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For anybody having difficulty reading the text:
Anti Acknowledgements
There have unfortunately also been people who have been less than helpful in my journey here. I wanted to acknowledge those too, because I know I am not unique in this experience.
No thank you to the physics study association that made me sing songs about how women couldn’t study physics without sleeping with the professor, the day I stepped into university life. No thank you to the 5th year physics student that decided to assign me a ‘stripper name’ within the first minute of meeting me in the physics coffee corner in my first year. No thank you to the technician that was responsible for onboarding me on the use of the cluster in my third year who raised his eyebrows and asked me if that meant I was some sort of “computer girl”. No thank you to the senior researcher that sent me utterly inappropriate texts after a conference, then proceeded to ‘apologise’ months later by telling me they had not been meant for me anyway so “no hard feelings remain hopefully”. And no thank you to him for attending every conference I’ve been to since. No thank you to the people who told me that it was “surprising” that I was doing a PhD since I was a girl. No thank you to the man who mistook me for a coffee lady at a conference, and after having to correct him two times that I did not work there, responded with “you should consider it”. No thank you to the researcher that asked me what I was wearing underneath my outfit during a conference. No thank you to the physicist who declared to a room full of other physicists that biologists “don’t know how to design an experiment”. No thank you to the people who have called me scary instead of strong and intimidating instead of intelligent. And finally, no thank you to the executive board of the TU Delft, whose knee-jerk reaction to being held up to a mirror about the social safety at the university, was to sue the party holding up the mirror instead of looking at the problems they highlighted.
I wish I could tell you this has all made me stronger somehow but in reality it has only shattered my confidence. You have made me feel like I do not belong in science and I cannot forgive you for that.
-Rachel
can’t wait to experience that myself!! 🥰
Does anyone have info about the lawsuit
Unfathomably based.
Bravo to the exceptional bravery on display here. I’m sure the majority of PhD graduates, including myself, wish they’d had the gumption to name and shame the suppressing factors contributing to a toxic academic environment. Reading this makes me kind of appreciative that my troubles were only administrative mismanagement and an inexperienced supervisor.
Also what the hell is up with TU Delft? It’s only partway through March and this is the second time this year that I’ve seen a PhD candidate publicly call out the institute.
This sounds like the University of Ottawa. Watching physics professors sexually harass the few women in our class was disgusting.
Not a physicist but fuck it is so relatable.
Reminds me of Sabine Hossfelder, a physicist, who had made some similar experiences.
Proof that educated people can still be immensely stupid and be utter human trash.
It’s sad that she decided to channel her experience into transphobia, as if punching down will somehow make up for all the punches she got.
clearly you don’t understand physics.
Really? That’s news to me.
She also made a video extolling the virtues of capitalism and how science wouldn’t have progressed without it, but then oddly went on to make videos about why she had to leave academia because of profit motive forcing her to research things that didn’t matter but got grant funding to keep her alive, without making the connection that the profit motive that destroyed her dream is due to capitalism.
Not to mention, she’s fueling anti-science perspectives.
Also, she’s very ableist in that she is against autistic people
Sucks.
Live and let live, man! And preferably with no sexism!
A dot point list would have made this more readable. Just saying.
and she should smile more too right? god you are a cunt
The irony in how badly you are missing the dot point
Is this satire?
It may be in a scientific paper, but this is more of an anecdote about the various issues the author encountered, rather than something intended to be actionable and clearly delineated as you’d expect in the body of a scientific article. Therefore a more literary style is appropriate for this section.
My mental model is that bullet points are for when you expect a reader to go over the points with a highlighter, prose for when you want to produce an emotional response. This feels more like the latter.
Yeah i agree with you. I feel like prose is for free-style text, which doesn’t claim to be rigorous. Bullet points always feel like there’s more rigor involved.
Normalise this. In the past women would have been accused of being unprofessional to have called men out like this. That’s the only reason why every woman doesn’t do it.
normalize it to the point that the anti-acknowledgements name names
This seems to be the Netherlands (TU Delft). Maybe it’s normal there.
Yes yes, intelligent woman be intimidating to some people.
But how old is this, is it still that bad? The “computer girl” could be around 2000.
But surely equality has been achieved in the last few months, this all feels so very January. People are so much more open minded now than in those dark days of the past. Why waste time even discussing such outdated attitudes that totally and completely disappeared in February and are certain to never return?!
…the dissertation. Which means years of being at a university, though granted it’s unlikely to be 25.
Feminist Hacker Barbie is the proper meme response to that and that’s 2014/15, but chuds tend to live under rocks so that might explain it.
You think old men in academia are up to date on their misogyny? Why?
Boy did this comment backfire.
It’s all in the wording, but I think it’s also the contradiction between the first and second/third sentences.
Yes yes, intelligent woman be intimidating to some people.
Acknowledges that intelligent women are intimidating to some. It also uses present tense, which implies the author knows this is still the case.
But how old is this, is it still that bad? The “computer girl” could be around 2000.
Ah “it”. Which it? That some people are intimidated by intelligent women or that the author encountered a ton of sexism?
I think it’s ok to ask how prevalent sexism still is these days, especially if you personally experience it / don’t participate in a field dominated by the opposite gender.
Something like “I thought society would have finally realized this behavior wasn’t appropriate after me too, is that not the case?” sounds less tone deaf.
You don’t think the “yes yes” is dismissive?
Fuck these misogynistic pigs, idiots like these need to be called out more often. It’s too bad she couldn’t give names out and completely humiliate and ruin them.
Beautifully spoken
I appreciate her telling it like it is and not bowing to a pressure to please.
Found an article speaking more about it, if anyone is curious about the context/her work.
