I generally respond to passive-aggressiveness by being direct. Usually nips it in the bud. Not this time, I guess.
Lot of crankiness on here today 
I wonder if we should start a new thread that might be pleasing to some. “What mean/sexist thing a guy did to me today”. I could start. The guy sitting next to me on the flight didn’t even say hello, or a word to me the entire flight. Jerk!Some guy asked me to move my bag in the restaurant and didn’t even say thank you. Sexist jerk! The guy sitting next to me at the restaurant coughed and hacked, no doubt spreading his nasty man germs onto my burrito, making me stop eating it before it was done. Selfish jerk! (But good for my diet).
And this is no joke, I’m serious. It would be a really long, long thread. 
“Some can laugh with it, some are afraid someone might disapprove if they do.”. That’s more a putdown than this:
“Some can laugh with it, some won’t find it funny.”
I don’t label myself a feminist, btw. I’m more about merit. (That depends on context, of course.) It’s about fairness and what’s appropriate. And what’s earned, not just bestowed based on gender.
And IRL, I do find good sarcasm priceless. But let’s admit it’s very hard to deliver in writing, much less, on a forum.
PS. Not all a*holes are being sexist.
We could start another one, @busdriver11 – the “Blame the Victims” thread. It seems some posters interpret lots of other threads as being about that anyway.
For those of you curious about the Just World belief system and its symptoms, I strongly encourage you to read Zick Rubin and Letitia Anne Peplau’s [url=http://www.peplaulab.ucla.edu/Peplau_Lab/Publications_files/Rubin%20%26%20Peplau%201975s.pdf]“Who Believes in a Just World?”/url.
And it goes on to discuss in a lot more detail.
I’m all for merit, too. But I’m definitely a feminist, though I know nowadays it’s kind of a dirty word. Nothing wrong with a few dirty words, here and there.
They are like that to everybody. I try to not take it personally, and figure they have plenty of other problems going on.
Go ahead and start it, Marvin. I’m sure it will be an active thread.
@busdriver11 A feminist! Now I know you are joking! ha ha you are indeed funny!
@marvin100 Excellent post above!
Good one, runswimyoga (you realize that autocorrects to run wontons, right?)
See, you do have a sense of humor!
Or that women must be hypersensitive, defensive, quick to retribution, when something bothers them. So they, too, deserve a harsh view.
And after all, if we can point to ourselves as successful, it’s got to be her. We probably see ourselves as tolerant, vis a vis what men might throw our way. But somehow other women are fair game.
To change topics to go back to the original point of the thread, I finally read the law review article and learned a lot more about this dean.
She’s a feminist legal scholar who has spent her career writing about these kinds of issues.
In that context, regardless whether you agree with her or not, to use gendered words to introduce her seems less like a gaffe and more like a calculated insult, especially since the student was apparently fed the language by the law review’s faculty advisor.
The article mentions the incident at the end of a long, boring article that details the influence of another scholar on this professor’s work. It is part of a tribute to the former professor. It is really the kind of article that nobody would read. And the anecdote comes at the end of a long recitation of the dean’s career accomplishments (as influenced by the professor who is being feted) and the point of the anecdote seems to be that you can spend your life writing about this stuff and you still are going to be introduced this way. The anecdote is relayed in the most neutral, non-outraged way possible, utterly flat in tone, with no characterization or value judgment expressed. Just flat, “here’s how I was addressed.” If anything, it is relayed with shoulder-shrugging humor.
I suppose the law review editor and faculty advisor could say in their defense that they were utterly unfamiliar with the entire body of their dean’s scholarly output – or even her field of study – but that wouldn’t be credible, and if true, would be even a bigger insult.
I read the article. It’s not boring. It is a bit autobiographical by Rosenbury for my taste, but the point was to illustrate the impact that Prof. Frug had on her, and how she uses Frug’s work in her own teaching, rather than starting out with the “canon” in feminist legal scholarship that includes McKinnon and others. Frug was murdered when she was comparatively young. I believe she was murdered on the street in Cambridge, MA, but I might have the locale wrong.
Here’s the link to the wikipedia article on Mary Joe Frug. She was hacked to death on the street in Cambridge, MA, by an unknown assailant, leaving behind a husband (a professor at Harvard Law) and two children. I don’t know whether her assailant was ever identified:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Joe_Frug
The response a year later by the editors of the Harvard Law Review and the Harvard Law Revue parody, as described in the wikipedia article, are unbelievably bad.
Part of what I do not understand about the wikipedia article is that the “Law Revue” has sometimes been an actual evening play/musical. My husband and I attended one in the late 1970’s which was very funny, and professionally staged. The Law Review apparently had a tasteless parody article distributed at its banquet, a year after Frug’s death (close to or on the day of her death, but a year later). I can’t tell from the article whether there was also a tasteless show.
In response to post 410: Right, I get all that. Maybe “boring” is the wrong word. In lieu of “boring,” I could have used: “Non-sensationalist article published in a symposium issue of an obscure law review, at a symposium honoring Mary Jo Frug, directed to a very narrow audience of fellow feminist legal scholar symposium attendees, and because it does not break any new ground from a scholarly perspective, unlikely to be more widely read, except by the very few people who might be interested in the degree to which Dean Rosenbury’s own career was influenced by Mary Jo Frug’s (i.e., an infinitessimal portion of the legal world (even those with an interest in feminist legal studies), let alone the wider world).” However, that would have been a bit too cumbersome. Certainly very, very few people – if anyone – would have read this article who did not already agree with the perspective.
In other words – if someone truly wanted to make a cause de celebre out of the incident – and vengefully “call out” a student in order to harm him (as this professor has been accused of doing) – it is unlikely that she would bury this supposed public flaming on page 350 of the New England Law Review’s symposium issue dedicated to Mary Jo Frug, at the end of a long article detailing the impact of Mary Jo Frug on this professor’s own career. There are a lot more effective channels for public flaming, if that had been her goal.
Apologies from some of the students involved in the Frug parody, and expressions of disgust from law faculty, in the Harvard Crimson, not long after the Law Review banquet:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1992/4/17/and-you-can-quote-me-pas/?page=1
The tasteless parody makes “young and vivacious” look like absolutely nothing. But sometimes when people have been deeply hurt–Rosenbury admired Frug greatly–they can become hyper-sensitized.
I think attitudes like this contribute to the problem. Overt sexism in the workplace is very real. You seem to think if women just develop a thick skin, they’ll be okay. The point is, it shouldn’t be happening. It’s not just comments and slights. Over the course of a career it leads to fewer promotions, less money, opportunities for further training or study that aren’t granted, successes that aren’t acknowledged or credit that’s stolen, and awards that are never received.
People, especially other women, who insist on minimizing the very real struggles women continue to face by brushing them off (telling them to toughen up) or classifying them as “victims” (which is not-so-subtle pressure to keep quiet) help create the environment that allows people to engage in the overt behavior.
“after all, if we can point to ourselves as successful, it’s got to be her. We probably see ourselves as tolerant, vis a vis what men might throw our way. But somehow other women are fair game.”
I just never divided my workplace up into men as the overlords and women as the aspirants the way some of you do. When I reported to a new manager, it never occurred to me to think “he’s a man, he must be xx” or “she’s a woman, she must be yy.” My most long term mentor happened to be male, and he’s as touchy-feely as they come, to the point where he has been to known to cry in front of me. I’ve had great mentors of both genders. And great friendships, too. Of both genders. Some of you seem to have more “hostile” environments and for that I’m truly sorry. I’ve had to prove my merits, but as a person, not as a woman.
Yes and it bothers me when an attempt is made to lump people into two groups men and women. More likely what is occurring is a reflection of personality traits rather than overt gender bias. Education around issues is good but will never overcome basic personality traits.
It may put things in more perspective to know that Linda Rosenbury, the law dean, was an undergraduate at Harvard-Radcliffe when Frug was murdered, and graduated in June 1992, after Frug was murdered in April.
“I think attitudes like this contribute to the problem. Overt sexism in the workplace is very real. You seem to think if women just develop a thick skin, they’ll be okay. The point is, it shouldn’t be happening. It’s not just comments and slights. Over the course of a career it leads to fewer promotions, less money, opportunities for further training or study that aren’t granted, successes that aren’t acknowledged or credit that’s stolen, and awards that are never received.”
I think that if you generalize, you can come up with any conclusion that you like. My opinion is that you try to deal with each situation appropriately. A thick skin may be useful in some situations, speaking to the individual, even a lawsuit may be appropriate in others. It is more useful to pick your battles. In 32 years of working with almost all men, I have found what has worked for me. I have seen other women do things that have absolutely not worked.
I am very supportive of female empowerment, and anything that trends towards victimology bothers me, in both men and women. I believe that you have the power to control your life, that you are responsible for making things happen. I have heard so much of, “I can’t because I’m not smart enough, I’m overweight, there’s discrimination, it’s too hard,” it goes on and on. I think the main problem people have is that insecure little voice in their heads that keeps telling them that they can’t.
Why of course there are barriers, difficulty and discrimination, if you feel as if you are empowered and that you are not the victim of circumstance, heredity, sex, or anything else…I believe you can control that little voice in your head. Agree or disagree, it’s a happier way to go through life. I think @momofthreeboys nails it, about personality types, not men or women.
“It may put things in more perspective to know that Linda Rosenbury, the law dean, was an undergraduate at Harvard-Radcliffe when Frug was murdered, and graduated in June 1992, after Frug was murdered in April.”
… So that makes it ok to overreact to a poor but not ill-intended word choice? Sorry, that adds zero insight to anything as far as I’m concerned.