argon

I have no idea how to respond to a co-worker thinking it is ok to ask me to look at a bunch of sexual pictures that all contain a "joke" of some sort. I'm speechless... There is a pretty creepy older Isreali post-doc that works in my lab and he's always asking me to read some stupid spam joke or look at a picture forwarded in an e-mail by someone, and usually i humor him and pretend im interested for 2 minutes. this time he loads up this slide show of a bunch of pictures making fun of palistinians that i dont understand because i cant read hebrew, he translates, i attempt to return to work, but he tells me he has some more and loads up an expensive slide show of sexually explicit pictures and proceeds to translate all the hebrew scrawled across the screen. I was stunned. I just sort of stood there not knowing what to do. I was pretty offended by most of the pictures and even more offended that he thought i would think it was funny. He has asked me out on psuedo dates a couple of times which i have respectfully declined. He is very inappropriate in his speech; he sometimes makes inappropriate comments about sex, or critisices unattractive women, and he is often quite racist. How do you tell someone you work with that you think they're a total ass-hole and still preserve a working relationship. How do you tell your supervisor that someone you work with is a total-ass hole and not look like a totall ass-hole yourself. Was this just a simple blunder that i should overlook. How many times do people have to sexually harass you before it is considered just cause to pursue action, legal or otherwise. And this is just a minor incident; What the Fuck would i do if someone i worked with or for was physically intrusive. It's really easy to say that women should always report harrassment, and its easy to critisise women that come forward with harassment charges only after other women have brought up charges of their own, but I really don't see many people taking women that bring up these sorts of complaints seriously. Look at how much critisism is heaped onto women that have brought up rape and harassment in the past. They are torn apart by the media and defense lawyers and in the end he defendant gets aquitted because the charges are too difficult to prove.

The world we live in is a shitty place for way more reasons than this. But I sure feel crappy.