Watch him interrupt. Watch him tell a woman that he’s more of an expert than she is, because he’s a guy. Watch him tell all women how they’re supposed to respond to catcalling. And as the pièce de résistance, watch him yell that if women are afraid, they need to get a gun!
The New York Times has declared that Academic Science Isn’t Sexist. What a relief! The authors are reporting the results of a broad study of many different parameters of the career pipeline, and are happy to report that there are no problems in academia. None at all, no sir.
Our analysis reveals that the experiences of young and midcareer women in math-intensive fields are, for the most part, similar to those of their male counterparts: They are more likely to receive hiring offers, are paid roughly the same (in 14 of 16 comparisons across the eight fields), are generally tenured and promoted at the same rate (except in economics), remain in their fields at roughly the same rate, have their grants funded and articles accepted as often and are about as satisfied with their jobs. Articles published by women are cited as often as those by men. In sum, with a few exceptions, the world of academic science in math-based fields today reflects gender fairness, rather than gender bias.
The Toronto Star has interviews with eight women who were abused in various ways by Jian Ghomeshi, and here’s a personal story about the conspiracy of silence. Almost everyone knew about Jian, almost everyone whispered warnings about Jian, but no one would stand up and shout about Jian, so Jian thrived.
That’s depressing, the way it always works.
So Anita Sarkeesian appeared on Colbert. How do you think the #gamergaters reacted?
If you found yourself repulsed by Andrew Sullivan’s ugly weaseling on #gamergate, here’s an antidote: Anita Sarkeesian on Colbert. She’s a reasonable person defending reasonable views.
Andrew Sullivan commits a classic rhetorical error.
So let me make a few limited points. The tactics of harassment, threats of violence, foul misogyny, and stalking have absolutely no legitimate place in any discourse. Having read about what has happened to several women, who have merely dared to exercise their First Amendment rights, I can only say it’s been one of those rare stories that still has the capacity to shock me. I know it isn’t fair to tarnish an entire tendency with this kind of extremism, but the fact that this tactic seemed to be the first thing that some gamergate advocates deployed should send off some red flashing lights as to the culture it is defending.
All well and good, but…there’s a “but” coming. It doesn’t really need to be a “but”. And unfortunately, Sullivan throws out a real stinker of a “but”.
It’s a great place for walking; I’ve strolled from the World Trade Center site to the Village to the Empire State Building to the AMNH and through Central Park. But somehow, I never experienced this:
Last year, Carla Ciccone went on a bad date, a really bad date, and she wrote about it, while protecting the obnoxious handsy fellow’s identity with a pseudonym. Apparently, there were enough clues at the time — “Canadian radio celebrity”, how many of those can there be? — and people figured out who she was talking about. That’s where it got weird.
The guy she described got uncomfortably physical with her on a concert date, and later pursued her with text messages that assumed a degree of interest that she plainly disavowed, asking him to leave her alone. This is creepy behavior. It’s patently rude, inconsiderate, and possessive, and you’d think everyone would agree that this is stuff guys shouldn’t do.
But that’s not the response she got.
I’ve done it. Usually, though, it’s done to illustrate, for instance, normal morphology, for contrast with your experimental results. Or as a key for the anatomy. Or even sometimes as a small, tasteful bit of decoration, as long as it doesn’t detract or distract from the data. In this poster, Use of yeast lysate in women with recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis by Vrzal et al., presented at the 8th Vaccine & ISV Congress in Philadelphia, I’m rather at a loss to figure out the purpose of these illustrations.
That’s the answer to the question, “Why are there so few women invited to an academic conference on alternatives to sexual reproduction?“
Other possible explanations:
