Challenges Dr. Taylor has faced in her career and life

You would be surprised at the amount of barriers Dr. Taylor had while trying to establish herself as a sociologist. To begin with, as an Assistant Professor at Ohio State University, she had difficulty establishing herself because a lot of her work was qualitative, and the department was mainly quantitative. Because of this, it took a long time for Dr. Taylor to actually be accepted as a strong academic; many criticized because there was a very narrow criteria on where you were supposed to publish your material. Another problem she faced was the fact that many people in her department argued she should not become involved in gender and sexuality studies. It was believed that lesbian research on sexuality was marginal and not that important, and the department told her that if she studied sexuality, she would never receive tenure. Despite this, she continued to follow her passion and research it anyway.

Another big barrier that Dr. Taylor faced was with her graduate adviser. She was at first very hesitant to speak about it, but she finally said it would be okay if I put this information on the blog because she was sure her adviser would never see it.

Her graduate adviser at Ohio State University, whom she asked not to be named, became a little too involved in her around her second year of study. Her adviser sexually harassed her, and told her repeatedly that he had romantic feelings for her; at the time, Taylor said, there were no real rules against sexual harassment so there was nothing she could do. She tried to just deal with it as her studies went on, but in the end it became too much and she had to do a lot of the work on her own.

"I don't even know how I made it through all of that by myself, now that I think about it!" she says laughing as she talks with me. But she did, and despite this barrier, and the fact that so many people were telling her to stay away from the field of sexuality, she has succeeded and become on of the most prominent scholars in this field.

Resources provided from a phone interview between Dr. Verta Taylor and myself.