Don’t Push That Button
Sexual harassment, science, and personal history
The past few weeks have been troubling, to say the least. Recent events in the science communication community remind us that feminism is — and should be — alive and well. While the stories that emerged from the Scientific American chaos didn’t surprise me, they pushed far too many personal buttons and kept me offline for days. For a Twitter addict, who uses it for community, news source, and entertainment rolled into one, this was a big deal. It’s taken several weeks to untangle my thoughts about — and reactions to — it all.
While it’s easier now than it used to be, I’ve always found it difficult to deal with men. Many seem unaware of me as a person with whom they’re interacting, focusing more on themselves and how they want me to respond to them. As a result, I often feel uncomfortable around them. I find it hard to read their signals and am never quite sure how to respond. Most times I just feel intimidated.
In my teens and twenties, I passed myself off as one of the guys. I shied away from any personal interest that seemed other than platonic, as it would reveal my true gender. I hated long hair, dresses, the colour pink, and form fitting clothes. I hated breasts and menstruation. I hated other women simply because of their womanhood, and ultimately wanted to be a man.
This wasn’t some random teenage rebellion on my behalf, nor the result of parental (mis)guidance or societal pressures. It arose entirely from having my female-ness turned into something sordid, dirty and disgusting by being sexually abused as a child. In my mind, the only way to ensure that no one could ever use my gender against me again was to hide it.
The baggy men’s clothes and androgynous look I adopted suited me for a long time, and my body cooperated by delaying any physical signs of sexual maturity other than menstruation. But it was an imperfect solution that didn’t always have the desired outcome. The male lifeguard at the pool who chatted me up as I stood shivering on deck in my bathing suit, too polite to cut him off. The roommate who thought I would benefit from a man’s touch, and that he was just the one to provide it. While my façade cracked in these instances, in other cases it worked too well. Part of me was hurt when women didn’t recognize me as one of their own. The scared looks on their faces as they told me I must have the wrong washroom, or the bland mask of the checkout woman as she called me ‘sir’.
The message was that no one — of either gender — was an ally. I had only myself to count on. There’s no question that my approach was excessive. But it was the only way I knew how to respond at the time.
These days I still despise dresses, and haven’t fully accepted my female biology. Hell, I even have problems using the word ‘woman.’
Kudos to my husband for catching a glimpse of a tiny golden ‘me’ glowing amongst the wreckage of a childhood gone wrong. For bringing me flowers even when I shied away from them, thinking they made me his property. For persisting past my fear of touch, of being female, of being cast adrift and hurt again if a man came into my life. Now I love getting flowers (gerberas are my favourite), my hair is no longer boy-short, and I often wear purple and pink.
I also walk a lot: it keeps me moving, staves off the desperation, and helps me think. I recently got a new jacket — pink — one of only two sale colours in stock. Sometimes, wearing my jacket, I feel afraid, like a target, wearing a flag that shouts my gender, my vulnerability. I fear it makes me susceptible to attack, like wearing red to a bull fight.
Rationally, I know that it makes little difference what colour I wear. That I’ll be judged on appearance simply because I’m female. That I’ll be tested and pushed harder than my male colleagues because I’m perceived as less capable. That I’ll be the recipient of creepy comments such as “You should come party with us,” delivered at a conference by a middle-aged, overweight white man who thinks he’s hot and — incidentally — has mistaken me for a grad student instead of a professor. That when I’m invited to collaborate on large grants, it’s to make the proposal sound better but not give me any real say in the research itself. That my undergrad students will call me Miss or Mrs. before they call me Dr. That my grad students will struggle with being advised by a woman — my female colleagues report that their students sometimes mistake them for a mother figure, coming for relationship or family advice.
So don’t tell me I’m overreacting to your sexist ‘jokes.’ That I’m being too politically correct when I call out the lack of female representation in prestigious research chairships across Canada. Don’t hide behind the mock-meritocracy response: “we chose the best people, and there weren’t any qualified women.”
Don’t tell me that half my department thinks I’m a bitch who’s manipulating things for her own benefit, when all I’ve done is stand up for myself. They congratulate my male colleagues for doing the same.
Don’t tell me how badly you feel about the plight of women in academia, then reward female students with career opportunities when they publicly flirt with you and stroke your ego.
Don’t tell me it’s not harassment, that I’m just being over-sensitive. That you didn’t mean it, that it was a one-time thing, that your generation learned a different way to treat women.
Every man who only harasses even one time is part of a pattern that women are left to deal with. Any woman who’s only experienced harassment once can be scarred for life. And if you’re such an educated person, you can overcome the limitations of your generation and treat women just like your male colleagues: as people.
As Thom Vernon wrote in his Huffington Post piece on being HIV positive, we all have our scars and traumas that stay with us for life. Both your behaviour — and my reaction to it — stem from a complex mix of emotion, experience and history that can’t be predicted for every single situation.
That doesn’t mean you have to walk on eggshells. It just means being aware — both of yourself, and of the women you’re working with. Apply some of that critical thinking you use to such great effect in science to consider how you interact with other people.
Ask yourself: what do you really like about that student? Their work — or their looks? What evidence do you have that a female grant applicant is less capable of carrying out a proposed research plan? Do you really think it’s appropriate to share a tent with your female grad student during fieldwork? Why can’t you think of any women when suggesting guest speakers or panelists for a conference? Are you taking a female colleagues’ input less seriously than others when writing a group grant? When interacting with female colleagues and students, are you standing too close, are you too touchy, or is the topic of conversation making them uncomfortable?
So please: Pay attention. Be decent. Be fair and try to give the benefit of the doubt. And stand with us — even when we wear pink.
Thanks to Kim Moynahan for input, and to Hannah Waters, Hope Jahren and many others for leading the way.
