That is a ludicrous straw-man: I have not claimed that men are unable to treat women as people, or anything close to that. (The discomfort and awkwardness some people feel around attractive people also afflicts females in my experience.) Your pretensions to the contrary notwithstanding, I don't think I require your reading suggestions; why don't you read up on not making idiotic straw-man arguments out of what other people say instead.

@Sursula If someone has trouble talking to another person because they find that person attractive, they are not "unable to treat women as people." They are behaving differently because they're nervous. And yes, like all people, women do sometimes have to do their best to deal with the shortcomings of others (including men). Of course, the men in question still have a responsibility to fulfill their roles as mentors, teachers, etc. But the fact that they get nervous alone does not immediately make them whatever horrible image you seem to have in your head.

@Sursula as for your comment... "it even reflects negatively on your own gender" is fairly blatant sexism. People having opinions (read: stereotypes) about genders as a whole is precisely the problem

@DreamConspiracy If the men in question are unable to do their job (mentor) without acting inappropriate (making unwanted advances) because of their students gender and appearance, then yes, they are not the nicest persons IMHO.

Your opinion is (evidently) not humble at all.

@DreamConspiracy and: when you as a men make excuses for other men behaving inappropriately and making other people uncomfortable (this is what Ben is saying), it is not a stereotype that I am creating

@Ben Walk a mile a in womens shoes, and then we will talk again.

@Sursula: Same goes. If you are going to use the you-can't-know-what-it's-like-to-be-a-woman argument then by that standard you have no standing at all to comment on the lived experience of men and the social pressures that operate on them. Like most asinine identity politics arguments, it yields a stalemate.

@Ben and one last remark, while it may need some practice to talk to women "appropriately", by the time you have advanced to a position where you are mentoring people, the learning period should be over.

@Sursula: Yes, it should be, but that is precisely the nature of a shortcoming --- it is a deficiency relative to what is expected of you. Throughout my answer (which is highly sympathetic to the female complainant) I have said repeatedly that the behaviours of the men being described are shortcomings. I have merely noted that some men find it difficult to develop this aspect of their social skills. Your apoplectic reaction is not in proportion to this innocuous observation.

@Sursula: The problem is that unless you can read minds (and most of us can't), you can't possibly know when some innocently-intended remark (or even body language) could be misinterpreted, blown out of all proportion, and you find yourself dealing with bureaucracy. Safer to avoid the possibility. As for social skills and the like, some of us just don't have them. Nothing to do with women particularly: it's humans. Dogs & horses are much easier to get along with :-)

There's a lot of plausible speculation why some men may act less professionally than one should expect of them, but not much useful advice for OP.

@WernerCD I believe adolescence is the most appropriate time when one should learn (or have learned) not to get janked around by one's sexual affects. For some, it takes longer, but it it can be expected at any level where a degree of professionalism is required.

@henning while you can learn control, we live in a weird time where, for the first time in history, men and women are working together and have to figure out how to get along on a day to day basis. In the grand scheme of evolution, it's been not even an eyeblink since women gained the freedom to work outside the home. From feminine products to running water... They aren't tied to "home". How exactly can someone learn in adolescence how to work on a day to day basis when we, as a society, don't know how to do it properly yet?

@WernerCD where I live, most men manage to be professional around women. It doesn't exceed their individual capabilities.

@henning and where I live, we live in a world where even the hint of impropriety can lead to accusations which can lead to career ending consequences - even if nothing was done wrong. Why do people find it hard to believe that men might have just reason to be uncomfortable? I can - and do - act professionally... but I also know it only takes one accusation. The world TODAY is different than the world 5 or 10 years ago. How could someone learn in adolescence when the world is changing around them? My points: It's not as easy as "just work together" and it's not as easy as "you should know".

@WernerCD I guess where we have common ground is that men should and still can learn certain things, and perhaps we also agree that some simple things (like not letting your sexual affect determine who to take on as supervisee) they can be expected to know, at a certain level of their career at least.

I think the whole second paragraph should be removed. Supervisor/student relationships are inherently coercive because of the power differential; being a "nerd" is no excuse to make other people uncomfortable (it's everyone's job to learn social skiills, nerds included); and not hindering students' academic progress is a minimum job requirement for a professor.

@GregMartin Power differentials do not make it impossible to form consensual relationships. I find it astounding that you would even make such a claim.

I think people may be reading more into my second paragraph than what I actually want to impart. I agree that failure to have developed good social skills is a shortcoming, and I do not think it is okay that this persists into a professional environment. I actually agree with Elizabeth Henning that this is the kind of thing that should be developed in adolescence (or at least by early adulthood), so I certainly find it annoying (and silly) when I see male academics who are awkward around attractive female students. I think it is incumbent on men to treat female students professionally...

...but by the same token, it is incumbent on professional women not to interpret everything that they find personally uncomfortable as an offence against decency. Being an adult means that other adults may find you attractive, and you may need to deal with the clumsy advances of others. Learning to accept that and deal with this with an appropriate level of rigour/empathy is just as much a part of professionalism as the flip side of the coin.

As to the specifics of this situation, for the purposes of offering advice we take the OP's reports at face value, but really we don't know if she is interpreting things correctly, or misinterpreting (or being overly sensitive to) the actions of the men around her. Without detailed descriptions of the situation we really can't know if she is entirely a victim of the shortcomings of others, or if she is doing something wrong herself. Hence the single paragraph (in a very sympathetic post) trying to give some level of fairness to men who may be awkward around attractive women.

It may have not been unusual for couples to start as supervisor-mentee in the past, but at all the universities I know today, such a relationship would quickly land the supervisor/mentor out of a job. Even refusing to supervise someone because they were attractive would probably have you up in front of disciplinary hearing (and quite right if you ask me)

Yes, I certainly don't think that the attractiveness/unattractiveness of the student is a legitimate reason to deny supervision. However, one factor of relevance here is that the very fact that supervisor/student relationships are prohibited creates an incentive for a would-be supervisor to express their romantic interest in a student prior to supervision, in case it is a welcome overture and leads the student to choose them as a romantic partner instead of a supervisor. So even here, the rules create some interesting incentives that can create awkward situations.

The nouns “males” and “females” are usually terms reserved for non-human animals (and plants) and sounds quite weird (even dehumanising) when used in place of “men” and “women”. Is their use in your answer intentional?

@Ben Ping in case you hadn’t seen the above and weren’t notified (see previous comment)

@Ben The rules at my place certainly, and I would guess many others, prevent new romantic relationships between academics and any students in the department, and heavily regulate relationships between academics and any student of the university. I can't say for certain but I'm pretty sure romantic passes at applicants would be looked down on in the extreme as well.