Rape and History Departments

I missed this story (a talk delivered a few days before the presidential election in 2016). Reading now. https://t.co/57niEhYQjE

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) March 26, 2018

I'm writing a piece right now on sexual harassment and history departments (and Title IX offices). This piece from Catherine Clinton came through my feed. Ample warnings for descriptions of rape and harassment. A sample:

Finding myself on the job market several years later in 1987 in New Orleans, out of nowhere, apropos of nothing, a rival male scholar (also on the job market) suggested, while standing in a circle of male historians at the book exhibit, that I should just go with him up to his hotel room and “get it over with,” as it was inevitable that “he would have his way with me.” I was dumbfounded, and upbraided him, but what alarmed me most was none of the other men called him on this behavior. When I phoned a male mentor who knew this character, he tried to smooth over the incident, remarking my rival might have been joking, or might have been drunk (at eleven o’clock in the morning!), and suggested I ignore him. But later that day I was told by a “friend” that this historian had told a luncheon table full of the most eminent southern historians of the Civil War that I was unable to secure a job because I had a reputation for sleeping with married historians, and departments were afraid to hire me. Setting aside that such trash talk was totally false, I was aghast. But again, I felt there was nothing I could do to derail such sexist slander.

The question is ... has anything changed?

Handler Cancelled - Now Fight the "Free Speech" Framing

Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, has cancelled his plans to speak at Wesleyan for commencement, and will be replaced by Anita Hill. This is the correct outcome. If somehow you missed it, I wrote about Snicket and the allegations of sexual harassment last week.

Now the usual "free speech" folks are going to claim this is about intolerance for controversial speakers. We need to resist that framing. It's about not putting a sexual harasser on stage with a woman who has spent her career fighting sexual harassment and giving them both honors. Fight the category error.

More to come on this. In the meantime, I really think Handler should just cancel his public events for awhile, do some work, and then come out with an affirmative statement about how he's going to change his conduct, and then he should change his conduct.

Meanwhile, the silence from male authors on social media has been very, well, silent. Around this and far too many other abusers in their industry. Folks notice.

On Franken

ICYMI, I wrote this about my soon to be former senator. https://t.co/CRvLe9T8kg

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) December 8, 2017

It's time to shift to the politics. The next piece I am writing is about the need to start repeatedly calling for Donald Trump to resign, explicitly, on account of the credible allegations of serial sexual assault, abuse, and harassment.

But for another minute, let's remember that getting serial sexual harassers (Franken) out of power matters. It matters for its own sake.