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Science Has a Sexual Assault Problem
cold fjord writes: Phys.org reports, "The life sciences have come under fire recently with a study published in PLOS ONE that investigated the level of sexual harassment and sexual assault of trainees in academic fieldwork environments. The study found 71% of women and 41% of men respondents experienced sexual harassment, while 26% of women and 6% of men reported experiencing sexual assault. The research team also found that within the hierarchy of academic field sites surveyed, the majority of incidents were perpetrated by peers and supervisors. The New York Times notes, "Most of these women encountered this abuse very early in their careers, as trainees. The travel inherent to scientific fieldwork increases vulnerability as one struggles to work within unfamiliar and unpredictable conditions."
It tells me that the definitions are too broad to be useful. Oh, crap, I said "broad". Now I'm guilty too!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
The study the level of sexual assault of trainees in academic fieldwork environments... was 26% of women and 6% of men reported experiencing sexual assault. According to a study by the CDC, 51.9 percent of surveyed women and 66.4 percent of surveyed men said they were physically assaulted as a child by an adult caretaker and/or as an adult by any type of attacker. More than half (54 percent) of the female rape victims identified by the survey were younger than age 18 when they experienced their first attempted or completed rape. Violence against women is primarily intimate partner violence: 64.0 percent of the women who reported being raped, physically assaulted, and/or stalked since age 18 were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, boyfriend, or date. In comparison, only 16.2 percent of the men who reported being raped and/or physically assaulted since age 18 were victimized by such a perpetrator. Study: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles...
I can't think of a single profession which doesn't seem to have a "problem." Makes one wonder.
Makes you wonder what, exactly? That this is not a "problem", because "everybody's doing it?" WTF? Look pal, the "problem" is narrow-minded, clueless misogynist views like that.
Wow! Just wow! I was thinking the same thing myself, except I put "this is a societal problem, not one just in the academic community," after 'Makes one wonder'. Way to go in projecting your fears and negativity on others.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
If he's talking about "Elevatorgate", then he's accurate, even if he's not calm about it.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
"Makes you wonder what, exactly?"
That this is a widespread social problem and not something restricted to just the nerdy professions. Project much?
Insightful, my ass.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Oh, crap, I said "broad". Now I'm guilty too!
you joke but you are probably correct here. The issue is not that 71% of all women are being sexually assaulted. Its that 71% of all women "feel assaulted" Somehow in the past 40 years what someones feelings are trump what the actual actions are.
Saying something sexual, is NOT sexual assault.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
2) If the men have a significant response rate, then just maybe that means the problem is YOUR QUESTION IS TOO VAGUE, rather than both genders experiencing sexual issues.
The mere fact that this article claims that 40+% of men experience 'sexual harassment', proves that their definition of 'sexual harassment' is not reasonable - the kind of thing only a PC fool trying to prove a problem exists would use.
Similarly, 6% of men experience sexual assault seems on the high side, though not as ridiculous as the 41% claiming harassment.
The only thing going on here is idiots using bad definitions for their poll.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
No, because if that is what the poster was referencing, "going on a tear" was actually saying "guys, don't do that", with the context being: sexual propositioning a stranger in an enclosed space in a foreign country at 4 AM after having just listened to the person you're propositioning give a presentation that included discussion on how the constant sexual propositions she received at these conferences made her uncomfortable.
THAT in turn led to her receiving a never-ending wave of abuse, including rape and death threats, and including having one of the most prominent male voices in the movement insultingly state that women in the west shouldn't complain about sexism because women in Islamic countries have it a lot worse.
It was after all THAT, that she, quite rightly, started going on a tear.
Phrasing of the questions in a survey is important to fully understanding the problem that is being examined. Here are the study questions. Two of the most relevant questions are these:
32. Have you ever personally experienced inappropriate or sexual remarks, comments about physical beauty, cognitive sex differences, or other jokes, at an anthropological field site?
39. Have you ever experienced physical sexual harassment, unwanted sexual contact, or sexual contact in which you could not or did not give consent or felt it would be unsafe to fight back or not give your consent at an anthropological field site?
The PLOS ONE document itself is very thorough, and worth reading through to more fully understand the issue.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Well, here's the actual questions:
The section is entitled Sexual harassment and assault so you would hope people would be contextually aware that "or other jokes" means of a sexual nature. But it's still a badly worded question. I further assume the reader is supposed to parse "inappropriate or sexual" as prefixes for the other items, but we live in a tightly wound panties world when comments about physical beauty are harassment.
The problem, again, is a terribly worded question. Are we to again assume physical should extend through the commas? Or is unwanted sexual contact just a fat girl asking a handsome dude to get a date after the working day is done. Is all physical contact unwanted sexual contact now?
The math for their statistical distributions is fine.
Their questions suck, lack good wording, and lack examples. [Not limited to but including... ...excluding FOO, but not limited to BAR.]
Women are more likely to be the subject of a sexual advance because men are expected to initiate courtship. Differing social expectations and indoctrination will dictate that women find any advances more objectionable then would men regardless of the level of genuine menace the represent.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The article looks at field work, not science as a whole. The results are self-reported, not verified or verifiable. And "harassment" and "assault" are defined so broadly that many normal day-to-day interactions can fall under them. In short, there is no evidence that "science has a sexual assault problem" in any standard meaning of those words.
Much as feminists and other progressives like to establish such a principle, in reality, just because you feel uncomfortable or believe that something was inappropriate doesn't mean anybody has actually done anything wrong.
Well yes, you are, guilty of deflecting criticism by claiming the definitions are too broad.
That's a common defensive reaction.
Problems should be well-defined. Someone can take that position whether they're doing it defensively or not and still be making a legitimate point. Calling it defensive, notably on a topic where there is moral stigma associated with being defensive about it, is just an ad hominem attack.
There are plenty of legitimate critiques of Parent's message--he appears to be dismissing out-of-hand an issue that affects hundreds of millions of people a year. He also failed to state what definitions he thinks are too broad to be useful. Responding with a question about one or more of those that might make people think about the issue is the difference between trolling and dialogue.
Actually Slashdot is like that about everything. What really gets to some on Slashdot is how people like you act all sanctimonious and incredulous when people disagree about something, and only when it comes to feminism.
Same goes for women.
Why is it always the men that get singled out here? That 6% figure for men ought to be far more eye opening than the figure for women. Basically 1, it's definitely underrported and 2, the focus is still on the women. The focus is always on the women.
Few men bother to report sexual assault or rape because there's little point in doing so. Most people are under the belief that women don't do that and even if they were to try, it's not technically possible. But, it does happen, even if most cases get swept under the rug.
As far as the figures for women go, most of the time it's 3rd parties defining it as sexual assault even in cases where the "victim" wouldn't consider it to be sexual assault.
Also, whether a woman finds an advance to be "harassment" or not depends on whether or not she's interested in the man.
So let that be a lesson to you. If you want to avoid harassment:
1) Be handsome
2) Be attractive
3) Don't be unattractive
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
an example or 2 please?
Ive known someone personally getting in trouble for sexual harassment for simply saying that the woman was wearing a nice shirt today. to her, that was sexual assault, to anyone with common sense, it was a complement
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
No, what they're talking about is, according to the article:
“Have you ever personally experienced inappropriate or sexual remarks, comments about physical beauty, cognitive sex differences, or other jokes, at a field site? (If you have had more than one experience, the most notable to you).”
That's not sexual assault. I'm not even sure it rises to the level of sexual harassment.
Flirtation isn't sexual harassment. I'm sure every woman in the country must have been the subject of welcome and unwelcome flirtations.
At a recent professional meeting, a woman made suggestive sexual remarks to me about a computer program. If I had said the same thing to another woman, the second woman could have interpreted it as harassment under that definition.
There's a lot of grey areas and political correctness. If you want to look at it with publications in the scientific literature, fine. Let's use rigorous scientific methods to find out what the magnitude of sexual assault is. The first step is get your definitions right.
You should read the study, not the article about the study, if you are going to criticize it. The thing you quoted was about harassment, not assault.
http://www.plosone.org/article...
"Have you ever experienced physical sexual harassment, unwanted sexual contact, or sexual contact in which you could not or did not give consent or felt it would be unsafe to fight back or not give your consent at an anthropological field site? (If you have had more than one experience, the most notable to you.)"
Is the question about sexual assault.
The grey areas are overwhelmed by the black and white areas. If you feel there are too many grey areas, talk to your manager about getting on a course to help you.
If you don't want to look like a creep - ask the girl to your room around witnesses (they don't have to hear, just as long as you make it feel safe for her to refuse). Waiting until your alone in a confined space, if not harassing, is very bad manners to the point of being ungentlemanly. Don't do that, guys.
Flirtation, on the job, especially by supervisors, is pretty damn hard to distinguish from sexual harassment. (And may actually legally be sexual harassment, when done at work.)
It is the mindless and baseless insults to anyone that disagrees with you that makes it flamebait. Your brazen strawmen that make people completely disregard what you have to say. That is also the number one reason that there is such a strong push-back against feminism. Obnoxious, pretentious blow-hards like yourself are the exact reason why so many people think feminism is a joke.
Of course you will continue to excuse your reprehensible attitude with pious self-importance and sarcastically shrug off any criticism with "most people that disagree are just misogynists" even though you have no reason the believe that and are shown otherwise every time you say it.
I want you to think about this, i kan reed, every time you feel someone is complaining about "straw-feminists" or "doesn't know what feminism is about". It is because of you and people like you. You are the number one reason that people have a bad image of feminism. It isn't misogyny. It isn't insecurities. People do not fear strong women nor do they fear losing their "privileges" (not that there aren't many feminists that love infringing on the rights of others). It is you. It is you and the other preening mooks like you. The self-aggrandizing attitude that because you are "feminist" you are morally superior and entitled to talk down, belittle, insult and defame anyone that dares say something you do not like.
You are a straw-feminist.
Dawkins has realized that he was using a logical fallacy and has since apologized for that tweet so everyone in this thread that is trying to defend him looks pretty silly.
She never accused the guy of harassment or assault. She was just pointing out behavior that she found to be creepy and used it as an example of what not to do. The whole video in question had to do with things that make women feel uncomfortable and thus not attend certain conferences. Yes, people have to deal with that from time to time in the larger society but if a specific group of people want to be more inclusive than they certainly shouldn't issue death threats just because someone had the nerve to point out some of those "awkward and uncomfortable" things.
"you transsexual weirdo"
"I did *NOT* bother "shim"
The others included references and links to a pic from Rocky Horror Picture Show, saying that I was nuts for "cutting off my balls", "He/She", Frank. N. Furter, "you are mentally unhinged by taking estrogen to attempt to upset your body's natural order of things, which yes, includes your mind taking a huge hit. You have mentally unbalanced yourself more than doing something quite insane in a sex change to yourself also."
And a lot more. And this goes on every day ...
Sexual harassment in a thread about sexual harassment? This all started because someone asked "What is APK" and I told them.
Now, back on topic, the headline is mislabeled (so what else is new). It says "Science has a sexual assault problem," whereas the actual survey talks about sexual harassment. And a lot of posters seem to have failed to make the distinction.
One (not exhaustive) definition of sexual harassment I would use is words or acts containing references to sex or sexual identity that either make me uncomfortable, or, or, in APK's case, were intended to make me uncomfortable but failed. Sexual assault, on the other hand, is when I'm lying on a hospital gurney in emergency with paper towels stuffed between my legs to stop the bleeding after being attacked. And for the doubters that sexual assault is under-reported, I didn't report that incident - the doctors did. I couldn't tell them. I just wanted the whole world to leave me suffer alone in peace.
Sexual harassment is not a case of "I'll know it when I see it", because too many of the harassers simply don't get it in the first place. Saying so doesn't make me a feminazi - there are plenty of men who do "get it". And there are other parts of the world where it's a heck of a lot worse, due to a culture that treats women as 3rd-class citizens.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.