I’m an advanced female Latina graduate student at a respected public university. I’m a member of a group that is doing some really awesome interdisciplinary work and I feel totally happy working with them.
A couple of years ago we got a grant to invite scholars doing relevant research to our own. As the only grad student in this group I was put in charge of doing all the organizational work including picking up the Guest speakers from the airport and attending dinners with the other members.
All the people who came to speak were all well respected historians and one of those people is an established scholar at a prestigious university with an impressive resume and work so similar to mine that I was particularly excited to discuss my dissertation with him. Professor Stickyhands appeared to be your regular middle aged nerd, in addition to being married and with children. It seemed normal that our first point of conversation in the car involved updates of his children, their ages, and their latest adorable achievements. In addition, he spoke of his brilliant wife and her new publication. He then mentioned how great all of his colleagues were and how much he enjoyed working in Latin America, speaking Spanish, dancing and socializing with the communities he worked in (suspicion entered my thoughts).
The symposium was a total success and my group was thankful that everything had worked out. We were in good spirits to celebrate (I was glad to be done with the extra work).
At the dinner all was normal perhaps even boring... Then, the carpool reassembled and I along with another Latinagrad student were asked to take him back to his hotel. Since the grad student was first on the route, I dropped her off, at that point Prof. Stickyhands suggested that we continue the party, mentioning that he did not know our world famous city and that it would be fun to get to know even a little bit of it… to which the gradstudent replied that she was tired and had a paper to finish… he suggested that he could help, and maybe even proofread it. Not only was I startled at his suggestion, but I thought I was crazy to think that this professor wanted to “hang out” with both of us in the middle of the night? As we drove off, prof Stickyhands praised me for my work and my most recent talk at our annual conference. While acknowledging my accomplishments, he mentioned that I was one of the few people who had published work in Spanish as well as English and that as a Latina in academia, I was definitely in a special place. I thanked him kindly and entered the freeway, from which he proceeded to put his hand on my leg, noticeably close to my crotch. He was careful to mention that a potential future publication could be arranged, with a guaranteed future of collaboration with him. I put my weight on the gas pedal, I’m sure he felt my anxiety but he continued to praise my work and put his fingers on my ear.
The difficult part about this story is putting into print the millions of things that crossed my mind in a matter of seconds… First I thought of all the times I planned how to stave off a potential attacker, the self defense classes that I took, how I would have liked to drive off the freeway, the karate kick that I wanted to give to his nose and even of the mace that was hanging from my keychain…
At the same time, I realized that it had never occurred to me that a potential attacker would be a fellow colleague or professor. I thought of the fact that this was someone who my advisor is close with, that this man was a leader in my field of study, that he knows all the people I work with and that in an indirect way, he had a lot of influence over the future of my career…
I want you to know that it NEVER occurred to me to cede to his ‘requests’… all I felt was an intense feeling of helplessness and anger that this was happening, and that in addition to being bound by my responsibilities as a driver, I was cornered by the power that he held over the future of my career.
A few seconds later, that seriously felt like an eternity… I realized that this man was the most disgusting creature I had ever shared my space with. He was breathing heavily and it was clear that he had an erection. I managed to speed the 2 miles from the freeway exit to his hotel and when we arrived, in the middle of my silence I skidded into the driveway and said, ‘Good night’ as diplomatically as I possibly could while holding back the tears of anger in my eyes… he opened the door, looked back at me and said, ‘You mean you don’t want to collaborate?’
At hand are many, many many issues… getting this out of my breath has not been easy. And I should mention that I am fully aware that this sort of thing happens all the time- but WHY!?
