A new dawn of space exploration is upon us. NASA’s goal first lady and person of color land Send a crew on a one-and-a-half-year-long mission to the Moon by the end of 2025, and to Mars in the 2030s.
To ensure a safe and enjoyable journey to the last frontier, national agencies such as NASA and private companies such as SpaceX Both the technical and human factors associated with working and living in space must be addressed. Still, the realities of sexuality and intimacy are mostly abandoned in the space.
How long would people be able to live in the isolated, confined and extreme conditions of spaceships and other planets? How are people going to fall in love, have sex, and start and end relationships under such circumstances? How do people deal with stress, limited choice of intimate partners, and issues related to consent? And how will sexual harassment or assault be prevented or addressed?
On October 15, 2017, #MeToo launched a global movement against sexual harassment and assault. As researchers are exploring the human factors in space and space sexology – the study of intimacy and sexuality off Earth – we argue that it is time to plan for the future of #MeToo in space.
Sexual assault and space research
On December 3, 1999, Judith Lapierre, a Canadian nurse and social medicine researcher, 110-Day Mars Simulation Experiment Begins on a Mir Space Station Replica in Moscow, Lapierre was the only woman in the eight-member team.
A month into the study, the Russian commander in chief discussed running an experiment where Lapierre would be treated as a sexual object of the crew. On New Year’s Eve, he said it was time to “experiment”, and forcibly grabbed and kissed Lapierre despite repeated requests to stop.
Lapierre informed Canadian Space Agency and informed the commander of his Austrian crew, who demanded immediate action from local and international management,
When interviewed by the media after the experiment, Lapierre opened up about his expectations of a safe, harassment-free and violence-free work environment. Yet some Russian news outlets described and misrepresented him as the cause of sad and unrelated problems, including a physical altercation between members of the Russian crew,
Aggression was reduced to cultural differences during the simulation experiment. And since then, Lapierre’s time in the space sector became an uphill battle as she spoke,
As she describes in Rudolph and Werner Herzog’s 2022 film Final Exit: Space: “When that mission ended, it really affected my whole career because I thought it would be the beginning of my research project with the space agency or the beginning of my workspace, but I was completely taken out of the system.” was given.”
Other research references
Lapierre is not alone. Sexual harassment has also occurred in other contexts similar to the extreme conditions of real and simulated space environments.
a 2022 report commissioned by the National Science Foundation (NSF) showed that 72 percent and 47 percent of 290 female respondents agreed that sexual assault and sexual assault, respectively, are a problem in the United States Antarctic Program (USAP). As one of the survivors explained: “I know none of this is news to you, it’s just a known fact around the station. It’s so self-evident that [it’s] Barely worth speaking out loud. ]Sexual Harassment and Sexual Harassment]is a fact of life [here]Like the fact that Antarctica is cold and the wind blows.”
The NSF report highlights a lack of adequate prevention, reporting and response systems, as well as a lack of support for victim-survivors and a lack of trust in human resources and USAP leadership. And only a minority of the leadership agreed that sexual harassment (40 percent) and sexual assault (23 percent) are a problem at USAP.
This is not limited to the USAP. In 2021, employees of aerospace companies blue original and SpaceX Came out with an alarming series of sexual harassment and misconduct allegations.
in one open essayA group of 21 current and former employees of Blue Origin condemned a sexist work culture, inappropriate treatment of women and sexual harassment by senior leaders.
no end in sight?
For mankind to safely take its next step in the universe, the culture of space exploration must change.
These tragic incidents call on national agencies and private space companies to take a proactive stance against sexual harassment and assault. NASA and other space organizations must go beyond implementation basic anti-harassment policies, They should dedicate the necessary resources to setting up an appropriate prevention, reporting and response infrastructure, including support and protection of victim-survivors.
This may include the creation of separate oversight institutions composed of sexologists and qualified health and psychosocial professionals. It may also include investing Studying human relationships and sexual health in space,
Victims-survivors need to be part of the dialogue and resolution at every step. It is essential to ensure the safety of Earth-based and space environments, and ethically conducts much needed scientific research on human space life.
MeToo taught us that collective action is powerful. and in the Lapierre’s words,
“It is time, more than ever, to face the real challenges of space exploration, with honesty, transparency, and by acknowledging that unacceptable behaviors of Earth are also unacceptable behaviors of space to the civilization of space.”
Read also: NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 astronauts landed safely in the Atlantic after spending 170 days in orbit