Women Of Science Explain How Stuff Is

In the wake of a series of unfortunate events that have rocked and shocked the small, chummy world of science writing this week, there are currently a lot of really smart women on Twitter talking about sexual harassment in science, academia and journalism.* If you are in need of a primer on the sort of guff one tends to get when one is a lady person doing sciencey things, have a glance at the hashtag #ripplesofdoubt, started by scientist Karen James to collect stories of harassment. It's quite instructive.

My wife here has just been reading over the many tales of lady-woe in the hashtag, and alternately nodding in sisterly agreement and rolling her eyes. "Bluh," she says. "It's kind of Take Back The Night-ey."

Bear in mind, this is a woman who once, as an exceedingly broke and exceedingly hungry freelance travel writer alone on assignment in the rural South, very nearly escaped having to have sex with a strange guy in a motel parking lot in Louisiana because she ate some of the barbecue he was cooking out of the back of his truck.** She is not easily impressed. Nor is she a big fan of Take Back The Night.

I am not a big fan of Take Back The Night, either, despite having spilled my guts at several of them in college. That was back before I realized, right in the middle of a doleful weepy monologue about My Very Sad Story, that spilling your guts at Take Back The Night does not actually get anybody to stop raping people, because rapists don't go to Take Back The Night.*** 

Here's where she's wrong, though. The great thing about this hashtag, which is indeed full of Very Sad Stories and not a small amount of weepage, is that it's happening among a group of professionals who already know each other, not primarily through gender politics, but through their shared work and culture. Every tenth tweet or so is from some guy whose mind has just been blown by the revelation that women all throughout his professional network are getting systematically hazed just for showing up, and institutions are looking the other way.

I am all for the creation of women-only safe space, even if that New Agey phrase makes me crabby. (What doesn't, really?) But I am so very glad this particular conversation is happening in mixed company. It's delivering a swift and brutally effective 101 course in the ugly daily realities of ladyhood to a lot of smart dudes that, for all their precociousness, have probably never had the occasion to really see this stuff before. And they ought to, really, if the goal is to get things to, y'know, change.

Keep it coming, Science Women.

*Pro tip: There's a bunch of it. Here is an absolutely withering example of the sort of thing that goes on, well, everywhere. And here is another. And another.

**Pro tip: Don't eat the barbecue.

***Not science. I could be wrong.

Update: You've really got to read this one. Kathleen Raven brings the wreckage.

Show Us Your Tits Or The Mouse Gets It

It's Casual Friday at Women Do HQ. What does that mean? Pajamas again for me! And sexual harassment for all! In today's lesson, we learn that women do ask for it. Just not in this case.

Thanks to Tom Egan of Mass Lawyers Weekly for passing along this highly entertaining read--a recent decision from the Massachusetts Committee Against Discrimination, in which G-2 Systems ex-employee Beth Citron, fed up with suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, takes arms against a sea of tit-ogling from bosses Tom Green, Steve Shepard and Hank Shepard.

Among the highlights:

...When Complainant approached him at his desk to ask questions about purchase orders, he said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear a word that you said, I was too mesmerized by your breasts.”

...As Complainant bent underneath her desk to get money from her purse, Shepard said that showing her “tits” would not get her out of it. Id. at 24. Complainant pointed out that her sweatshirt was zipped so high that it was practically a turtle neck, to which Shepard said, “Oh, I thought your tit was hanging out.”

And the piece de resistance:

Complainant testified that one day in November of 2004, Greene was standing by the door of Hank Shepard’s office and said that he was going to capture a mouse and allow it to live if she took off her shirt and bra, but kill it with a hammer if she didn’t. Transcript, I at 110-111, II at 137. Complainant responded by saying that she was disgusted by his idea and walked away. Transcript I at 111. Greene subsequently said that he was going to fill up a bucket of water about halfway and put a platform full of food in the bucket in order to attract a mouse. Transcript, II at 162. According to Complainant, Greene thereafter made the following comments in her presence or by fax: “mouse and hammer,” “I’m getting that mouse today,” “I’ve got that hammer ready,” and “help, I’m drowning signed the mouse.”

After sifting through the lurid facts, Hearing Officer Betty Waxman concludes that, indeed, Citron was sexually harassed, though she dismisses a second allegation of constructive discharge. But buried in Waxman's finding is this vile little nugget:

In short, Complainant’s behavior and dress were not sufficiently provocative to be deemed an invitation for sexual harassment.

Oof. Lucky for Citron she's "quiet, shy, and not temperamental," I guess. Being a habitual dropper of F-bombs, myself, I doubt I would make it through one of these hearings alive.