Let me share a piece of my day with you today.
I have to be in full-dean dress (i.e. skirt & jacket, hose & heels) because some Very Important People are having a Very Important Conference at our school. I arrived in time to shake hands all around, then had to sit up front with the other deans. That meant that I couldn't openly surf Facebook, so I had to pretend to listen.
There was a talk by Nationwide Important Lady and a talk by State Officer-Politician on some Very Important Topics. N.I.L. proceeded to preach to the converted, apparently using a script someone wrote for her when she is speaking to a different group of people. She also noted that she had visited some local community colleges and they had such dedicated staff that was committed to excellent teaching. So CCs are really excellent, too.
S.O.P. explained that he would love to give us all more money, but there is no more, so we have to be as excellent as we can be with what we have. And in general, we need to shut up about wanting to have research funded, as we are not R1. Full stop.
There were many more talks, but during the afternoon coffee break one fellow collared me to talk about women. I seem to be one of only a few in this room full of suits. He feels it is useless to give women tenure, because the minute they get tenure they start having babies. And this is unfair to the men, who should have gotten tenure (probably meaning him) instead of the women. I tried to escape, but he kept ranting about women. I was so glad that the bell rang for the next session. I excused myself to dispose of my coffee cup and made a dash for a room in the building that I know is empty and has power sockets.
Drinks will be served in 15 minutes. I can't wait.
I'm confused. Why in the world did you look to escape rather than tear him a new one?
ReplyDeleteI've been at that meeting.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, when I find myself in similar circumstances, I get so flummoxed by the grotesque sexism that I simply have no idea what to say. I always tend to be Miss Terribly-Clever-After-the-Fact, wishing that I had said something like, "Oh, we've been working on ways to make sure that our tenured men actually have the babies, but the experiments have all gone terribly, terribly wrong!" (followed by evil cackling laughter).
ReplyDeleteSeriously, I never know how to confront this in the workplace, because it is so utterly bizarre. And given that I'm such a damned Snugglebunny, I usually wind up trying to continue making polite conversation with the jerk, anyway.
Actually, I am sure many workplaces would consider accommodating men who would like leave to spend the 1st few months with their newborns while their wives (because this is totally a hetero-normative rant usually, isn't it?) went back to work.
ReplyDeleteWas he advocating that as a means for equal rights?
/disingenuous sarcasm off
You could look at him and say, "On our campus, that comment is actionable." That's my fantasy of Dean Power.
ReplyDeleteOf course women start having babies then. Nothing is sexier than a woman with tenure.
ReplyDeleteI'd have excused myself only long enough to go out to my truck and get my Newberry castrating knife.
ReplyDeleteI'd drink too if I had to listen to garbage like that. How exactly did he think you were supposed to respond? Perhaps only women who have publish AND had tubal ligation should be tenurable. What an absolute asshole.
ReplyDeleteThat level of sexism, actually spoken out loud, and to a woman, in a suit, is astonishing. I suppose it's actually helpful to have the real cretins out themselves so blatantly. At least you know who they are.
ReplyDeleteI'd still be too gobsmacked to be able to come up with a response at the time. Well, possibly "So, I take it you're suggesting that a woman with an excellent record of publication, teaching and service should not be given tenure, where a man with the identical record would be considered to have easily earned it? Don't you think that's (astonishingly cretinous, you spectacular asshole? ) a little unfair?"
I had never heard of a Newberry Castrating Knife but now I really, really want one.
I had my baby after I had tenure. My only regret is that it wasn't over the dead body of this asshole.
ReplyDeleteIf this clod works for Suzy, she should have said "Well, thanks to these comments tenure is something you will never experience. Good day."
ReplyDeleteIf moron boy protested, she should have said "Good day, sir", and if he continued "I said Good Day, sir."
So, male professors at this jerk's university don't take paternity leave?
ReplyDeleteSocio, I'm just hoping that male professors at this jerk's university don't breed.
ReplyDeletehow many colleagues THINK what this asshole thought but DON'T say it...there's murderous intent there, too.
ReplyDeleteMen can get paternity leave in a few very liberal places (Canada?). If nothing else, paternity leave might put an end to these sort of ridiculous statements. I have often heard men say that women will never be as good at such-and-such as men because they will inevitably take time off to have children. It's offensive, as is the idea that all women want to have children - around 20% of women of childbearing age do not have kids, which amounts to millions of women who are voluntarily childfree. Also, I've known plenty of academic men who have taken months and months of extended medical leave for various reasons and no one hassles them about it, but a woman who takes her legally allotted three months' maternity leave is treated like a slacker.
ReplyDeleteMy partner and I would like to have a second child, and I'm seriously considering trying to be very visibly pregnant when I go up for tenure. "Deny me NOW, suckas!" >:)
ReplyDelete50% of academic women do not have children, thanks partly to the tenure clock and partly to the phenomenally child-unfriendly atmosphere of academe in general. Of which this cretinous swine is only a vocal example.
ReplyDeleteWhat are you drinking? If it's good enough to help after a comment like this, I want some.
ReplyDeleteThanks, people, I laughed a river!
ReplyDelete@Streinikov, he doesn't work for me, thank goodness.
@SocioConvert, that was one of the things that I tried when he noted that he had three kids. I exclaimed that he probably took paternity leave, but he said, no, someone had to earn the bread (yes, he said that) and anyway his wife - who is a physicist like him - wanted to stay home.
This guy was not a silverback. He was younger than I am. Much younger.
Do you think putting one of those Newberry things on my door would be an actionable offence? I could pass it off as a bottle opener.
The wine was cheap plonk conference wine last night, but tonight I had a nice white wine sangria while dining out with Mr. Suzy and telling him about the hilarious email of the day: "Hi, I'm now student number X! What do I do now?" I had all sorts of rude answers from "Call Mom!" to more unprintable things in my mind, but just referred him to the counseling office.
Never use your Newberry Castrating Knife if you don't have a Henderson Castrating Tool (http://www.enasco.com/product/C15399N) too. Someone could get hurt.
ReplyDeleteYou can use a Newberry knife without the Henderson--been doing it for years.
ReplyDeleteYou just grab the dangly bits and yank. Snaps the cord. Then you toss them to the farm dogs.
A handful of younger guys in my dept. have taken paternity leave and appear to be pulling their weight as parents. In a couple of cases it definitely influenced their performance, and not for the better. Nobody ever made the correlation.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but the Henderson Castrating Tool is used with a power drill. I don't know where to go with that one...
ReplyDeleteI can say from personal experience, if you show a video demonstrating the use of the Henderson, all the male students reflexively cross their legs.
ReplyDeleteThe Henderson is actually the best thing since sliced bread, as far as homeostasis is concerned.