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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...
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
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.
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.
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.