidewalk, with my wife, & we fell in with four young women, effectively making us a group of six. I was with five women. I noticed almost immediately that I got a strong emotional, i.e. sub-conscious reaction. I got a lift – a feeling of pleasure or joy. (Please, no sniggering about dirty old men – it wasn’t like that.)
Later that afternoon, in the supermarket, i noticed there were four of five young men in a group. Again, I got a sub-conscious reaction. This time, it was a feeling of menace. (They weren’t doing anything suspicious, just hunting for whatever they wanted to buy.)
What i’m suggesting is that all of us bring sub-conscious biases to our encounters with other people. These obviously influence our behaviour towards them in face-to-face encounters. This, almost certainly i would say, influences our attitudes when thinking about others as well.
The big question is, how do we go about changing the ingrained emotional or sub-conscious reactions of the misogynists?
@ #3: I a surprised at this. Our university (and others I have taught at) have different layers of support and training for dealing with unruly and disruptive behavior. I would be very stressed out for having to report the incident you mention, but our faculty liaison and admin. would support me.
I can not imagine what it is like to deal with crap like this while female. This is a brave teacher, and one I am honored to have as a colleague.
To be fair, this kind of thing happens to men too. I’ve not had this same scenario, but been made to feel similarly uncomfortable by sexual comments from women in my classes, particularly when I was younger (and presumably more attractive). I’ve had a stalker-like student. The fundamental differences are that this is not a regular occurrence for men and that we, generally, don’t feel threatened by it because we are unlikely to be harmed physically. I do think that the situation was handled very well but, as pointed out by ludicrous, not perfectly. There is something here for all of us to think about, whether we are considering an improper comment in an evaluation or are interacting with our students in an attempt to, rightly, shame one while respecting the rest.
I got comments along those lines as a TA. Including a comment complaining about how when a student came to my office once I asked them to leave the door open.
I did so because it was hot in my office and I wanted ventilation.
But this guy was miffed and thought that my goal was preventing “rumors” and added a few choice comments about how he wouldn’t think of hitting on me anyway, because I was an ugly dyke.
An admirable post and admirable behavior from the teacher – although sadly many of the comments on the blog post PZ quoted are predictably along the lines of “Lighten up, sweetheart / it was just a joke / boyz will be boyz / why are you being so sensitive“.
Bleagh.
I also got a snide comment about my handwriting (I graded exams and thus would periodically write things in the margins) being too “girly.”
okstop,
I’ve never met a student as ethically challenged as some of my baby-boomer colleagues. I believe that it is easier to establish a positive relationship with students when you don’t make assumptions about things like their ethically behavior. I begin with a positive assumption that they behave well (not like adults, I expect better behavior than that illustrated by the average adult). Doing what is right is not a general failing of youth so much as it is of humans.
Kinda sucks that, out of around 160 perfectly normal evals, one jackass spoils the entire bunch for her. I guess that’s human psychology, though, to accentuate negative events while positive ones tend to become background noise. Just goes to show that you can’t justify ignoring the behavior of a minority, even a very small minority, of jerks based on “well, most of us aren’t like that.” Good handling of the situation, though, even if I agree with sonofrojblake @ 6 that the rule about not doing stuff to people that you wouldn’t do to your mother/sister/daughter would definitely go over some people’s heads.
It is a generally unacknowledged stereotype. There is an unspoken “all”. I think you would agree that it is likely that there are students in her class whose ethics, understanding etc you would be proud of. How unfair is the insult to them? The last time you were stereotyped you did not like it at all. Why do we think it’s ok to do it to the young.
Okstop: “But I maintain that all of us should be ashamed, to some degree, of who we were at 20”
Thank you for the suggestion, would you entertain the notion that we adults might be projecting a wee bit of our personal shame onto the young?
Might there be a correlation between an adult’s disparagement of the young and the difficulties, failures, shame experiences, ill treatment etc. that he went through when young?
I dunno, just asking, has anyone researched it?
Are the dynamics in any way similar to misogyny? Just asking.
.
First off I am a woman. Wadjet (is a serpent egyptian goddess). More often than not, many misinterpret my name as being male. Second, it shouldn’t matter if I am male or female… but if I am a male and I disagree with something relating to females, I get accused of being a sexist. If they know I’m a female first, then I usually don’t get blamed and don’t have to explain later. Third, why is everyone running around trying to be a victim all the time? This instance of this end of semester evaluation… It happens all the time. The student was most likely joking. And lets be honest, some people do not have a very developed sense of human (either when writing something funny, or the other person reading it)? Since when do rational individuals get so hyped up that we start assuming this student was a male? If this evaluation is like ANY I took when I was in college 20 years ago, they were anonymous. So how did we jump to this evaluation being written by a male student trying to sexually harass a female teacher…. MAYBE it was a female student? IDK. I just think there is a lot of hoops being jumped through to try and make someone a victim of a “vicious sexual harassment”.
I also find it great that the teacher used it as a lesson for students. They really should know that sometimes what they say or type isn’t received in the way they thought it would, that it still can be sexual harassment. Harassment all depends on the person receiving it. If the person receiving it is not accepting of that type of input then it is then considered harassing.
The worst part of this is the comments that this student doesn’t deserve teaching. That this kid that is all of 19 or 20 years old is somehow not worthy of being a college student anymore because he/she decided to tell a joke that bombed with that teacher. This joke may have played out better on another demographic, granted. If the teacher was not a young woman, but an old man let’s say… all of a sudden the joke is funny…. I could see my Humanities professor making such a joke on himself. He was a wild one.
In college we let kids loose to an extent. They are building who they are going to become. We let them be more real.
This article, and the responses are a failure on being able to understand exactly what is wrong with the world right now, not just the atheist movements popping up. We can ALL be a victim…. IF we want to. It all depends on how we choose to respond. Personally, I’m tired of being a victim of something far worse, so you won’t see that out of me. I conquered the victim in me. Can we all try and allow people to just be humans again? It’s getting too far out of hand. Even atheist blogs/sites are starting to censor! Can you imagine?! Some of them openly state they do not endorse free speech on their pages?!
I guess I expect more out of atheist groups than I have been seeing. Maybe we all suffer from different aspects of the same illness.
But be known, you can call me any name you like. Send me any sort of sexualized response you like. You can chat me up, hit on me, OR not. I am not going to get offended. Heck… You can even say the “F*bomb” to me and I promise not to cry.
Not ethically inferior: more unable to overcome psychological blocks or be aware of the harm they cause to others. Like a kind of lack-of-experience-based-privilege blindness. The idea is that children are born without social aptitude, learning how to correctly interact with society is what becoming an adult is. Being able to admit your faults and apologise (in a public, professional setting) is one of those social interactions.
Being unable to evaluate the harm of our actions doesn’t necessarily make a person ethically inferior.
And lets be honest, some people do not have a very developed sense of human
Well ain’t that the truth. All hail the wisdom of Tyops.
Tat Wadjet, I realise that English possibly isn’t your first language but I suggest you read both the OP and comments as nobody said they shouldn’t be taught or shouldn’t be a student, you just invented that. Also, while you might feel fine with being sexualised, not everyone is, and dismissing it as just boyz being boyz or just joking is what continues the sexism by making it seem OK. Nothing to do with having a sense of humour or not.
@John Phillips, FCD
Uh, take your own advice John, Tat was probably referring to:
Personally, I disliked McC2lhu’s other sentence much more:
If you’re aiming for karmic humour, have a whale or pot of petunias or gramda playing a piano or something fall on their head instead.
Tat Wadjet, I’m having a hard time seeing what point you’re trying to make, given that this…
… would seem to be in direct contradiction of this:
*grandma
@skmc
*It’s spelt *Tpyos ;)
I think ‘adultism’ (some call it ‘childism’) is the template for all the other ‘ism’s. It is where we first learned (on the receiving end) that an undesirable behavior or trait of an individual can be gratuitously ascribed to the whole group. It is gratifying because it allows us to think that we know something in advance about all the members of that group we may encounter.
Years later we discover limits. We shouldn’t do that with every group, not gender, not race, etc.
But the negative stereotype habit is there deeply ingrained in our experience so it takes an effort to ‘not do it’.
Yes there are always the excuses (I mean reasonable assessments of the facts) the young do differ in many ways from the mature. But how do you get from a reasonable assessment of the facts to ok it’s open season on using the young for an example of any trait we don’t like.
I’d have been tempted to ask the rhetorical question of whether that student would want to be assessed based on my opinion on their physical appearance and not based on the work they do for class. That’s what we’re doing here right? Jeans and a sloppy t-shirt? Backwards cap? F! Even if you got 95%. That’s how we do, right?
Oh wait, I bet that “man” would not want to be judged like he’s in a pageant. I bet he wants to be evaluated based on his knowledge and his work. Funny that.
@#19
I’m not convinced that your statement is true. I have found the current generation of students more empathetic and aware of the harm caused by language than adults of previous generations. I do not wish to paint previous generations with a broad brush, but I do see some degree of progress in our culture in this regard. Then again, the real point I’d like to make is that you do not know if a young person or an old person, drawn at random from a pool, will be more empathetic, responsible, moral, ethical, or whatever else you’d like to measure until you actually do the measurement. This is because humans are highly variable in all of these attributes and because the measure of such attributes can be, in part, subjective.
ludicrous
I expect young birds not to be able to fly. I expect lion cubs not to be able to hunt. Why should I not expect human children not to be able to understand social niceties, nuances of moral/ethical behaviour etc which they have not yet had time or experience to learn? I’m not disparaging children by doing so—merely acknowledging a fact.
Daz,
Students in a college classroom tend to range from age 17 to 70. Are they children? Where do we draw the line? Are their 12 year olds that are more socially developed than 50 year olds? (hint: the answer is yes).
That comment would be inappropriate no matter if it was from male, female, or any other gender variation. It’s nice that Wadjet has been able to rise above ever being made to feel any discomfort or ever to be made to feel devalued, I’m sure most people would like to attain that state. If that comment was meant as a joke, the student has a serious humor disability. Perhaps the atheist movement would be improved by a slight increase in respect and civility.
@barbyau
Oddly enough my s.o. reports having been assessed influenced by physical appearance quite often during secondary school and university.. (she admitted to wearing an “exam neckline”, while saying she liked the professors who weren’t influenced by that and treated her like an equal the best) Darn it sexism goes both ways from young to old, but mostly one way from men to women =(.
AnatomyProf
ludicrous is objecting to the teacher’s comparison of adult behaviour with childish behaviour, and claiming that to compare the two is, somehow, age-ism.
@AnatomyProf #27
Yeah, rethinking it I guess that in general I was off and of course children aren’t necessarily less or more of a whole number of properties (“empathetic, responsible, moral, ethical, or whatever else”). To rephrase though: the way GracieABD used “adult” is not so problematic if taken to mean “having learnt how to correctly interact with society”. Similarly to how “professional” doesn’t mean “how people in this profession behave”, but rather “formally, based on professional guidelines and concentrating on the substance of the work at hand”.
It makes sense to say “adult behaviour” in a certain context, just like “professional behaviour”, although the individual doing both may be a child amateur.
Ludicrous, stop being such a whiny-ass titty baby.
“Adultism.” Bite me.
Daz,
I agree with ludicrous. I think the issue is larger, as a class is going to be heterogeneous, but I do believe that the assumption that college students are less than adults is damaging to the educational process. They are adults (based on age). Some of them are more socially developed and empathetic than their instructors. Some are not. I believe that the word we are looking for is condescending. That is what (it sounds like, I wasn’t there) the instructor was doing. Providing a teaching moment, such as this one, without being condescending is a difficult task. We all fail at times. This may have been time for a (brief) class discussion. I would base that decision on my feeling about the class, assuming enough time had passed to develop one. This is just my opinion, but I worry that some of my colleagues limit their ability to teach because they do not treat their students like adults. That said, I maintain a rigid schedule to prevent students (without regard to age, sex, or ethnicity) from succumbing to sloth (as I myself am prone to do).
=8)-DX and Tat Wadjet, apologies for missing that in post 3, no excuse. But I stand by the rest.
I agree, but that isn’t the assumption which the teacher is making. What she’s saying is that:
X is the expected adult behaviour, and Y is behaviour typical of children. Therefore if you consider yourself to be an adult, or aspire to become a responsible adult, you should do X, not Y.
@33 =8)-DX,
Professional is a term I use a lot in class. I talk about how my students are attempting to move into a profession (health care) and that this requires a degree of seriousness not required in other aspects of their lives. I think that it is a great word, but it too needs to be defined when you have the conversation (as you’ve pointed out for adult behavior). Some confuse professionalism with a style of dress. I try to sell it as a commitment to be excellent at your chosen field, something that begins by setting high expectations for yourself. If I use adult in class I’ll try to define it clearly so that we use it in a positive manner suggesting a goal to achieve.
@37 Daz,
Perhaps. But I think that ludicrous’ point was that an adult wouldn’t come out and admit it. We have too much evidence to suggest that they would hide it, deny it, or spin it. It might be (as =8)-DX pointed out) a desirable adult trait, but it is not an adult trait. Children are often more honest when their behavior is challenged than adults are.
Thank you however for having me reread it. I was a bit off track.
Some of us have favorite age scapegoats. You can sometimes observe that a particular blogger or commenter will repeatedly disparage a certain age or school class.
can be interesting to free associate to childhood references ie. ‘childish’ (what do you see) ‘teenager’ ‘adolescent’. What gender, what appearance, posture, facial expression? Happy, sad, angry?
ludicrous at 40
How could I have forgotten the all-time favorite ‘rebellious’.
AnatomyProf
I’m not so sure. (See below)
ludicrous
This is what I tried to get at in my #28. It is not disparaging of children to call behaviour which children typically engage in “childish.” It’s just a statement of obvious fact.
It is, however, disparaging to the adult to call an adult’s behaviour childish; because the adult is considered to be old and experienced enough to have learned adult behaviour.
We can ALL be a victim…. IF we want to. It all depends on how we choose to respond.
—–
TW
—–
It seems the teacher in this case is choosing not to be a ‘victim’ by responding in a proactive way to the inappropriate remark.
I don’t think the counsel to
‘lie back and enjoy it’…sorry ‘take it as a compliment’ is doing anyone any favors.—–
/TW
This is so great! I hope that I could have half this teacher’s poise when calling at sexist behavior in the classroom.
The weirdest comment I ever got on an eval was, “Ms. Cyrano has a great attitude, but she needs more pirratitude.” With a little drawing of a pirate ship. :DDD
Daz–completely agree with you. Ludicrous is living up to his ‘nym.
Anatomy Prof @ 35
The problem I have with this statement is that it implies that the opposite is fine–that children’s opinions and ideas should be ignored. I’m not treating my 15-year old like an adult when I respect her opinions. I’m treating her like a human being. I don’t treat my students like adults (most of them ARE adults), I treat them like full and authentic human beings that have valuable ideas and a right to contribute.
That has nothing to do with age, or development. It has to do with ethics (and perhaps grokking some Freire.)
The relationship between a student/teacher is, at bottom, authoritarian so long as I have any control over whether that student passes my class. And I have a lot to say about interrupting that paradigm, but those have to be systemic changes. The best thing that I can do within the classroom is to acknowledge that the paradigm exists, make the process as transparent as possible, and always affirm my students’ rights to authentic self-expression. This is the same way that I parent. Again–not an age/development thing. For me, this is an ethical choice that has to do with respecting human dignity.
Children and adults are both people and deserve to be treated as such.
That said, children are immature and less experienced, and are more prone to acting without considering the effect (both because of ignorance-due-to-inexperience and because of the impulsivity that is the result of their still-developing brains).
I have never not received sexually harassing comments in my TA evals. Not once have I not received them. I have 7 semesters of TA experience, and I’ve received sexually harassing comments every semester. Every other female TA had it at least as bad. It’s so common at my school, they actually started having the profs go through the TA evaluations ahead of time to screen out the inappropriate ones, and likewise the university administration collates and removes sexually harassing comments directed at female-presenting professors.
But there’s a shitload of protection for the victim (understandably, and I approve wholeheartedly – my uni is actually pretty good about that type of harassment) if a TA or prof is harassing a student in university regs. Pretty much none if a student chooses to harass a TA. IF you can prove who did it and you have witnesses or hard evidence like an email, you might be able to get academic sanctions placed on the student and have them switched from your section. Might. Maybe. More often than not, they’ll give the student a talking to. “Bad boy, don’t do it again.” I say boy because in my 7 semesters and nearly 1000 students taught, every harasser that I’ve dealt with or heard about has been a male-presenting student. Every one.
This is why I won’t be alone with a male student. Not because I’m concerned about “rumors,” but because I’ve had it happen before where a male student tried to hit on me and thankfully there was someone else in the room but I have no idea what would’ve happened if there hadn’t been a witness. Sexual harassment by my students is a part-of-my-reality thing. It’s happened. More than once. And that fucking sucks.
I teach introductory physics to pre-meds and to engineering students. It can definitely be a boys’ club, particularly with the engineering students, and I have been subjected to more than my share of sexist comments in anonymous student evals, usually at the end of the semester when it is too late to respond. For instance, I am apparently a giant slutty whore who wears stripper boots to class and have breasts that are too big. Except for the times when I don’t dress sexy enough and am too buttoned down when I teach. I wear too much makeup and sparkly jewelry, or sometimes not enough. My accent is annoying, except when it’s cute (I live and teach in the midwest, but grew up in Appalachia and still have a somewhat pronounced accent). I’m a bitch who doesn’t care about my students and is only in teaching for the money (ha! I’m a contract lecturer with no hope of tenure, ever) when I do things like enforce rules and deadlines or decent behavior in the classroom, except when I’m being too nice and letting students walk all over me. And so on.
I’ve had students, always male students, openly question my intelligence, during class while I’m teaching, because I can’t be openly right about something they think they’re experts on (I usually give those students a verbal smackdown, show them to be wrong in front of everyone, and invite them to leave until they can be more professional and respectful and deliver an apology for being an asshole).
I’m one of two women in my department and I’m the only one who teaches undergrads. I’ve asked the other men who teach these classes if they have to deal with this sort of thing and they all have said no. They’re also usually stunned that anybody would say these things to me, either to my face or in evals.
I’m lucky in the sense that I’m kind of a bitch and have no problem standing up for myself, but that’s after 10 years of teaching experience and I used to get much more upset by this sort of thing back when I was a TA and a new adjunct. I’ve also had a string of really supportive department chairs who back me up when students come complaining over stupid thing (like the way I dress in class or whatever–and yes, that’s actually happened). .
ischem,
That is so awful! I’m so sorry that you’ve had to read evals like that. I’m so sorry that those people exist.
I make a joke during my instructions on filling out the eval that the comments should only be about my teaching and that saying something like “Ms. Cyrano’s hair is ugly and I hate her face” doesn’t help me be a better teacher. I don’t think this joke keeps gross people from saying gross shit. I think I’ve just be really really lucky. :(
Ludicrous,
I have a somewhat different perspective on the adult/child, adultism/ageism matter. Perhaps it is just a difference in how I understand the words but as I see it ageism is a thing, adultism not so much. To me one doesn’t become an adult just by getting older. One has to learn how to act like an adult. I have known teenagers and even little kids who are more adult than some grown ups.
If she had said “teenagers” and “grown ups” then I would agree that it was ageist.
So FWIW, I don’t see the teacher’s response as ageist. By my understanding of “adult”, it is no more “adultist” to say that an adult would not behave that way than it would be “mathematicist” to say that a mathematician would not mistake a linear function for a quadratic equation. Treating people with respect is part of the definition of being (or behaving like) an adult.
. . .
One other thing. I hope (apparently unlike the “karma” joker) that the kid who made the inappropriate comment learned an important lesson that day. In my experience lots of people say thoughtless, inconsiderate and inappropriate things (myself included) because they (we) thought they were acceptable and even funny until someone took the time to correct them (us). Maybe I’m just lucky and/or deluded but I find most people are willing and often eager to correct their mistakes and bad behavior. (Of course the flaming assholes get more air time.)
LOLOLOL Oh yes, that sweet sweet adjunct’s salary. Why, if I teach at 3 schools, I might be able to make my student loan payment! I’M LIVIN THE DREEEEEEEAAAAAM!
Same here. My office door is always, always open when I have students in there. Always. My office is also in a high traffic area of the building and when I had the opportunity to move to a slightly larger office on a quieter floor, I turned it down partly for this reason.
Since becoming a lecturer, I’ve been hit on by students, usually on their final exams or some other thing they’ve handed in near the end of the semester. For example, last semester I had one of my intro physics classes make a “cheat sheet” for the final exam, but they had to hand it in with their exam, with their name on it. One student wrote on his that I was a total MILF and wrote his phone number, another said that he’d “absolutely hit that,” and another just drew a big penis and balls on his paper. All three of them put their names on it. Back when I was a TA, though, I would get asked out regularly by students and I had one turn into a stalker (which was really scary and luckily campus police took it seriously, but still).
@Cyranoth2nd: I’ve never had anything as blatant as “teach naked,” but gendered slurs from students because I wouldn’t give them answers and implications that I shouldn’t be teaching because I’m a young and babyfaced woman? Yes. I’ve also had comments on my physical attractiveness (“She’s cute!” and also “She should get implants bc I thought she was a boy” – yeah, I got that one once), my dress (“she’d look a lot nicer if she dressed up a bit” – dude, we’re in a fucking chemistry lab. Fashion is, and should be, the least of my concern), and my frank manner (basically calling my no-nonsense approach to lab safety “crude” – when male profs and TAs who likewise approach “If you spill acid on yourself, you’re stripping nude and getting under the shower because skin is more important than modesty” in those words don’t get criticized for their frankness).
Other female TAs I know have received comments on their smiles, on their hair, on their bust. Some have been called gendered slurs – me included. In my case, I’m pretty sure it’s because I won’t shrug and smile and let safety issues go, and I won’t shrink when dudebros try to loom at me to intimidate me into shutting up about it. I have threatened to kick out students who refuse to keep their safety gear on because I don’t want a student going blind on my watch, and I’d do it again. If my evals were uniformly low, I’d think it was me, but even including those outliers, my average score is >2 standard deviations above the average TA eval, and typically averages about 90%. I think it’s safe to say I’m pretty damn good at it and most of the students don’t mind my manner.
Let me point out that the term “Professionalism” is classist.
(This point brought to you by union members who gave us Labor Day).
Daisy Cutter:
Seriously?
note that not-quite-at peak performance brains are still no reason for discrimination. or various pandering generalisations.
Thunk,
Since when it pointing out that children are typically less socially developed than adults “discrimination”?
Tat Wadjet (#18)
Do you even read what you write? No one’s trying to be a victim. They are victimized because, as you note yourself, this sort of shit happens all the time. So does rape. Rape is really damn common. Should we overlook it because of its frequency? And black people get followed around in upscale stores all the time by staff who think they’re shoplifters. Should we pretend it’s not oppression just because it’s so common?
And what sort of “real” person does someone become when they’re allowed to act like a sexist douchebag and harass women without consequence? No, seriously, tell me. Is that something we should encourage?
You didn’t conquer anything. You stuck your head in the sand and are pretending, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that social problems are personal ones. Maybe you find that comforting, but you’re wrong. You’re a denialist. And you’re victim blaming, which is disgusting and genuinely harmful. If you want to maintain your belief that you can rise above oppression just by willing yourself not to react to it, fine, but don’t evangelize about it. Keep it to yourself.
Sexual harassment is dehumanizing. So no, we can’t allow sexual harassment if we want people to “just be humans.” I mean, why the fuck should the humanity of the harassers get more consideration than that of their targets?
Do you think it’s equally discriminatory or “adultist” for kids to not work 8 hours a day, not be able to drive or vote, or legally drink?
For real, a lot of people are spouting straight-up nonsense in this thread.
It becomes discrimination when you use it as an ad-hominem attack against something a young person is saying (as a 26 year old who passes for 8 years younger, I run into that a lot and it’s fucking infuriating), or when you try to conflate “young” and “asshole”. Most of the preteens I work with in my martial arts and science outreach are freaking awesome people who would never think of conducting anonymous sexual harassment. Young and asshole are not synonyms, and implying they are is an insult to the great kids I work with.
I was a TA for four semesters.
Two semesters I TA’d labs, two semesters I TA’d lectures.
Things I got:
-Comments about how I probably didn’t know anything about the topic at hand.
-Stares at my chest/ass.
-Suggestions that I should wear more revealing clothing in the lab.
-The nickname “bitch” for demanding that a student wear gloves and use the balance that is in the hood while he weighed out ethidium bromide.
-The nickname “heinous bitch that no-one likes” for scolding someone when I caught them just about to pour organic solvent down the drain.
-Complained about to the professor when I refused to give credit for the answer “[my name]’s tits” when the correct answer was “synthetic” on an exam.
I could keep going.
As a note: My comment is general-you, not you-in-particular. I realized on re-reading that it appears as an accusation, and I don’t mean that. I’m talking in the general sense.
Also: it also becomes discriminatory when it’s used as an excuse to deny a kid agency they’re capable of asserting or health care they need. A 14-year-old is fully capable of deciding she doesn’t want to be a teen mom, for example, and requiring parental consent for abortions or birth control or for signing off parental rights is hugely problematic, IMO. There are women I knew in high school whose lives were ruined because they had reactionary religious parents who refused consent for abortion.
Likewise, requiring parental consent for kids to seek mental health treatment is hugely problematic. What if the parents are abusive or “don’t believe” teens can get psychological disorders?
Finally: it’s discriminatory when it’s used as an excuse to invalidate a kid’s experience and minimize problems that disproportionately affect them. Cuz yeah. That was the reaction to the bullying I received in high school, which was of such severity that if my parents had been abusing me like that, I probably would’ve been removed from their custody.
Unfortunately, asking that men treat women they’re not related to as well as those they are isn’t sufficient, as
sonofrojblake @6 has described.
The easy-to-follow rule is: If it’s something you wouldn’t say to a man who you think would be capable of kicking your ass, then it isn’t appropriate to say it to a woman. For example, if you wouldn’t tell a random male stranger on the street to smile, you shouldn’t be telling women to either.
I reckon the teacher evaluation corollary would be: Don’t write anything about a female teacher that you wouldn’t write about a male teacher and that you wouldn’t happily sign your name to, knowing that you could be expelled for using harassing language.
There is a long list of items expressed by the female teachers who have commented on this thread that can be added to the list of male privilege..
And these comments are from those women who have more or less successfully dealt with the harassment.
What about those who quit or didn’t start teaching because of it?
It appears that colleges are not doing enough, they are only putting out fires if that. They need to preempt it.
It is the male colleagues who need to step up to the plate and insist on a zero sexual harassment policy.
Men can do it without the name-calling and other backlash, it is so much easier for us.
ks and ischemgeek: I am so sorry that this sort of vile behavior is routine in your teaching. I think that calling out the behavior is the only way to deal with it, and I wish that schools would be more proactive about this – not just screening out inappropriate evaluations, but hauling the smirking, privileged asses of the perpetrators in front of a senior member of the school for a lecture about appropriate behavior (I am thinking specifically about the recent video of the chief of the Australian army condemning sexual harassment).
My partner and I both teach in a graduate school, and she has been fortunate not to be on the receiving end of this sort of abuse. I think it is a combination of a generally more mature peer group, smaller classes, no anonymous evaluations and our graduate school collating and going through all evaluations before passing them on to the faculty and course director. Regardless, you have my sympathy, my best wishes, and my hope that you continue to teach science, because we need more women in science and fewer old white farts like me.
I did get some comments like this when I was younger, and some different but equally irrelevant ones when I was older. I ignored them all, since I didn’t get them until after the semester was over. The vast majority of my students took the process seriously, and I learned quite a bit from reading their comments.
However, back when we could still post grades on paper outside our offices (the early 1980s), someone obviously didn’t like the result of their test (I was teaching calculus-based physics for engineers, which was a weed-out course for the engineering school), and wrote “F*** you, {my lastname}” on the sheet (without the asterisks, of course). I wrote under it, “No, thanks”.
It’s another of our privileges, by the way, that we men can attack sexism/misogyny without getting inundated with rape threats.
It may be our most important privilege and at the same time the most under utilized.
One of the female professors in the department where I do work study had a meeting around midterms at the request of a male student in danger of failing. He proceeded to argue that, basically, he knew more about her grading system than she did and whether or not she was allowed to say “no late papers accepted.” When this failed to result in a better grade, he stood over her desk, yelling and using expansive gestures that almost struck her.
She informed him that he had to leave and she would speak with him again when he was calm. When he refused, she went to the door and, despite his “you can’t leave yet” (he apparently attempted to grab her arm), she walked down the hall to a (female) colleague’s office.
He followed her, demanding she continue their “conversation.” At the other professor’s office, he continued to argue, looming over her and nearly toe-to-toe (she’s petite; he was not), ignoring her requests and the other professor’s that he leave. It wasn’t until a couple of male faculty members came down to see what was going on that he finally left.
Afterward, I asked if she was okay, wanted coffee or anything, and she told me that this happened at least once every semester.
Later, word came down from on high that she would have to continue teaching him because hers was the only section of the course being offered that semester and he needed to graduate on time. And HE was offended that she would not meet with him except in the presence of male faculty member.
John Phillips, FCD
//Tat Wadjet, I realise that English possibly isn’t your first language but I suggest you read both the OP and comments as nobody said they shouldn’t be taught or shouldn’t be a student, you just invented that. Also, while you might feel fine with being sexualised, not everyone is, and dismissing it as just boyz being boyz or just joking is what continues the sexism by making it seem OK. Nothing to do with having a sense of humour or not.//
John, first of all it’s rude to insinuate that English is not my first language because you don’t agree with me. Those two things aren’t even related. Yes, English IS my first language. It might help you to note I do not speak British English though, but American English. Which is why I would have typed “sexualized” instead of your “sexualised”. I also would have typed “humor” instead of your “humour”. In the future try and realize that English is a broad language that the rules change depending on the continent. Also you might want to bring down the pretentious factor down 3 notches as well. I was referring to the comment below. Which explicitly does state that student did not deserve to be taught. I did see that you admitted to missing it. I appreciate that little back-step.
//McC2lhu doesn’t want to know what you did there.
“The students in that class are lucky to have someone that aware and intelligent, well, except for one douchenozzle, he doesn’t deserve any sort of professional instruction.”//
Please also note, I am not using the “boyz being boyz” thing either. Again, I clearly stated that we did NOT know if the student was male or female. I feel you didn’t read my comments at all. I was referring to the person leaving the comment, that they might have not had a good sense of humor by leaving such a comment OR the person reading the comment might not have had a good sense of humor. Humor is only humor if it is understood by both sides as being that.
I can’t believed I responded to your whole post without insulting back, but I did. I think I deserve my cookie now.
———————————————————————————————————————
//Daz
2 September 2013 at 10:03 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Tat Wadjet, I’m having a hard time seeing what point you’re trying to make, given that this…
Third, why is everyone running around trying to be a victim all the time? […] The student was most likely joking.
… would seem to be in direct contradiction of this:
They really should know that sometimes what they say or type isn’t received in the way they thought it would, that it still can be sexual harassment. Harassment all depends on the person receiving it. If the person receiving it is not accepting of that type of input then it is then considered harassing.//
Daz, I don’t feel as though my comments were contradictory at all. I am saying that everyone needs to lighten the heck up and stop taking everything as an affront on their person. Pointing me out as a “victim blamer” === Give me a break. I am no more victim blaming than you all are making me a victim by calling me polarizing names like that.
And no – I have not got any rape threats… Am I lucky? I don’t think so. I was sorta looking forward to them….
My attitude makes all the difference. It’s no fun to send rape threats to someone who isn’t scared of them. People just want reactions out of others…. troll on!
I’m not surprised. I get at least one or two angry dudebros looming at me per semester over safety stuff. I can stare them down, buuuut then these confrontations always happen in crowded labs (there’s safety with witnesses), plus I have nearly a decade of martial arts training.
Also: At least once a semester, I’ll get ambushed in the hall by angry students (always male, usually in a group) demanding to know why I “failed” them on something (typically, they’re the sort that somehow fail everything they do with TA supervision, yet ace everything they do at home… and have friends who are straight-A students. And answers which are always in-line with what their friends wrote. Yeeeeah. I might not be able to prove it enough to make a case before the academic disciplinary board – it’s hard to nail someone on plagiarism – but I know what’s going on there). And they circle me and try to intimidate me into changing the mark. I usually bullshit and say I don’t have the power to override the marking scheme and direct them to the prof in charge, but that will only do so long as I’m a TA. If I ever get to lecturer or prof, I’m going to have to figure out a way to deal with that crap on my own.
Quick blockquote refresher:
<blockquote> Your text here </blockquote>
yields
Tat Wadjet (#67)
This right here is classic victim blaming. It doesn’t matter if you’re denying that people are actually victimized. What you’re saying is those who receive rape threats are to blame because they don’t display the “correct” reaction. You’re saying the targets deserve it. But, the ones you should be holding accountable are the senders. Nothing could ever excuse what they’re doing. And, not only are you ignorant of how bullying and threats work (either from the perspective of the bully/harasser or the victim), you also seem to think that no one ever carries through on rape threats. Fear is not an irrational response, here. Don’t tell women to ignore their fear because it’s most likely a “joke” or an attempt to get a reaction. Sometimes it’s not.
Also, bullies/harassers are the ones you should be holding accountable for making things less fun. It’s not the people saying “don’t do that” that drags things down. Their fun is already being ruined by the ones making the rape threats or doing the harassment. And no, it’s not the target’s job to brush that off so the people threatening/harassing them can have fun. People who threaten and harass others don’t deserve to have fun.
Lemme repeat that: People who threaten and harass others don’t deserve to have fun.
Maybe something like this could be done. I am sure there is a male feminist of whatever intensity in every college. He could invite all his make colleagues over for drinks to discuss the work situation of female colleagues regarding sexism/misogyny at their institution.
Pool whatever information they have. Go home and consult with the women they know, tell what they heard at their meeting and ask for more information. Do this being careful to not identify or put any woman on the spot in any way whatsoever. Have another men’s meeting, share info again, assess the situation. Go back and ask the women for their ideas on how to proceed. Keep doing this until there is enough knowledge to begin work towards solutions.
Taking the liberty to paraphrase Rebecca: Guys Do That
That’s one thing I haven’t had to deal with as a prof. It probably has something to do with being an almost 6 foot tall 200 pound woman who can look mean, but people tend to not mess with me in that way. When I was younger (and much, much thinner), I did occasionally get men try to physically intimidate me, but these days I mostly get smart assed little shits who try to make trouble during class or on evals, but it’s always verbal harassment, never physical.
I do get angry emails every May, telling me how I have maliciously and willfully ruined some poor pre-med or pre-pharmacy student’s life by giving them a B in physics and now they’ll never get into a professional program and it’s all my fault. Because I’m a horrible, horrible person who doesn’t care about her students.
Those particular messages are usually from young men, but not exclusively. I do occasionally get entitled women in my classes as well.
So very very glad that one of the benefits of being a TA at my uni is that I’m not required to give students my email. So I don’t. They can look me up in the Uni directory, but most would rather complain to the prof about how I’m a horrible, horrible person and a bad TA for marking them unfairly by following the standard marking scheme the prof made to the letter (I’m the annoying TA that will proof-read the marking scheme the day it comes out an bombard the prof with questions to make sure I understand it completely so that I don’t mark anything wrongly… so, in other words, exactly the wrong TA to try to complain to the prof over marking scheme issues about. :P).
Tat Wadjet
I’ll quote ’em again, so you don’t even have to bother scrolling. Please show me how you reconcile this:
with this:
The first implies “lighten up, it’s only a joke.” The second implies “even if it was meant jokingly, it’s not fucking cool. Don.t do it.” (And the second is correct, by the way.)
Your poor communication skills are your problem. Clarify or shut up. (And on the subject of clarity, please see NightShadeQueen’s comment #69.)
This resonates so much, though for much different reasons. Whenever I got a good review from a visiting teacher telling me that I was the best they had, I’d want to break down and start crying. Because I knew exactly that. That it didn’t matter one bit because I was seen as “trans*” and that meant so much more to whether I would still be employed and what my bosses thought of me than anything else. All that effort, all that payoff in benefits to students, didn’t matter a single red cent. I was an object because I was a woman by an “untraditional” route.
I’ve lucked out that this dehumanization for the most part hasn’t come from students and I certainly have not had to face sexualization yet, but I know the rage and pain and frustration well. It truly sucks when whatever you do doesn’t matter because who you be overshadows it all in other people’s minds.
Tat Widjet publicly likes this post by Dan Lewis on Facebook:
and specifically states “I know” to the above.
Need more prima facie evidence they are not here in good faith?
Interpret this:
as meaning that they are not here in good faith at all, characterizing rebuttals as “crying” while avoiding addressing the issues. Rather, misdirecting to some bogus reading of pretentiousness in someone presuming the least offensive thing (that English isn’t their native tongue, instead of that their thoughts are so confused they come out as conflicting piles of goop serving only the opinion of the moment.)
And another gem from Tat Wadjet:
Instead of siding with the victims, they’re playing the pedestrian “compare secularists to religious fundamentalists” schtick.
What a smarmy victim-blaming asshole you are, Tat. Now that you’ve had your say, kindly fuck off.
Ooh!
True story time.
So one of the lecture-sections I TA’d was Biochemistry. Which is (1) a hard concept class that many people fall flat in, and (2) a class that medical schools care deeply about your grade in.
So there was an exam. I graded it, passed it back, and posted office hours.
Student comes by.
He says that he got a “C” on the exam and really needs to get a “B+” or better in the class. The following conversation ensues:
Me: “Well, you still have the final and the project. Do well on both, and you should be fine. The homeworks won’t hurt either – they might be the difference between a “B” an a “B+” – and you should come to the weekly review sessions. They’re at [time] and [place].”
Him: “No, you don’t understand. I need you to give me a better grade.”
Me: “I’m sorry?”
Him: “I don’t have time for that shit. Give me a better grade.”
Me: “You can earn a good grade on the final and the project by studying and working. I can help you with that, but I don’t “give” people anything.”
Him: “So you won’t give me a better grade on this exam?”
Me: “No.”
Him: “Hold on.”
At this point, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and dialed it. I hear the following:
“Hi, it’s me. The TA won’t give me a better grade. I know! She’s such a bitch. Okay.”
At this point he holds the phone out to me and says that his mom wants to talk to me.
I refuse.
He yells. His mom can be heard yelling. He gets in my face.
Fortunately, my office-mate (hooray for offices of five!) comes in at that point and glowers like the former linebacker he is.
Student leaves with a parting shot of “I’ll talk to [prof] and you’ll see!”
Last I heard on that topic was the prof saying to me, “Did you ever figure out what [name]’s problem was? What a jerk.”
I had a student threaten to get me in trouble with [prof] whose patience for such BS is far less than mine. I told him, “Feel free. His office hours are [hours] and you can email him at [email] and if you’re unsatisfied with the resolution, you can appeal through the Dean at [Dean’s contact info].”
… When he left, he could be heard laughing to his friend about how stupid I was that I helped him to get me fired.
That was a year and a half before I left that job. I never heard of it after that. Wonder why.
Note that I am still referring to the type of person who thinks they deserve an A because they deigned to take the course, but not to work at it and is highly offended that the TAs and profs don’t fall prostrate in awe at their godlike intellect – I am more than happy to correct my own marking errors when I do make errors, and on occasions that I’ve felt the marking scheme unfair – like the time that, due to an oversight, a student could either get >95% or <20% as a mark, which I felt was patently ridiculous as there's a huge difference between the student who fucks up the last line and the student who makes a new mistake at each step of the required calculations – I've asked the prof for a change to the scheme.
throwaway (#77)
Sounds like an unmbiguous admission of trolling, to me. (As if it wasn’t heavily indicated by #67.) A monitor should notify PZ so Tat can get her desired banning without delay.
WOW>.. Yeah… I am mesmerized by the humanity and civility here.
I’ll start with my first comment (I’m using blockquote so people should be happier, right? Hopefully it works like I want it to)
So lets see…. So the fact that I point out an obvious fact, I’m still victim blaming? Because I address reality and state things as they are? How exactly does that work. I NEVER said someone deserved to be sent rape threats. Not once. WHY are we back to rape threats anyway? Either way… fact is, if you don’t want someone to do something do NOT give them a reaction to it. I guess I have to explain MUCH more detailed, according to my next quote and comment…. SO here it goes. If you are in 5th grade, and someone comes up and calls you a poopy head. The WORST thing you can do is cry or pout about it. They want to put you in that state, that’s why they did it. If, instead, your response is to laugh at them, (and as I tell my nephew to do) ask them if that’s the best insult they can muster up. Pretty soon, they stop calling you names. They are not getting you to cower to them. They are not getting to dominate you. Here’s another instance. When I was in high school…There was a lunchroom section that ONLY senior football players sat at. One day at lunch that was the only empty table. So my friend sat her tray down, and said lets eat here. I said, are you crazy… this is where the senior football players sit. She said…well it’s the only empty table, so I’m sitting here. So we sat down. Pretty soon the football players approached. One of them said hey, this is our table. My friend (who grew 10 feet tall at this moment, smiled at them and said, we can share the table with you. So they sat down and ate with us two nerdy wallflower girls. It blew me away. If you don’t cower or react the way someone tries to get you to react, they will stop that approach. It’s only common sense.
NOW – HOW is this victim BLAMING? I am telling you how to NOT be a victim to begin with!!!
————————————————————————————————————–
Daz, I resolve them together by saying this: The person who tells a joke might find a joke funny. The person who hears the joke might be offended. I am positive you have been around for a joke or two in your life. If the joke has anything to do with gender or sex, it can still be funny. It can be very funny… so long as the person hearing the joke laughs too. IF however; the person hearing the joke gets offended… now they feel like they have been sexually harassed. Maybe you tell the joke to someone else, and they think it’s funny — Then NO harassment. I can’t be more clear than this. Seriously I have reduced it as far as I am capable of.
Finally
Wow… really? Like I really want to continue talking to you, when you tell me to “Clarify or shut up”. I am trying to clarify. You guys are stuck in a circle… and aren’t able to see the forest through the trees. I am trying to be patient. However, I don’t think that your methods are in anyway encouraging me to continue. At some point I will find it a waste of my time to continue (which is quickly approaching). So you all can stand around and congratulate yourselves. Really I am finding the hypocracy here tedious.
PS. Since most people can’t interpret emoticons… I think I will kindly how did you put it… “fuck off”. I actually am here on good faith…. don’t believe me? Well that’s too bad. You know I am sick of this attitude that is running around…. This certain atheist groups are better than others bull. I have been very honest and patient. I didn’t realize what my friends posted to me on my facebook page, and what I responded to them with was of ANY consequence here. Perhaps you’d like to crawl up and do more checking on me and see what I said in other forms over the last 15 years on the internet.
Consider me gone. Give yourselves high 5’s.
Tha’s better.
I have not had that happen to me before. However, I did have one complain to my department chair about three weeks into the semester that “he didn’t pay $1500 that semester to get a B in physics.” That earned some serious laughing from me about and a comment that he paid that money for a seat in the room and whatever he decided to do with that was his own business. He dropped the class.
Aww, man, I’ve never had a student sic their mom on me yet. That would be so much fun.
But at least I get to high five everyone over Tat Wadjet’s histrionic exeunt!
Um….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histrionic_personality_disorder
I’ve never had it happen. I’ve seen it happen, though. Showed up to a meeting with aforementioned [prof], just as a woman was leaving his office, yelling at him. He told her that if she was going to manage her kid’s courses, course loads, and mark disputes for her, she may as well get her kid to drop out and attend school herself, as it would probably be better for both of them.
… It was pretty epic.
I think that student’s mistake was trying to intimidate the prof, who was, after all, the department chair.
“histrionic” is a common adverb meaning “melodramatic” or “theatrical”.
I was close, once. I was on the exam committee for a grad student who failed to advance to candidacy…and his mother marched down to the department head’s office to complain.
There was no point. The guy failed spectacularly. Didn’t know a thing about the field he proposed to get a Ph.D. in.
NightShadeQueen:
It’s possible for someone to behave in a histrionic (melodramatic) manner without having a disorder. Just sayin’.
Would you say your department chair is easily intimidated by sophomores with chips on their shoulders?
Ah, I fucked up. Mixed it up with “hysteria”
Sorry, carry on.
Scuttlebutt has it that back in the day some Big Shot™took it into their head to go back to school and get their masters. So they approached the school and opened their checkbook, offering a large bequest. The school was appropriately grateful, but still insisted that any degree not earned the traditional way would have “honoris causa” written on it.
To be clear: I got the etymology of “hysteria” and “histrionic” mixed up.
…..doesn’t help that I think that histrionic personality disorder is quite the sexist diagnosis, confused my arguments for the disorder itself with the arguments against “hysteria”, and generally fucked in general.
I’m sorry.
Exeunt Wadjet, perceived as a bore.
I’ll get me coat…
*rimshot*
Nicely done.
As far as I’m concerned, I think a lot of parents and students mistakenly think that teachers, profs and TAs, generally don’t enjoy giving out failing grades. I don’t do it for funsies. I feel every failing grade I hand out is a personal failure to some degree, because I feel like my job is to try to help as many students as possible do well. I admit to myself that I can only do so much, but the first year, I felt certain I was a bad, horrible, no good TA because nearly half of my students in a section failed. I later found out that I just had bad luck to get assigned a bunch of students who were F-C range students across the board. If my inexerience was a factor, it was clearly not the deciding factor in their final grades – else my course would’ve been an obvious outlier.
But three weeks before final grades came out and my prof told me that as comfort to convince me to keep TAing, I showed up at the prof’s office in tears when I figured out what my percentages were going to be, apologizing profusely as I was certain I must be fucking up so badly that I was ruining these students’ careers. I vowed to quit since I so obviously was a failure as a TA. The prof talked me out of it, for which I’m grateful.
I’ve since learned how to shield myself from that severe self-doubt, but still. It’s not fun. I don’t enjoy giving out Ds and Fs. I do still worry that I failed each student who fails my course somehow. But I’m not going to hand out undeserved Cs and Bs and As just to save my own feelings. And all I can do is just keep watching how other people explain stuff and keep taking what works for me and keep refining my own teaching in hopes it’ll get better.
Though, I would like to register a complaint, as “exeunt” refers to multiple people leaving and so far as I can tell Tat Wadjet is one.
ARG, revision fail. This
Should read
Ah, but his ilk are legion.
</pathetic attempt to disguise the fact that my Latin is rustier than a very rusty thing>
Obligatory Life Of Brian link
Oops, her
Daz 100,
Correction
There is but one whose ilk are legion, the Greta. I will countenance no ilk before her
Ingdigo Jump @3
Indeed, looks like the Dean “called her in for a meeting” right away.
Because everyone knows, The Department must NEVER be made to look bad…
http://tenureshewrote.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/teaching-naked-part-2/
Actually, PZ, if you’ve got any time or attention to spare for an update, I’d love to read your take on Part 2.
Tat @67
…
Trigger Warnings for quoting of real rape experiences from the uber thread:
No fun…
If you don’t react.
My turn:
When I was raped, I froze. Dead stopped, staring at a blank point behind the panel I was at as my rapist ground himself into my thigh until he completed. My own rape. At the time. No reaction. There was nothing to “gain” in my reaction, cause, hey, whatever, it’s no fun unless you can see them collapse. But does it stop the abusers. When I was bullied as a child, I learned not to react to anything. I lost the ability to cry when I should. I still go cold.
Cold. Shut off. Nothing there for the fun of sociopaths.
Did it stop one single victimization? Fuck no. Violators violate. Bullies bully. Rapists rape. They don’t do it “for a reaction” or for the “lulz” or because it’s “fun”. They do it because they like to destroy people. Make them feel like shit.
You clearly enjoy that too.
“Troll on!”
You said, in clear identification with that population. Their experiences over the reality that the rest of us swam in.
On the big rape thread, there are so many stories. So many people raped since before they could even have memories. Living with that deep in their bones.
FUCK YOU they need to “put a brave front up” so that some rape “joke” spewing abuser can get their rocks off threatening and violating.
It’s not our job to be feeling alien when we teach. To be triggered for some frat douche fuck who wants to high five that he hurt the “bitch” teacher who dared think she could exist in what HE has decided should be a male space by force.
FUCK THAT.
And FUCK YOU.
Do not hesitate to fuck off and never come back. Tell AVFM and the Slymepit that we’re the meanest fucks on the planet. I don’t care. But take those stories with you. The pain of what rape FEELS LIKE! And what it fucking means to be shaking and puking, holding desperate the parts that were violated years, decades ago, weeping that you don’t want another trigger or another memory. What it means to be TRIGGERED.
This is not academic. This is REALITY.
SO. FUCK. YOU.
Odd that Tat is bragging about posting some stupid victim-blaming shit and immediately getting called on it as if that were some bold act of courage.
Being a troll isn’t all that special or worthy of boasting about.
proudfootz @105
Damn straight. Oh, proud anti-PC warrior. You can successfully be a dick on a website in the same cookie-cutter way as every tom, dick, and complete fucking misogynist. Wow! Truly we must all bow down deep and inhale thy genitals like the sculpted scepter of GOD!
I mean, how else could you have the intellect and bravery to be so predictably boring and rote, one more sigh note working to make lives worse for anyone out the norm?
The real fucking heroes are out on the rape thread, telling their stories, digging deep, sharing things they’ve never been able to before. Taking real risks and dredging up real memories with REAL physical effects stapled onto them. They did this to try and make the world a slightly better place, to provide something to the legion who have been broken and battered.
That’s bravery. As is the will of each one of them to keep going.
And these penny ante misogyny cheerleaders could only hope to be half as “brave” and “heroic” as those rape survivors. No wonder they turn all their effort into just making people’s lives shitty instead and trying to silence those victims by perpetuating a culture of insinuated threats and non-stop triggers.
Goddamn loathsome bottom-feeders.
Cerberus (#104)
I wish your post would emblazon itself across Tat’s vision and refuse to disappear till she reads every last word ten times over.
Personally, never been sexually harassed in class. I did however get a stalker student for a while, after I helped him with homework for someone else’s class during my office hours a couple times. Young male students: Just because I am slightly nicer to you than my job absolutely requires, that does not mean I want to date you. It means I want you to pass your classes.
He texted me, called me, came around my office. I told him to go away, he came back the next day. I told him I was married, he bought me perfume. He was over six feet tall, solid built with big biceps, and I felt intimidated by him. Although he never became violent, the mere fact of receiving attention in a seriously socially inappropriate way was unnerving. I filed a report with the campus police, then the next time he tried to text me, I explicitly threatened legal action, and (whew!) I haven’t heard from him since. (He also graduated, I think.)
The woman whose office is next to mine has also had a stalker student, also ended without violence, luckily.
I have been date raped when I was 16, and later spent 10 years in an abusive relationship. Wanna hear my Stories? NO…. I didn’t think so. Yeah — keep on labeling. I won’t be back. Just wanted to tell all you assholes, you are really REALLY wrong about me. PS> Please respect my and my friends facebook anonymity in the future. I don’t appreciate the violations that are occurring here. I am leaving, I won’t be back. PLEASE just drop me, drop my part in this conversation. Just stop.
How about, “…if you would not want this said to someone you love”?
And, “This is not considerate behavior”?
proudfootz:
Are you boasting about your not-so-pithy observation being an isle of stupid in the midst of serious discussion? If so, stop. You have nothing to brag about here.
Tat Wadjet:
Right now, the place for those stories would be here: https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2013/08/30/stunned-silence/comment-page-1/#comments
Caine
To answer your question, no.
I was participating in the serious discussion already.
Pro tip: if you aspire to “facebook anonymity”, pro’ly shouldn’t log in using your Facebook ID.
The internet: how the fuck does it work?
I’m deeply sorry. Truly. But this:
is passive-aggressive abuse too. I don’t think you know much about the people here if your rhetorical flourish tries to paint those here as serial abusers who are so vindictive about “casual disagreements” (which yours wasn’t).
Is this an attempt at gaslighting? Your post with yourself and your friend bragging about the way you handed our misandrist white-knighting asses to us was publicly visible to the world when I made my comment. Now it is not public. I did not violate anything except holding you to task for words which were said to a room full of strangers. If it was not meant to be public then it is your mistake, not mine, for repeating it here. Stick the flounce.
@Tat Wadjet:
I think everyone commenting here is truly sorry to hear this, and regrets that it occurred.
But. . . how would you have reacted, at 16, and/or in your abusive relationship, if someone had given you the “advice” you gave above: “if you don’t want someone to do something do NOT give them a reaction to it”?
Would you have agreed that it was correct; that “giving a reaction” was, in and of itself, what resulted in the date rape, and the abuse?
I suspect that you would not.
Harassment, in and of itself, probably seems very minor next to rape and abuse. But calling it out properly blames the one doing the harassing. Ignoring it or treating it like a joke (which, yes, it probably was) leads to the one doing the harassing thinking that harassment is an OK thing to do. And it’s a small thing by itself, but it helps reinforce the sort of culture where rape and abuse happen.
Raising consciousness is slow and difficult, but the objective is a culture where those with a propensity to harass, abuse, and/or rape won’t do it, because it’s been made clear to them that it isn’t acceptable behavior.
Per the OP:
It would be nice if this was actually a reasonable standard for behavior for interactions with women.
Given the way women are treated by their family members all too frequently, it really isn’t.
– – –
Taj:
Did you enjoy it?
Would you counsel others to enjoy that?
If you had tried to enjoy it, would it still have been rape and abuse?
If someone had told you it was only rape and abuse because you didn’t enjoy it, would they have been blaming you for being a victim?
Think carefully, we’ll wait.
Certainly, as much as you’d like to tell us.
This thread might not be the very best of places, but you might find you could tell your story without being told that you should have enjoyed it, or told that you could have avoided being a victim by enjoying it.
Well, except by this ‘Taj’ person, of course.
If the shoe fits…
Won’t be back yet again, you actually mean.
I wonder if it will stick this time.
If so, that’s too bad.
Unfortunately, we have nothing but what you wrote to go by, and the picture that paints is actually pretty clear.
Maybe that’s everyone here simultaneously getting everything you said wrong in exactly the same way… or maybe it’s something else.
You make the call.
…Facebook is a private forum?
Having your username link back to your Facebook page is a way of keep yourself anonymous?
Consider, for just a moment, what people might be led to believe about you if this level of thought is typical of what you’ve written here.
We’ll see.
If you don’t see the essential hypocrisy in insisting that people who are made uncomfortable by things written about them are choosing to be victims, and then writing this statement, it is up to others to point it out to you.
Predictably the Dean is coming down on her for making a scene and damaging their brand as well as offending a customer.
The boat must not be rocked.
Yes, I think her follow-up post is also of great importance (especially wrt the JUST REPORT THEM contingency).
Tat Wadjet:
Even though you tried to throw other victims under the bus, we’re still willing to support you.
Ingdigo Jump @ 119 and Gen, Uppity Ingrate and Ilk @ 121
Yes, that’s what I was trying to point out back at my comment #103.
And you’re right, there’s a whole bunch of RONG in that Dean’s response–it’s really discouraging.
But if anyone needs an object lesson in how women can be just as sexist, and absorb just as much sexist crap from their culture, I’ll be keeping that link handy.
@Funny DIva
The one who taught adjuncts that they shouldn’t report or make a deal about a kid masturbating in class was a woman too