Let me tell you... at one time or another, nearly every woman has been harassed by some guy in power. It could be a boss, a father, a colleague, a clergy member, a teaching assistant, a professor, a mentor, etc etc etc. My friends and I can recount harassment even in our later years, when you'd think we wouldn't be so attractive anymore.
At some point, however, it's hard to push back because of the job market or worries that you won't get a decent review or that you can't sustain yourself on unemployment. And then there's the worry that you'll be labeled as "the troublemaker" or that your boss would retaliate because you went to HR. (Hint: Eventually you learn that HR isn't there to protect employees. It's there to protect the company.) For all practical purposes, it's a no-win situation for the women. The bottom line is that we simply want to depend on men to act responsibly. (And just for the record, women can harass men, too. It's just less common because we have fewer opportunities to be in the power position.)
X powerful piece. Let’s talk about it. Powerful white men using their power and privilege to satisfy sexual rendezvous with women. Summers comes off as a creep. But Larry Summers wife is a creep for suggesting a book that was similar to Lolita to a pedofile Jeffrey Epstein. That’s like someone saying hey if you like good pizza then you should try this new Olive Garden that opened up. Why are you suggesting that? You’re encouraging it like hey this is a good one. That sounded disgusting to me. And then Sommers just getting dating advice from Jeffrey Epstein. Woody Allen is a known certified piece of shit.
PK, thanks for saying that. When your stomach turns before the “big quote,” you know what that is? It’s your body telling you the story is already true.
That’s what shook me too PK. Not just the names, but the familiar move institutions make when the facts are unbearable. They reach for procedure and try to make the witness the problem.
I’m grateful you stayed with it. If any part of this hit close to home for you, I’d love to hear which line did it.
Sounds lazy if I say all of it and tbh I did skim a paragraph or 3 promising myself to read it again tomorrow. Reading this was hard.
Starting with recovery. I understand recovering from our culture and you laid it out better than I could explain it.
It's the overwhelming ness of what you wrote about. It isn't just the institutions, it's individuals, families, groups, CHURCHES, schools, society, and institutions. It's remembering the times I went along, times I tried to fight back and got beat down. It's soul crushing. It's a lonely pain, yet it happens to so many.
It’s interesting…someone in the back of your mind, over time, actually does the things that your internal compass tells you is going on. There are many, many stories over thousands of years that appear to be precursors to the activity that Summers is accused of. This is not new, but now the ability of others that are capable of exposing the duplicity are involved.
Check that internal thinking, state the issues, expose the fraud, and walk away from those that denigrate you. Your life is too short to be tied up with others indignity’s.
Thorough crime report. A cart load of exhibits, a bus load of scofflaws, and all the receipts. And the board has no answer more sophisticated than attacking the witnesses. Harvard is too big to get a pass.
Let me tell you... at one time or another, nearly every woman has been harassed by some guy in power. It could be a boss, a father, a colleague, a clergy member, a teaching assistant, a professor, a mentor, etc etc etc. My friends and I can recount harassment even in our later years, when you'd think we wouldn't be so attractive anymore.
At some point, however, it's hard to push back because of the job market or worries that you won't get a decent review or that you can't sustain yourself on unemployment. And then there's the worry that you'll be labeled as "the troublemaker" or that your boss would retaliate because you went to HR. (Hint: Eventually you learn that HR isn't there to protect employees. It's there to protect the company.) For all practical purposes, it's a no-win situation for the women. The bottom line is that we simply want to depend on men to act responsibly. (And just for the record, women can harass men, too. It's just less common because we have fewer opportunities to be in the power position.)
In 2005, while president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers gave a speech in which he suggested that the low percentages of women in certain scientific fields was due to less instrinsic ability, though the statistics were unclear. There was an uproar at that time. Here are some sources. https://feminist.org/news/harvard-president-finally-releases-transcript-of-controversial-speech/
X powerful piece. Let’s talk about it. Powerful white men using their power and privilege to satisfy sexual rendezvous with women. Summers comes off as a creep. But Larry Summers wife is a creep for suggesting a book that was similar to Lolita to a pedofile Jeffrey Epstein. That’s like someone saying hey if you like good pizza then you should try this new Olive Garden that opened up. Why are you suggesting that? You’re encouraging it like hey this is a good one. That sounded disgusting to me. And then Sommers just getting dating advice from Jeffrey Epstein. Woody Allen is a known certified piece of shit.
Thank you for writing this. It took courage to look at and lay it out. My stomach was turning way before I got to that comment.
PK, thanks for saying that. When your stomach turns before the “big quote,” you know what that is? It’s your body telling you the story is already true.
That’s what shook me too PK. Not just the names, but the familiar move institutions make when the facts are unbearable. They reach for procedure and try to make the witness the problem.
I’m grateful you stayed with it. If any part of this hit close to home for you, I’d love to hear which line did it.
Sounds lazy if I say all of it and tbh I did skim a paragraph or 3 promising myself to read it again tomorrow. Reading this was hard.
Starting with recovery. I understand recovering from our culture and you laid it out better than I could explain it.
It's the overwhelming ness of what you wrote about. It isn't just the institutions, it's individuals, families, groups, CHURCHES, schools, society, and institutions. It's remembering the times I went along, times I tried to fight back and got beat down. It's soul crushing. It's a lonely pain, yet it happens to so many.
Not surprising! Look how long it took the Catholic Church to acknowledge that they had a bunch of ordained pedophiles in their ranks.
It’s interesting…someone in the back of your mind, over time, actually does the things that your internal compass tells you is going on. There are many, many stories over thousands of years that appear to be precursors to the activity that Summers is accused of. This is not new, but now the ability of others that are capable of exposing the duplicity are involved.
Check that internal thinking, state the issues, expose the fraud, and walk away from those that denigrate you. Your life is too short to be tied up with others indignity’s.
Thorough crime report. A cart load of exhibits, a bus load of scofflaws, and all the receipts. And the board has no answer more sophisticated than attacking the witnesses. Harvard is too big to get a pass.