Major professor, with a thesis almost done, that is sticky. I had a woman who did not sexually harrass but instead took it into her head to be emotionally and professionally abusive … and I thought it was too late to change chairs (it might have been, although it is what I would advise someone in a similar situation now).

It was hard to figure out how to resist her utter c*** enough so that I could still survive as a person, but be polite enough to still get through the program. And I did not understand the situation well enough to be able to make my case coherently before anyone else. I have done a lot better resisting sexual harrassers effectively, but I guess this experience should give me an idea of what people who do not, have gone through.

Sexual harrassers at school/work, I seem to be immune to. In the rest of life, less so … as this post indicates!

Later that year, my major professor actually kissed me in the middle of a street one day (catching me completely off-guard) and told me he was “in love with” me. I almost had a heart attack trying to say “the right thing” and not cut my own throat professionally. This was before he signed off on my thesis, by the way! Several years later, he did, in fact, marry one of his students. And the pisser was: he was really attractive and cool in many ways, but I had other fish to fry (more school elsewhere).

I can’t remember when I got over being as “polite” as I was certainly trained to be. I think it was when I finally got too old to get so many on-slaughts. Wonder if there’s a connection there…? Or if maybe I just don’t get so many on-slaughts because I’m not so polite. ;^)

I’m sorry. but..

LMAO!!!!

Correct!

“With the outcome, in his mind, up in the air.”

Oh Lord, that’s surely true, I hadn’t thought of it.

“And it’s the rather shallow attempt at trickery that takes “friendship” out of the equation.”

I hadn’t articulated this, either. Oh, dear.

“Stop chasing me, you asshole! I don’t want to fuck you!”

And it is interesting how carefully I was brought up not to throw such things in peoples’ faces. With the professor, I would have had the opposite reaction, i.e. I would not have felt any compunction about saying it, because there was a whole institutional structure that would have been on my side on the issue. In this situation it is what I want to say … but I am a little like the grownup version of the child Nezua describes here, being polite.

Not only should he be paying for sex (there is nothing shocking or demeaning about this, given what he’s asking for–and wanting), he should be paying you for the “foreplay” he THINKS he’s involved in with you already. Ask a prostitute. Some of them get paid to listen.

Oh, yeah. And he’s no friend. He’s someone you know who provides companionship and does maintenance on houses, but is trying to trick you (yes) into bed. You, on the other hand, out of need for companionship and house-maintenance, try to pretend you don’t recognize his attempt at trickery and it is this pretense that is exhausting and depressing. And it’s the rather shallow attempt at trickery that takes “friendship” out of the equation. As long as he’s allowed to continue the conversation, he’s going to see it as tacit approval for his continued attempts to “scale the wall of China.” All part of the game. With the outcome, in his mind, up in the air.

I remember a professor chasing me around his dining table when I was in grad school. I didn’t let him catch me and we never said anything out loud about the incident or what was really going on. But I couldn’t protest because I would have put my degree in jeopardy. What nauseates me still about it: I couldn’t even scream, “Stop chasing me, you asshole! I don’t want to fuck you!”

Meanwhile – the reason this irritates me is that I live in a semi-wasteland and most of my actual intellectual and emotional support is not physically present. I like this Friend because he is in many ways supportive – an actual friend, and not from the university but from another world. Refreshing. But at the moment he seems to have become a sort of black hole, wants more energy: like those classes which students are taking and you are teaching because they are required, and they could be interesting, but you have to put in 150% of your energy to even inspire 50% of theirs, or to elicit the 50% which is that 50% you most need for things to work out best for all. I am tired, tired – and somehow events with this Friend are emblematic of all that I am tired of, and it is depressing.

You nailed it. That’s what I’ve been bitching about all along. THANK YOU!

PS: Twisty coined Dude Nation, not me! She has coined mucho.