Fun.

Not going to lie, feeling pretty down right now.

I just returned home from the lecture for the course that I TA. It's a huge lecture hall, and it's late at night. Understandably, the lecturer for this course tries to grab the wombat attention by being a wee bit risque---not terribly so most of the time.

But sometimes, what he says just makes me really uncomfortable. Tonight was one of those nights.

He asked the wombats if there were any chem engineers in this course. One girl raised her hand. After asking her if she'd heard of a concept, he proceeded onwards in his lecture, occasionally asking her if she'd heard of other concepts. After the third concept, he asked her if she knew anything and if she was really going to be an engineer (none of these concepts were covered until today). Then he directly launched into a story about how home moms used to be referred to as "domestic engineers."

WTF.

First of all, you singled out this student and then implied that the sort of engineer she'd become was a "domestic engineer" because she doesn't know everything about engineering yet, which of course she should as a sophomore. Secondly, if you've already apologized to the whole class before due to your previous terribly inappropriate/sexually charged comment about a specific female student, why would you continue to push the envelope too far? Plus, he even stopped himself going, "I shouldn't say this." LISTEN TO YOUR DAMN SELF.

Maybe I'm the only one offended by the implication that this female student would have to be a housewife to be a type of engineer. But no matter his intentions---even though he clarified that he knew that statement was inappropriate---a student went home and probably is questioning her major choice right now due to his actions.

Sexism at a SLAC

I had a conversation today with one of my favorite chem profs of all time. He's really a great guy, and what the conversation was about was not particularly pleasant.

Throughout my four years here at the small liberal arts college I go to, there have been some incidents of sexism. Not lots, not anything to complain about in comparison to other places, but some. This used to be surprising to me, given the overwhelming majority women have in our science department.

Lately, I am no longer surprised by the crap given to me by male chem profs. I am not surprised, only saddened by the occurrences. This past semester has been an overwhelming amount of fail.

Both of the profs for the classes I TAed this semester gave me lots of shit about being a biochemist (you know, the "you aren't a real chemist" crap, despite the fact that I have taken ALL of the same courses plus some more chem courses plus some more upper div bio courses). One of them, after my "I've had it with your crap" moment which involved my don't fuck with me tone, conceded and has never done it to my face again. The other, well, he's just a special, special snowflake.

His harassment has not only involved demeaning me and my field of choice in front of our students, it has involved comments that are *far* too inappropriate to say to a student, let alone in front of a class of students. I can't get too detailed for fear of being recognized, but these comments stop just short of blatantly sexual.

I informed my favorite chem prof ever of these terrible comments today and he was incredibly horrified. He has now promised to talk to this prof (who is moving on to a new position that is TT)and is so incredibly upset that he didn't see this coming and that it occurred. My friend, who has had to deal with far worse from this tool, is also in the middle of registering a complaint.

The one thing that I have no idea how to handle is the fact that even though I gave this jerkwad as good as he gave me, he just didn't stop. I tried ignoring him, I tried giving him crap back, I gave up on being respectful to this man, I tried...everything I could think of. How am I supposed to deal with asshats like this when in the end, I had to go get a man to give him the slap across the face that he so desperately needs? How are students supposed to deal with the combination of a sexist man and position of authority?