Professor behaving oddly, but I don't want to persecute him I’m doing my masters (while working full-time) and one of my professors from last semester, who is teaching my class this semester as well, always asks me, “Did you get your husband to do your homework?” He also asks me if I'm married before giving me feedback. I wish he would just give me the feedback like he does for the guys in my class. I've told him it doesn't matter if I'm married or not but he laughed at me. I outright told him to stop multiple times and he didn't listen.

He also said, “You aren’t going to get your husband to come in here and beat me up, are you?” I think he was making a joke but I'm "on the spectrum" so I'm not sure. I just said "no" and kept staring at him. I'm very socially awkward.

I’m not married and I don’t wear any rings, I don't think he is thinking I'm married.

I was thinking of going to some university higher-up about it. I documented everything contemporaneously and they won’t be able to claim I’m bitter over a bad grade, because he actually gave me quite a good grade in my previous class. The current class has just started today so no grade yet.

I want to go to the program head or a higher up at the university. But I don't want to persecute my professor. I know there is a lot of persecution against conservative professors. I think he is just expressing the conservative view that women should be married by my age (I'm 30 - he doesn't know my exact age but can probably guess I'm 27-33). I understand the point of view, but sometimes it doesn't work out. My family believes the same and they tried to get me to married. My ex fiance and I were engaged for 10 months and ended it then, ended up for the better as we would definitely have divorced. Nevertheless, I am not against marriage. I am no liberal. I just want my professor to STOP asking me about my marital status but he won't listen. I want to go to higher ups but I don't want to persecute my professor either.



EDIT This is not sexual harrassment. He is only asking me if I am married before giving me feedback and to know that my husband has not completed my homework (which would be academic dishonesty). Not for sex purposes. He is not seeking any relationship with me so it's not sexual harrassment. It may be sex-based harrassment since he is not harrassing my male classmates however it is not sexual at all and thus cannot be sexual harrassment
Without going into legal definitions of what this is exactly, the bottom line is:

This is inappropriate, discriminatory behavior, and you shouldn’t put up with it.

It seems like you’ve already done your best to politely stop these kinds of comments with no success. The fact that you documented everything is really great. You should approach student affairs/ombudsman/Graduate studies division and report this. Keep a record of the report. 

I’m willing to bet that you’re not the first student that encountered this behavior. One could hope that you’ll be the last if you report him.

I want to tell you that your school will make sure that your grades won’t suffer and that the outcome will be that the professor will face disciplinary action. In cases like this it’s unfortunately not always the case. Even more severe cases (eg outright sexual assault) have been covered up by university officials because of their bad press repercussions. I hope your university will do better.

I’m sorry this happened...