‘Micro-aggressions’ aren’t a thing. Psychology research debunked this strange, unempirical, activist concept years ago, e.g. this paper. The fact that the DEI industry continues to promote the concept of ‘microaggressions’ shows that they can profit from it, not that it is empirically grounded.
As for sexual advances being ‘unique to EA’, that would be news to any biologist who studies courtship in any of the 60,000 species of sexually reproducing vertebrates.
“People saying things that are mildly offensive but not worth risking an argument by calling out, and get tiring after repeated exposure” is just obviously a type of comment that exists, and is what most people mean when they say microaggression. Your paper debunking it alternates between much stricter definitions and claiming an absence of evidence for something that very clearly is going to be extremely hard to measure rigorously.
I should point out that I unfortunately misquoted the sexual advances part, it should be “inappropriate sexual advances”. I agree that we cannot expect no romantic relationships to take place in one form or another during conferences. But hopefully we can agree that such activities should not be significantly upsetting to attendees, and perhaps even have an ambition that everyone should feel safe from inappropriate behaviour.
‘Micro-aggressions’ aren’t a thing. Psychology research debunked this strange, unempirical, activist concept years ago, e.g. this paper. The fact that the DEI industry continues to promote the concept of ‘microaggressions’ shows that they can profit from it, not that it is empirically grounded.
As for sexual advances being ‘unique to EA’, that would be news to any biologist who studies courtship in any of the 60,000 species of sexually reproducing vertebrates.
“People saying things that are mildly offensive but not worth risking an argument by calling out, and get tiring after repeated exposure” is just obviously a type of comment that exists, and is what most people mean when they say microaggression. Your paper debunking it alternates between much stricter definitions and claiming an absence of evidence for something that very clearly is going to be extremely hard to measure rigorously.
I should point out that I unfortunately misquoted the sexual advances part, it should be “inappropriate sexual advances”. I agree that we cannot expect no romantic relationships to take place in one form or another during conferences. But hopefully we can agree that such activities should not be significantly upsetting to attendees, and perhaps even have an ambition that everyone should feel safe from inappropriate behaviour.