Ed Yong - Sexism and Harassment in the Science-Writing World

Ed Yong (photo below) blogs at National Geographic's Phenomena: Not Exactly Rocket Science blog here he does a weekly column of cool science-related articles from around the interwebs (I've got your missing links right here" - this week's is I've got your missing links right here (19 October 2013).

Before I continue, I want to mention that on the sidebar of his blog, Yong has this:

My wife, who makes it all possible  

I share this because Yong's personality and commitment to his wife is relevant to his comments on and coverage of a recent series of disturbing events in science journalism. This lends Yong more weight in his refutation of the behaviors described below.

A very well-known science writer and blogger, the Blogs Editor at Scientific American, and co-founder of ScienceOnline.com - Bora Zivkovic - was accused by first one and then several science writers - all female - of sexual harassment.

The pattern is pretty distinct in each of their stories: 

[Bora] contacted her, showed interest in her work, met with her, and then proceeded to steer the conversation straight towards sex (such as repeatedly telling her he was a "very sexual person.")

This is all so effing disturbing as a man - I work with women who go through this is much less public ways. Often, as is the case with Kathleen Raven, this kind of harassment devolves into rape.

I am so proud of these women for speaking out and revealing the culture of control and power in which they work. And I applaud Ed Yong for featuring this story on his blog this weekend.

Ladybits have issued a call for submissions on the power of harassment.

So with that, here is the opening to this week's "missing links" column.

Sexism and harassment in the science-writing world

It’s been a bit of a week in the science-writing world. First, Scientific American blogger Danielle Lee wrote about an editor who asked her to write for free and called her a whore when she turned him down. SciAm took down the post with inconsistent explanations, prompting a fierce online response. Maryn McKenna sums up the story and I’d really recommend this post by Kate Clancy. The post is back up; the editor, fired.

In the wake of that, writer Monica Byrne accused Bora Zivkovic, a leading figure in the science blogging community, of harassment. He apologised, but concurrently other women stepped forward, including science writers Hannah Waters and Kathleen Raven. The women are brave; their accounts, devastating. Raven’s is the most gut-wrenching thing I have read in recent memory. Trigger warnings apply.

The event has also prompted a lot of good pieces on gender and power issues in the science community. This is a non-exhaustive list, but: many good pieces on Ladybits; Melanie Tannenbaum on the psychology of impact vs. intent; Alice Bell on the nature of the sci-blogging community; Laura Helmuth with sage advice for people seeking mentorship (and those who can provide it), and more; Martin Robbins on keep-it-quiet-ism.

The whole thing also led to the heartbreaking #ripplesofdoubt hashtag as many people shared their stories of how pervasive harassment and sexism affects them. See Hope Jahren’s piece.

I’m pushing this to the foreground because it’s more important than any of the stuff below. We need to open our eyes. We need to ensure that our colleagues don’t have to go through this, and certainly not alone. We need to speak up about it because doing so will create a culture where people can speak up about it, where they can stand up and be supported. Not this. [emphasis added]

More coverage here, here, here.

Charlie Glickman on The Crash and Burn of Hugo Schwyzer

Over the years I have posted a lot of articles by male feminist author and (soon to be former) gender studies professor at Pasadena City College, Hugo Schwyzer, who had written (at various times) for Jezebel, Good Men Project, Role/ReBoot, and The Atlantic, among others.

In light of his recent admission of sleeping with students, not once, but on-goingly, while claiming to be an upstanding man in a happy marriage, I have taken down all of the material on this blog of which he was author.

If you have been following the story around the interwebs, you know the situation. If not here are a few articles to bring you up to speed (if you care).

• Porn Professor Hugo Schwyzer Comes Clean About His Twitter Meltdown and Life as a Fraud (The Daily Beast)
• We Need to Talk About Hugo, Race, and Feminism (Bitch Media)
• Sexting is bad enough when teenagers do it. But it turns really creepy when middle-aged men get in on the act (The Telegraph UK)
• Porn professor admits to having sex with students on campus (San Jose Mercury News)
• Controversial “Feminist” Hugo Schwyzer Has A Very Public Meltdown (Buzzfeed)

Since his announcement that he was quitting the internet, he has been posting updates on his blog of a new autobiography he is writing about his life, his drug/alcohol addictions, and (if he has figured out yet) his sexual addiction. Yes, he is a sex addict.

That he is continuing to post material after "quitting" the internet rings of hypocrisy and narcissism. I eagerly await his termination by Pasadena City College and I hope that no substantive publisher picks up his new story (can we trust that any of this is true and not more marketing schtick?).

For those who want to read a more balanced and insightful take on this situation, in which many of us were taken in by a con-man, this article from Charlie Glickman feels about right to me.

Some Thoughts About Hugo Schwyzer

•   Aug, 14, 2013
•    Charlie Glickman

If you haven’t been tracking Hugo Schwyzer’s crash and burn, this post probably isn’t relevant for you. But for those of you who have been following it…

I’ve been thinking a lot about how everything went down for Schwyzer ever since his meltdown. It’s taken me a bit to sit with what I’ve read and what I’ve heard because there’s just so much of it. And every time I think things have gone as far as they’ll go, they keep getting worse.

I feel a lot of anger about what Schwyzer has done. Like many others, I hoped that his contrition for his past actions was genuine and that his behavior had changed. Like all of those other folks, I was wrong.

The last direct contact I had with him was when I spoke at his class this past April. To be honest, I had mixed feelings about associating myself with him. By that point, I knew that he wasn’t everything he presented himself as, but I decided to go ahead with my talk because I thought that I had something valuable to offer the students in his Navigating Pornography class. Given my background discussing gender and masculinity, I wanted to open up a discussion with them about how porn both reflects and shapes masculinity, and to offer alternative ideas of how we can define what it means to be a man. I volunteered my time for the sake of the students and while I had a fine experience a guest speaker and bringing some different perspectives to the class, I still felt unsure about being connected with Schwyzer. I should have listened to my gut on that one. I didn’t realize just how big a chasm there was between how he presented and how he acted.

I recently read a good definition of “trustworthiness.” We decide that someone is worthy of our trust when we believe that they will take our best interests into account. That doesn’t mean that they’ll do what we want. It means that they’ll consider our best interests and will take them seriously. 

Unfortunately, some people are good at putting up a front and convincing others that they deserve that trust. When we get conned, it’s hard to let go of that, even in the face of direct evidence. I wish I could say that I hadn’t been taken in, but I was. And as a result, I didn’t see the damage Schwyzer was doing, despite having been told about some of it. The inability to let go of the illusion that we want to see, and the tendency to throw good money after bad because we can’t admit our error both got in my way, and I deeply regret that.

I’ve been sitting with the question of why part of me wanted his stories to be true. Some of it is that I do genuinely want to live in a world in which we can trust people when they do their best to change. I don’t buy into the confession-and-redemption model that so many others do, but I do think that people can make amends and change. That made it easy for me to focus on the parts of Schwyzer’s story that I wanted to.

Some of it is that he was very charismatic. We spoke on the phone a few times when he interviewed me for pieces he was writing and he really seemed to get it. I didn’t agree with everything he wrote, but in conversation, he seemed more clued in. I’ve seen enough people write to generate controversy to have assumed that was what he was doing. On the two occasions when we met in person (one of which was when we chatted before I spoke to his class), his charisma was even more compelling. I don’t know how to describe it, but if you’ve ever met someone with charisma, you know how it can draw you in. I’m willing to bet that he could turn it up when it was directed at someone who had something he wanted, like say, a student he wanted to have sex with.

Some of it is that I have less direct experience with the kind of manipulation that he was doing. I was talking with a friend who faced a lot of that growing up and they recognized his bullshit early on. That’s a difficult thing to see when you don’t have those particular filters.

I’m sure that there are other elements to it, but those are the three big ones that I’ve come up with so far. The thing about a con artist is that they get you to want to believe them. They can get you to overlook the most glaring inconsistencies, which is what makes the con so successful. I don’t know if Schwyzer was buying into his act himself, how much of it was the result of his mental illness, or what else might have been going on. It doesn’t really matter to me because whatever the root causes, he conned me and he conned a lot of other people. I wish I’d been able to see it sooner.

Unfortunately, his lies and his actions have made it that much harder for all of the men out there who want to be allies to women, whether we call ourselves feminists or not. By convincing folks to trust him and then betraying that trust, by lying about what he was doing for years and pretending to be acting from integrity when he wasn’t, and by using the language of feminism and social justice as a smokescreen, Schwyzer has made it even more difficult for us to demonstrate our desire to be worthy of the trust of the women in our lives and our communities.

Far worse, Schwyzer’s betrayal of the women in his classes, as well as in online and in-person communities, adds insult to injury. There are women he hurt directly and indirectly, and I don’t think we have a complete tally, yet. While I feel some anger over how Schwyzer conned me and others, that pales in comparison to my anger about the ways in which he has injured and betrayed women while lying to our faces.

I’m glad that Pasadena City College is taking steps that I expect will result in his losing his position as a professor. Wherever he ends up, I can only hope that he is no longer in a position of authority over anyone.  And I hope that he is no longer able to influence or contribute to the ongoing discussion about gender equality and sexual politics. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Sexual Misconduct: The Third Zen Precept by Nancy Baker

This is member-supported content from Tricycle - A useful discussion on Zen's Third Precept: Sexual Misconduct, by Nancy Baker (supporting membership required for access). You don't have to be Zen or even Buddhist to appreciate this precept - all of us should be more aware of our sexual conduct and our embodiment of sexual ethics.

The Third Zen precept - Kamesu micchacara veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami, "I undertake the course of training in refraining from wrong-doing in respect of sensuality." - began in the monastic world, where celibacy was required. The rules were fairly strict (from Access to Insight, Buddhism and Sex):

Complete sexual continence is considered an essential feature of the monastic life. Intercourse of a heterosexual or homosexual character is automatically a Parajika offense. A monk who performs such an act is considered to have expelled himself from the Order, and is no longer in communion with the other monks. Any acts of a sexually unbecoming nature falling short of intercourse result in suspension and require expiation. Samaneras, or novice monks, who break their training in this respect are disrobed.

Laypeople who do not participate in sexual violence (rape, molestation, incest) or psychologically coercive sexual misconduct (incest, power imbalances such teacher/student, quid pro quo situations), or morally inappropriate sexual conduct (marital affairs, lying to seduce) may feel that this precept has no relevance in their lives. Nancy Baker counters that belief:

In fact, if we look more closely, it is a subtle and interesting precept; there is more to it than first meets the eye. There are several different translations of its subject matter: “adultery,” “impure sexuality,” “sexual misconduct,” “unchaste conduct,” and “misuse of sex.” What causes the misconduct and the impurity has been translated as “attachment,” “greed,” “grasping,” and “desire.” A consideration of some of the differences among these translations actually allows us to see the richness of the precept. Here, I will examine two ways of understanding this precept: sexual misconduct and misuse of sex.

The sexual misconduct point is easiest to grasp - "our conscious and unconscious impulses to take advantage of the susceptibility of others for our own emotional or physical gratification" - i.e., sex that harms others in any way.

Misuse of sex, however, relates to the impact of our sexual behavior on ourselves. In the end, it comes down the the Buddhist idea of kamma (karma). Here is more from Access to Insight's article (by M. O'C. Walshe):

We may recall that a few years ago there was a song "Money is the Root of all Evil" Some people pointed out that not money, but the love for money is the root of all evil (well, of a lot of evil, anyway). And here is the snag. Sexual pleasure (like money) is not "evil" (or unskilled), but attachment to sexual pleasure (like the love of money) is. If we can experience the pleasure without attachment we are all right; if we become attached to it, we are not "hitting the mark." Now of course it is rather difficult (to put it mildly) to experience pleasure of any sort without feeling attached to it. But attachment is kamma, and unskilled kamma at that. And the results of that will inevitably, according to Buddhism, be something unpleasant in the future.

Many people will find this explanation novel. Some will find it puzzling. Some will undoubtedly reject it — with or without investigation — with the excuse that it is overly subtle, or arbitrary, or something of the sort. What they mean is, of course, that they find it inconvenient. But it will repay a lot of consideration and mindful investigation. Careful study, in fact, should show that it is the key to the whole problem. The matter can also be considered in terms of the law of Dependent Origination: "Contact is the basis for the arising of feeling; feeling... of craving; craving... of clinging;" etc., the ultimate outcome being of course the continued process of becoming, with all the sufferings entailed.

It seems to me there is, in the Theravada tradition of Buddhism, an emphasis on control of desire - exercising restraint in all areas of our lives, but especially sexuality, to prevent attachment. I find that when we try to control anything that is natural in our lives - sexuality, hunger, desire, emotions - that we end up in a negative relationship with that energy - it ends up controlling us either overtly or covertly.

I propose we do not try to control our cravings, desires, and feelings (I can no more repress anger than I can sexual desire), but rather, befriend them, get to know them, and understand the role they play in our lives (positive and negative, since it will never be all one or the other). This is a different approach, but I suspect it is more likely to allow us to come into "right relationship" with our sexuality, desires, and feelings.

Sexual Misconduct

The Third Zen Precept 

Nancy Baker

Author Nancy Baker is currently leading a Tricycle community discussion about sexual misconduct and the third Zen precept. You can join the discussion here.