Seems to me most universities are fairly inept at dealing with sexual assault and harassment, regardless of whether it involves faculty and students or just students.
I wonder if maybe it's because they think they're supposed to be dealing only with the minds of the people who populate their buildings, rather than their bodies?
I think the very nature of much harrassment makes it all but impossible to deal with the way we might deal with physical assualt, say.
When Mrs. M. was struggling with what to do about the Prof that was making her feel like puking, she considered blowing the whistle, but realized there wasn't really much she could say. Everything happened in private, and everything could be interpreted one of two ways. His harrassment was like a double entendre: interpret it one way and it's innocent, interpret it another and it's smutty.
She's back at UofT for her PhD, in a different faculty, and never bumps into the guy. She also has a new advisor who's quite genuinely like a father to her. A true mentor, and proof that absolute power doesn't necessarily corrupt absolutely. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
At UBC there was, a few years ago, the case of a psychology professor who invited a student to drop by his house to discuss academic business. The wine was poured, the candles were lit, and the stereo was running, and the scholarly enquiry was conducted on the chesterfield.
The University later had to deal with harassment complaints from the graduate student when the professor gave her a failing mark. After the University had dealt with it, it was also processed by the BC Human Rights Tribunal:
[url=http://www.bchrt.bc.ca/down/decisions_1999/mahmoodi_vs_ubc_and_dutton_oc...
This report is over 90 pages and goes into a lot of detail on how the university and the police all tried to get to the bottom of this thing. It wasn't easy. There were even technical issues of the type you'd expect to see in a TV show. The professor's stereo equipment had accidentally recorded the audio portion of the scholarly encounter, and that all had to be figured out.
A major complicating factor was that the complainant was a known liar from other contexts. Could she be believed in this case? At the same time, the professor's story was a long way from adding up to its own totals either.
In the end the Tribunal awarded the complainant just over $10,000 and ordered both UBC and the professor to pay.
Magoo, I'm impressed you didn't give that prof an excuse for rhinoplasty or orthodontic enhancements. I'm a little too neanderthalic to let that pass without some intense, personal discussions with the letch. Just ask Mrs. F.
She had a creep leering at her at her when she was in occupational therapy. One quiet discussion, in which I politely pointed out that the therapist could be making a lot more money off him in the very near future, and the offender took up the habit of leaving the room when the missus entered.
quote:
Originally posted by HeywoodFloyd:
[b]Magoo, I'm impressed you didn't give that prof an excuse for rhinoplasty or orthodontic enhancements. I'm a little too neanderthalic to let that pass without some intense, personal discussions with the letch. Just ask Mrs. F.She had a creep leering at her at her when she was in occupational therapy. One quiet discussion, in which I politely pointed out that the therapist could be making a lot more money off him in the very near future, and the offender took up the habit of leaving the room when the missus entered.[/b]
A textbook example of Albertan interpersonal skills,...which are, as we all know, precisely modelled on the Texas Examplar.
What do you suggest for those men and women who aren't handy with their fists, or when the other guy is younger, taller, and stronger? That they move to Toronto or Vancouver? Good idea, ... and many of them thought of it first.
quote:
Originally posted by Erik Pool:
[b]A textbook example of Albertan interpersonal skills,...[/b]
A textbook example of baiting.
And a good GFYS to you too. [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]
Edited to add
Wait until Erik figures out that I grew up in BC. That mirror will look a whole lot different.
[ 15 July 2004: Message edited by: HeywoodFloyd ]
Though I do have to say that testimonies from men about how they'd "handle" the situation, should any of their "women-folk" find themselves to be in a similar situation to be beside the point.
The abuse of power is a profoundly vulgar thing.
quote:
Originally posted by Hinterland:
[b]The abuse of power is a profoundly vulgar thing.[/b]
Does that include the abuse of personal, physical power, by a younger, stronger man assaulting an older, weaker man? Or for that matter, a man his own age, who just isn't as large or strong as himself, one who has spent his life in the world of books, not the gridiron?
How would you extend this to bullying in the schoolyard? Do you not find it a bit strange that most kids who are being "bullied" in school, that is assaulted, perhaps injured, do not see themselves as victims of crime, but just as failures and weaklings who cannot successfully defend themselves, unlike their action heros on TV?
And isn't it refreshing to learn that in the socialist paradise of the Babblers everyone is well beyond that kind of primitive thinking?
quote:
Originally posted by HeywoodFloyd:
[b]And a good GFYS to you too.Edited to add
Wait until Erik figures out that I grew up in BC. That mirror will look a whole lot different.
[ 15 July 2004: Message edited by: HeywoodFloyd ][/b]
What does GFYS stand for?
As for your move to Alberta, it looks like you moved in the right direction for you.
quote:
Originally posted by Erik Pool:
What does GFYS stand for?
Ask Paul Martin, it's what he told all the Chretien supporters to do.
quote:
Originally posted by clearview:
[b]Ask Paul Martin, it's what he told all the Chretien supporters to do.[/b]
Ah yes. But none of them did.
quote:
And isn't it refreshing to learn that in the socialist paradise of the Babblers everyone is well beyond that kind of primitive thinking?
Heywood's our token right wing goon, so back off.
Actually, I disagree with HeywoodFloyd's response too. If I thought threatening a harassing professor would help, I'd do it myself. A woman in the situation Magoo describes has lots of threats at her disposal. The problem is, whether her academic career will be put in jeopardy because of it. Her academic career will be put in jeopardy just as much by hubby coming in like Rambo as it will by the woman telling the professor to back off.
The thing is, most of the profs (or bosses, or whatever) who harrass this way tend to be cowards. I've faced off a prof who was a habitual harrasser of female students, and a boss who put a hand where he shouldn't have. You don't necessarily need a male person to do it for you, and it doesn't necessarily have to be physical harm that is used. For the former case, the casual mention of wifey, scheduling and the availability of address information was quite enough to send the jerk packing.
I think that much of the time we give these men more power over us than they truly have.
I agree with you michelle. My response worked in the the case I described. Would it have worked were Mrs F. in the situation Mrs M. was? Most likely not. I would have, however, considered the response Zoot described. Threats come in more flavors than my dragging knuckles and many of the other flavors are very effective.
I didn't mean to imply that women needed a male knight in white armor to protect them. Women are more than capable of dealing with the situation.
Like I said, I'm a bit neanderthalic when it comes to the women in my life. Not because I think they can't take care of themselves, but because I believe that it is my job to be the protector.
I agree with Michelle's analysis, but what really strikes me in this article is how inredibly conceited that Bloom guy must be. "A vortex of power and charisma"??? This guy makes Warren Kinsella look humble.
This whole sexual harrassment and sexual assualt problem is very serious. I don't think the law is the ultimate solution, because A) it doesn't address the primary sources of the promblem. And B) In many circumstances, things can get fuzzy, with he saids, she saids, going on and there isn't always alot of proof.
That isn't to say that there shouldn't be laws against both acts, although they should be improved, after all at the moment the law and education is the best we have now, but in the long term we must think of innovative solutions that address the problem at the source. I'm working on it.
quote:
Critics of sexual-harassment standards argue that you can’t legislate passions; true enough. But you can legislate what to do about people who act on them improperly. Powerful men and woman who belittle and humiliate their subordinates manage not to belittle or humiliate their supervisors. Neither men nor women tend to harass upward in a hierarchy.
I think that this is the most valuable thing that Wolf says in the piece - it very effectively removes sexual harrassment from the emotional arena and reveals it for what it really is: an abuse of power. Culturally, we need to understand that sexual harassment (like rape, like sexual assault) is fundamentally about power and not about sex. If mere sexual gratification was all someone were after, there are easier ways to achieve it. But they don't allow for the rush that overpowering someone who is socially or physically weaker does. And that's what a sexual harrasser or rapist wants - that feeling of power, not just the sexual release.
Here might be an interesting deterrent though: the Women's Centre, or equivalent, purchases a relatively inexpensive "pinhole" camera, like you see used in "stings" on television, and they make it known far and wide that it's available for borrowing by anyone who feels they're being harrassed.
Certainly it won't stop everything by everyone, but there might be more than a few professors who suddenly have to consider the possibility that the student they're harrassing might be gathering some irrefutable, inflammatory evidence that will see them unemployed, divorced and disgraced. It might also be empowering for the harrassee to know that they can do something concrete and credible to put an end to the harrassment.
On a similar but different note, tenants in our building been disturbed by some late-night demolition going on in the building beside us (a company called [url=http://www.verity.ca]verity.ca[/url] is building an indoor swimming pool for an exclusive women's club). The contractor doesn't have a permit to extend the work hours past 7pm, but the work had been going on until 2 or 3 in the morning, and consisted of dropping industrial waste from a 3rd story building into a large dumpster. Attempts to get them to stop were met with obfuscation and disrespect, and we didn't know what more to do. Then we started photographing them. Every time. When the trucks arrived, they got photographed. When the dumping began, they got photographed. Every time we heard them we'd either take some photos (or pop a large flashgun to make them believe we were). Once they realized that this wouldn't be "he said she said" anymore they started to take us seriously. As long as it was our word against theirs they were willing to take their chances, but once we had proof, they backed right down.
I think that either gathering such proof, or even the possibility that someone might, could have the same effect on harrassers.
Saying all rape is about power, is like saying all murder is about money.
Depending on the cirstance there can be other motives. Revenge, peer pressure, booze/drugs, horniness, fear, lack of confedence in ones masculinity, stupidity, guilt, insanity, despration, love/obsession(kind of goes with insanity), the danger, not paying attention.
[ 16 July 2004: Message edited by: Rev. Phoenix ]
quote:
Originally posted by Rev. Phoenix:
[b]Saying all rape is about power, is like saying all murder is about money.Depending on the cirstance there can be other motives. Revenge, peer pressure, booze/drugs, horniness, fear, lack of confedence in ones masculinity, stupidity, guilt, insanity, despration, love/obsession(kind of goes with insanity), the danger, not paying attention.
[/b]
Regarding your first point, I don't think the analogy is accurate at all - indeed, your list of other motives supports power as the driving force.
Revenge is about power, about making someone pay. Peer pressure is also about power, about showing others that you have power/that you're not powerless. Booze/drugs never [i]made[/i] anyone do anything - they might remove the inhibition against it that you'd have if you were sober, but they don't themselves cause rape.
Horniness? People who are horny go home and masturbate or hire a prostitute, they don't force someone else against their will. How is it satisfying to fuck an unwilling partner?
I'm not sure what you mean by fear so I can't address that - I don't know what kind of fear would cause someone to commit rape. Lack of confidence in one's masculinity, however, is also about power: demonstrating to a woman/to himself that he's man enough to "have" her/make her submit to his desire.
Stupidity, guilt, insanity, desperation: while stupid, guilty, insane and desperate people may well commit rape, I don't think those are causal (perhaps insanity...I'm not well-versed in mental illnesses that prompt violence).
That love and obsession are linked is a little sad. Why would someone ever rape someone that they loved? Rape is painful and degrading, not things that you want to make your beloved feel. Obsession, on the other hand, might factor in but again, I believe that obsession hinges on power, the notion that if the lover can't have the beloved, then no one will, the desire to control the beloved, to have the beloved submit to the lover's will.
I might concede a little on your point about the danger; someone might somehow find it exciting to get away with a violent act. But isn't that too about power, about committing a wrong and escaping retribution because one is so powerful that no one can touch them?
And not paying attention? To what? To the other person saying "no, I don't want to do this"? And isn't ignoring someone a way of having power over them? Of refusing to acknowledge their rights as a person?
I know I'm nitpicking but on this point I'm passionate: sexual violence is about power, not sex. People who want sex can get it in lots of other ways, and they do. People who want power over other people, who want to degrade, humiliate or abuse, they're the ones who rape, assault or harrass. Just because it has the word "sexual" in it, doesn't make it about sex; sex is the effect, not the cause.
You can easily reduce everything to being about power. I'm talking a direct relation to power. So and So is exerting his power over another by raping them. In most of the examples, such as peer pressure, the question of power is indirect, the rapist who is giving into peer preassure, is looking for acceptance, not power, is the ones who are applying the preassure that are interested in power. In the case of love, some people's view of reality gets to distorted by the powerful emotion, and they retranslate external indicators of non consent in such a way the it indicates cansent in their minds, aka they refuse to believe that so and so is unwill therefor they distort their perception of reality to one in which "She was asking for." In many of the other examples power is a factor, but not exclusively. Example, a rapist maybe horny, but it is the question of power that caused said horniness. If all the rapist cared about was power and his/her interests were completely asexual, then they would be more likely to turn to asexual forms of humiliation and violence, like beatings, swirlys, ect...
quote:
Originally posted by Rev. Phoenix:
[b]This whole sexual harrassment and sexual assualt problem is very serious. [/b]
Personally, I think it's very much yesterday's issue. The real prevalence of this kind of thing reached a peak in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Boomers had just reached adulthood and were convinced that with the "sexual revolution", they were entitled to a certain amount of sex. If it wasn't materializing, they figured it was OKay to use a bit of coercion to fill the gap.
In today's world, I think it's a rarity, at least among "good employers". In situations in the service industry, bars, nite clubs, restaurants, where you still have a youth-dominated work force, and one that has been pre-selected on factors such as looks, there may still be an ongoing issue due to the overall climate of the workplace.
[ 17 July 2004: Message edited by: Erik Pool ]
I think that calling it "yesterday's issue" shows complete ignorance on your part. It still happens, victim blaming does also.
(I want to say more, but it's going to need some thought to figure out exactly how to respond)
Sexual harrassment is definitely NOT yesterday's issue, Erik. If it was, women wouldn't still be in the position of being harrassed. They are, and shockingly more often than you would think.
Erik, where can I get some of those rosy glasses you're sporting?
I'm a little more than two months too old to be a boomer, and the worst sex-harrass I ever saw was happening in the fifties and sixties, perpetrated by arrogant male academics who considered female students to be, simply, perks of the job.
It was boomer women who put the brakes on that kind of shit, although anyone who thinks they stopped it entirely is too naive and protected to be true.
Further:
quote:
In today's world, I think it's a rarity, at least among "good employers". In situations in the service industry, bars, nite clubs, restaurants, where you still have a youth-dominated work force, and one that has been pre-selected on factors such as looks, there may still be an ongoing issue due to the overall climate of the workplace.
Hey, everybody! Suddenly, we all remember one of the main reasons we are not Liberals! We are not cheap snobs, eh? [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]
harassment
