PREACH IT

A recent discussion w/ a colleague made us think about the many hours survivors of #harassment or #abuse in academia have to spend to report the abuser and then deal with the following steps (interviews, writing, therapy, etc). Are there any studies about this?? 1/5

I’m sure it’s a lot of time that survivors have to spend, that otherwise could have been used for academic purposes, like writing papers/grants, reading papers, thinking, etc. So it would be interesting to measure what’s the real “academic toll” of abuse or harassment. 2/5

In academia, what does it really mean to “study misogyny” and work to prevent gender-based violence if women in the field are taught that speaking up about abuse and discrimination is a career-ender?

On the left, you can’t claim to fight for equality while putting women in these situations and pressuring them into silence.

Wouldn't it be nice if not the people who have experienced (power)abuse, harassment and discrimination in Academia would be the ones who talk about it and fight it at great cost and risk of retraumatization but if the silent masses and the ones with power in the system actively worked to prevent it?

Sexual abuse/misconduct is rampant in academia. It's known to be rampant. It's known that students aren't safe. Campuses will raise awareness as if they aren't employing predators.

If I know of a harasser, it is my moral obligation to pass that info on to anyone who might work with them.

In my academic voyages, sexual harassers are nice to the people above them and to the people parallel to them. They exploit and harm those below them, so most of the faculty simply don't know.
When something does happen, the university throws a net of confidentiality over it to protect itself

Something that is very true of charismatic abusers is that they don't just charm the people they are abusing. They work hard to make sure that the community around them considers them to be of impeccable character it makes it harder for things to come out and harder for those things to be belidved

Well, that's one of the tricks of the abuser, isn't it? An awful lot of behaviours that add up to abuse can be rearranged to look a bit like "ladies' man", or "womanizer" if someone is clever or people aren't paying attention.

I think a disturbing number of people believe that sexual harassment is about being horny and needing to do something about it rather than being about asserting a power dynamic... so they classify it as the result of too much of a somewhat healthy or at least natural impulse.

Harassment should be disqualifying by itself. But harassers are also disproportionately prone to other misconduct, from plagiarism to embezzlement. The common denominator is a toxic sense of entitlement - to other people's bodies, money, work, or anything else.

hypatia.ca/2017/07/18/t...