One of the morals of the story is that when people are not accountable to anyone, most decent souls police themselves. Others do whatever they can get away with. These days, one manifestation of that is cheating on papers. With the advent of the internet, it's easy to find or buy information online. Most of us wouldn't cheat if a completed paper were lying on the street in front of us. But some will do whatever it takes (short of the work itself) to get ahead. Academic cheaters have extra power because they know how to use computers. The way to even the odds is to give teachers tools to detect cheating.
Academic cheaters shortchange mostly themselves. Instead of learning, they acquire bogus credentials with no skills to back them up. But cheaters like Professor Sleaze deprive people (mostly women in this case) of the education they would otherwise pursue. They also have a lot more personal power than an academic cheater. They can capriciously pass or fail a student whose reputation depends on her grades. They can derail the schooling of someone whose education depends on scholarship funds. This is not bullying. It is pure evil, and for many years, people like that man got away with it.
Not militant feminism, Math, but activist feminism, and with that word change I'd agree with you. The thing about people like Professor Sleaze is that they isolate their victims. They have power, and the individual victims have none. Each victim assumes that she's alone and without recourse, and the next step is to assume that she brought it on herself, and anyway that's all she's worth. When she can join with others, she will see the equation in a different way. (Math pun not intended.) She sees whose fault it really is, and she begins to see a way to even the odds. This is democracy in its purest form. Everyone gets to have a voice. Everyone deserves the right to protect herself or himself.
There are other morals to the story too, of course. The silence of the powerful when they do not themselves have anything at stake, for one. I'm sure we can think of others.
Academic cheaters shortchange mostly themselves. Instead of learning, they acquire bogus credentials with no skills to back them up. But cheaters like Professor Sleaze deprive people (mostly women in this case) of the education they would otherwise pursue. They also have a lot more personal power than an academic cheater. They can capriciously pass or fail a student whose reputation depends on her grades. They can derail the schooling of someone whose education depends on scholarship funds. This is not bullying. It is pure evil, and for many years, people like that man got away with it.
Not militant feminism, Math, but activist feminism, and with that word change I'd agree with you. The thing about people like Professor Sleaze is that they isolate their victims. They have power, and the individual victims have none. Each victim assumes that she's alone and without recourse, and the next step is to assume that she brought it on herself, and anyway that's all she's worth. When she can join with others, she will see the equation in a different way. (Math pun not intended.) She sees whose fault it really is, and she begins to see a way to even the odds. This is democracy in its purest form. Everyone gets to have a voice. Everyone deserves the right to protect herself or himself.
There are other morals to the story too, of course. The silence of the powerful when they do not themselves have anything at stake, for one. I'm sure we can think of others.