I cannot believe that female surgeons are giving other female internees this advice. Are males (still) that bad with sexism? I must be living in a fool’s paradise. The following is from the Age newspaper in Australia. Probably her intention was to shock everyone into realising this problem has not disappeared and something radical had to change, but I don’t think her advice is acceptable, either.
A senior surgeon has fired back at criticism that she’s offering “appalling” advice to young surgical trainees by suggesting they’re better off staying silent if they’re sexually assaulted by a colleague.
Dr Gabrielle McMullin, a Sydney vascular surgeon, said sexism is so rife among surgeons in Australia that young women in the field should probably just accept unwanted sexual advances because coming forward could ruin their careers.
The comments, made in an ABC radio interview after she helped launch a book about gender equality at Parliament House in Sydney on Friday night, triggered angry reactions from sex abuse and domestic violence campaigners.
“It’s a sad indictment on us and the community when this is what women are being advised to do to benefit their career,” said Domestic Violence Victoria chief executive Fiona McCormack.
Centre Against Sexual Assault Victorian spokeswoman Carolyn Worth called the advice “appalling” and “irresponsible” because perpetrators thrive on not being challenged about their behaviour.
“I would have thought highly trained professionals would be able to operate a better system than that,” she said. “I actually don’t think that’s acceptable advice in this day and age.”
But Dr McMullin stood by her comments on Saturday, saying it was pragmatic advice which exposed the ugly reality of rampant sexism in male-dominated profession.
“I am so frustrated with what is going on that I really didn’t care, didn’t think what the reaction would be,” she said.
“All the phone calls that I have received since are from women saying, ‘Yes, thank you’. It’s been hidden and suppressed for so long and it’s only when it comes out in the open that you can do something about it. So, I guess this is my attempt to air it.”
Dr McMullin referred to the case of Dr Caroline Tan, who won a 2008 sexual harassment case against a surgeon while she was completing surgical training at a Melbourne hospital. Dr Tan was vilified and has been unable to find work at any public hospital in Australasia despite the legal victory, she said.
“Her career was ruined by this one guy asking for sex on this night. And, realistically, she would have been much better to have … ,” Dr McMullin said in the criticised ABC interview.
“What I tell my trainees is that, if you are approached for sex, probably the safest thing to do in terms of your career is to comply with the request; the worst thing you can possibly do is to complain to the supervising body because then, as in Caroline’s position, you can be sure that you will never be appointed to a major public hospital.”
When asked about those comments, Dr McMullin said: “Unfortunately, that’s true.”
She said new laws were needed to reward women for reporting sexual harassment rather than the current system of cash payouts and moral victories.
“My main advice would be do not put yourself in that situation, treat everybody as a potential attacker, and that’s a terrible thing to have to do,” she said.
Australian Medical Association Victoria president Dr Tony Bartone said he strongly disagreed with Dr McMullin’s advice to young women.
“This old view of acceptance needs to be eradicated,” he said.
“Sexual assault is a crime and will not be tolerated by our society. The medical profession is not exempt from this maxim.”
He said all public hospitals had procedures in place to allow employees to safely report everything from bullying to sexual assault. “There should not be negative consequences for reporting.”
The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons released a brief statement saying there were strict measures in place to deal with harassment and abuse of any kind.
“The College actively encourages Trainees and Fellows to come forward in confidence with any such allegations, which will be thoroughly investigated,” a spokesman said.
Dr Tan did not respond to requests for comment.
pitputim 
Hang on a moment, “unwanted advances” are not assaults. Someone who has been propositioned has not been assaulted, and it is wrong to conflate the two things. Calling an unwelcome proposition an assault only cheapens the term “assault” until we can no longer know, when someone complains of it, whether to take them seriously.
The proper way to handle an unwated advance is to politely decline, and perhaps to thank the person for the compliment. After all, the person is not a mind reader, and could not know in advance that his or her proposition would be unwanted. People don’t proposition others if they know they will be rejected; they do so in the hope of being accepted.
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There is a power play at hand here and you’ve missed the point. It can be harassment and not assault
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The term used in the article is “assaulted”, and what is described is not an assault.
A propsition is not harassment unless it is accompanied by a threat. The threat can be explicit or implicit, but it must be objectively there; the recipient’s unfounded fears, based on what other people have done to yet other people, do not turn a simple, polite proposition into harassment. So long as the propositioner takes “no” for an answer, s/he has done nothing wrong. Nor is there any reason why s/he should not ask again later, in case the recipient has changed his/her mind; a repeated proposition only becomes harassment when it follows so closely on an identical rejected one, and nothing has changed in the interim, so that it’s not reasonable to suppose it might now be welcome.
This is simply the way that people who are prutzim ba’arayos, both male and female, behave.
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Seems you don’t appreciate the real world of power imbalance and its implications
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Recently Boris Nemtsov was murdered. He had been working on a report containing what he described as proof of Russian military involvement in eastern Ukraine.
A few months ago Aberto Nisman was found shot dead on 18 January, the day before he was due to testify before Congress that Fernández had conspired to cover up Iran’s alleged involvement in a 1994 attack on a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.
At the Royal Commission we had a quite a few people testifyed anonymously because the didn’t want to increase the already serious repurcussions of having gone to the police.
Here, Dr Gabrielle McMullin is saying that if you want to work in medicine and don’t want to throw your 10 years of med school down the drain, she thinks the “best” course is to ignore the harassment. She is saying how it is, not how we want it to be.
Whistle-blowers hardly ever win. Society has to change not the victims.
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Today she said she didn’t want to be taken literally in her advice but shock everyone about the power imbalance.
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http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/top-surgeon-quits-the-alfred-hospital-amid-sex-harassment-claims-20150311-141d9h.html
“The case has divided The Alfred hospital and incensed the top surgeon’s supporters.”
“divided” means many condone the harassment?
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