I recently participated in a scientific symposium, realizing that maybe I needed to count the blessings and be happy that at least two of the speakers (ten) were POC and adding into the mix that four were non-native English speakers. Although, all were male which was part of why I have been mulling over my feelings for a bit of time.
More to stress me, was that there seemed to be fairly few female lab members as graduate students and postdocs*. But I could've missed them or been over pessimistically - as in "maybe I just thought they should be even nowadays". I didn't keep a tally on paper, mainly making a mental note at the acknowledgement slides, so it could've been exacerbated. After all, there were a lot of diversity on the male side, and it left me wondering as I've mulled about before - can there only be "so many non-majority males" and then the left over diversity is either female, POC, 'immigrants' or some other non-conformity minority? (I'm not a diversity researcher, just a white, non-native English female PhD making observations that are quite possibly fairly subjective.)
It turns difficult a times though, considering I spent the day and evening talking to quite a few of the speakers and the organizers. They all seemed intellectual, very nice and very science driven. No "good old boys comments" and no leering towards the younger females standing around talking about science. I didn't get"let's shut out women from the lab" but at the same time, it was fairly clear that it was one of these subsections where you switch graduate students/postdocs and have a clear pedigree "he was a post doc of mine, now he's heading up the great lab over there". It's business as usual and I shouldn't be too surprised. The few female post docs who were mentioned were given similar excellent comments as the mentioned male ones so there is a good possibility that I'm too sensitive to the female ratio of the speakers/presence. You tell me.
As for this morning, and the drop that spilled the cup. The pussy comment and the debate. Maybe not so much the actual leaked video but the aftermath on TV/newspapers/twitter where commentators discuss how they feel about the presidential candidate using such a profane choice of words. I haven't gotten the feeling that people are as outraged of "the general view of women" that he has portrayed for quite some time, as shocked that he is using the p-word** being vulgar using profanity. Not to mention the sidebar conversation that he is expressing "a want to fuck married women", which is unmoral and bad (especially for a Christian conservative GOP point of view). The last part is surprising to me, seeing that it should be pretty obvious that he has done this before - cheating, divorce and remarrying - and been in interviews about it so really not that new, right? The focus, from what I gather, is not on "kiss them whenever I feel like it, since I'm a celebrity" but on the p-word and that it's so much more in your face when you use profanity.
The thing that really gets to me though, are the comments "as a father to girls this is offensive to me" and the narrative; "what if it was your daughter, wife, mother". The constant idea that gets repeated that we (in this case: men) need a relationship to a woman to understand that maybe it is simply not acceptable to say and act a special way. That it's the knowledge that women who belong to someone they respect (themselves, their best friend) could be treated this way and therefore it would be bad to behave like this towards them. The need to have an insight from relating to a "female who is related to you".
Not because it's an outrageous behaviour to start with. To set yourself above others and mistreat people (women), but because someone could do that to YOUR woman/women. The overall idea in the background that you have a right to mistreat/take advantage of people, which makes them weaker than you and therefore you are in your right to act however you want, is somehow alright and acceptable.
That is what I take issue with.
Since I won't solve this today, I might as well go for a long, nice jog in the lovely autumn weather outside. Maybe the sun and endorphins will wash away the brooding dark thoughts that cloud my mind?
*there seemed to be quite a few of female techs
**part of me wonders what had happened if he had used the c-word. From what I've seen, Americans are more sensitive to cunt. but maybe not in this context? Overall though, the idea is that these words are mainly negative in their connotation since they refer to "not being a strong man" <- all="" be.....="" div="" nbsp="" strive="" to="" we="" which="">
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