Posted on 05/09/2018 6:25:43 PM PDT by BBell
"In my view, this is not only a frivolous complaint but one that is damaging to serious issues of discrimination and misogyny."
Students on the campus of Merrimack College. –Jim Davis / The Boston Globe, File
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A male political theory professor said Friday he won’t apologize to a female gender studies professor for a joke about “ladies’ lingerie” he made while both were riding in a crowded elevator. The public spat comes amid heightened sensitivity to sexual misconduct propelled by the #MeToo movement.
Professor Ned Lebow, who teaches political theory at King’s College London, told The Associated Press that he has refused to apologize because he did nothing wrong and because a complaint filed by Professor Simona Sharoni against him with the International Studies Association is “frivolous.”
Sharoni, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Merrimack College in Massachusetts, said in a complaint she filed last month that she was standing near the elevator at a San Francisco hotel and she offered to press the elevator buttons when Lebow “said with a smile on his face, ‘women’s lingerie’ and all his buddies laughed.”
She said she froze and didn’t confront him. As the men walked out of the elevator, the only other woman in the elevator turned to her and told her maybe they should have spoken up. They said it is no longer acceptable to make such jokes.
“As a survivor of sexual harassment in the academy, I am quite shaken by this incident,” Sharoni wrote.
Hours after the April 5 encounter, she filed a complaint with Mark Boyer, the executive director of ISA, which was hosting the annual conference on international relations studies.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
That’s her problem - she’s shaken when she should be stirred.
I’m not sure I’d have eaten it if she did.
A survivor?
Here is an example someone else posted. This is my memory. And women’s lingerie would have been my free association to the the request for a floor in an elevator.
However, looking at the specific woman in this case, do you look like her? And you get lewd comments? I have not seen it. But I am not a women.
The only experience I can share is that I play online bridge and I used a female cartoon character that my daughter picked out as my avatar. The character was not sexy. I did get men hitting on me. So I changed the avatar to one of my own gender, because I was annoyed at the comments I was getting from some old men.
Looking at the article a little closer, I think I see that the male professor has a lawsuit he can file before long.
The International Studies Association is just another academic organization. It has no power, nor standing, to punish the professor for what he said. Free speech prevails. There is no employment relationship whatsoever. These kinds of organizations are really powerless, thank God!
He is probably counting how much money he wants to sue ISA, the female professor, and her host institution for infringing on his First Amendment rights.
Whether or not we agree with sexual harassment, it is really an artifact of employment law. It has no power whatsoever “on the street.” The First Amendment lives!
The guy is from Kings college in London so I don’t even know how much weight this will have over there. The British academia ,in general, still seems to have more humor.
Some white, middle class, straight male probably opened a door for her. She's been scarred for life. And now this. The overwhelming tragedy this woman has had to endure in her life.
Bump.
You know, I hadn’t noticed that. The UK seems even crazier than we are. I hope you’re right.
American universities are zoos. I am so tired of it that I’m preparing to go into farming. In that vocation, the vegetables don’t talk back or whine. They just die.
I got off subject. We do have an outstanding higher education system in this country but unfortunately most of higher education is garbage anymore. The selection processes are strict in other countries. I hear whiners here talk about higher education being free in other countries. Sure, that may be the case but at the same time higher education is limited in other countries and their higher education system would not take the likes of most of the whiny butts here.
Absurd.
“This my ‘Tell me joke, if you dare’ face.”
I agree with you utterly and completely. You have nailed it.
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