sexual harassment
zooillogix | May 1, 2008As reported in the May 2008 Journal of Ethology, researchers in the sub-antarctic Indian Ocean on Marion Island, recently observed some fascinating and disturbing behavior. A young adult Antarctic fur seal was witnessed forcing itself upon an adult king penguin for upwards of 45 minutes. While young adult fur seals are known for aggressive sexuality that sometimes spans species between pinnepeds, this is the first documented case of a seal "[bridging] the level of vertebrate class in their copulatory attempts." i.e. getting it on with a freakin penguin.
The seal was first spotted subduing the…
thusspakezuska | April 3, 2008I've mentioned Kay Weber and her lawsuit against Fermilab on this blog before. Sherry Towers forwarded an email to me that gives an update on Kay's situation:
Those of you getting the first wave of this email probably know Kay Weber personally, but may not know the story that has been a main focus of her life for the past 4 years. Here is her story:
Kay worked at Fermilab (a Department of Energy Laboratory) for more than 18 years. She has a degree in Mechanical Engineering, is a Licensed Professional Engineer, has Master's Degrees in Computer Science and Psychology. When Kay was hired she…
thusspakezuska | March 4, 2008Janet Stemwedel has a lengthy, informative, interesting post on that eternally troublesome question: When in my graduate career should I have a baby? After reading it, I am put in mind of that New Yorker cartoon with the guy on the phone, looking at a datebook on his desk, saying "How about never? Is never good for you?"
The Chronicle news blog reports on a former professor at U. of Georgia with a "long record of sexual harassment." What's a university to do when one of its professors is found to be in violation of the sexual harassment policy? Why, pass him along to another university…
thusspakezuska | November 1, 2007David Perlmutter, professor and associate dean for graduate studies and research in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas, has a column in the November 2 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education on knowing when to keep a secret. Perlmutter offers up some good advice about managing one's career by knowing when to hold one's tongue, or even by avoiding hearing the secret someone else is dying to share. He suggests you fend off the would-be gossipers by saying, "I think I know what you are going to tell me, and it's really none of…
thusspakezuska | September 12, 2007So I'm skimming along in Google Reader, thinking it's the year 2007, when whoa! I happen upon this post by Female Science Professor. Did he actually call her "science lady"? WTF? What millennium are we living in?
And this is the kind of response you get from the authorities when you are calling about a long-standing, well-documented problem of stalking/harassment. But hey, she wasn't actually physically assaulted by the stalker, so what's the big deal, right? Plus, she was asking for it.
What if she was physically assaulted and was actually unable to ask for it at the time - i.e…
thusspakezuska | July 25, 2007From the Chronicle of Higher Education today:
A California state senator grilled Charles B. Reed, chancellor of the California State University system, and John D. Welty, president of its Fresno campus, on their commitment to gender equity in athletics at a special hearing here on Tuesday.
The senator is somewhat peeved about two recent settlements - one for $5.85 million to former women's volleyball coach Linda Vivas, and another for $3.5-million with a former women's swimming coach and assistant athletics director. After awhile, the millions start to add up, and people notice. You know,…
thusspakezuska | July 17, 2007The Chronicle of Higher Education reports
California legislators plan to look into whether there is widespread gender bias in the California State University system
following a lawsuit that resulted in a multi-million dollar award to Cal State-Fresno's former women's volleyball coach.
State Sen. Don Perata, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, said lawmakers were alarmed by the cost of the case to taxpayers, and also want to find out whether Cal State had turned a blind eye to gender discrimination elsewhere in the system, the AP reported...Fresno State said it would…
thusspakezuska | June 29, 2007I've been doing some reading over at Twisty's place this afternoon, and, you know, it's the usual patriarchy-blaming that helps raise your blood pressure. I do admire Twisty's way with a phrase.
Then I came across this post. And it was more than the blood pressure; I wanted to scream in frustration and anger. A precocious 9-year-old girl who's taking classes at a high school, and who has been "singing over her chemistry equations". But then, in an ill-considered move, she turned 10, which apparently was equivalent to posting a sign on her back that read "All males may feel free to…
thusspakezuska | April 6, 2007Bora at A Blog Around the Clock alerted me to an article in Science Daily titled Power And Sexual Harassment -- Men And Women See Things Differently.
Issues of power, workplace culture and the interpretation of verbal and non-verbal communication associated with sexual harassment were the focus of a study by Debbie Dougherty, assistant professor of communication in the College of Arts and Science at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Working with a large healthcare organization in the Midwest, Dougherty examined the question: why does sexual harassment occur?
Dougherty's findings show…
thusspakezuska | February 22, 2007Absinthe has asked me to do a mirror post of her post on this issue. So, here it is.
Several months ago I told you about the Kay Weber v Fremilab lawsuit in my post Class action lawsuits. If you read the link to her federal court Complaint contained in that post, you will see that she lived through a decade of appalling sexual harassment and even more appalling retaliation when she complained to the lab (she was successively demoted over the course of a decade from being one of the top women at the lab to eventually working under the supervision of a tech...she was ultimately fired…
thusspakezuska | December 4, 2006Occasionally one of my (usually male) readers will take me to task for what he considers to be my unwarranted angry - dare I say, strident? - tone of voice. Can I not be more polite? More reasonable? Would I not catch more flies with honey? Only speak sweet reason, dear crazy bitch Zuska, they plead, and we will assuredly attend to the substance of your message. But not while you rant and rave so. No indeed. That can only turn us off.
Well, as someone I knew once said, I don't want to catch flies. I want to kill them.
I told the story of the origins of the "Puke On His Shoes"…
thusspakezuska | December 4, 2006The Chronicle of Higher Education's news blog has a little item on Joseph Schlessinger. You may know him as the "internationally known researcher and head of the pharmacology department at Yale University" famous for his "his work in figuring out how information flows between a cell surface and the cell -- studies credited with laying the groundwork for several treatments for cancer".
Or you may know him now as the jerk-ass who allegedly sexually harassed his secretary so frequently and so long that she eventually had to quit her job to get away from him.
The secretary, Mary Beth Garceau,…
thusspakezuska | November 20, 2006Following up on my entry on Joanna Russ's book, How to Suppress Women's Writing, and its application to women in science and engineering...
In discussing "prohibitions", Russ notes"
First of all, it's important to realize that the absence of formal prohibitions against committing art [or science] does not preclude the presence of powerful, informal ones.
These include poverty and lack of leisure, the latter arising from overwhelming duties to family and home. Even our heroines had to overcome this latter prohibition:
Marie Curie's biographer, her daughter Eve, describes her mother's…
thusspakezuska | September 7, 2006This entry is sparked by a recent comment from Markk:
Quit yelling about men -in engineering- and yell about men -in authority- especially academics, abusing their position.
While it is unrealistic to think that I will ever quit yelling about men in engineering, at least until the revolution comes, I do like to think that I also do a fair amount of yelling about men in authority who abuse their position as well. Is Markk perhaps not familiar with my earlier writings on Dr. Toadygawa of MIT, and Rollins President Lewis Duncan (regarding the latter, I have been promising you an update entry…
thusspakezuska | September 6, 2006So, what would be an example of someone creating a hostile environment in the workplace or educational setting?
An example of "frequent, non-trivial acts of a sexual nature" might be, oh, say repeatedly raping your lab assistant nearly 80 times. The rapist in this case was R. Igor Gamow, "a prominent inventor and chemical engineer who was fired by the [University of Colorado] in 2004 for 'moral turpitude.' " The multiple rapes took place between 1995 and 1998. (See The Chronicle of Higher Education daily news, May 5, 2006.)
Or, as Kay Weber alleges in Weber v. Fermi National Accelerator…
thusspakezuska | September 6, 2006It was Faramir in The Lord of the Rings who described Frodo's task as "a hard doom and a hopeless errand". I must confess to feeling that way myself about my own self-imposed task of reporting to you about the pond scum of academia, those who discriminate and harass, the bilious lechers and sexual abusers of the young. And yet it must be done. Because if I don't do it, who will? And these miscreants must not be allowed to slither away into the dark recesses of our classrooms and buildings, attempting to rehabilitate their reputations or escape scandal altogether. No, they must be publicly…