mathbabe

As many of you know, I write a fun Saturday morning column called Aunt Pythia, where I give advice to people about all sorts of things. I typically have at least one or two questions per week (out of 4) from math people, and some of those are questions about dating and romance, from both men and women.

With some consistency, then, I get a question something like last week’s question:

Dear Aunt Pythia,

Is it perverse that one of my initial reactions to something bad happening in my life was “this ought to make good Aunt Pythia material”?!

To set the scene, I’m a young female maths PhD student, who attended a graduate school/conference a few months ago. Initially I didn’t know anyone at this conference (it was the wrong side of the atlantic) so it was great to find lots of really cool people to talk to. In particular I talked a couple of postdocs, whose research directly connects with mine. One of them, “Smith”, sent me preprint, which I excitedly read over the weekend (it was a 2 week event).

Aunt Pythia, is it wrong that our conversations at these events are not just mathematical?

Smith started paying me too much attention. Well, there are lots of other people at this conference so I can just talk to other people (I accept evasion was rather weak of me). Then during a break between lectures, in which I had elected to get on with work, he proceeded to ask me on a date. The humiliation was not even private, there were many other people remaining quietly in the room like myself.

This deeply upset me. I still like to think of myself as a serious mathematician sometimes, and so the rude awakening from my naive collaboration ambitions may account for much of that pain. Or perhaps it was the way he seemed so sure of a yes, or his remark “I can concentrate on the lectures now”.

I thought of several defiant responses to give to his question, but, alas, only hours later. My parting remark to him was “never do that to someone again”. He was misguided and somewhat upset too… I don’t think he will embarrass himself like that again anyway.

Aunt Pythia, I still can’t move on from this. I still feel the injustice when I think of it. How can I move on? Am I making too much of this?? I feel like I really want people to understand why this was upsetting for me.

Moreover, I wonder at my responsibility in this. There have been other situations in which I felt I may have won more favour than I deserved perhaps by being the female. Am I obligated to be sensitive to this bias, and reduce my level of warmth ‘just in case’? Smith is giving a seminar to my group in the near future. I’m not sure how I should behave around him, hence why moving on would be really great…

Woman not at a bar

Here was my (typical for Aunt Pythia) response:

Dear Woman,

First of all, I appreciate that certain situations are “Aunt Pythia material.” That is in fact a goal of mine, which I can now check off as “achieved.”

Second of all, I’m not really sure I understand why you are so upset. And I’m sorry for that, because as you stated, it’s important to you that other people understand this point. I am going to make some guesses because I think if I miss it, my advice will probably be totally useless. Here I go:

1. You wish he had asked you in private, because it’s just a private matter and asking you in public put you on the spot too much.
2. You hate him for acting like he was definitely going to get a “yes” from you, because it made you look and feel like you should be grateful for the attention and flattery, which you are not.
3. You think questions of romance in the context of mathematical conferences degrade you as a mathematician, and you want to keep the two things absolutely separate.
4. You think that his romantic attention, in front of other people, made them think he wasn’t taking you seriously as a mathematician, but only as a romantic or sexual interest, which might possibly make them also not take you seriously as a mathematician.

Now, just as an exercise, I want to imagine what this guy’s perspective on the whole thing was. Various versions as well:

1. He met this amazing, brilliant math nerd and he thought things were going really well – they were talking about all kinds of things, not just math – but when he asked her on a proper date, she got really mad and told him never to “do that” to someone again, which confused him. Do what? He ended up sad.
2. He met this amazing, brilliant math nerd and he thought things were going really well – they were talking about all kinds of things, not just math – but when he asked her on a proper date, she got really mad and told him never to “do that” to someone again. After thinking about it a while, he realized that he had put her on the spot and hadn’t judged the situation properly. He wants to apologize to her and remain friends (and he still has a crush on her, but whatever) but he’s not sure how to do it. He vows to be more careful and more private in the future.
3. He met this amazing, brilliant math nerd and was really into other people seeing him score with her, so he asked her out in front of them, but it didn’t work out because she was onto him and called him out on it. He’s going to have to revise his plan in the future.
4. He pretended to be interested in a female mathematician’s work so he could get down her pants. Plan failed with that one but he moved on to the next in line.

OK, so I am not sure which scenario you think this guy fits into – if any – but personal guess, bases on what I know, is he’s a #1. The thing about men (and women) is that nobody knows what they’re doing, but mostly they’re not trying to be bad people.

I’m not saying there aren’t people like #4, but I don’t want to assume anyone, ever, is actually like that unless I have really large piles of evidence. So I am advising you to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was just crushing out on you and had no idea that you’d be uncomfortable with the situation.

I also don’t see why you can’t collaborate with this guy. Honestly. Having a crush on you is his problem, not yours. I’d even say that crushing out on your collaborators might help the work. Certainly keeps it interesting, and it doesn’t have to lead anywhere or even mean anything. Honestly I don’t know if I can work with someone without developing something of a crush on them.

I don’t actually think we can separate our mathematical selves from our self selves, and sexual/romantic parts of us emerge no matter how hard we try to restrict them. That’s not to say the guy should have put you on the spot – I agree with you that it was an awkward if not somewhat hostile move – but I don’t think it makes sense to assume that working on math with someone isn’t an intimate thing to do.

In any case, if and when this happens again, feel free to have a response memorized along the lines of, “I really don’t want to date people within my field, it’s just not my style. But thanks anyway.” That way it’s not about them, and the answer is final.

The one thing I feel I should object to is the use of “injustice.” I think that’s going too far. The guy didn’t impugn your honor, integrity, or mathematical talent. He simply asked you out in the wrong time and place. Put it this way: you’re going to need a thicker skin to be a woman warrior in mathematics. Sad but true. Save the word “injustice” for when it’s really needed.

Here’s my advice about his upcoming visit. Go to his seminar, ask really good questions. Be a mathematician. Be warm because that’s who you are. Be attractive because that’s who you are. Don’t worry about people being falsely attracted to you because it’s real. And it’s not anyone’s fault and it’s actually awesome. Oh, and everyone has it to some extent, tall men especially, and they don’t feel weird about the attention they receive. Feel free to turn your attention to others when someone is being weird.

Good luck,

Aunt Pythia

This generated a ton of comments, much more than usual for an Aunt Pythia column, and you can read them here. The debate is great, and it’s made me think about this issue much more, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I gave bad advice.

Wait, let me rephrase that. I have come to the conclusion that I was wrong about this issue, but at the end of the day I think I might stick by my advice in the final paragraph. Here’s my thinking about it.

First of all, a very personal confession. I am a pro-love hippy throwback from the 1960’s. That means a few things, and I probably wouldn’t even be writing Aunt Pythia if I weren’t weird in all sorts of ways, but the consequences that are most relevant to this discussion are the following:

1. As a pro-love hippy throwback from the 1960’s, I do not find it inherently bad if someone is attracted to me in a romantic, sexual, or really any sort of way. In fact, I think it’s great news! More love is good!
2. I crush out on people all the time, and I always have. If my friends stopped hanging out with me every time I hit on them, I would have no friends (thanks for the forbearance, friends!). I think of it as “part of my charm,” but it also has the effect of surrounding me with people who are, in general, also somewhat pro-love hippy throwbacks. It’s a selection bias thing.
3. As a pro-love hippy throwback from the 1960’s, I am simply not awkward about this issue, and indeed I don’t even see a reason to be (see above selection bias). What this means is that if someone expresses a desire to date me or have sex with me that I don’t reciprocate, I don’t get at all alarmed, and I don’t feel any responsibility towards them, or awkwardness, or anything really other than a mild sense of flattery. It happens enough that I have a crush on someone that they don’t reciprocate (because I crush out on people all the time) that I know it’s no big deal. And it almost never is.
4. In particular, it would never occur to me to rule out someone as a potential mathematical (or otherwise) collaborator because they expressed sexual or romantic interest in me. Here’s why. From my weird perspective, my brain is my best feature, and I would assume it means they are really into my brain, i.e. working together. I don’t tend to separate different kinds of attraction, because I don’t think it’s possible. So if someone is ambivalent to the way I look when they meet me, and then they talk to me a while and love the way I think, then they might end up being super attracted to me. I think that’s normal. In any case I don’t think someone being attracted to me sexually is a sign they don’t take me seriously as a thinker. That has certainly not been my experience.
5. Having said that, if someone exhibited harassing tendencies: stalking me, not taking no for an answer, threatening me in any way, or even just being overtly sexual with me when I’ve already politely declined, then yes, I would totally think the person was a stinky jerk.
6. And here’s the final, important part of my confession: that very rarely happens to me. I think it’s a combination of my body type (extra large) and my personality (extrovert), but I very rarely get hit on by men who are creepy. Those men do not see me as a potential victim of their harassing ways.

As a result of my above confession, when I heard about someone who gets asked out by a man, I honestly didn’t understand why she would be upset. But here’s the thing, I’m weird, and I know that. So I shouldn’t assume all women relate to sexual and romantic attention the way I do. In fact, they don’t, as I have (slowly!) learned over the years from my readers.

Many of the people who commented on the thread mentioned that, when a romantic or sexual interest has been expressed between two people, things get extra complicated, and it makes it much more difficult to work with someone collaboratively. This is not true for me, but it’s true for enough other people that I should just assume it’s true. So for now let’s work with the following simplified and slightly cartoonish assumption (and I apologize for being heterosexist but I’m doing so for clarity, and I’m not sure if it applies to gay relationships):

Assumption A: if a man or a woman has expressed interest in being sexually or romantically involved with the other, they can no longer do math together.

Given Assumption A, I can absolutely understand why Woman not at a bar was upset about the event. It meant that she was no longer capable of working with this guy whose math she was interested in. That’s a huge loss, and it’s upsetting.

Moreover, and here I’m simply repeating what a bunch of people on my comment thread explained to me, it’s something that the guy did to Woman not at the bar, which is not cool because she has no power to undo it. It’s like, imagine she has a list of “possible collaborators” and he just went and crossed out his name from her list.

OK, now let’s do some simple reckoning and figure out why Assumption A causes a problem in general. The field of math is deeply lopsided, with many more men than women. If the women are all hit on by men, then they all exclude themselves as collaborators. This isn’t much of a problem for the men, who have plenty of other potential collaborators, but it is a huge problem for the women. They end up with very short lists.

Altogether, it really looks like Assumption A is a major problem, even if it’s expressed in a hyperbolic way and is only somewhat true, and even if it’s not true for all women but only a majority. My new advice towards math men will be in the future: don’t ask out other women in math, and certainly not in your own field, and most definitely not in the context of a math conference.

It makes me sad to say this, I need to confess, because I personally love math guys and I think they’re wonderful partners, and of course I’m married to one of them. But I really do get the logic, and for as long as a version of Assumption A holds, I think it’s kind of an inevitable loss. So yeah, I was wrong about this. I’ve changed my mind.

Next, and I’m sorry if I’m beating a dead horse, I do want to go back to my advice for Woman not at a bar:

Here’s my advice about his upcoming visit. Go to his seminar, ask really good questions. Be a mathematician. Be warm because that’s who you are. Be attractive because that’s who you are. Don’t worry about people being falsely attracted to you because it’s real. And it’s not anyone’s fault and it’s actually awesome. Oh, and everyone has it to some extent, tall men especially, and they don’t feel weird about the attention they receive. Feel free to turn your attention to others when someone is being weird.

I still stand by this advice. I don’t think that we should try to give Assumption A any more power than it already has. If I could, I would try to convince people to discard it altogether, because ultimately I do think it’s a choice that people make inside their heads, it’s not a god-given truth, and as such it deserves to be examined and ignored if it is deemed not useful. And if there’s anything that’s not useful, it’s a rule that limits options for women’s math careers, which is already unduly difficult for so many other reasons.

My final word on this is this: I do think we’re in danger of conflating two issues, namely sexuality and sexism. I have experienced enough toxic sexism in my life, that had absolutely nothing to do with sexuality, that I worry we’re making unnecessarily strong cultural rules around sex where we should be thinking longer and harder about structural and institutional sexism, which is the real problem. And of course there are confusing combinations of the two, like this guy, where there are sexual predators and they’re also sexist, and to be clear it’s never ok to be sexual with someone who is your student or someone whose career you influence.