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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ
@olivia.science

> there is something troubling—something troubling, say, about the male professor who happily accepts the infatuated attentions of his freshman student, has sex with her, dates her. The problem, I suggest, is that he was supposed to be teaching her.

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ
@olivia.science

> When the teacher takes the student’s longing for epistemic power and transposes it into a sexual key, allowing himself to be—or worse, making himself—the object of her desire, he has failed her as a teacher. And this is so even if the student has fully and enthusiastically consented

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ
@olivia.science

This is so useful for carving out exactly why it is the men in our academic spaces who may not enter into sexual or romantic relationships with students or indeed mentees, but still ENTERTAIN and ENJOY this phenomenon, are in direct violation of their professional duties.

Roger Watt
@rjwatt42.bsky.social

In my amateur way, I think this often gets multiplied by an additional asymmetry of vulnerability. To learn you have to make yourself vulnerable - open to influence. Teachers who aren't ready to learn from their students or the experience of teaching aren't vulnerable.

Donna Minkowitz
@donnaminkowitz.bsky.social

The one terrible book along these lines (from the 80s) is Feminist Accused of Sexual Harrassment by Jane Gallup, a feminist professor who indeed in my view did sexually harass students. The book, a defense of professor-student sex, is one of my favorite hate-reads.

Scornflake Ghhhoul
@scornflakegrrrl.bsky.social

This gives a lot of food for thought thinking back to my own student days and am actually not sure how I feel about it. But I guess certainly in some faculties the boundaries were less healthy than in others.