By David Futrelle
Noted racist, er, “intellectual” Steve Sailer has an interesting proposal that he thinks could speed up research on the coronavirus: we should exempt male researchers in the field from accusations of sexual harassment and assault until the virus is finally defeated.
While he proudly notes that most of the researchers in the field are dudes, he’s worried about all the women who will be working alongside them — each one of them a possible accuser!
“Under 2019 Rules,” he lamented in a blog post on the white supremacist VDare site,
any man running a large organization that employed a lot of women and who happened to Surface in the Media was fair game for any woman who used to work for him deciding that what The Conversation needed now to be about was about that time he put his hand on my shoulder at work and it made me feel funny and I thought about it for weeks and I have now decided it was sexual assault. So Society must validate my feeling by firing this man from his job . . .
Here’s my request: Under 2020 Rules, we postpone all such Conversations involving anybody involved in the effort for the duration.
Because these male researchers are just too darn busy to be disturbed by accusations from all the women they grope.
I mean, who’s got time for that?
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!
Is this in response to some scientist being accused of assault? Otherwise this just seems like a random excuse to be misogynistic (which is probably what it is). I haven’t heard of any coronavirus-related scientists being accused of misconduct, but I would rather we have people who aren’t predators be working on vaccines.
We’re in a global crisis, with scientists and health care professionals working around the clock, and this is his thought process?
Trust a misogynist to turn “all hands on deck” into “all hands on dick”.
One of the roommates has tested clear. The other is still not tested, but has been diagnosed with Covid-19 by symptoms and duration. The doctor wants to give #2 a test, but. We aren’t rich. So we aren’t a priority, like Hollywood people are.
If you’ve got time to sexually harass someone, you’ve got time to deal with the consequences of sexually harassing someone.
Fucking brilliant idea! not only should this be implemented for all the mens working on the vaccine but for all mens working on anything and everything until all the problems in the universe are resolved!
seriously though,fuck that guy. its bad enough we have people using this outbreak to spread all sort of hate via conspiracy accusations we don’t need to add advocating over looking sexually assault as well.
The field is not as dominated by men as he perhaps thinks it is.
jvi (dot) asm (dot) org/content/91/16/e00739-17
(This spam filter is a tough nut to crack!)
I hadn’t heard of any accusations being made, so this isn’t even a reaction, it’s a presumptive measure on behalf of those poor male scientists who just wanna abuse the women around them.
I’m not saying there are none who would because there’s always that one dick, but why does this guy assume serious people working on a vaccine for this shit would have such a lack of respect for the women working hard alongside them, and need such protection? Not everyone is an asshole like you, Steve Sailor.
The research in question is almost incalculably important. If you’re sexually harassing your colleagues, you’re obviously not focusing 100% on the work, so get the fuck out of the way and let more diligent people pick up your slack.
@Big Titty Demon
It is telling that misogynists like Sailer assume all men are rapist assholes who can’t control themselves. It’s a very negative view of men, and one that I (and probably most other feminists) would disagree with. And they say we’re the man-haters.
@Moggie
And I’m sure female colleagues will work much better in an environment where they aren’t being harassed.
Side note: does his name remind anyone else of Popeye the Sailor Man?
“I’m working around the clock. My team is drained. We need funding, access to equipment, MORE TIME! What do you have for me?”
“No women are allowed to accuse you of sexual harassment or assault until we get this dealt with.”
” What? ”
“You can cop a feel any time you want. Isn’t that great? ”
“Get out of my lab before I kill you with this very expensive microscope upside the head.”
I don’t suppose that Stevie the Sailerdope ever considered that all the women who are researching the virus & treating the victims would perform their life saving role a lot better if the men around them were focusing on the job & not their boners?
Why do these guys always make men look like drunken frat boys at a toga party who are incapable of acting like professionals? Companies hire women for their professional abilities to do a job (as they do the men), not as the entertainment at a stag party.
Naglfar,. I’m thinking researchers who aren’t creepy predators would do better work because they’d be focused on curing a disease rather than doing creepy things to their coworkers. So hiring non-predators has a clear advantage. No doubt giving preference to the non-creeps would give MRAs another reason to piss and moan. 🙂
Today, the Covid-19 thing is the main concern in everybody’s mind. This means that the people working against the disease are about the most prestigious collective in the world.
This prestige is shared by men and women. Women are taking part of the cake. To solve that, we decree freedom of sexual assault.
Freedom of sexual assault will make some men spend time in sexual assault matters, some other men spend time in what-should-I-do-in-this-situation moral matters, and women spend time dealing with the consequences of aggression. It will work for the disease.
But the women will leave, and that’s what’s important. Because then all the prestige will go to men, and women will be made less relevant and less powerful.
After all, what matters most to us is not human life, but disenfranchising women.
(Everything up to now /s).
It could also make sense to compare how much women participate in the actual work, and how much space they have in media compared to men, to see if both things correlate.
If this actually came into effect, and there were actually people as dumb as Sailer doing useful research, what are the odds they would intentionally work slowly just to have this in effect as long as possible?
Clearly everyone is missing his point. His proposal isn’t to give license to sexual predators. That would merely be a minor side-effect, assuming it ever happened at all, ever, which it doesn’t.
No, no, no, no, no! This is to free innocent men from the constant, crippling fear that the vindictive harpies they’re forced to work with will level false (and they’re always false of course) accusations, thus taking these valiant men from their life-saving work! Who could oppose such measures? We know who. It’s feminists, who want us all to die. /s
Just one problem, Steve. This kind of policy would discourage social distancing. That’s what we’re all about now. Keeping our distance from viral entities. That includes any scientist-guy who wants to get grabby.
Maybe later, Steve, after this pandemic — which at this point has now killed more than 10,000 people — has run its course, we can talk about how you totally, totally don’t deserve to go to prison for helping yourself to women’s bodies.
I know Conversation here means only conversations about men’s inappropriate behaviour, but because of the wording it sounds nice and inclusive. Gay creeps could creep on other dudes, women could creep on women and men, as long as they’re “involved” in the effort. It’s not how you solve a crisis but it could make an equal opportunity porno.
In reality it’s just another fantasy about the breakdown of society, where you get to do whatever you want because your skills are just so darn necessary that no one can do without you.
@Kat
I was thinking the same. Even the example of a woman not liking her boss’s hand on her shoulder screams “you are already too close now!”
To Praphrase Chapo Trap House – Those Idiots get angry about made up scenarios, that only exist in their heads.
Also can we please get ofer the Idea of the Genious Individual, who towers over the rest of the mortals and to whom moral an ethical concerns shouldn`t apply. This Idea has already done far to much damage.
As Naglfar already said, letting predators prey with impunity means that society loses the contributions of the preyed upon.
The Welsh singer Duffy recently told the world the reason she disappeared from music for years: “I was raped and drugged and held captive over some days.”
How many more are there? How many songs and novels went unwritten? How many great scientific discoveries have been postponed idenfinitely because someone was raped, had bad grades for that semester and never made it to grad school?
@Masse_mysteria
Speaking of fantasies of breakdown of society, we are certainly approaching such a breakdown, but seeing no signs of MRAs becoming important. No, it’s the doctors and nurses and sanitation workers and other jobs that matter, not the MRAs who sit around on Reddit all day.
You win all the internets.
[Emphasis mine.]
I know it’s foolish to look for actual meaning in the random capitalization of pretentious pseudointellectual cranks who believe that Victorian grammar imparts a certain gravitas to otherwise flaccid prose, but this one just calls out to me for some reason. Why capitalize “Surface” and not “happened”? Why leave “organization” uncapitalized, when it’s obviously important enough to be mentioned in “the Media” (which is probably the only defensible instance of capitalization in the whole sentence)? And “fair game” would have totally been capped by some English doofus in a walrus mustache, so why no love here?
So.
Many.
Questions….
…I don’t think “sexual assault” counts as social distancing, Steve.
Speaking as someone who just learned she’s going to be providing tech support for COVID-19 testing … if Steve Sailer has enough idle time to come up with ideas like this, I’d invite him to clean my living room, but I wouldn’t trust him in my neighborhood, much less my house.
@Gaebolga – I call that writing style Crank Winnie the Pooh. The words that are capitalized are likely the ones that sound the most insistent and angriest inside their heads as they’re typing. Common tell: uppercase “Men”, lowercase “women”.
@Skiriki – thanks! ?