sexual harassment?

[rphilos]

4 hours ago, orange turtle said:

You have spent all this time defending the person (Note: NOT the USC player or the neurodiverse prof in the article you linked) who might or might not be "unfairly" accused. What say you about the people who are on the receiving end? 

I think this is an unfair comment about me, since I specifically said that you are justified in making a complaint against the person who harassed you. I even suggested that you tell his wife what happened, which would probably be worse for him than a Title IX complaint.

[rphilos]

2 hours ago, Sigaba said:

Again, put down the shovel.

If discussion aimed at getting at the truth bothers you, why are you studying for a PhD?

2 hours ago, Sigaba said:

If you ask out a classmate, you put yourself at risk. If you don't want to be at risk, don't ask out your classmates.

Almost everyone I know (including myself) is partnered with a classmate. Fortunately, no sexual harassment policy is so insane as to say that a classmate merely asking another out could be harassment.

[fuzzylogician]

8 hours ago, orange turtle said:

I have a meeting tomorrow where CreepProf, as Fuzzy christened him, will attend. I am going to take it step -by -step for now. And start by seeing if I am too uncomfortable attending the meeting. And if I am, then I will consider approaching another PI who is younger and seems quite motherly (I know I'm completely stereotyping here and it's unfair that women often get burdened with more disclosures). I think I'm gonna make an appointment with counselling, too, just to see if they might have ideas as professionals.

I hope the meeting went as well as could be. Meeting with counseling sounds like a good idea, everything else aside, to help you work through your feelings and develop strategies in case you have to continue seeing CreepProf as part of your professional life. 

[orange turtle]

Update for those following this:

I went for my morning meeting, and sat somewhere else. I purposely placed myself near the female professors. Got a raised eyebrow from one but I just shrugged it off.

After the meeting, one of the senior PIs I sat next to asked if everything was fine. She said I hadn't said a word during the meeting and had moved to sit with the "older and more senior people" instead of hanging out where the grad students tend to sit. She also mentioned that I had uncapped and capped my pen "over a hundred times" throughout the one hour meeting and hadn't taken any notes, which seemed to her like I was terribly anxious (she's a psychiatrist) and I was usually pretty chilled. She said she was annoyed at the pen uncapping and capping at first but when it continued she thought this was more than just "usual graduate student tics, idiosyncrasies, and anxiety."

I pretty much wanted to cry right there. Mostly because I have been dreading this meeting. I think she is probably very well-trained to know when someone's going to cry so she asked me to go to her office with her.

I told her pretty much everything. And she flipped. She started cursing. I've never seen this professor frazzled. But she then said she would talk to the other PIs/co-investigators if I was fine with that, and would move towards removing him from the team and said "We can always get another investigator from that area. There's several other guys I know."

In the meantime though, she said I didn't have to attend the meetings until he is gone. They won't penalise me.

I am so relieved! And I ate about a pound of chocolate so I'm now sick to the pit of my stomach and sugar high. But that's okay. :-)

[datik]

A lot of people have made really good arguments in this thread so I just wanted to say that I empathize with your situation and I'm really sorry this happened. From your update above, it is clear that this is unfairly upsetting you.

I have known cases of sexual harassment by senior professors at Universities here, and it really pisses me off. They were worse than what you described because they didn't just "ask politely". What really peeves me is that in these cases the rest of the staff and even the University is complicit because they don't want to lose important professors or make a scandal that could affect the whole administration. So cases like this end up being normalized.

I am glad that you exteriorized this concern because it is likely that you are not the first or the last to be subject to this individual's harassment. Maybe I'm being a little extreme but I also feel that you had a moral obligation to fight this. (But as others have said, the world is not always fair so you need to be smart about how you go about it).

The supervisor is super guilty in this regard too.

[fuzzylogician]

@orange turtle what a great response! I am so glad you found the support you needed, and someone to take the situation as seriously as it should be. There is no situation where a supevisor telling you they want to have your children or propositioning you for sex is okay, no matter how anyone tries to spin it! 

[EliaEmmers]

@orange turtle

This is great news and I'm very happy you spoke up. Every time a woman like you stands up to harassment, you help make the world a little bit better for everyone. 

THANK YOU FOR BEING BRAVE. 

[rising_star]

I've been away for a few days and boy was this thread a lot to read. @orange turtle, I am SOOO glad you found a champion on your research team. Good luck going forward and I hope that this creepy prof is out of your academic life for good now!