This is not a productive way to argue. It is especially wrong-headed when thrown at another woman scientist who you know nothing about!!!!!

Cheers,

-cvj

Sure. But the scholarship didn’t change a thing about that. It’s certainly a good idea to have these (well, I generally think scholarships for qualified young people are a good idea because they provide a certain level of independence) but it doesn’t really address the cause of the problem. And in some cases it can actually go against the intention to provide a welcoming environment for women in a men-dominated area.

“I am all for supporting women in science, but what I have been trying to communicate is that one needs to be very careful how to do that, or it will backlash. I want women to be treated equal, not more equal than men.”

I couldn’t agree more… Hence what I’ve said above.

By the way the fact that there are people who will assume that your holding a fellowship had more to do with your gender than your ability says more about them than it does about the fellowship. Such fellowships have done a lot to help women get a start in a field. They are not ideal measures, but are not evil either. Let’s not rush to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Cheers,

-cvj

At the institute where I was, those who finished an MD usually got a PhD position as researcher/teaching assistant. I should add literally everybody got such a job. I am not usually over-convinced of myself, but I think most would agree that there were many PhD students which were not as qualified as I was. However, when I finished my MD, I was told I wouldn’t get a position there, because I am a women and could apply for the scholarship, so the Institute wouldn’t have to pay me.

Yes, I got that scholarship. It was about the same amount as the job had been, but with the usual drawbacks (no health insurance/retirement plan/unemployment insurance). The next three years I’ve been repeatedly told (in many though not all cases half jokingly, but nevertheless) that I am only there because I’m a women and got payed through that scholarship.

I am all for supporting women in science, but what I have been trying to communicate is that one needs to be very careful how to do that, or it will backlash. I want women to be treated equal, not more equal than men.

What he wrote is the equivalent of saying, “I heard a great lecture today by a physicist I respect and boy, did she have great hooters!” Crude, unrefined, and unnecessary. I don’t really care if it’s his private blog or not, what he said is publicly available and gives us insight into his thinking. Falling back on the old “Oh, all Italian men are like this” doesn’t make his disrespect any more right than claiming that it’s okay to mutilate women because of cultural concerns. It’s still disrespectful at the very least.

Perhaps all of us, no matter where we come from, could learn to be MORE respectful of other human beings, rather than falling back on trite “cultural” excuses for flagrant behavior.

Overall, I do not think that there are hard and fast rules of behaviour…. only guidelines of which to be mindful. Sadly, one can most clearly tell when something does not feel right only after the fact/event/act, rather than accurately prescribing beforehand what will work and what won’t. So guidelines are worthwhile, to help with navigation. There will always be room for good examples that break all the guidelines but nevertheless work….but those are exceptions… and as things improve, there will hopefully be more of them and we can worry about this all less… but we are a long way from that situation, in my mind, and hence the care.

Best,

-cvj

sorry about that, usually I am quite a restrained person, but this was just too much - reading that diatribe again, hours later, still makes me upset …

Coming back to the topic of this post - now, I guess I got your point that remarks about physical appearance are a no-go in a blog post about the presentation of a colleague - let her or him be black or white or whatever. I’m sure you have had quite some first-hand, bad experience with this issue, and for this reason are much more sensitive to it than I am. Moreover, I don’t buy at all Tommaso’s argument that his writings are not public - there is hardly anything more public than a blog post.

But please accept that I don’t completely share your point of view.

For example, concerning the issue of public versus private, I think the relevant category may be official versus private - and in this respect, this post on a “private blog” is not official, as has been mentioned before.

Then, I would say, the most important thing is that it is obvious for everyone that the writer has a deep respect for the person he or she is writing about, and regards his or her work seriously, as alpinekat puts it. Now, this is a delicate point, since it definitely requires good writing skills and tactfulness to meet these requirements if you consider writing about anything else than the presentation as such. But if fulfilled, I still see not a principle reason not to insert such a paragraph in a post, given that the context is non-official, and the person described really plays in a different league (I hope Tommaso doesn’t mind that statement). If Tommaso’s paragraph meets these criteria may be open to debate - as I mentioned before, I would not have written that myself, and similar to alpinekat, I could imagine a formulation that would, hopefully, leave less margin for potentially harmful misinterpretations.

But I completely agree that this issue is extremely sensitive and should be handled with extreme care!

On the other hand, as for the case of women in physics in general, I guess the most important goal we should try to aspire to is that, as Lisa Randall puts it in the Discovery piece mentioned by Bee, a woman can “just [...] be a scientist like the others”.

In this respect, I am quite confident that a certain normality has been reached already - maybe this is naive, but I hope it is not - you see, for example there are now cases of physicist couples where quite obviously, the woman is the more brilliant one of the two But then, schemes to protect women in physics bear the danger of overdoing, and just reaching the opposite of what they initially are intended for, by singling out again woman as not “scientists like the others”. I remember that Sabine once told me about her mixed feelings when she obtained a scholarship intended to foster women in the sciences, exactly for the reason that she wanted to be accepted for her science in the first place.

I understand that this was not the point of your post, and that you are quite certainly aware of this problem, but it comes to my mind as a further aspect of the problem.

Since this was mentioned, the guy who did not dare to make eye contact with the four women visitors - well, there are quite shy male physicists, perhaps more than among a random sample of males, and I could imagine that such a guy is even more intimidated and unsettled by long discussions bout how to be careful with respect to women - I concede that from alpinekat’s description alone, it is not clear to me whether the reason for this guy’s behaviour was not plain old-style chauvinism.

I am well aware of the old professors talking patronisingly about their female students as “their girls”, or even worse - but I am optimistic that these are dinosaurs, on the brink of extinction. However, from several discussions with my wife, I am also aware that we male physicist are at risk to get caught in a much more subtle trap - that we may perceive perfectly normal women physicists as either arrogant and aggressive, or as feminine and a bit naive, depending on how much they adopt to a style typical of male physicist. Interestingly, I read these days about roughly the same problem facing young women managers in industry - it may be typical for a setting traditionally dominated by males, and with few female role models.

So, this issue is to stay with us for some time - but I am confident that with time, things will improve, and normality will set in. We should just stay aware of the many pitfalls we may fall into.

Thanks, Stefan

Your comment reminded me of a comment I had meant to make, when someone (way up there) wrote that we should remember what we were taught as children [i.e. sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.]

What rot that turned out to be, didn’t it?

“I tend to think of such people as relics, still in existence, but most of the field has moved on”

Oh no, No ! No, they have not. There are examples in the new generation being created all the time, and encouraged (subtly, and not necessarily intentionally) to mimic their elders in these matters - We have come a long way on the one hand, but in other ways, we are only ever a tiny step away from the old ways, and have not come very far at all, in my opinion. This is precisely the reason to take note of these things, and to have this sort of conversation.

Best,

-cvj

Good luck. I don’t know if there are any useful suggestions. Don’t break anything - that never helps really.

General policy reminder to all - Lubos has no right of reply on this blog, and so to be fair I also delete anything inflammatory said about him too. So stefan’s understandable expression of frustration is where it stops, with regards Lubos, please. In any case, lack of relevance would also be an issue.

Despite the attempts of some to tilt the conversation that way, let’s keep trying to keep the discussion here out of the gutters and sewers.

Thanks.

-cvj

thank you very much for your answer - I was about to comment in more detail, but right now, I’m just to shaken by the latest post by Lubos Motl, partially targeted at my wife. Of course, it is Motl, and he may not qualify as a “colleague” anymore - but his malicious distortion of quotations and his defamatory attitude does far more harm than any remark about physical appearance. Believe me, if I would meet Motl right now, you would have to prevent me from breaking his fingers.

Anyway - are there any useful suggestions around how to handle such a case?

Best regards, Stefan

In any case, I wish you well. While I disagree on this particular battle, the war is worth fighting.

Oh, and maybe I’ll be able to call Jennifer Ouellette a colleague in a couple of years

Alpinekat:- The problem I see with your position is that it is impossible to tell in advance whether a woman likes or is inviting that sort of treatment or not. And in the many cases when someone is not welcoming it, or gets the impression (by seeing other such cases) that the work atmosphere is such that this is prevalent, it is remarkably unpleasant (to say the least) and as has been said before, is completely undermining. So the best thing to do it seems is to keep that out of the work environment (which includes colleagues describing each others work in a public forum) and leave it for elsewhere, or to be done by people outside of the professional relationship in the manner I described.

Just to clarify - “colleague” here does not have to mean that they write papers together, they are in the same professional field; peers wanting to be taken seriously by each other. In the same way that (I’m guessing a bit) you and Jennifer Ouellette are colleagues in the science writing profession, although you’ve not written pieces together or worked in the same office.

As with everyone I’ve had a reasonable discussion with on this, it is ok for you to disagree with me on this…. I just want to make sure that we understand what each other is trying to say, and so I am carefully clarifying the points I am trying to make. This is not easy - it is subtle - and this is why we should all be careful. I’m not sure that you really appreciate just how incredibly severe the problem of women and minorities in physics actually is. As you go about your work as a science journalist, you may observe that, and I hope it will help you see what some of us are trying to say here.

Best,

-cvj

Clifford — I want to thank you. Awareness of these issues is important. Last summer, I was working in a lab through and REU program. One day during beam-time, she wore a polka-dot dress that came to the knee. When she walked into the data unit, the eyes of most of the men in the room dropped to her legs, professors and grad students alike.

She took it with good humor and a bit of amazement, but it made her uncomfortable enough that she moved behind a chair until they were behaving more professionally. In physics, these stories are unique to the experience of female students, and that is unfair. On the other hand, she knew she looked good in that polka dot dress, and sometimes women want to feel attractive. To that end, she was more successful than she had intended.

Women aren’t always victims of the male gaze. We do sometimes invite it, though I would hope that colleagues and professors would be more discreet than what my suitemate experienced.

You point out that as a colleague, his comments are inappropriate, and I think that is an important distinction. If he was working closely with Lisa Randall, actually meeting her and publishing papers together, I would agree. The obvious attention that my suitemate received made her uncomfortable, and that is a real danger to young women in physics.

However, Dorigo points out that Randall is a public figure. So long as they are not working closely enough that Randall would have to meet him, the question becomes, Does he regard her work seriously? And it’s clear from the paragraphs following the offensive one that he does. I’m glad that his remarks sparked so much discussion. They certainly weren’t professional, but in this context, I don’t think he was out-of-line.

-cvj

1 - Kea (original post, #12 etc.) as you know said quite plainly you are a hypocrite, there and in this column.

2 - Mahndisa (original post, #17) also commented along the same lines in Kea’s blog.

3 - Louise (original post, #21) says she is disturbed by your criticism.

It could be enough to deflate you a bit, but anyway:

4 - Bee (original post, #33) also started an argument with you on the issue, and you had to climb mirrors to defend yourself at her blog.

5 - Riqie (followup post, #8) describes those who react as you do as “feminazis”.

Take care and don’t forget algebra.

Cheers,
T.

Actually “many feminists” = “2 women”. Two. And furthermore they are closely linked. When I addressed their groundless accusations and (I and others) pointed out some inconsistencies in their position, they quickly went silent and shrunk away. (At least on this thread…I cannot speak for yours since it degenerated a bit too much into chaos for my tastes, so I’m afraid I stopped reading.)

Anyway, the accusations leveled at me are all just a red herring. The central issue remains.

Best,

-cvj

Sorry for disappointing you, but do not read me if you found that sentence irritating or upsetting - there were others in the past, and there will be more in the future. It is my way of writing. Really, describing TDLee as I did today was sort of a joke, but it felt utterly natural to me and in perfect match with my usual style. I certainly will not avoid doing only for women if I do it for men.

Cheers,
T.

Thanks for the thoughful response. The context issue is all important. I’ve tried to explain it in the post, and in a number of comments here and in the other discussions on other blogs. The issue of whether blogs are public or private is interesting, but I think that there is simply no confusion in this case. In my opinion it is clear that this is not the right place to make those remarks. The main factors are the fact that Tommaso is a colleague of the speaker (working in roughly the same field), and that he is reporting on a professional work scenario.

That he is a colleague is really very significant, and this is what makes it very different for him vs a science writer (see the comment #30 and subsequent blog post of alpinekat) or someone else who is not in the same field. [Such writers can and should feel free to (carefully) include all sorts of observations about people in order to bring out individuality and so forth - this is fine since they are not in their field.]

That he is a colleague (and that it is a work setting, describing the speaker at work) is what completely invalidates the claim that is it private thoughts on a private blog (and whatever you call or subtitle the blog is totally irrelevant). And, as pointed out by others, that he prefaced his remarks in the way that he did shows that he knew this too, which further undermines the feigned position of surprise, cultural innocence, and so forth.

Then we have the issue of who he is talking about. Her being well known, and her appearing in fashion magazines, or people’s stated perceptions (rightly or wrongly) about whether her looks have been used to help sell book - these are all less relevant than has been claimed. It just does not reflect well on a field (to someone trying to come into it especially) with hardly any women - where women are notoriously not immediately taken seriously because in the minds of the majority male population of the field their sexual characteristics (perceived promise, and so forth) take precedent over the content of their thoughts and speech - it just does not reflect well on it to have this sort of public gawking from a colleague.

I think it is a mistake. I do not conclude that Tommaso is evil or necessarily sexist in any way, based on this one thing. I am talking about the action itself, and not utterly condemning the person. We all make mistakes, and I myself have made regrettable mistakes in this area too.

To repeat again what I said elsewhere:

I am not asking for censorship, on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is hopelessly naive to think that anyone can say or do anything that they want to in any situation. There is a balance to be struck, and with the appallingly low numbers of women and minorities contributing to science, it would seem that the wise thing to do is err on the side of caution. Reversing the situation and talking about […remarks on a man’s appearance, etc…] is a total red herring, for example - he is already secure as part of the overwhelming majority of people in the field, so that is missing the point entirely. I’m not asking for censorship, just a bit of common sense and care in how we treat our colleagues and how we are seen to treat our colleagues by those less established people trying to make their way in the field. Context is important, and we should be mindful of it. That’s my main point.

Thanks all of you who tried to have a sensible, thoughtful debate without jumping to easy slogans (like “political correctness”) and juvenile name-calling.

Cheers,

-cvj

One is that this may be part of a big, blurry shift in the boundaries between what’s private and what’s public. Blogs, like some reality-TV shows, bank on the desire of some people to put part of their life on public view and on the appetite of others to consume such things. Some of this would probably not have been done at all a few decades ago; now it is, and the reason has only partly to do with technology making it possible. To get to the point, some of what Tommaso Dorigo wrote would be unobjectionable if he said it privately to an audience of a few acquaintances whose tastes and feelings he already knows. When he posts it on a blog, retaining that private flavor as part of his style and approach, he runs into questions of propriety from an audience of people he doesn’t know (i.e., the public) because we’re still, and maybe always will be, altering our views of what should be done and said in public. I’m unable to describe this issue very clearly because I’m not a sociologist, but it’s a subject that’s been explored by sociologists, e.g., by Richard Sennett in The Fall of Public Man, where he argues that, contrary to common belief, it’s not privacy that’s being eroded but the sphere of the public.

Another aspect of it is simply that appearances register on people. When I see a poster for an HBO Labor day concert by Justin Timberlake, I think, Hmm, he’s got some sex appeal, and I don’t even like men, maybe I should watch the concert. Stimulating such a reaction is so much a part of marketing, not to mention a part of music (look at the classical performers on CD covers these days and you’ll see what I mean), that we seldom think about it consciously. But it’s not, so far, a very common aspect of the presentation and discussion of science. In other words, we haven’t yet reached the point where people routinely say of a physicist that “He/she is hot.” However, we may be heading in that direction, and if we get there, it’ll be partly a result of these cultural factors I’ve tried to touch on.

Elliot

Cheers,
T.