This is what happens if you are a woman in philosophy who was harassed.

After I was drugged and assaulted, and my ex responded by telling me I was a horrible person, I dumped him and refused to speak to him. I told everyone who knew that it was personal and to remain friends with him, iterating over and over "he's a great guy". I did not tell them he was bipolar and had previously sequestered me for three days in his locked bedroom, following me to the bathroom so I couldn't leave, while he had been manic. My ex chose to to professionally harass me, and stalk me for eight months. He still cyber stalks me.

Western University found my harasser guilty of harassment.

But, most troubling, they found me guilty as well. The investigators took offense to me accepting the help of three people who came to me as they felt I was in danger, and also accepting to meet the head of my Institute after my harasser conspired with another colleague to frame me for vandalism and was caught on security footage. They felt *I* had "brought the situation to the work place”, despite the fact that my harasser had shared my breakup email to the head of the institute and the two chairs of the department the day after the breakup, and continued for months to spread rumours to faculty and colleagues that I had lied about my assault for attention, and conspiring with another colleague to frame me for vandalism — all months before I was contacted by these four people and confirmed that I did need help.

Western University feels that asking for help when there is a four month long pattern of escalating harassment culminating in patently criminal activity, and continuing to escalate into stalking at the work place, breaking into my work computer, cyber stalking me despite him and his friends all being blocked from all my social media, stalking me at professional conferences not in his field, finding out where I am eating and showing up in cabs only to sit next me, etc. is harassment. When he would sit 5m away from my desk after work hours in an empty office two rooms away from his own office and stare at me for hours, causing me to work with my keys in my hand, leaving me afraid of physical attacks — they feel I had no right to accept to talk to colleagues who walked in on the behaviour and immediately asked me if I needed help. They feel I should have waited to be physically injured.

Mind you, I tried for months to get a restraining order. When I went to the London police, they told me since it happened on campus, I had to go to campus police. But campus police “doesn’t do restraining orders” and told me to contact the heads of my department. However, accepting their requests to discuss these events makes *me* a harasser.

I have no words to say how many shades of wrong this is. The head of my institute and one of the heads of my department simply made misogynistic comments to me and blocked the other head, the climate committee and my own’s requests for security measures. They not only enabled him, but they allowed the harassment to increase and develop over time with total impunity. They also protected him when they made him President of the student association overseeing all committees including harassment cases, despite knowing he was under investigation. There will be no consequences for them.

There will be no consequences for my harasser, who terrorized me for 8 months while I was recovering from an assault and concussion, who took advantage of my refusal to speak ill of him to spread rumours about me and alienate me from my friends, who turned half the staff and half the department against me, who made me a social and now professional pariah, who framed me for *vandalism*, and then began to stalk me daily when he received no consequences, and who then started to stalk me professionally outside the department when he still received no consequences, who cyber-stalks me still to this day, and who made me feel afraid for my safety everywhere I went, while I was recovering from an assault and a concussion and multiple sprains that left me on medical leave.

There will be no consequences for any of them, and he, the misogynistic professors and the toxic departmental climate will continue, comforted in the knowledge that technically, I harassed him by seeking measures of physical distance and protection.

That is how institutional misogyny works: although he was found patently guilty of harassment, the woman who had to stop going to campus, who refused to speak to anyone because she didn’t know who she could trust, who didn’t want to respond to anything because she knew it would escalate the harassment and she would face scrutiny and rumours, who just wanted to focus on recovering from her concussion and completing her course work, who only accepted help once a criminal act she was the target of occured on campus, who decided to leave completely to ensure her own safety — she must have done something to deserve this. She *must* be punished. Though it is is clear she was being harassed for months before she spoke out to the proper channels (police, campus police, heads of departments and climate committee member) about how to deal with this, she must be found guilty. They cannot encourage a woman using the proper identified channels to report harassment.

One of the chairs of my department has been writing me for two weeks, asking me to come back and trying to figure out arrangements. After learning what I learned today, I refuse to pretend this is normal, I refuse to subject myself to a toxic work environment, I refuse to get my degree from a misogynistic institution.

I know my worth and my value. I have been gainfully employed at a fulfilling job since a week after leaving academia, three and a half months ago. A career in philosophy is hard. Dealing with toxic philosophy department cultures is harder. Being a woman in philosophy is even harder. I knew my career was over the day I realized I was being harassed. I knew I had about a 10% chance of professionally surviving this. I had many supporters and persevered for another year. But two years of harassment and watching my harasser be protected byy department, a year and a half of waiting for an investigation to conclude… It got to me. I realized my career wouldn’t survive this. I left. I am happy since making this decision. Hearing how the university has decided to value my right to psychological, physical and professional integrity is mind-blowing.

To any female in academia, especially philosophy : run. Your harasser being found guilty is an unheard of outcome. But if you are that lucky don’t think for a minute your department or university will actually protect you.