“We should try kissing, I haven’t been smoking for six months,” he told her. “Then we can kiss after the mission and compare it. Let’s do the experiment now.” Lukyanyuk then attempted to yank her out of the line of sight of the two cameras that kept a constant surveillance on the crew and its activities. He aggressively kissed and manhandled her twice, even as she protested loudly.
This was following a 10 minute brawl which had occurred earlier in the evening, drawing blood from the commander and one of his compatriots. Lapierre would later say it seemed to be the result of both men gunning for her sexual attention.
…the Russian scientific coordinator, claimed that the brawl was a “friendly fight” and that Lapierre had “ruined the mission, the atmosphere, by refusing to be kissed.”
And that only got attention because it was on camera and other countries quit in protest over how the sole woman on this mission was treated.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say every woman who dares enter a male dominated field has stories like this. And I for one and glad this is all coming to light, and don’t give two shits about any #notallmen that get caught in the cross fire. Sorry not sorry. Comeuppance is here!
I don’t even like Morgan Spurlocks mea culpa! He’s all “yes I’m the problem” while also trying to spin it out as “we’re all the problem” + “I was abused as a child” + “I’m an alcoholic” because you know what dude? Lotta of us had troubled childhoods, lotta of us had issues with substance abuse, but NOT a lot of us turned around and victimized others. Fuck you dude, you earned your comeuppance! You don’t get to apologize and blame your past! Thats not how this works!
You know, yesterday, my husband was like “Something I never hear about in the conversation about sexual harassment is if the guy might have Asperger’s.”
I went back to a tweet and blog post I had written about a sex bias incident I encountered at a conference. Like 1 in 10 tweet replies to me were asking if maybe the men involved were on the spectrum and how could I castigate these poor, NNT men?
And he was like I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.
I know Aspies (from my time in FOnline) and they were nowhere near as sexist and racist as NTs [neurotypicals]. NTs seem to be the only ones who take deliberate pleasure in causing misery.
Being a sexist asshole doesn’t make you “aspie” and fuck those guys that try to throw people on the spectrum under the bus to distract from their assholeishness!
Heck, most people I know on the spectrum are ace or gender-fluid (or poly or bi or pan…) cuz they don’t grok gender roles or sexual stereotypes.
I had a guy in one of my lab sections when I was a TA try to tell me that I couldn’t prohibit him from creeping on women in class because he had Asperger’s and thought he was being normal. I escalated that one straight to the dean.
That same student tried it again, a couple years later in my friend’s class. She was all tied up in knots, panicked about being ableist if she punished him. And that’s the real challenge - she didn’t know how to respond. She was genuinely concerned about discrimination, but also was very low-information about Asperger’s and what rights and responsibilities both she and the student had. The desire to help is there, and real, and was being badly exploited by a serial creep.
There is an unfortunate stereotype that being non-neurotypical basically just means someone who doesn’t get social conventions. Add the unfortunate stereotype that men all want to be horrible sexists, they’re just restrained by polite society, and it all explodes from there. This “Big Bang Theory” seems to be really popular for some reason.
Oh man, the number of “allies” I lose because I won’t hand out cookies is amazing. LOL
Sorry not sorry. If your allyship is dependant on cookies then you were never an ally to begin with.
Or, you know, because can be non-cis, non-het, or gender non-conforming just because of who we are. I don’t think not grokking cis and het norms would make us non-those. I think being non-those can make it harder to grok cis and het norms. For example, for years, I thought all het men wanted to be women, and perhaps vice-versa, and thought het couples were living vicariously through each other.
And being aspie/autistic doesn’t excuse actions. But it does mean different gaze patterns-- we may instinctively avoid eye contact, we may stare, and if we try to fit in, we may learn the wrong ways to fit in. And it does mean more potential for miscommunication or for misjudging the appropriate times/places for communication. (Always consider whether the other person can say no, and whether they know they can say no, and whether they can get away from you if they need space to themselves.)
Oh for sure. I didn’t mean to generalize across the entire spectrum. The few friends I have that are on the spectrum just do not fit into the societal confines of gender and sexual orientation. And awkwardness is always acceptable, abuse/harassment never. Hence why I bristle at the idea that “aspies” will do X. Because its just not true dammit!
If he does, he’s a creep with Asperger’s. Being a creep and having Asperger’s aren’t mutually exclusive.
Although it’s funny how they always say they have Asperger’s after they get in trouble, and before they get in trouble there are precisely zero indicators that they are on the spectrum…
I have caused a lot of awkwardness, especially I was younger, because I didn’t have the social skills not to. It was more that I just didn’t know the proper etiquette, and my mannerisms set off a lot of red flags with people. I couldn’t even really explain what my deal was, because at that time, nobody had heard of Asperger’s or thought that autism could be high-functioning.*Really, this was mostly a series of learning experiences for me, because I didn’t intend any of the awkwardness and was just trying to go about my day. I’ve been yelled at enough to know what to not do, so I don’t do that. Also, I’ve come to understand a little bit of what women deal with day to day, so I don’t take it personally that I have to make efforts to not look creepy.
Creepers, on the other hand, know what they’re doing and don’t care. If you tell them what they’re doing and ask them to stop, they won’t stop.
*I dislike functioning labels, but I’m using “high-functioning” to mean anywhere between “reasonably independent” and “not institutionalized” in this context.
I wouldn’t say most or because, but I generally agree with you. There seem to be a lot of us who either aren’t straight, although I don’t know why that is. Also, I don’t understand traditional gender roles and sexual stereotypes, and I actually think most of this stuff is toxic, yet I still consider myself a cisgender male even if I somehow don’t fulfill society’s expectation of what a man is supposed to be like.
[sigh] Yes you can. Unless he wants to make women uncomfortable, he should show some kind of effort toward not making them uncomfortable. Even if someone tells him not to do A, B, and C, and that’s a small drop in the bucket, at least that’s an effort and a sign that he wants to learn. And of course direct communication is always appreciated. It’s not that he’s expected to be suddenly become normal overnight, just that he is conscious of behavior that makes others uncomfortable, and tries to stop this behavior. This shouldn’t be so hard.
I also know the experience of having made serious social mistakes but not having realized it. It can be frustrating if something I think is acceptable is seen as unacceptable and I don’t understand why. However, this is totally different and is a slap in the face to anyone who has actually struggled with this. If I’m making someone uncomfortable, I should apologize and try to make amends, end of story.
I just mean most of the ones that I am friends with, I don’t mean most in general. Though there is an implicit bias there cuz they gotta be happy-mutants to be friends with in the first place… so now its a whole horse/cart thing! LOL
I’d say most of the Aspies/auties I know are bi/pan/ace/nonbinary etc., except I know a lot of them so I can’t say most. But those I have more in common with tend to be more LGBTQ, ace, nonbinary, etc. Like does attract like.
I still agree with @MarjaE that “because” doesn’t sound right. Trans people are just trans because they’re trans.
Just so we’re clear, he was lying. He hadn’t requested accommodations from the student disability services people, and refused to cooperate with any measures to involve a psycologist (on the school’s dime!) as part of adjudicating the dispute. He was a bad actor looking to get away with something. I wasn’t privvy to the proceedings, but he was removed from the class. He almost got away with it with my friend, though, because she had more ableist propaganda in her head (that people on the spectrum can’t deal with social behavior; that the ADA means schools have to do whatever a person with a disability says to accommodate them) than actual information.
The (admittedly limited) experience I have with individuals on the spectrum is exactly this. Simply saying “that was kind of creepy because [explanation]” sometimes leads into a discussion that dives deep into the minutae of [explanation] but it’s born from a desire to understand and then avoid doing that creepy thing in the future. It’s not “well, I am on the spectrum, so just deal with it!”
They don’t want to hurt anybody, and the response is generally an attempt at course correction so that they don’t keep doing it.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.
