couple years ago i did a study of the strategies people used to defend professors who had been accused of sexual impropriety in their labs/departments. overwhelmingly the most common one was that he’s a special genius and mediocre minds want to deprive us of his brilliance. this thinking is RAMPANT
Reposted from
jamelle
“trump is no ordinary man” fuck you yes he is
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We're all human, and when we start thinking/treating certain individuals as if they were special people it's always bad. When folks can do that it's easy for them to also start thinking/treating certain people as less than human too.
It follows the same logic of the "1 sweet now or 2 sweets tomorrow" test.
In fact, it's more likely that the harassed PhD student has more to contribute than an over-the-hill academic, but that isn't how our brains work.
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." — Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb
Moral of the story: Stand up to bullies.
Therefore the juniors don’t matter.
Therefore the “genius” can get away with whatever abusive behavior they do.
(Which is a fantastically self-centered view of the world)
I thought I lived the mantra of believe the women, until it was someone I genuinely respected, and then it was hard.
It took a few months of reflection and active thinking to update my perspective.
Ref. the studies demonstrating that people don’t change their thinking when shown data, but harden their original position.
I guess they're not the ones with agency
Yeah, he managed that by making the workplace intolerable and driving out competitors.
Fascinating! who knew?!!
https://academic.oup.com/book/56194/chapter/443481683
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
(that's positive fire, not threatening fire, tbc)