Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

I think this is starting to lead us to our disagreement. If a girl reports "creepy" behavior, do you believe it should be treated as "creepy"?

Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

Yes. There's really no two ways about this. It's actually a bit upsetting that you even have to ask. If a student comes to their mentor and says they were made to feel uncomfortable, they shouldn't be second-guessed.

Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

The environment is just one part of it... or perhaps I'm getting lost in terminology. It truly is not enough to simply make the environment (is that FRC or the world?) a place where girls/women can feel secure. It's a good start to be sure, but it does nothing to undo years of society telling them to not rock the boat. Life gets bumpy sometimes. We want all of our students to feel empowered to meet challenges and conflicts.

Beyond having a secure envinroment, it's also about calling out every time an adult tells a young girl to let someone else do something for her that she could do for herself. It's about watching for the girl who wants to participate but gets shoved out of the way while the teacher/coach/professor/supervisor ignores her. It's about encouraging girls from an early age to be forthcoming and clear about what's on their minds. And when they are, then it's about refraining from criticizing or ostracizing a girl for her stating her mind. It's about not second guessing her when she gives her opinion. It's about not insisting that she constantly prove she deserves to be respected. It's about looking at her with the same basic respect if she were male.

This may sound like it's putting the onus on women. It's not. It's putting the onus on all of us to find ways to not force women into the choice of being true to themselves or living harmoniously with their familes and communities.

I'm not expecting the suggestions above are any kind of solution. That's way above my paygrade.

Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

3 out of 4 examples you give above, the actor is not the girl.

We fix the first 3 (involving the environment - which includes the place, the people, the things she interacts with), the 4th will come.

Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

It should be treated neutrally. Neutrally does not mean that you think it is not creepy, and it also does not mean you think it is creepy. Neutrally means that you try to understand both sides. Understand that the offended party feels a particular way, but also try to inform the offender softly. Try to inform the other party of what they were doing wrong without coming down as the hammer of Thor.
Conversely, when someone comes to me because they hate someone beyond redemption because they think the other person is weird, there needs to be room for the offended party to learn. Is that agreed upon?

Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

So this is the cause of our disagreement. Neutral action implies disbelief in that the act was not creepy. Whether you mean it or not. You (a general you, not you specifically) are that girl's mentor, the person who is there to support her, to teach her, to guide her. Not being absolutely supportive of her discomfort is not living up to your role as a mentor. Implication can mean everything

I agree with you on this approach, given that this may be offender's first offense. The majority of suggestions have been: talk with the offender, have a aside conversation, don't embarrass them, etc. But this is what we've been discussing how should we approach the other party.



I want to be absolutely sure that we address the first part before we move on. So I'm going to respond with the assumption that we're going to have two discussions at the same time, and that the primary conversation is the one above ^

Yes, but only after you absolutely support offended party's claim of "creepiness". It would make you look like an absolute -donkey-, but it's still your role to support the student. I would only teach this lesson after I learnt of it during my disciplining of offending student. While not specifically with claims of "creepy" I have been in this situation, where X accuses Y, but Y really didn't, and then I go to X with "not cool...", and then I go back to Y "i apologize...not cool of X", and X loses a little bit of credibility with me.

Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

In an ideal world gender would not exist, humans would be manufactured by machines, and their purpose would be to think "outside the box". I have read stories from both sides. Those of alleged victims, and those who have allegedly been falsely accused. I have also done extensive research into studies regarding such topics. I can provide references if needed, however after looking at the raw data of studies, and factoring in other statistics such as likeliness to report harassment, in my opinion the disproportionality is extremely small or non existent in many cases. I should also point out that people who are falsely accused, seem have a much more difficult time bringing the people who wronged them to justice. I am not saying that harassment is not an issue, I am saying that we should strive to prevent all harassment, not just harassment against specific groups of people. I implore you to look at this issue from many different angles, not just the ones you were indoctrinated with .

Until a time where gender does not exist, I believe that we should be striving for true equality. One where factors such as gender, and race have no role in what opportunities we are presented with, rather everything should be based on merit.

Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

Language like this exemplifies why our attitudes about this subject still need work. It minimizes the experience of the victim by portraying it as little more than a feeling and can be construed as condescending. It is also more concerned with how the offender is treated in a way that, by my reading, implies that you don't want to come down too hard on them because the offense wasn't a big deal or, perhaps, the victim is overreacting.

Perhaps you'd do a great job handling a situation like some of those we're alluding to in this conversation; we're not judging you. We're just trying to point out that the language that is used, frequently by men, often places higher importance on the potential consequences to the offender than the victim.

Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

This. So much this.

Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

Did I say that there should be disbelief that it was creepy? I said there should be neutrality.
I will phrase it better. Believe that she thought it was creepy, and believe that she wasn't unwarranted in doing thinking so.
Also believe that the offender did not mean to cause offense. Also realize that people come from entirely different backgrounds, and thus, creepy has a different meaning to other people. Lost in conversation here is the fact that castigating someone for behaving differently is one of the best ways to alienate someone from anything.

Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

Actually my call is for all of us to a) watch for it in ourselves and b) call it out when someone in our lives does something crappy like this. These things are done by ordinary people all of the time, both male and female, by our families, our friends and ourselves. When it crops up, it's subtle and subconscious with plausible deniability but it's there. The most constructive thing each of us can do is examine our own behavior critically. That's the one person each of us can definitely control.

I do not share your confidence that girls will simply feel secure enough to be assertive and direct if you remove other people's crappy behavior, unless you're writing off girls who have already been conditioned to not be. This is something that starts early in life. Removing the cause does not undo the damage. You would not believe the amount of self-censoring that many girls and women go through.

Somehow I feel obliged to clarify that I am a woman who has been in STEM nearly my whole life. I just realized my user profile wouldn't indicate that.

Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

I don't think this is true (for the most part; there are undoubtedly cases where this is true). However, I have been told that my anecdotes are meaningless in the face of others' anecdotes, so :confused:

Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

I completely agree with these whole posts. I also think that it can be important to tell students that *anything* that makes them feel uncomfortable can and should be dealt with, and that it's not mean to ask someone to stop making you uncomfortable. In fact, you're probably doing them a favor as well if they don't realize how their behavior is making others feel.

If someone asked me 5 years ago whether I wanted to have someone talk on my behalf or talk myself to the guy making me feel uncomfortable (this was not in a robotics context, initially), I probably would have said no out of a misguided sense of being nice. I didn't think he was intentionally creeping me out and I ascribed most of my discomfort to the fact that my friends were telling me I ought to feel uncomfortable. It undeniably would have been wrong for someone to talk to him anyway without hearing my thoughts on the issue first, but if someone explained (in the least patronizing way possible) that it would probably help him too I might have been more willing to face the embarrassing/awkward conversation and saved us both years of discomfort.

Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

We're (at least I'm) not trying to discount your anecdotes as meaningless. But the sheer number of women who have responded to this thread as well as the numerous women beyond who have stories of people disregarding or downplaying harrasment through improper use of language should indicate that this may be more widespread than you think.

Re: Making STEM a better place for women
 

That's the problem with anecdotes right there. There is no reliability and no representation of both sides. Anecdotes only report the side of the person with axe to grind, however justified they are in said axe grinding. Someone who has had good experiences going to authority figures are less likely to express this, because they is no axe to grind.
I also see you've read my posts without context. Earlier, there was a user accusing me of writing the most damaging post she's seen in 15 years on this forum. Another tacitly called me a creep. They used rhetoric far more incendiary than you, so I've had to respond to separate points from the OP.