Mastodawn

I should also add that *every single time* someone has said to me "oh, that could never happen here in my department", I have subsequently learned that it has, in fact, happened there.

Saleh Elmohamed Jul 18, 2024

@dan It is even much much worse if such harassment was also done or tolerated by her advisor(s) or lab PI.

Farce Majeure Jul 18, 2024

@dan I suspect this is true of basically every toxic leader problem.

Nicola Romanò Jul 18, 2024

@dan and the big issue is that even when these things are called out (and I suspect a lot of times they aren't) universities tend to pretend nothing is going on and do as minimum as possible, meaning the person who has been harassed is the one who takes the worst of an already terrible situation

Alessio

Mar 10, 2025

@dan very generalizable

@dottorblaster https://discuss.systems/@dan/113105007407514335

Dan Ports Mar 10, 2025

Dan Ports (@[email protected])

Upon further consideration, every single time someone has said to me "oh, that could never happen here" — about any subject whatsoever — I have subsequently learned that whatever it is has, in fact, already happened there.

discuss.systems

The more I learn about this, the more angry I become.

Dan Ports Aug 29, 2024

I guess I'm just going to start boosting this every time I hear about another woman leaving her PhD program because of sexual harassment...

Dan Ports Oct 11, 2024

update: I have lost count.

Dominic Hopton Aug 29, 2024

@dan the fuck is wrong with people? What happened to “I’m here for the work”, and, idk, not being a douche nozzle??

sidereal Jul 18, 2024

@dan I know more people my age (mid 30’s) who have dropped out over toxic shit like this, than have completed grad school. Academia is not OK

Ben Rosengart Jul 18, 2024

@dan Yes, we really do.

Phoebe Jul 18, 2024

@dan
I hate it, when those men excuse their behaivor with "it's just fun, she is overreacting". Or saying that women did something to brovoke this behaivor.

They are destroying womens carriers and for them it's just funny.

@dan Have you read about the difference in success with #publishing #research papers in #journals when author names are redacted?

Ariaflame Jul 18, 2024

@caterinevauban @dan I've certainly heard about the difference in student ratings of teachers depending on what they perceived their gender to be.

@ariaflame @dan Oof, wow. I hadn't heard that one. 💔😒🤬 Sad to say that I do find it believable, though.

Irene Zhang Jul 18, 2024

@caterinevauban @ariaflame @dan ugh it’s way worse than that. I’ve seen across 20 years (not me personally just other faculty), the continued comments about the physical appearance of women. At least I think they’ve gotten rid of the chili pepper at ratemyprofessor.com.

@irene @ariaflame @dan 😮🤦‍♀️🤬

@caterinevauban Yes. Fortunately, at least in my field the top publication venues pretty much universally use double-blind review — but even that only started over the last decade or two

@dan Cultural change can be stupidly sluggish.

Graydon Hoare Jul 18, 2024

@dan Yeah I have known several first hand and lost count of related second hand cases of this story. It's awful.

Linguist Gone Foreign 🌏Jul 18, 2024

@dan

Please take this rage to your male colleagues, involve them and hold the issue of sexism and harrasment to their faces. This is how we move forward, with allies speaking up in all spaces.

@linguistgoneforeign That is pretty much what I have been spending this week doing!

Mark M. Evans Jul 18, 2024

@dan this makes me think of the video by Angela Collier.

https://youtu.be/8DNRBa39Iig

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

Micah Jul 18, 2024

@dan situations like this are so infuriating, I hope the PhD student is doing alright. There needs to be better options for recourse and protection against harassment. It seems like in a lot of these cases if your PI doesn't care and your department bureaucracy is unmanageable, you're out of luck. Unions can be helpful, but I've not heard of many grievances about inter-worker harassment.

Wren Reilly Jul 18, 2024

@dan Use the TU Eindhoven cryptography program as a case study. Not content with home-grown harassment, they took on a sexual harasser who is also credibly accused of gender-based violence, at the request of his former boss.
I wonder how common this shuffling of creeps is in other disciplines.

Ezra Freelove Jul 18, 2024

@dan Feel like it can start with firing some men who do it. My wife heard about a lab manager who isn't allowed to have female graduate assistants because he's a creep. They should fire this lab manager because he's a creep.

Coach Pāṇini ®Jul 18, 2024

@ezrasf
•that• is a #BrokenStair

Shirley Eugest Jul 18, 2024

@dan
This used to happen everywhere, in every job. Then we passed a law (finally) to make it illegal. It eased up.
Then came the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing.
We got to hear the rage from all the men who had spent ten years suppressing their worst behaviors at work. Rage.
Women still don't get paid equally, promoted equally, or even retained equally, once hired.

Anita Hill was responding to a Congressional subpoena. Not accusing him of crimes.

They want to go back to the 1950s.

swope Jul 18, 2024

@dan

I had seen and reported that kind of behavior from a senior researcher, and I recently learned he was forced out.

But then the person that told me also said he was unproductive.

So I guess we are still allowing bad behavior from men as long as they publish good research (or whatever the org's product is.)

@dan ☝️

Harrassing someone should disqualify the harrasser from receiving a PhD (or other degrees).