The woman didn’t want to share this kind of fun, which is perfectly fine. But she was somehow “offended,” which is not. In fact, the woman felt that this invitation constituted Sexual Harassment, and she complained. Even worse, this previously loyal movement member then blogged and blogged and blogged about it, urging her female readers to stay away from the organization. Now the word is out to younger progressive women—don’t go to this group’s conferences.

The couple were strangers. The extent of our conversations included a couple of comments he made on my Facebook wall, a question of how much Hug Me! I’m Vaccinated teddy bears cost, and whether I’d take a picture with them after the event… and then them handing me The Card. Which I made clear in my account.

I’m not the one with the PhD in psychology, but I’m fairly certain that if this couple thought that my statement that most children catch pertussis from unvaccinated adults was me secretly dropping subliminal messages that I’d like to get tight and shiny under the stairs with them, then the problem with this interaction does not begin or end with me.

Klein starts off with one tiny change in the details of my experience, one tiny change that alters the entire context of the situation. In Klein’s version of my story, “John” and “Mary” have reason to believe I might be interested in joining them to socialize our genitals. Now, if by “gotten friendly” he means “accepted Facebook friend request” and “stood in front of a room while the couple was present and delivered a talk about how everyone needs to get Tdap”, then yes, I concede, we “got friendly”. But I doubt that’s what he meant. What I think he means is that I was asking for it.



No. I don’t share in this kind of fun. And yes, that’s fine… but now, Dr Klein, a licensed therapist, is now telling me how I am allowed to feel about things that happen to me. Feeling offended is okay. A psychologist telling people he’s never met what they should feel about their experiences that he hasn’t even bothered to fact check is not okay.

I felt that the incident was inappropriate and violated the conference’s harassment policy, so I informed the conference organizers. Then I blogged about it. Once. (I guess twice, technically, if you count this post.)

But the point that really irritates me here is that I supposedly “[urged] female readers to stay away from the organization. Now the word is out to younger progressive women—don’t go to this group’s conferences.” Nothing could be further from the truth. I commend the way that Carl Tracy, head of Ohio Skeptics and the conference’s co-organizer, handled the situation. I said I was proud to have been a part of that community that weekend:

I want to thank Carl and Sarah Moglia for putting together a harassment policy to ensure a respectful environment and Carl for diligently enforcing it. I am proud to have taken part in an event that was so dedicated to the safety and comfort of all its attendees.

I encourage everyone, especially women and minorities, to get involved with this outstanding group. They will make sure you are comfortable. They will make sure you know your voice matters. You are an important part of their community and if anyone belittles your contribution based on your gender or appearance or ability, that other person is not welcome. If anyone got the mistaken impression that I am somehow anti-Ohio Skeptics, let me say this in super caps: I LOVE OHIO SKEPTICS. I HOPE TO ATTEND MORE OF THEIR EVENTS. YOU SHOULD, TOO.

So the leadership of said organization is scurrying around, trying to figure out what to do. “About what?” I asked.

The leadership was left scurrying around not because I am a whiny complainer, but because the couple acted inappropriately and then immediately left the premises to avoid any consequences. They left before I could respond. They left before I even looked at the card. The leadership did not immediately know how they were going to handle the situation because they felt that it needed handling. In fact, I said that I understood if they did nothing… because, really, the conference is over and the couple was gone, off to another state. But Carl felt that this was a big deal. The couple not only violated my boundaries, but they also broke conference rules, and that they did so to their keynote speaker was unacceptable and disrespectful to the entire conference and its organizers.

Apparently, * Some people want a policy on Sexual Harassment

Yes, I do. And the conference had one in place.

* Some people want a zero-tolerance policy on Sexual Harassment—one COMPLAINT and you’re out

Zero-tolerance, yes. One complaint and you’re out? No. Zero tolerance means that each complaint is acted on appropriately. The event I attended did have a zero tolerance policy in place. One man suggestively heckled a speaker during her talk. Carl approached the man, and told him that was not appropriate, asked him not to do it again. Was he ejected immediately? Nope. Was his behavior tolerated? Nope. That’s what zero-tolerance is. Inappropriate behavior will not be tolerated. This is really only a problem if you are incapable of ever behaving appropriately.

* Some people want to issue a statement about the organization’s policy on Sexual Harassment

Yes. Because if you have a policy, people should be able to find it… so that they know what the damn rules are.

“Sir, you have to leave, you broke several of the conference’s rules.”

“What rules?”

“The ones we didn’t issue to everyone so you cannot know that we made them.”

“Wait, what? Why wouldn’t you tell me what the rules are?”

“Some guy on Psychology Today rolled his eyes at us issuing a statement that we had a policy so we didn’t do it. We figured he’s right. He’s a doctor and wrote books and stuff.”

“Oh, right. yeah. That makes sense. Can I whip my penis out as we leave? Or is there a rule about that?”

“I’m sorry, I cannot disclose that information to you in any kind of statement.”

* Some people want to persuade this woman to attend next year’s conference

No… I don’t need persuading. Unless you’re talking about TAM, in which case you might be talking about Rebecca, not me. I’m not attending TAM either, but that’s mostly because of cancer. And not like euphemistically calling assholes “cancers of our community”. I mean like actual cancer. And no one is trying to convince me otherwise. Because, you know, fucking cancer and shit. So I’m pretty sure you’re talking about Rebecca. And she never got a card. But whatever, details… women all sound the same when we’re complaining about nonsense, amirite?

* Some people want to persuade this woman to stop trashing the organization

Now I don’t know who you’re talking about. Because I’m not trashing any organizations. Maybe organizations like Generation Rescue or Age of Autism… but no one here is asking me to stop trashing them. And Rebecca isn’t trashing any organizations. But who needs facts? This is about silly women and their hysteria over learning that sex exists.

For someone who didn’t want one kind of attention, this woman has certainly managed to get plenty of another kind of attention.

All attention is equal. Klein is a psychiatrist psychologist, so he knows this is true for all adults. You either want no attention or all the attention, and you don’t get to choose which ones you want. Oh, you don’t like getting questioned by the cops every time you go out? Well you sure like all that attention every time you sing karaoke. It’s the same thing, you know. It’s just attention. You either like it all or you don’t. It’s true because a psychologist said so. Quit complaining that you got attention. If you blog, you deserve ALL the attention you get. Because you want it. Because you’re an attention whore.



This woman—and the more intimidated members of the organization—need a history lesson. In the Bad Old Days, people—men—with institutional power (professors, bosses, doctors) used sex as a bargaining chip. “Sleep with me and you’ll get ahead,” some of them told the women who reported to them. “Refuse me and you won’t.” It was ugly. It was How Things Are Done. You can see it in the show Mad Men. In the 1970s, women began to sue their employers under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Women demanded an end to the discrimination (“put out or get out”), and to the maintenance of hostile work or learning environments created by continuous sexual pressure. Nowadays, both kinds of pressure are considered unacceptable in most American institutions, and both employees and employers (and students and professors, etc.) have some sense of this. But Sexual Harassment law was never designed to protect women from merely feeling uncomfortable. In a typical workday, men and women alike face many sources of discomfort: atheists face clerks wearing crosses; able-bodied people face colleagues in wheelchairs; Fundamentalist Muslims and Jews face professors dressed with arms and legs uncovered; the infertile face coworkers’ desks with photos of their kids, and parents are given time off for parenting events such as piano recitals. No, the law is designed to simply create a level playing field of opportunity—not of emotional experience. It doesn’t require anyone to be a mind-reader, it doesn’t undo the normal uncertainties of social interaction, and it doesn’t require anyone’s social skills to be smooth as silk. Occasionally feeling offended is still considered part of the cost of being out in the world.

Oh, sweet sweet naive, Dr. Klein, I think it’s adorable that you think that sexual harassment ended by 1980. But I hate to tell you, it didn’t.

What’s less cute and rather disturbing is that a sex therapist wouldn’t understand that a person’s personal boundaries regarding their sexuality and discomfort with being forced into a sexually charged situation without a say is not the same as having to face the reality that some people need wheelchairs. Do boundaries not matter to your clients? Do you counsel them to do whatever they want and if their partner(s)/recipient(s) don’t like it that’s their problem? That’s terrible advice. If that’s what you’re telling people, please stop doing that. That’s how people end up raped. And I think that’s pretty awful. And probably unethical.

And you know, even if we take your argument that women are just too fragile to understand that they sometimes are going to be made to feel uncomfortable by people who have different thoughts than theirs, this isn’t about sexual harassment law. This is about event policies. And sure, you can let everyone feel incredibly uncomfortable, if that’s what you want. Or, you can create a space where people are comfortable. Event organizers generally opt for the latter because usually comfortable people are more likely to return. So if women are feeling like they’re being treated disrespectfully by event organizers or attendees (regardless of your professional recommendation that they start feeling the way that you want them to) and nothing is going to be done about it, those women are unlikely to return.

I assume you’re familiar with the libertarian principle of the free market? That’s how it works. You give people a product that they want to buy, and they buy it. You give them a product that makes them uncomfortable, and they won’t. Sometimes that product is a conference. And your customers are the attendees. If a customer is nice enough to give you feedback on how you can change your product to ensure their return, it should be considered.

Or, if you don’t want women to attend your event, then call them sniveling attention whores and they won’t come back. I guess it just depends on whether you care about putting out a shitty product that no one wants.

So what did that young woman experience? Not Sexual Harassment, but Unwanted Sexual Attention. And when the woman made it clear it was unwanted, the attention went away. That should have been the end of the story. But if the recipient of a friendly, non-pressuring, non-institutional sexual invitation isn’t grown up enough, she (or he) will feel assaulted. And with today’s heightened consciousness—and internet access—she will have the option of describing herself as victimized to a large number of people. And yet why do we privilege unwanted attention that happens to involve sexuality? Again, we’re not talking about coercion or even pressure—we’re talking about attention, invitation, or suggestion that has no connection with real-world consequences like job evaluation. Adults are the recipients of unwanted attention every single day: stories from strangers on airplanes, awkward compliments from co-workers, grocery clerks sympathetically inquiring about the brace on your wrist or that cold medicine you’re buying, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormon missionaries asking if they can talk with you for a just a moment about their Invisible Friend In The Sky. Unwanted attention—whether sexual or non-sexual—is part of the cost of stepping outside your front door. With Jehovah’s Witnesses, you don’t even have to go out—you get the attention by just opening the door. When American society privileges our discomfort if the unwanted attention is sexual, that’s more about our cultural values than about any inherent hierarchy of discomfort.

See, this is where that tiny change in context at the beginning of the story changes a lot of things. Dr Klein portrays this as some poor couple inviting me to have sex with them after misreading what they thought were signals that I might be interested. And after they propositioned me, I ran straight to conference organizers and my blog and started screaming ZOMG ALMOST RAPED IN OHIO! HELP! HEEEEEEELP! RAAAAAAPPPPPPEEEEE!!!!

I was handed a sex card, while I was working, that was in no way welcome, and the couple had no reason to believe that attention was welcome. They ran off before I even looked at the card. They violated my boundaries, belittled my professionalism and offered me no way to respond to them. I was mad. And I blogged about why it was inappropriate.

I never said I was a victim. I said I was offended. Because I was. Because that’s valid. Because my sexuality is not up for grabs. Because I shouldn’t have to defend that. Because women are often dismissed based on their fuckability (which must lie in perfect balance… must not be too fuckable but must not be unfuckable). Because there was a rule in place against such attention. Because I didn’t want the attention. Because it’s the IRL equivalent of trolling, essentially declaring that they’d fap to my talk.

Maybe you think that cultural context doesn’t matter and you can pretend that surprise sex is just what polite people do to strangers if we just step outside our silly Puritanical society, and maybe it is in Klein’s world where sex isn’t a thing that should hold any emotional weight, but that’s not my world. In my world, surprise sex is a hostile gesture. And that cultural context is important. That couple approached me within that context, it’s why they didn’t stick around to see my reaction. Because they knew it wasn’t a nice thing to do.

The whole “Eek! An unwanted sexual invitation—gross! My day/week/year is ruined!” is a bit precious. The whole idea that women need to be protected from discomfort, or from men, or from sex, is a giant step backwards. Obviously, sexual violence and coercion are horrible and unacceptable realities in contemporary society. But if we need special rules to comfort or protect anyone reminded of this reality, modern life will come to a screeching halt. And it will be women who will suffer most from this “protection.” 1970s feminism was completely clear on the dangers of such traditional “protections,” and labored continuously—and successfully—to undo most of them. The topic is particularly poignant when the people involved are progressive political activists. If we expect to go out and communicate effectively in a world that is often hostile to our ideas, we need to have the emotional skills to tolerate a wide range of responses. If we can’t even handle a friendly sexual invitation in a genuinely safe environment without losing our composure, how can we tolerate the rough-and-tumble of the world out there? Learning to say things like “that feels bad, please stop,” “I don’t like that you said that,” “You have obviously misread me completely,” and “I don’t think anyone would like what you just did” involves a fundamental skill that every grownup needs.

Back to me being silly and just not knowing how to communicate as a grown up. It’s not the couple who thinks that their physical desires come above my comfort. No, they’re normal and I’m whiny. They have no respect for my boundaries, and that’s my problem. Because I’m the one silly enough to expect that people be aware that I (and everyone, really) have sexual boundaries. And when those boundaries are violated in a sexual hit and run, I should still respond, I guess to the ether, that it wasn’t appreciated. I should respond politely, and decline their “invitation”, explaining nicely that it’s not my thing — not my thing to have sex cards thrown at me while I’m at work by people who I only know because they wanted to know the price of my merchandise — and hope they hear it as I call out into the night.

How about this: grownups learn that there is a time and a place for sexual propositions. Much like there is a time and a place to ask people if they love Jesus, and a time and a place to tell someone you’re concerned about their health. Rather than making it the responsibility of everyone who doesn’t want attention to list the kind of attention we may or may not want, why don’t we just put into place some social rules about how we approach certain topics and then live by the assumption that decent people understand those rules and that there are consequences for breaking them. So, let’s say you throw your come-fuck-us card at a stranger, you understand that the stranger very well might think you’re a giant asshole who she would not want to fuck. And if you do this within the context of an ongoing discussion within a community already fed up with it’s women leaders being sexualized, it may come up as part of the conversation. Especially if the woman you’re throwing cards at writes for one of the most prominent blogs leading the discussion.

This has NOTHING to do with the number of women who are sexually coerced, trafficked, raped, murdered, or otherwise maltreated around the globe. This is not about porn films, prostitution, clitoridectomies, or forced child-rearing.

That’s true. It also has nothing to do with Dr. Marty Klein. It has nothing to do with children starving in Africa. It has nothing to do with the economy. It has nothing to do with the fact that the earth will eventually be swallowed up by the sun. Why are we not taking a look at these bigger issues? Why are we not focusing on the Really Important Things™ as deemed important by Important People™? Why should I, as a leader in the community, have any say in how I expect to be treated? Why should I, as a member of the community, want this community to grow? Why should I expect that this community be held to a higher standard on behavior when it already holds itself to a higher standard for everything else? Why am I doing this when I should be thinking about Dear Muslima…

This is simply about the need for people to acquire and express a little bit of sexual intelligence. Congressmember Larry Craig, repulsive political creature that he is, did not deserve to suffer for (allegedly) inviting a stranger to have sex in the Minneapolis airport men’s room a few years back. Similarly, “John & Mary,” and every other polite person, deserves a simply reply when they issue an unwanted sexual (or non-sexual) invitation: “No thank you.”

“John and Mary” are the Larry Craig of skepticism? Larry Craig was repulsive because he was a liar and a hypocrite and a coward who politely and semi-publicly tried to solicit sex.

John and Mary are just assholes and cowards who impolitely and mostly publicly attempted to shock and humiliate me in an attempt to get me to have sex with them then ran off. It’s barely comparable.

Walking away—or catching a flight—is optional, and certainly acceptable.

And that’s exactly what “John and Mary” did.

I should note that on Dr Klein’s personal blog, he added the following edit that does not appear in the Psychology Today article:

If you’re interested in sex, consider the following recurring situation. This is a composite of several actual events—similar to how I write about clinical cases.

This disclaimer was not in the original blog post yet the edit is not labeled as an edit, which is standard procedure for most bloggers, and makes it look like I was complaining about something that was always clearly labeled as “I bet you think this blog is about you, don’t you?”

The statement was added after I sent a tweet to Dr Klein stating that his version of what happened to me was incorrect and asking him where he got his facts. He has not responded to me.

I reject that this is a composite based on the description of the woman in question as “a particular woman in her mid-30s.” And I reject that this is a recurring situation. I do believe that he may have confused me and Rebecca as the same person, however I don’t believe he ever thought he was considering the experiences of several women while writing this article.

If this article is, indeed, a composite, then it’s even more distressing that he considers the complaints of all women who are being harassed at conferences to be silly, childish and irrelevant of discussion. And that all women who speak out against harassment are getting the attention they deserve.

So either Marty Klein is lazy and would rather spout off opinions without considering any facts, or he’s researched this intensely and based on all of our collective complaints, he has deliberately decided that we’re all stupid and socially inept.

Also, I believe that “this is a composite” is the new psych blogger version of “what? it was just a joke!”

Shitty doctor meme courtesy of Rebecca Watson.

6/18/12 12:35EDT ETA: Dr Klein has edited his Psychology Today article to state:

If you’re interested in sexuality, consider the following scenario. It’s a COMPOSITE of various situations that recur at conferences and other large gatherings. It’s particularly important that people interested in progressive politics and gender relations work this out. Again, this is a COMPOSITE–the way therapists write about cases, changing some details and adding others.

Again, with no note that it’s an edit (you know, like the one I provided at the beginning of this edit), and essentially admitting that he is setting up a strawman to attack women who are complaining about harassment… I suppose if you write “COMPOSITE” in super caps, you don’t have to be held accountable for your actions. And if you leave the edit disclaimer out, you can make complaints about you look like they’re coming from uptight, self-absorbed women looking for things to complain about.

6/18/12 3:40pmEDT ETA: Dr Klein has added another stealth edit to his COMPOSITE: (emphasis mine)

Apparently a couple at last year’s conference had approached a particular woman in her mid-30s. Eventually “Mary & John” handed the woman their card—suggesting quite clearly that they were “open” to “adult activities.”

from

Apparently a couple at last year’s conference had gotten friendly with a particular woman in her mid-30s. Eventually “Mary & John” handed the woman their card—suggesting quite clearly that they were “open” to “adult activities.”

If this is indeed a COMPOSITE, I don’t understand why a change in details was necessary. Dr Klein, are you talking about me or not? Is “composite” cover for “sloppy journalism” and “trying to get attention for covering a topic I’m ignorant of” or are there several cases that are actually similar enough to my experience that readers shouldn’t assume it’s me? Because right now, it still looks like you took my story, and twisted the details because you didn’t care enough to find sources beyond petty gossip (if I’m being generous)… and now you’re changing details in an attempt to CYA.

6/18/12 4:31EDT ETA:

SteveD over at Mad Art Lab compared the current Psychology Today post and the original from earlier this morning, and it seems that Dr Klein has made a number of edits to his post, despite the fact that there was not reason to edit them all because it was a COMPOSITE of several cases and not about me…. but still he changed them to better fit my story. Despite this not being about me. Here is Steve’s email, in it’s entirety, outlining the changes… with the exception of one — that Klein also change “blogged and blogged and blogged” to “blogged”. Because I, and the fictional composite character, only blogged about it once: