Dierdre Sholto-Douglas wrote:
>In bionet.women-in-bio Karen Lona Allendoerfer
><ravena at alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:
>: Another example: a very competent woman
>: was interviewing for a postdoc. A PI with an axe to grind with her advisor
>: came to her seminar, was a jerk to her through the entire seminar, and
>: after the seminar told her that "if this were my PhD thesis, I would be
>: ashamed of myself."
>Out of curiosity I have to ask; how did she respond?
She said that in the middle of the seminar, she had the thought,
"well, I could just start crying now," and was able to decide against that
and keep from crying. She also said that after her talk, people had told
her the situation about her tormentor having "issues" with her PhD advisor.
It turned out that most people in the audience had been sympathetic to her
and realized that she was basically an innocent bystander, caught in the
middle. This helped her take the situation mostly in stride, and laugh
about it later when telling it to others. Taken together with what some
other people have posted, this suggests to me that the situation is not all
grim: if a questioner is really out of line and being a jerk, rather than
just a tough questioner, people will understand, and will sympathize with
the questionee.
What bugs me personally about the larger cultural response, though,
is that the questioner in the above example really doesn't suffer any
negative social consequences for his behavior. Many people tolerate it or
even admire it; they shrug it off and say "well, he's just being himself."
Jerks and boors are just there, like earthquakes and plagues, and if you
can't deal with them, then, well, you're to blame, not them.
It reminds me of a metaphor that a character used in Margaret
Atwood's book, _Cat's Eye_. In the book, an artist paints a picture of
women falling off the bridge over a ravine. At the bottom of the ravine
are men, painted as rocks on which the women injure themselves. The
character discusses how she was inspired by her experiences with cultural
attitudes towards sexuality, growing up. While neither I (nor, as I
interpret the larger book, Atwood) agree with the literal symbolism of men,
women, or sexuality portrayed by the fictional painting, it did seem to me
to be an accurate portrayal of how aggressors are often viewed by society:
as forces of nature, inanimate objects not responsible for the consequences
of their actions. The responsibility, not to mention the suffering, is the
victims' alone. I object to reality of this.
>(Anyway, depending on what your work is, there are some things
>which one simply does not want to discuss as the dinner table,
>especially if one wants to retain their dinner.)
:) Yes, that certainly can be the case, but in this one, the problem was
more of style, not content.
Karen
