Doubling Down on Mentorship

That’s a terrible title, but you’ll see where it came from later on.

I wrote a post a while ago in which I took the very brave stance that mentors should not sexually harass their protégés, and that they should do their best to remember this sage advice any time they get attention from someone of the “right” sex/orientation*. It’s probably not because that person wants to join genitals with you, it’s because you’re a mentor and people are naturally going to look up to you.

(*The “right” sex/orientation meaning: attention paid to a hetero male mentor by a female protégé, or attention paid to a hetero female mentor by a male protégé, or attention paid to a gay/bi female mentor by a female protégé, or attention paid to a gay/bi male mentor by a gay male protégé, or …)

It was an insightful post, and, really, should be made required reading for anyone who’s going to become a mentor. However, the post only touched on one aspect of the mentor/protégé relationship, and how sex makes everything more complicated – actually, two aspects:

1. Don’t sexually harass the people you’re mentoring. Ever. I mean, don’t sexually harass anyone, that should be a given, but especially don’t do it with people you’re mentoring.
2. Just because you’re getting attention from the people you’re mentoring it doesn’t mean they want to do you. The whole point of mentoring people is that they’re going to pay attention to you.

I read an article on Slate this morning and thought it was time to revisit the topic. The reason that I gave this post the shitty title I gave it on “doubling down” is that I’m going to go even further in this post. Because there are times when the attention being paid to a mentor really is sexual, or has a sexual component to it. There are times when a female student really does want to sleep with her professor; there are times when a gay male colleague really does want to sleep with his male mentor. I’m not going to keep giving examples, but you get the idea; you can mentally insert whatever gendered combinations you’d like – you have my blessing to spend a few minutes fantasizing about it if you want. In such cases it wouldn’t be sexual harassment to reciprocate, at least not in the usually understood sense (though it still might constitute professional misconduct), but – and this is crucial – it would still be a bad idea.

Unfortunately, most of the harm felt from this type of thing is felt by the protégés – especially female protégés – because that’s the way the world works: If you’re the one with more power things tend to work out well for you, and if you're the one with less power… too bad, kiddo, but if you want you can suck my cock to help you feel better. (I know it’ll make me feel a lot better than it’ll help you, but still… get to it.) With this in mind, much of the rest of this post will assume male mentors and female protégés, and I apologize for the gendered approach, but I also firmly believe that this is all about power, and the genders have unequal amounts of it, even when the gender roles are reversed (i.e. female mentors to male protégés), so that’s why there are even bigger impacts for male mentors and female protégés.

So why is it a bad idea for mentors to sleep with protégés, even when the protégés really want to? Let’s delve into it, shall we?

First of all, it’s an abuse of power. That should go without saying – it really, really should. I don’t care what the rules allow at your particular organization or institution or corporation, this isn’t about rules, it’s about power. If you’re mentoring someone you’re just simply not on equal footing, period. When you have sex it won’t be between two equals, no matter how much you’d like to think it is; there are many ways in which you are equals, I’m sure, but there are also fundamental ways in which you’re not, the mentor is in a position in which respect is expected or even demanded, and that’s going to taint the entire “relationship.”

Another problem, which is directly related to the abuse of power, is that this act is going to damage the reputation and/or career of the protégé. From that point on anything the protégé does professionally – good or bad – is going to have a stigma attached to it because of the relationship with the mentor. Did that coed get a nice spot on a research assignment? It’s probably because she was sleeping with the professor. Did she not get a nice spot on a research assignment? It’s probably because he doesn’t see her as anything other than a fuck-toy and doesn’t take her seriously. (And if he doesn’t, why should we?) And when she leaves college/university with a letter of recommendation from her mentor are recruiters going to take her seriously or just wonder “what she did to get that letter”? This last point is more valid in some professions than others; if there’s a close relationship between the private world and the college/university world, as is the case in some scientific areas, it’s very possible that everyone will know about the relationship.

And speaking of the word “relationship,” that’s definitely what we’re talking about. Even if this is a one-off incident rather than an ongoing affair it’s more intimate than the professor/student or mentor/junior resource relationship it started out as. Which means that the protégé is going to start seeing the mentor as a human being rather than a larger than life figure. Which, by the way, would normally be a good thing: a lot of mentors need to be reminded that they’re not gods they’re just people with slightly more experience (due to their earlier entrance into life than their protégés), and it would be good for both mentors and protégés to be reminded of the mentors’ humanity. But in this case the girl who’s slept with her mentor and sees him as he is instead of as a larger than life figure is now a lone voice in the wilderness. Everyone else (male and female) thinks this guy is amazing, but she now knows that he’s just a guy like everyone else. She knows the obvious things we’re all thinking about, like whether he’s good in bed or how big his cock is or whether he has any weird kinks, but she also knows other things about him: Does he talk in his sleep? Make weird noises when he eats? Fart a lot, in the comfort of his own home? Whatever she happens to know about him, she can’t share with anyone, because if she does they’re going to view it as sour grapes. “She says he has a small cock, but she’s just put out because she couldn’t get that spot on the research project.” At the very least, mentioning any of these things she knows is just going to emphasize that she has/had an affair with him, which, as we all know, for some reason means that people can have an excuse to take her less seriously (and doesn't really do much damage to him).

But here’s the thing: It’s also possible that a situation like this might extend beyond a single coed sleeping with a single professor. If a professor has a reputation for sleeping with his students, or is in a particular field where a lot of that kind of thing goes on (the Slate article mentioned that philosophy departments seem to have quite the reputation around this), then any coeds under that professor or in that department will become suspect. It’s bad enough if people know about a girl sleeping with her professor, that will damage her reputation (maybe his too, but much less), but any other girls under that professor will potentially also carry the same stigma. People will wonder about any girl who gets a nice spot on a research assignment under that professor; is she sleeping with him too? People will wonder about any girl who gets a letter of recommendation from him; what did she have to do to get it?

I’m making the point that this is much more damaging to the protégés than the mentors, but there are wider implications to an entire field. I mentioned above that the field of philosophy has been tainted by professors sleeping with students; ask yourself: do you really want to taint your entire field just so that you can fuck some coeds?

“So wait a minute,” some people might be thinking, “you’re saying that I can’t sleep with any of the people I mentor?” YES that’s what I’m saying! YES! Don’t sleep with anyone that you mentor! I get that it’s hard to resist when those hot young things are throwing themselves at you, but have some self control and ask yourself: Isn’t that problematic on its own? Do you maybe need to think about the reasons these girls are attracted to you? If it’s because you’re so intrinsically hot then you should be able to find other girls to fuck – ones you can fuck without impugning your entire profession – and if it’s not because you’re so hot, if it’s because you only seem hot because of your status as a mentor, then this whole situation is not flattering to you.

Then again, men are men. Chris Rock used to say that “men are basically as monogamous as their options,” and if he’s right maybe this whole thing is just about availability: she’s willing to fuck me? Then I’ll fuck her!

So what’s the answer? The Slate article mentioned some male mentors who try to avoid the whole situation by just staying away from women and girls altogether. If I don’t have any women in my lab then I can’t sexually harass any of them, right? And neither can any of them accuse me of sexual harassment! Problem solved! (And yes, guys in power tend to worry about the false accusation boogeyman a lot: “What if these chicks start accusing me of sexual harassment even if I’m not doing anything wrong?” It doesn’t happen nearly as often as they’d like you to think – really they’re hoping that real sexual harassment can be discredited – but they mention it all the time.) It should go without saying that this is making the problem worse; instead of getting sexually harassed, or having their careers ruined by sexual misconduct, we’ll just kick women out of the field altogether? How is that better?

There are some ways that male mentors can help, though. And female mentors as well, though I still think there is more damage done when a male mentor sleeps with a female protégé.

First of all, don’t sleep with people you mentor. Didn’t I say that above? A lot? Yes, and it bears repeating. Don’t sleep with people you mentor.

Secondly, I’ll repeat what I said in the other post on mentorship: when you’re mentoring someone a natural product of that relationship is that they’re going to pay a lot of attention to you, and maybe even flatter you. That’s part of the mentor/protégé relationship; don’t assume that every hot chick who flatters you wants to suck your dick. You’re her mentor, assume that that’s it. (If that’s not it – if she really does want to suck your dick – refer back to the previous paragraph: don’t do it.)

And my third piece of advice is related to the second: do your best, every minute of every day, to stop thinking of your female protégés as female protégés. They’re protégés. Period. As soon as you start thinking of them differently because of their gender you’ve started down the wrong path. You don’t have male and female lab assistants, you’ve got lab assistants; you don’t have male and female counselees at work, you have counselees; you don’t have male and female protégés, you have protégés. This one adjustment to your thinking can make all the difference. Even if that false accusation boogeyman were to raise its head and you got accused of sexual harassment even though you did nothing wrong, you’d have a lot more people on your side if you’d been treating people equally all along. If you’ve been sleeping with your protégés, on the other hand, and get falsely accused, people will be right to question you in this instance.