A statistic
Jul. 18th, 2011 04:23 pmThere's a thing where women go to technical or fannish conferences and experience creepy, sexist behaviour. There's a thing where they write about it online and suddenly the entire internet hates them. (Rebecca Watson and the atheist blogosphere is just the latest example, it's a pretty common pattern.)
So the first thing happened to me last week, and I'm sitting here hesitating whether to post about it unlocked, because I don't particularly want the second thing to happen. I think the risk is low because Dreamwidth isn't really noticeable to the blogosphere, and because the community here doesn't overlap with the community attending the conference, (unlike the situation of conferences about the future of the web or fannish topics). Anyway, I think there's some merit in telling the world when something like this happens, and also I'm pretty angry about it, though it was fairly minor in the scheme of things.
This year's ASME conference was on the theme of diversity in medical education. There were lots and lots of good things about it, and I had a very enjoyable time overall. The one sour note was a slightly pompous, middle-aged American attendee who approached me. I was wearing my hair in its usual long plait which had fallen over my shoulder. He reached out as if to grab my hair, which meant reaching towards my breast underneath, and said "That's a great ponytail you have there, you're beautiful!" He was moving past me at the time and was the other side of the room before I had time to recover from my initial goldfish state.
I don't think he was being lechy, otherwise he would have stayed around for a reaction. I didn't feel threatened: it was right in the middle of a crowded room. No, the only reason I'm angry is the breathtaking arrogance of his assumption that I wanted to know what he thought of my hair and appearance. I was taking part in a professional conference, I was enjoying a coffee break and networking opportunity. I wasn't there for his aesthetic enjoyment, just because I happen to be younger than him and new to the medical education community and female. He probably read me as even younger and less influential than I am; the big selling point of the ASME conference is that it's a chance for everybody to mingle, from first year medical students to international Med Ed superstars. I know I look young for my age (the long hair contributes to this), and even if he guessed that I'm a junior lecturer rather than a student, I'm a complete newbie in the field of medicine and medical education.
It's a little thing, certainly, and it's hardly going to drive me out of my chosen career! But there's something incongruous about a three-day event in opulent surroundings set up for middle-aged, influential, mostly white men to air their opinions about how to make the medical profession more diverse, and then they turn round and treat their younger female colleagues like that.
The keynote speaker, another middle-aged, highly successful, white-appearing, middle-aged doctor and academic, annoyed me not by overt sexism but because he kept contrasting "diverse students" with "less diverse students". Apparently when presenting his research about the experiences of black and minority ethnic medical students, he was too embarrassed to use the term "white". Less. diverse. I've always rolled my eyes a bit when I see studies discussed that suggest many white people have negative associations with concepts like diversity, access, multiculturalism etc. But if someone who's enough of an expert to be invited as a keynote speaker at a conference on diversity talks as if "diversity" is a characteristic that individuals have to a greater or lesser extent depending on how many oppressed groups they belong to, the problem starts to look explicable.
And circling back to my opening paragraph, I wonder if there isn't something similar going on when a comment as carefully neutral and mildly stated as Watson's
Anyway, I will soon get round to writing more about all the cool things that have been going on this month! Just wanted to get this story off my chest.
So the first thing happened to me last week, and I'm sitting here hesitating whether to post about it unlocked, because I don't particularly want the second thing to happen. I think the risk is low because Dreamwidth isn't really noticeable to the blogosphere, and because the community here doesn't overlap with the community attending the conference, (unlike the situation of conferences about the future of the web or fannish topics). Anyway, I think there's some merit in telling the world when something like this happens, and also I'm pretty angry about it, though it was fairly minor in the scheme of things.
This year's ASME conference was on the theme of diversity in medical education. There were lots and lots of good things about it, and I had a very enjoyable time overall. The one sour note was a slightly pompous, middle-aged American attendee who approached me. I was wearing my hair in its usual long plait which had fallen over my shoulder. He reached out as if to grab my hair, which meant reaching towards my breast underneath, and said "That's a great ponytail you have there, you're beautiful!" He was moving past me at the time and was the other side of the room before I had time to recover from my initial goldfish state.
I don't think he was being lechy, otherwise he would have stayed around for a reaction. I didn't feel threatened: it was right in the middle of a crowded room. No, the only reason I'm angry is the breathtaking arrogance of his assumption that I wanted to know what he thought of my hair and appearance. I was taking part in a professional conference, I was enjoying a coffee break and networking opportunity. I wasn't there for his aesthetic enjoyment, just because I happen to be younger than him and new to the medical education community and female. He probably read me as even younger and less influential than I am; the big selling point of the ASME conference is that it's a chance for everybody to mingle, from first year medical students to international Med Ed superstars. I know I look young for my age (the long hair contributes to this), and even if he guessed that I'm a junior lecturer rather than a student, I'm a complete newbie in the field of medicine and medical education.
It's a little thing, certainly, and it's hardly going to drive me out of my chosen career! But there's something incongruous about a three-day event in opulent surroundings set up for middle-aged, influential, mostly white men to air their opinions about how to make the medical profession more diverse, and then they turn round and treat their younger female colleagues like that.
The keynote speaker, another middle-aged, highly successful, white-appearing, middle-aged doctor and academic, annoyed me not by overt sexism but because he kept contrasting "diverse students" with "less diverse students". Apparently when presenting his research about the experiences of black and minority ethnic medical students, he was too embarrassed to use the term "white". Less. diverse. I've always rolled my eyes a bit when I see studies discussed that suggest many white people have negative associations with concepts like diversity, access, multiculturalism etc. But if someone who's enough of an expert to be invited as a keynote speaker at a conference on diversity talks as if "diversity" is a characteristic that individuals have to a greater or lesser extent depending on how many oppressed groups they belong to, the problem starts to look explicable.
And circling back to my opening paragraph, I wonder if there isn't something similar going on when a comment as carefully neutral and mildly stated as Watson's
...don’t invite me back to your hotel room, right after I’ve finished talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that mannercan provoke such huge outrage. Somehow women are saying "I'd prefer not to be sexually harassed, thanks", and some men are hearing "men are all evil and disgusting and probably rapists". There are lots of reasons for this phenomenon, and one of them is probably genuine defensiveness by actual misogynists. Still, a contributing factor may be that objecting to harassment is considered a feminist position (as opposed to, you know, a decent human being position!) and feminism is tainted by all kinds of negative associations.
Anyway, I will soon get round to writing more about all the cool things that have been going on this month! Just wanted to get this story off my chest.
