“Welcome to my new blog series on gaps. Because gaps are often complex, simplistic, single-cause explanations, such as ‘discrimination,’ are rarely justified. I will be exploring specific gaps—racial, gender, political and more—and reviewing how social science evidence can and should influence our understanding of those gaps. I will be critically evaluating the ‘all discrimination all the time’ explanations for gaps advanced in many academic circles. I will be identifying a slew of explanations, other than discrimination, that can be a source of some or most or even all of many gaps.”
So, let’s get this clear. Jean-Yves Beziau, a Brazilian philosopher, was falsely accused of “sexism” and “homophobia” by a witch hunting gang of authoritarian bullies at prominent philosophy blogs (FP, DN, NA), despite Beziau being anti-sexist an anti-homophobic. There’s nothing “sexist” with the analogy that younger attractive women become less attractive – it’s a scientific fact of behavioral ecology and mating behavior. Weinberg, one of Beziau’s leading witch hunters, wants to continue his bullying and witch hunt of Beziau, and also wants to censor comments at DN pointing out the facts. So let’s respond to this aggressive authoritarian bully.
1. “The comment had been flagged for moderation (see the comments policy page for how that works). I can see why it was flagged. It’s very obnoxious and silly.”
It is Weinberg who is an obnoxious authoritarian bully.
2. “The line “witch-hunted by an online mob of PC enforcers who have made whole careers out of imagining sexism where none is present” is ridiculous.”
It is true. It is the obnoxious witch hunters who should be ashamed of themselves.
3. “Beziau was not “witch-hunted.”
Beziau was publicly witch hunted, by an obnoxious authoritarian named “Justin Weinberg” and his obnoxious bullying mates.
4. “Rather, he was criticized for some really strange, gratuitous remarks on topics unrelated to the thesis of his paper, which drew attention to the quality of the paper and its editing, which in turn raised questions about a journal’s policies and more generally about the practice of having special issues of journals.”
To excuse his public smearing and harassment of professional philosophers, Weinberg now lies. Beziau was publicly smeared as a “sexist” and a “homophobe”. This is disgraceful.
5. “I also don’t know who has made “whole careers out of imagining sexism where none is present,” in part because I don’t see a lot of false accusations of sexism in philosophy—there’s some,”
The false accusation was made against Beziau by Weinberg, an obnoxious authoritarian bully, and his obnoxious authoritarian mates.
5. “I’d guess, but certainly not enough for anyone to have made a “whole career” out of.”
Like you and your academic failure mates, Weinberg?
6. “The thing is, he is not a trustworthy testifier on this topic.”
Why would anyone trust an obnoxious authoritarian bully like Weinberg? Weinberg engages in aggression and bullying; and then blames those, like Diogenes, who protest about Weinberg’s aggression and bullying.
7. “I suspect Diogenes wouldn’t know sexism if it put his hand on his thigh. But since he did not direct this insult at anyone in particular I’ll let it slide this time.”
Irrespective of what Weinberg “suspects”, the fact is that Weinberg’s enthusiasm for sexist witch hunts, authoritarianism and public bullying of professional philosophers is legendary.
8. “In general, I’m ok with erring on letting Diogenes’ silly remarks through.”
How brave of the authoritarian bigot to tell us he’s “ok”! No, Weinberg, you’re not “ok”. You’re an aggressive authoritarian bully, known for public smearing and harassment of professional philosophers.
9. “The people who should really be concerned with his comments are serious philosophers who have thoughtful complaints about whether political considerations, worries about offensiveness, and social conformity are playing too large a role in contemporary philosophy.”
Weinberg et al’s method of ensuring conformity by publicly destroying people has a terrible history in the 20th century: it was the method of Stalin and Hitler and their henchmen.
Lots happening at the Pilos… our News in the Profession segment went really well, with some very able people chipping in. We put up a collage in honour of Putnam, who will be missed. Feel free to share your favourite stories there, or simply say how you feel.
Next up we are probably going to continue with Pilos Profiles. Any suggestions of philosophers to cover?
Thanks, these are all great suggestions. Not sure about the true nature of NS yet but Jason Stanley seems like a fine candidate!!! Stay tuned. First we have to complete Bertand Russell’s life.
How about various philosophers who’ve been publicly smeared and witch hunted by the SJW crowd led by Saul, Weinberg, Barnes, Schliesser et al over the last couple of years?
Apparently, Saul’s new social justice project is called “What is it like to be a feminist rapist in philosophy”, profiling her convicted rapist feminist colleague, Anna Stubblefield.
Of course, all the greatest logicians and philosophers have all been women. They enter the discipline and suddenly there is progress, because they are at least as brilliant as all men or have the special female perspective that unclouded of male chauvinism sees truth immediately.
I can’t tell if you’re being serious. But just in case you are: the lack of consensus about something has little bearing on whether it is true or reasonable to believe/assert. If you think Edgington’s solution clearly fails to be either true or reasonable to believe/assert, write up a paper arguing as much and submit it to Mind. Take care to use a few keywords from this thread so that when I referee the article I’ll know it’s from a meta-meta-meta-blogger and put it on the fast track for acceptance.
Lance the Boil claims that Ranksalot’s suspicions are a “patent absurdity”. But that dude is all over Facebook, rude as hell (by his own admission!) to anyone who disagrees with him, and especially to young philosophers. That he doesn’t see this as bullying behavior is hilarious.
Sorry, but I can’t take people seriously who as professors use the same language as highschoolers (Kukla).
Has she finally found someone who is willing to put his/her/its penis/hand/tool into her underfucked supermuscular vagina on a regular basis? Because people like Lance and Kukla become the persons they are because of sexual frustration. Turns out your fuckability decreases heavily if you are an self-absorved sanctimonious asshole.
Spare me that bullshit about etiquette! It is the internet, an anonymous blog that thrives on the insane actions and statements by the profession’s best connected people. There is exactly one person that occurs constantly in online discussions whose arguments and behaviour is impeccable: David Wallace.
I find it funny that all the character assassination is fine with everyone across all blogs as long as they fit some party allegiance. Making fun of someone with relatively harmless attacks is somehow bad, because it uses such nasty words as “vagina”. Sorry, but when I came across her piece in the HuffPo about her new sports regimen I could only think about some of those pathetic craigslist ads for hooking-up, especially with those pictures.
And yes, I think people like Kukla, Lance, Saul, Stanley, even Leiter deserve all the ridicule they can get. None of them has shown any dignity in the way they respond to views they might find not in line with their own. They all resort to either name calling of a much worse kind or use their power to suppress others.
Where was the big outcry when some people insinuated repeatedly (and falsely) that TS has had a string of relationships with UG students? That is actually slandering and let to only a few critical responses.
there’s an obvious difference between ridiculing someone for their foolish views and insulting them based on their “supermuscular vagina” (whatever the fuck that means), which is misogynistic and puerile. The metablog can be a great place to mock Lance et al, *for their views and posturing,* particularly since grad students and junior faculty cannot do so under their own names. However, the above insult just reinforces the view that this place is a cesspool.
It’s important that we refrain from reinforcing this impression, because, despite their protestations otherwise, I imagine that many people in the profession read this blog, at least occasionally. A good way to push more people toward the SJW side of things is to keep up the misogyny.
And they ought to know how great the disdain for them as academics and as public personae is. They are not open to arguments, they simply do not process them. The whole problem is not that they entertain certain ideas and hold certain opinions, it is that they are not any longer engaged in discussion but in a crusade.
Would you engage with Trump and Cruz in a debate? No!
To shut up narcissists you tell them how disgusting they are on every level.
I agree that the person who made the “supermuscular vagina” comment shouldn’t have done so. It’s a low blow and it makes the PMMMB look bad. There are plenty of good critiques of the social justice warriors that are fair and intellectual and keep it clean.
Still, it’s stupid to call the comment “misogynistic”. What a wild conclusion, to assume from the fact that the person made that silly joke that he hates women in general! What the fuck? Like the vagina comment, it really discredits the case if the person who made it. Thoughtful people don’t jump to wild but trendy conclusions that easily.
The “supermuscular” comment was painful, yes. But it simultaneously theorized that a man (Lance) and a woman (Kukla) have the views they do because they aren’t getting lad, which in turn is because they’re not “fuckable”. Cringeworthy? Yes. Unfair? Yes. A low blow? Yes. But the misogyny charge doesn’t hold water. It’s clearly not even the car that a woman is being singled out for special criticism, since in that same sentence a man is given the same criticism.
The reference to muscularity is clearly a riff on the fact that Kukla never stops bragging publicly about her strength training, depicting herself in gym costume lifting weights, etc. If a male philosopher did what she does and constantly harped on the details of his weight lifting routine and accomplishments at the gym, we’d at least say it was annoying. The person who made this comment about her was doing what many comedians do and what has been done here about many other antiheros: finding a distinctive but innocuous feature about the person he’s criticizing in order to make some fun. In this case, the sexual element of the criticism of both her and Lance crossed the line of good taste. But calling it misogyny is just knee-jerk mindlessness.
I wrote both the original comment and the comment you responded to. Was it in bad taste, of course. Do I regret it? No. Is it insulting? I hope so. I honestly find the insinuating of mental deficiencies much more insulting than any reference to bodily features. So any complaints about the mentioned neuroses would have been more apt in my opinion. Of course it is not mysoginistic as you aptly explained.
But as I wrote, the SJWs and Leiter to a lesser degree use insults far more severe and at a higher frequency. And in the former case, there really is no reasoning possible. The are crusading and nothing short of force will stop them. I am not saying that this force is physical (of course this would be totally wrong), but they need to taste their own medicine and need to be shut down.
I don’t understand why you think mentioning a man gets the poster off the hook for misogyny. If a person wrote a long post describing Obama using stereotypes about black people, and then chucked in an ‘oh yeah, and (white politician) also has feature X’ it would still be racist.
And bringing up a woman’s attractiveness/fuckability and using her supposed lack of both to discredit her is a sexist stereotype. Going into detail describing her genitals is gross (and note, that if you think ‘parity’ rescues the case here, the male is not described in that same level of detail at all.
I think if you’re objecting to the use of ‘misogynistic’ here it may be because you are operating with an unusually narrow view of what the term means. It doesn’t simply refer to comments which, for example, explicitly state “I hate women.” All you need to do is google it to see that most definitions of misogyny are broader than simply ‘hatred of women’ and also include things like ‘contempt for women’ or ‘prejudice against women’. A quick google will also throw up tons of examples in which the broader definition is clearly the one being used. And the comment under discussion pretty clearly shows not just contempt for *a* woman, but is making features of the target’s gender and sexuality a focus of the criticism when there is no particular reason to do so. The insult is in part successful because evaluating women in terms of their appearance/fuckability in a professional setting (by which I mean this is a blog about philosophy, and is evaluating her participation in the philosophical community) is a particularly effective way to undermine them, and is not so frequently or successfully used to undermine men.
(Similarly, there are some insults which, when aimed at men, are in part successful because they invoke sexist stereotypes against men. They’re of course also sexist, even if the so-called ‘joke’ doesn’t explicitly say “I hate men” but relies on some negative stereotype.)
I mean, do you think it is just a total coincidence that the poster chose to use an insult like that rather than almost any other kind of insult they could have used that insulted Kukla about something that was actually relevant in this case, like what she said/did etc? Isn’t it a bit bizarre to go straight from talking about someone’s annoying way of talking to some weird tirade about whether or not they are getting laid? Why go there – well, because it is a particularly effective way to undermine a woman.
12:20,
Sorry, your justifications are just as off as your original charge of misogyny.
If someone described both Obama and a white person as having a characteristic that black people are often thought to have, the fact that the describer also describes a white person that way *would* make the attribution of racist intent less plausible. Also, it is commonly said of both men and women that they are tense because they haven’t got laid recently. So is criticizing people by calling them unattractive. Happens with men all the time. Open your eyes and stop trusting feminist theory to guide you, and you’ll see it everywhere. What: nobody criticizes Donald Trump’s appearance or fuckability? Come on.
The difference between the description of Lance and the description of Kukla is that Kukla is described with the word “muscular”. What you don’t seem to be getting is that Kukla repeatedly writes and boasts about how muscular she is. That’s the basis of the (tasteless and unnecessary) joke.
I also never said or thought that misogyny requires one to say the words “I hate women”. I know, hatred or contempt for women = misogyny. I’m denying that the joke implies a general hatred or contempt for women our a bias against women. It seems you’ve been conditioned to feel entitled to engaged in mind-reading when you hear something unkind said about a particular woman and to think, aha, the explanation for this can only be that the writer has a general hatred for women. That’s just jumping to conclusions. There’s as much evidence of woman-hatred here as there is evidence of a general hatred of bodybuilders. Like a disturbing number of people in academia these days, you’re applying the word “misogyny” way too carelessly.
Well put 1:43. The mind-reading stuff is spot on. People need to stop impugning vicious motives on the basis of such scant evidence. And it doesn’t help when it’s gussied up with groupthink for reading the tealeaves of misogyny.
Loving Rebecca Kulka’s measured response: “My new plan is to bombard him with screenshot after screenshot of me typing things like go fuck yourself Brian and mind your own fucking business Brian and what the ever-living fuck are you even talking about Brian.”
Isn’t this where we’re meant to raise the delicate issue of ‘civility’ Rebecca?
Lance (and all of his “comrades,” who are falling all over themselves to show “solidarity” [read: kiss ass] on fb) are trying to capture the discipline in order to propagate all of their goofy bullshit views. Thus, bullying is OK so long as its aimed at the right targets. If BL emails someone repeatedly to mind their own fucking business, that’s causing “harm.” Rebecca Kooky does it and, you know, it’s all for the cause! I mean, who doesn’t get angry on social media sometimes?
All in the name of the oppressed, right guys? How fortunate are the oppressed, to have a wealthy Georgetown professor with a GRUELING workout routine (did I mention how in shape Lance is? because, he is. he needs to be ready for when the revolution arrives).
Darlene Deas posted at Leiter’s blog late last year. Being both funny and sensible, this caused some FP feminist fruitloops to throw a tantrum at Deas. One of the loons – Fempedo, Einsatz, Pogin, Yapper? – came over to the metablog, whining about Deas’s mentioning buying a coffee pot on amazon. Feminist loon complained about Deas’s “tone” and how it made the femloon feel “uneasy”. Hence the coffee pot joke.
1. Sir Ranksalot (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)
2. Glaucon loses to Sir Ranksalot by 10–4
3. Diogenes of Sinope loses to Sir Ranksalot by 12–2, loses to Glaucon by 8–4
4. Tied:
Spiros loses to Sir Ranksalot by 13–1, loses to Diogenes of Sinope by 5–4
Pilos aka Purple Haze loses to Sir Ranksalot by 13–3, loses to Diogenes of Sinope by 6–4
6. Tied:
Magickal Replacement loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Spiros by 7–2
Rooster Burn loses to Sir Ranksalot by 13–1, loses to Spiros by 5–3
Crispy Artwell loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–0, loses to Spiros by 6–2
Generic Lou loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Spiros by 7–2
10. Justice Whineberg loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Crispy Artwell by 4–3
11. Jenny from the Blog loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Justice Whineberg by 4–2
12. Philodaria loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Jenny from the Blog by 3–1
13. The Ghent Balloon loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Philodaria by 4–2
14. Tied:
Comrade Drabek loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to The Ghent Balloon by 4–2
Mr. Can’t Stop Rough Blogging about Chalmers and Stanley loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–0, loses to The Ghent Balloon by 4–2
16. Splinter loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–0, loses to Mr. Can’t Stop Rough Blogging about Chalmers and Stanley by 2–1
17. Ed “Blackadder” Quasiarian loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Splinter by 2–1
18. Noetika loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Ed “Blackadder” Quasiarian by 2–1
19. Tied:
Brotevi loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–0, loses to Noetika by 3–2
Lance-a-lot loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–0, loses to Noetika by 3–0
What is the meaning of the poll? Does voting for Jenny Fempedo, Magical Einsatz, Justice Whineberg, Louie Genitals or the Balloon mean you like their stuff? Or rather that you think they’re deranged zealots or something similar? Well, Fempedo and Einsatz are deranged zealots; whereas Whineberg, Genitals and the Balloon are merely narcissistic bullies.
Imagine with me that a philosopher (let’s call him “TP”) has been accused of sexual misconduct. Several friends, students, and colleagues step forward, all testifying that TP isn’t that sort of guy. “He didn’t harass or assault *me*!”, they say. “TP would never do that!” Or, “That’s not at all the TP I know! The charges are humbug”.
Would such testimonials from friends, students, and colleagues be given much weight? No, they would not, and rightly so. For they have no bearing at all on the testimony of those who claim that TP has engaged in misconduct towards them. They are besides the point. And in a way, they are a tool of epistemic injustice, for they mostly serve to silence the voices of victims.
It is interesting to see a structurally similar situation unfold with respect to Lance. On his Facebook page, friends, students, and colleagues are stepping forward to say that ML isn’t the sort of guy to bully, that he’d never do that, and that “well, he never bullied *me*!”. These little testimonials completely miss the point, and they should be given as little weight as “character witnesses” are given in the context of allegations of sexual misconduct.
I was thinking much the same. In the thread ML even admits he is “rude” at times. How does he (and his univocal chorus of facebook “friends”) *know* that at least one of these instance of “rudeness” did rise to a case of bullying, harassment, or intimidation of a junior colleague for sharing a link to a blog he doesn’t like? I’m not saying it did, I have no idea. But this is the same guy who has just quoted Black Socrates warning us about sanctimonious white knights having inadequate self awareness and epistemic humility! But expect to see much more of these antics if, thanks to the APA and its supporters, we continue down the path of “niceness” a professional norm.
Indeed. If someone had an interesting philosophical project to carry on they wouldn’t spend time SJWing. All of these people are nobodies or have-beens.
For the poster above who asked about the backstory to Darlene’s coffee pot. This was posted in the first March thread:
Good to see there’ll be return at Leiter’s blog for Darlene Deas. Who can forget the femtrum against Deas last year! And the femloon who wandered over here to complain about Darlene’s problematic coffee pot, and her “tone” …
I think the following memorable comment summed it all up.
——-
Yeah, her tone. What a tone! I can’t believe someone would have a tone like that. Especially a woman outside the profession. Did I mention the tone? So inappropriate! who has such a tone?
And that coffee pot: geez, don’t get me started. How completely inappropriate! And surely there’s some reason why that coffee pot post appeared on Leiter at the same nanosecond as someone was sexually harassed. Timing, anyone? And we’re supposed to believe that it’s a coincidence.
If it were just the tone, I’d have felt strange, but let it go. If it were just the coffee pot, I’d have felt uneasy, but let that go, too. But both together from the same person? And combined with the timing? Hello… this is mega inappropriate. Yet another reason why Leiter needed to step down from the PGR and why we’re better off with the SPEP report. Leiter didn’t just provide Deas with a platform, he also has a tone problem himself. To say the least. Also, he has a coffee pot. He may have also recommended that others buy a certain coffee pot on Amazon. And PLEASE nobody say that he didn’t just because he wasn’t publicly accused of doing it. Word gets around about these things. ‘Nuff said.
So Deas has got to go. It’s not just the feminists who think so anymore, it’s the dyed-in-the-wool antifeminists who are fed up with her tone and her coffee pot remarks. Never mind the content of her comments: really, really, please, I beg you, don’t read her comments for the content and think about it. Just remember that coffee pot thing and nod your head and play along. And her tone. And her timing. And then let’s all just agree that she’s making it hard for anyone to take the problems with academic feminism seriously. Really. We can do better. No more Deas.
Seconded. It’s boring and dumb. Even just considering humor alone, these people should be easy as hell to lampoon and some boring weiner/vagina/fuckability jokes are the best folks have got? Yeah, a real comedic crack squad we’ve got working the room here.
Whatever Mark Lance has said against Leiter (I’ve no idea), Lance had a reputation at the New APPS blog back in the day – maybe 2011 or thereabouts – for repeatedly insulting and bullying other commenters. Pretty sure even was made to back down on occasion because of his aggressive certainty of his own opinion. Not surprising then that people might eventually get sick of his aggression towards others.
I looked at a sample of Lance’s comments from New Apps from around 2011, and I did not find anything that I would call insulting or bullying. Mostly, he was quite appropriately clinical in discussing ideas, considering and sometimes answering objections, and so on. I saw one exchange where Lance was a bit condescending, addressing an anonymous and quite annoying interlocutor as “dear boy” — hardly a serious case of bullying.
So far, however, no “evidence” of Lance-a-lot’s alleged bullying. If Sir Ranksalot has some, he should produce it, otherwise he should take the post down and perhaps apologize. I don’t much care for either of those two, but it is not right to publicly assert something that damages someone’s character and have no evidence to back it up that would show that it deserved to be so asserted.
I’ve seen it several times: Lance is trying to make it socially unacceptable to link to Leiter Reports, so he posts scathing comments underneath people’s status updates. He will fail and that’s probably he seems to have stopped of late, even before Leiter called him out.
“…. otherwise he should take the post down and perhaps apologize”
Is Leiter not merely reporting what others have said? If others have accused Lance, then by normal philosophy profession standards, he is guilty. Are you seriously suggesting we need a “due process culture”? What a peculiar idea! I thought it had been established (by Anna Stubblefield’s Rutgers colleague, Prof Ruth Chang) that evidence is irrelevant to truth and that accusation is guilt?
Similarly, is Jean-Yves Beziau not automatically guilty of “sexism” and “homophobia”, based on the accusations from Audrey Yap, Justin Weinberg, et al? Should they take down their accusations against Beziau and apologise? Similarly, is Laura Kipnis not automatically guilty of something based on accusations from Lauren Leydon-Hardy and Kathryn Pogin? Should Leydon-Hardy and Pogin et al take down their posts and apologise?
Your suggestion seems to be that the SJW tactic used in the philosophy world – false accusation and public smear/shaming campaign – should end. How likely is that? When will FP and DN announce a moratorium on their tactic of false accusations and smear campaigns?
The difference is that those saying Beziau said sexist stuff could point to the passages and say “see, that’s what I mean.” People could disagree, but there was material that people could disagree about. Here, no one has produced any material about Lance that could be scrutinized as to whether it constituted bullying or not. So let’s see what kind of dossier Leiter is able to compile.
It is true that Leiter has not produced evidence, other than accusation. However, the guiding assumption of philosophy’s SJWs is that accusation = guilt. This is the SJW tactic, used over and over, to fuck up people’s lives, in serious ways, without evidence. No one wants a “due process culture” – Ruth Chang said so. Philosophy’s SJWs – Saul, Weinberg, Schliesser, Chang, Barnes et al – have made the “rules” that the profession is expected to live by. It looks like Leiter is simply playing by the SJW “rules” to teach them a lesson. Perhaps SJWs might treat this as a “learning experience”, that mere accusations are not evidence? And that some accusers are lying bastards? Maybe SJWs will begin taking down their false accusations and issuing apologies?
I have just one last response to this total bullshit. I am literally shaking with anger, and literally finding it hard to type. Please remove my name from the petition. I do not want to be associated with it any longer. Your bullying and obtuseness have made me unwilling to be associated with it. I know you are a good philosopher, so your utter refusal to follow the argument is perplexing. In any case, I no longer wish to have my name on a petition initiated by you.
I was about to post the same quote! I can’t get into NA archive comments on Tor for some reason, but it was some philosopher, Neil somebody, overflowing with good will toward the NA program and trying to engage with, I think, the Gendered Conference Campaign. He was reduced to a quivering mass of rage by an egregious case of what was a constant feature of ML’s tenancy at NA, viz his patronizing, snide, nasty and — yes — bullying responses to commenters, including sometimes friendly ones.
If you enter “shaking with anger” into the New APPS search box, this comes up: http://www.newappsblog.com/2012/09/leitersresponse.html The “Neil” in the thread is almost certainly Neil Levy, who has posts at Oxford and Melbourne, and who mutually kissed and made up with Lance by the time the thread closed. So not a grad student or junior faculty.
“matt smith said…
…. Not to put too fine a point on it, people can disagree with Lance and Schliesser without thereby demonstrating that they are stupid jerks who need to be told off. I was interested in Leiter’s (and others’) response to this project and came over here to read New APPs. What I found was vitriol and pettiness. Lance’s pointlessly snide comments about “obviously”? Come on. So what if that annoyed Lance? He’s the one with the power here. He should let it go and try to respond respectfully and constructively. I don’t think that this is meant to be a place for slamming people’s faces into the dirt if one spots a argumentative failure. … Also, more pointedly – I call on Schliesser to be as willing to call out Lance’s abuse of power as he is willing to call out other people’s bad arguments. …
21 September 2012 at 06:00″
Keep reading. Lance and Schliesser both apologize in a couple of comments afterwards, with Lance saying “To all the readers: I apologize again for contributing to the degenerating tone. And I hereby resolve to take up Matt’s approach, to ignore rhetoric that offends me and simply respond to substance.”
Then Smith says in reply to Lance: “Mark – that is really, really gracious of you. You deserve a lot of praise. I appreciate your openness to constructive interventions, even if critical. I meant to be constructive since I support the goal of gender equality in the profession. As my dad would have said, thanks for being such a mensch… Finally, it sucks that Leiter is using my comment in the way that he is. I am going to email him.”
COWEN: But is it at least possibly the case that we’re seeing the greatest threat to intellectual diversity in some of the areas which matter least, and when the stakes are high we overcome it. Physics looks pretty good, computer science looks pretty good.
HAIDT: No, it’s not — there are two universities now, but it’s not which ones matter more and which ones matter less. It’s what is the sacred value. The sacred value of universities from sometime in the 19th century through maybe the 1980s was truth. Now it was not perfect, but we all talked that way. Look at the mottos of Harvard and Yale — Veritas, Lux et Veritas, it’s right there on the motto, veritas, truth.
We made a big show — it was largely true — of saying this is what we’re here for, we’re here to find truth. But in the 1970s and ’80s as we had a big influx of baby boomers who were involved in social protest, who were fighting for very good causes, civil rights, women’s rights — they flood into the academy in ’70s and ’80s, they get tenure in the ’80s and ’90s, but also in the 1990s, the Greatest Generation begins to retire. There were a lot of Republicans who became professors after World War II.
But the ’90s is the decade where everything flips. At the start of the 1990s, the overall left‑right ratio of the academy, taking all departments, was two to one, just twice as many people on the left as right. That’s fine, that’s not a problem. But by 2005, it had gone to five to one, five people on the left for every one on the right. Those people on the right are mostly engineering, nursing, things like that. If you look at the core — the humanities and the social sciences, other than economics, it’s closer to 10 to 1 or 20 to 1.
In other words, right‑wing, or libertarian, or social conservative voices have basically vanished between 1995 and 2005. This has made us unfunctional, but it’s in the social sciences and humanities where the sacred value has become social justice and the protection of victims. That’s the division. One university of the sciences still pursues truth, the other university in the social sciences and humanities pursues social justice.
[…]
COWEN: Let’s say you were put in charge of undergraduate admissions at Yale, and you could more or less do what you thought was best without constraint, what would you change?
HAIDT: Oh gosh, I’d change a lot of things. One thing that I would do is I would start admitting for signs that you can contribute to an intellectually diverse environment. That means that I would look for people who — so Yale in particular, but all of the top schools have a huge problem, that they have basically social justice warriors who are so empowered, so angry, that they dominate discourse and you basically have the small illiberal left has completely terrorized the larger liberal left.
Yale right now is quite dysfunctional. Students there say they can’t speak up, they can’t speak up in class, they feel pressure on Facebook, if somebody sends around a petition for some left-wing cause they have to endorse it, even if they don’t want to. Yale’s a mess right now, as a lot of schools are. That should be the top diversity issue, is intellectual diversity. I would stop admitting for social justice cred, in other words, if you say, “Oh, I started this protest group, and we got this overturned.”
Basically I think a lot of students know is the way to get into a top school is show your social justice activism. Well, top schools are now full of social justice activists, and they’re no longer places where people can say anything that contradicts the social justice activists. What’s that old joke? “Doctor, it hurts when I do this. Well, stop doing this.” They should stop admitting social justice warriors and start admitting people they’ve got the guts to disagree.
[…]
COWEN: What’s the best replacement for religion in modern, secular society?
HAIDT: Oh boy, the best replacement.
COWEN: Good question. Durkheimian question.
HAIDT: Yeah. A few years ago I would have tried to give you an answer and say we should have some other sacred value to replace it, but given what’s happened in the last year on campuses, I’m really afraid of it, because you might think, “Humanitarianism should replace it. We should all have a religion of helping the poor, helping each other.” Now, of course, it’s really important to help the poor. It’s really important to help people who are oppressed.
But once you make it a religion, that means you are impervious to evidence. You are committed to certain religious rituals even if those rituals make things worse. For example, I’ve been studying the research on affirmative action and diversity training. As far as I can tell there’s no evidence that they make things better and there is some evidence that it makes things worse.
Now, it’s messy. I can’t say for sure that they do, but the point is, we seem to be doing things on campus that are making things worse. The activists are largely asking for things that will make things worse. Much more affirmative action, much bigger racial preferences, which will cause much bigger gaps between Asians at the top and African-Americans at the bottom. Which is going to inflame prejudice, not reduce it.
Once you make something a religion, you’re not open to evidence. You do really crazy, stupid things. What I would say is, let’s not have a replacement for religion. Let’s set things up so that there isn’t a big religion that unites us all to take on our enemies. Let’s try to return to a climate in which people find meaning and purpose in their private lives and in their smaller associations, but we don’t have a big sense of national purpose.
Yale should admit students on the basis of their political ideology: so says Jonathan Haidt, the liberal social psychologist.
Hooray for politicizing the college admissions process! Go, Jonathan!
From my experience in elite universities there are *plenty* of “social conservatives” running around on campus. The idea that they’re not being admitted is laughable.
If the “social conservative” intellectual well is drying up, it’s because these folks are on the wrong side of history with regard to civil rights for minorities, women, and LGBTQ folks. Read any Ross Douthat column if you want an idea of the (lack of) intellect these people bring to the table.
Butler is giving the Tanner Lectures at Yale. Stanley is enthusiastic about it (and his response to her) on social media. Leiter denounces Butler as an obscurantist bullshitter on his blog. Know where philosophy is headed if the SJWs consolidate their power-grab.
You know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may think he’s
Really sick and they won’t take him.
And if two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and
They won’t take either of them.
And if three people do it! Can you imagine three people walkin’ in, singin’
A bar of “Butler Bullshits” and walkin’ out? They may think it’s an
Organization!
And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people a day . . .
Walkin’ in, singin’ a bar of “Butler Bullshit” and walkin’ out? Friends,
They may think it’s a MOVEMENT, and that’s what it is.
I find this the most fascinating thing about the current election: the discovery that the real source of the contemporary culture of narcissism, entitlement, and SJW pseudo-leftism was the Baby Boomers all along, never the millennials! Every single characteristic that has been used to slander millenials–the it’s my turnism, the priveleged whining about injustice, the constant accusations of racism and sexism–have been the defining features of the Clinton campaign and its supporters.
It’s not such a surprise, I suppose. The baby boomers, the true entitlement generation, as teachers and helicopter parents and grandparents tried to get the kids to swallow their crap, then used their kids as scapegoats. The kids vomited it back up for a while. But eventually they got sick of it and left for Bernie, the ideological equivalent of the pre-boomers.
And that friends is what is called begging the question. Assuming you already know what a liberal society is, unargued for, and using it to critique an article that sets out to establish what exactly the right not to be harassed or the right to free speech could mean when the state allows for free and private associations. I’m excited when you to run into a Catholic church on Sunday and yell “Hail Satan” and then wonder why they throw you out. I HAVE A RIGHT NOT TO BE HARASSED… FREE SPEECH!
Does anyone outside the SPEP-New Consensus matrix think that Penn State has done something laudable by fêting and graduating an impressive number of black women? Here in Athens, a philosophy degree from PSU worth about as much as abiology degree from Bob Jones University. Is it different elsewhere?
They’re referring to Ragin’-mad Kinnon. I can’t see any value in posting creepy stalker-y updates about “sightings” online though, let alone the “freakish” comments. That’s just unpleasant, as bad as anything she’s ever done. Stick to criticizing her obnoxious online interactions with other philosophers: plenty to write about there.
+2 – no reason to tell us about “sightings” of Rage Machine. Rage is a minor player in the ecology of philosophy’s free-fall into SJW hysteria, witch hunts, paranoid conspiracy theories and all around lunacy.
“Oct 8, 2011, 2:44 PM from Spoon. Tomorrow I think. He’s not staying with me, he’s staying with another friend. Unrelated: why is Jennifer fucking with me? Why won’t she just give me my paper with comments? Answer: because she *likes* fucking with me, because she is evil.”
The preposition “with” in the first sentence should be included in the second. But then you couldn’t get a hate-fap going, so I guess I see why you dropped in.
“Because our study found that women are less likely than men to en-
joy the use of thought experiments as philosophical methodology (Sec-
tion 4.3), it might be appropriate for instructors to incorporate a wider
variety of philosophical methodologies and sources in their classes
(e.g., experimental philosophy, scientific readings relevant to philoso-
phy, and perhaps also relevant literature or media articles)”
So don’t teach what is distinct about Philosophy, but change the discipline into some wishy-washy all of the above…
Basically, it says: shred philosophy (and science) teaching, because women find abstract thinking hard. They don’t “enjoy” it. After all, the point of philosophy (and science) is to “enjoy” it, and not to find out the truth.
I.e., anti-intellectualism. How depressing to see philosophy sink so far.
I think that this study is actually really impressive and has some very interesting results. To name just two, the researchers find that neither (a) the number of women on the syllabus nor (b) the gender of the instructor have a significant impact on women’s interest in continuing in philosophy.
It’s good they did this study. I skimmed enough of it to see what the various hypotheses were that they entertained. They included quite a few, and that in itself I find useful, because it caused me to think of a hypothesis that they DON’T entertain and which I have never seen anyone propose on the feminist blogs or the metablogs or other blogs or in conversation.
At another point I will try to state it clearly and in relation to some of the points they bring up in this study. The basic idea of it takes off from their concern to explore the question whether women “identify with” the subject of philosophy. The authors do something quite different with this line of inquiry than they might do.
My hypothesis contrasts with such hypotheses as those that say women leave philosophy because it is not the kind of activity they enjoy or are good at. There’s the possibility that some women who leave very strongly identify with it and think they are good at it, but for that very reason depart from the current academic practice of it. I remember thinking when I was young (long before Women’s Studies departments were found on campuses) that all that was happening in class discussions was men comparing the size of their … voices… hands … or something, and I very explicitly remarked to a female friend that that excluded me and her. What I am suggesting is not the hypothesis that women don’t like aggression or forcefulness in discussion — which is obviously false given that half the lawyers are women. It is the hypothesis that able potential philosophers who are women leave academic philosophy because, as practiced at least in undergraduate classrooms and the surrounds encountered by undergraduates, it is not philosophy but some other game.
Why would this result in young women leaving but not young men, you say? Well, answer, there is something additional, besides philosophy, that men but not women gain from the way philosophy is practiced in undergraduate classrooms and from the way our culture of philosophical practice in other ways gets passed down. They are staying for the other benefits.
“all that was happening in class discussions was men comparing the size of their … voices… hands … or something”
Why don’t you just say it? You don’t like nerds because they’re socially dumb, and you think it’s OK to make fun of their genitals.
But do you think it’s also OK when posters in this thread make jokes about R Kukla’s genitals? Kukla is a woman who also happens to be nerdy and socially dumb, which she has proved by bragging about her workout at HuffPo.
If you can’t see any relevant differences between talking about the bad habits of some undergraduate men and making a personal comment about a specific woman’s genitalia, get out of the fucking profession.
Maybe try working through a few thought experiments to work out the relevant variables?
‘Talking about their bad habits’ by making jokes about their penises? If you can’t see the similarity, then in your words get the fuck out of the profession.
And no, I didn’t say there weren’t ‘any differences’. That’s just a strawman you made up to argue against. The only important difference is between naming and not naming names, but we all have male undergrads and it hurts them just the same.
lol speaking of straw men, don’t use quotation marks when you’re not quoting. I said ‘any RELEVANT differences’. no straw man on my side bb 😉
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: Joe anonymously posts “I remember thinking when I was young that many women I knew had STDs ” on an online forum. John anonymously posts “Marissa Whelk has STDs and a dirty vagina.” Are there any relevant differences that might give the two posts a different moral status?
If you think “well the only difference is that Joe didn’t name names,” you get an F.
“because women find abstract thinking hard”. It seems like you find reading comprehension hard. Good luck finding that in the article.
Moreover, it’s reasonable to think philosophical methodology that emphasizes thought experiments is not intellectual at all; it emphasizes bullying and confirmation bias instead of reasoning.
The study is also factually incorrect about proportions of women who apply to study philosophy as a degree course at university. It is approximately 30-35%. The US is an outlier here because its application process is so unusual compared to the rest of the world. In the rest of the world, you apply to do a degree. It’s surprising that the authors did not consider the vast expanse of reality outside the US.
Women do not “leave” philosophy. Around 30-35% apply to study a degree in philosophy. Around 30-35% then go on to postgraduate study. Around 30-35% obtain PhDs. This claim they “leave” philosophy is a myth. Will we be reading articles entitled, “Why do men leave law, medicine, biological sciences, humanities and social sciences”? For these are subjects with majorities, often very large majorities, of women. One doubts it.
The complete lack of concern for truth and evidence shown here is staggering.
Where are you getting this info from? I can’t remember the source now, but I thought it was the case that pretty much equal numbers of men and women did intro philosophy, but that women were less likely to go on – that is, that the leak in the pipeline is between first and second year study.
Yes, this person is just making things up. They say they want “evidence” but cite none.
The Paxton Figdor Tiberius 2012 study found: (Here only the first gap is statistically significant)
43% of intro course participants are women
35% of majors are women
31% of PhD students women
32% of professors are women
The GSU data before this study was:
55% of intro course participants were women
38-41% of majors were women (2006-2011)
No data after this.
‘I’m just not interested’
‘Would it better if … ‘
‘I don’t care.’
‘But why? …’
‘I have better things to do.’
‘You don’t know your own best interest. Here watch this 10-minute promo video’
‘Did that do anything for you’
‘No.’
‘Is it cuz you think philosophy requires innate brilliance?’
‘No.’
‘But survey shows lots of people think that philosophy requires innate brilliance.’
‘I don’t give a shit.’
‘It must be that you think philosophy requires innate brilliance. And you must be underperforming due to stereotype threat’
‘No. I got an A in the course, I enjoyed it. But I have no intention of taking another class in philosophy next semester.’
‘That’s inexplicable unless you felt unwelcome or were mis-treated or can’t get behind intuition-driven thought experiments which as we all know is how philosophy is practiced everywhere on all occasions.’
‘No, no and no. I want to explore other course offerings’
‘Is it cuz the jobs prospects of philosophy majors are gendered? We suggest managerial and administrative positions …’
‘I haven’t yet figured out what I want to do.’
‘Remember to remind me to add to the list: parenting, teaching, writing, and activism.’ [can’t make this shit up. see fn. 37]
‘…’
The whole feminism thing in philosophy is now essentially a conspiracy theory, no different from belief in Area 51 or creationism or climate change denial. People will look back. in perhaps 20 years’ time, with horror at the stuff that went unchallenged.
No shit, of course I did. Based on these findings: (i) There was no gender difference in this factor, PerceivedInstructorFairness, (ii) There was no gender difference in this factor, PerceivedStudentRespect (iii) There was no gender difference in this factor, AlternativeClassroomPreference (iv) There was no gender difference in this factor, Field-SpecificAbilityBelief (v) We found no significant difference in the grades of men and women.
So, (partly) yes, “our field should avoid turn ing women away from philosophy for bad reasons — for instance, by over-emphasizing particular methodologies, by instilling a lack of confidence in women, by engendering the idea that philosophy requires abilities that cannot be developed with practice, by promoting a gendered schema of philosophy, and so on.” But these are not shown to be factors. So why do women leave philosophy?
What’s your point? I made no such claims. On the other hand, “It’s just like this,” and continue to believe it’s just like this when it’s not and irrelevant, the gold standard of ideological advocacy research.
“Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa · March 30, 2016 at 6:47 pm
“Safe spaces are routinely set up when a speaker comes to campus that is ideologically distasteful.”
I have seen this asserted before—but exclusively by handwringers about Today’s Coddled Youths. Is it true? What are these kinds of safe spaces like? Having consulted with some friends and colleagues who also have never seen any such things, I’m starting to think this sort of thing is just a big myth. I’m familiar with particular offices or environments that are designated safe spaces, where, for instance, people are invited to discuss sexual assaults without fear of judgment or attack, and maybe women’s-only lounges in dedicated locations. But I kinda think this kind kind of portable fainting couch zone is pure reactionary fantasy. It’s hard to prove a negative, but I’ve never seen such a thing—frequent assertions about what is ‘routine’ notwithstanding.”
Here are just a few examples of what Jonathan Ichikawa Jenkins falsely claims is a “myth”:
He’s talking about campuses actually setting up safe spaces – like a room or something – hence the description of a ‘portable fainting couch zone.’ I just skimmed them, but none of those articles mentions anything like that. They ate all about no-platforming, which may be objectionable but is not what ichikawa is talking about.
OK, I thought you had just misunderstood but it looks like you are being deliberately unreasonable. You are right that they use the words “safe space” but it is clear from the context that they are discussing actual spaces, as I described, not no-platforming. But the fact that your immediate response to someone who disagrees with you about how to interpret something and gives reasons why is to call them a ‘liar’ makes it clear that there’s no point trying to have a reasonable conversation about this. But the quote is above, so I guess the few people who care can decide for themselves who is ‘lying’.
Google is your friend if you can be bothered to find more. The more worrying question is why do Stanley + Ichikawa Jenkins persist in this “well I haven’t seen it, so it can’t be true” schtick rather than, you know, opening Google or following the conservative media who are all to happy to point out instances? Do they think they are somehow above it?
Maybe for the same reason that idiots like 8:41 persist in their ‘deliberately misinterpret then call everyone who points this out a liar’ schtick. Its propaganda masquerading (though in some cases not very well) as discussion.
“I thought you had just misunderstood but it looks like you are being deliberately unreasonable.”
The only person being deliberately unreasonable is you. Anyone can read about the relevant incidents and see how “safe spaces” and “safe space policies” are used to block or prevent invitations of speakers, or disrupt those talks. If you do not wish to read the evidence, that is your choice, but it is unreasonable. If you cannot process this immediate evidence, this again is unreasonable, and reflects poorly on you and you alone.
I am completely confused about all the hate that this new empirical study is getting here. The authors do not simply take on board the usual SJW views. Rather, they *test* those views, and they provide evidence *against* a number of them.
I don’t know your definition of ‘hate’. Most comments have been on specific points related to the study. It is only you who have chosen to construe it as an ideological conflict.
They provide evidence against some of them, but then they propose new SJW schemes instead. Replace thought experiments with X-phi and newspapers? If that’s what women supposedly want to read, then why not just major in gender studies (newspapers) or in social psychology (X-phi)?
Being the person who posted the “sexist remark” about Kukla, I have to admit that Leiter contacted me beforehand and asked me to write the comment. Seriously though, Leiter has also a rather loose definition of sexism
“… ‘deliberately misinterpret then call everyone who points this out a liar’ schtick.”
The deliberate dishonesty of Stanley, Ichikawa Jenkins and others, about publicly available facts, concerning the routine use of “space space” mentality to bully, silence, threaten and harass speakers and other individuals – Greer, Hoff Sommers, Tatchell, Yiannopoulos, etc, etc. – there are countless cases, well-documented and frequent occurrences – is not “propaganda”.
It is telling the truth.
It is exposing propagandist academic apparatchiks – like Stanley and Ichikawa Jenkins – for organized harassment and violence against other academics whom they want to see threatened, bullied and silenced.
Why do 46 million Korean teenagers leave Wisconsin each year? Have philosophers ever examined this serious social problem? If not, why not? To be frank, I think it’s disgusting that philosophers hate Korean teenagers so much.
For the book, political scientists Jon A. Shields and Joshua M. Dunn Sr., who are themselves on the political right, conducted detailed interviews at 84 universities with 153 conservative and libertarian professors from six disciplines — economics, political science, sociology, history, philosophy and literature.
Women do not “leave” philosophy. It is a myth. There is not one single piece of evidence for this bizarre myth. Around 35% of those who *apply* to study a philosophy degree are women. Repetition of a myth doesn’t make a myth true. The myth remains false however many times the myth is repeated.
Do you have a citation for that? Because someone has cited studies above that seem at odds with your claim. If you know of studies that reach a different conclusion about the statistics (which I assume you do as you are citing specific percentages) it would be good to link to them.
“Because someone has cited studies above that seem at odds with your claim.”
That is false. No one has. You are trying to deny that the proportion of female applicants to study for a *degree* in philosophy at university are around 35%. I have seen these figures in detail for several universities and they are fairly uniform.
You deny this. Ok, well state the evidence. Thank you.
What the hell? I’m not trying to deny anything. You keep stating a percentage, and despite being asked twice, you’re refusing to provide any evidence. I was assuming that you didn’t just pull 35% out your ass, but given your hostile response to someone who simply asked you for the citation, I guess not.
That’s not how it works. You can’t just pull a number out the air, refuse to provide any evidence for it, then demand that your interlocutor state evidence that shows your figure is wrong. If you are making a statistical claim, the onus is on you to provide evidence for it. Did no one teach you this?
I have seen evidence that the percentages for female applications to study a philosophy degree are around 35-40%. For Cambridge University, here are the application figures for 2011-2014:
2011: Male 61.3%, Female 38.7%
2012: Male 56.3%, Female 43.7%
2013: Male 60.1%, Female 39.8%
2014: Male 62.6%, Female 37.4%.
This averages to 39.9% female, 60.1% male. The figures for other Universities I’ve seen are similar, some slightly lower and few slightly higher.
So, closer to 40% than 35%. Describing this as ‘around 35%’ is pretty dishonest, given that the average is 39.9% and one thing in question is where the leak in the pipeline is. If the average was in fact 35%, you would have a much stronger basis for the claim that women don’t drop out, given the stats on what percentage of PhD students are women. But if its 40%? Not so much. I also understand now you are talking about the British system, where people apply to take a particular subject. But Jesus Christ, why not just clarify that that was what you were talking about if people cite studies from other regions, rather than throwing a tantrum accusing people of trying to deny things?
It’s hilarious watching the numbers sneak up. The first time the claim was made, it was 30-35%. Then someone asks for evidence. Then the claim is repeated, but now it’s ‘around 35%’. Someone asks for evidence again. Some is actually provided, but now it’s ‘around 35 – 40%’ to describe an average of 39.9%.
What’s “hilarious” is your own ignorance. I’ve seen figures for another university which are consistently around 33%. And others around 35%. You seem incapable of understanding the idea that evidence matters. There is no phenomenon of women “leaving” philosophy. It does not happen. It is a myth.
OK. You’re right. I am ignorant of those figures – though I’m not sure why that’s hilarious. But you have ‘seen’ the figures. Fine. What is your source? Which universities are you talking about? Where could a person go to read such figures in order to cure themselves of their ignorance?
Also, at most your stats would support the claim that in Britain, women aren’t leaving philosophy. But someone has provided actual figures from a different region – and they have actually provided a source – which does show a drop off. So your claim that “there is no phenomenon of women leaving philosophy. It does not happen. It is a myth” is much too strong. Nothing you have said supports the claim that ‘it does not happen.’ At best you have provided support for the claim that it does not happen in systems where people apply to study a philosophy degree, but as has been pointed out multiple times, you are yet to provide any evidence for the statistics you cite. “I’ve seen figures for a university” which you do not name, where even the lowest figure is higher than your initial claim, is not evidence. You need to say where you are getting these figures from, otherwise we have no reason to believe that you’re not just making them up.
“If the average was in fact 35%, you would have a much stronger basis for the claim that women don’t drop out, given the stats on what percentage of PhD students are women. But if its 40%?”
Women do not “drop out”. That is a myth. The evidence I have seen suggests 35% is closer, but I’ve seen lower figures for applications & current enrolment, and also higher ones too. Cambridge’s average is 39.9% over a recent four year period. I’m not going to do other people’s research for them, simply because they’re too dishonest to do it and instead prefer to spout myths which are not supported by evidence.
Looks like you can’t be bothered to do your own research, let alone other people’s. Tell you what, next time you write a paper that makes a statistical claim, put a footnote that says “I’ve seen this figure somewhere but I’m not going to bother saying where because I’m not going to do the reader’s research for them!” And see how far that gets you.
What do you mean, ‘myth not supported by evidence?’ Someone gave you the figures above which supports the claim – see the comment from March 31 at 2:14. They even told you where these figures came from. You’re the only one spouting figures which you haven’t provided evidence for.
This is by social psychologist and feminist Carol Tavris. Recall back in December ’14 that a blogger at Fem Philers reaffirmed that she regarded Emily Yoffe as a “rape apologist” for her articles for Slate discussed here…
Philosophymetametametablog 
“Welcome to my new blog series on gaps. Because gaps are often complex, simplistic, single-cause explanations, such as ‘discrimination,’ are rarely justified. I will be exploring specific gaps—racial, gender, political and more—and reviewing how social science evidence can and should influence our understanding of those gaps. I will be critically evaluating the ‘all discrimination all the time’ explanations for gaps advanced in many academic circles. I will be identifying a slew of explanations, other than discrimination, that can be a source of some or most or even all of many gaps.”
The “Gap=Discrimination” Assumption Critically Evaluated
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201603/what-explains-racial-gender-and-other-group-based-gaps
This looks like it’ll be very interesting. Thanks for sharing the link
“all of many gaps” o wow all of many!!
So, let’s get this clear. Jean-Yves Beziau, a Brazilian philosopher, was falsely accused of “sexism” and “homophobia” by a witch hunting gang of authoritarian bullies at prominent philosophy blogs (FP, DN, NA), despite Beziau being anti-sexist an anti-homophobic. There’s nothing “sexist” with the analogy that younger attractive women become less attractive – it’s a scientific fact of behavioral ecology and mating behavior. Weinberg, one of Beziau’s leading witch hunters, wants to continue his bullying and witch hunt of Beziau, and also wants to censor comments at DN pointing out the facts. So let’s respond to this aggressive authoritarian bully.
1. “The comment had been flagged for moderation (see the comments policy page for how that works). I can see why it was flagged. It’s very obnoxious and silly.”
It is Weinberg who is an obnoxious authoritarian bully.
2. “The line “witch-hunted by an online mob of PC enforcers who have made whole careers out of imagining sexism where none is present” is ridiculous.”
It is true. It is the obnoxious witch hunters who should be ashamed of themselves.
3. “Beziau was not “witch-hunted.”
Beziau was publicly witch hunted, by an obnoxious authoritarian named “Justin Weinberg” and his obnoxious bullying mates.
4. “Rather, he was criticized for some really strange, gratuitous remarks on topics unrelated to the thesis of his paper, which drew attention to the quality of the paper and its editing, which in turn raised questions about a journal’s policies and more generally about the practice of having special issues of journals.”
To excuse his public smearing and harassment of professional philosophers, Weinberg now lies. Beziau was publicly smeared as a “sexist” and a “homophobe”. This is disgraceful.
5. “I also don’t know who has made “whole careers out of imagining sexism where none is present,” in part because I don’t see a lot of false accusations of sexism in philosophy—there’s some,”
The false accusation was made against Beziau by Weinberg, an obnoxious authoritarian bully, and his obnoxious authoritarian mates.
5. “I’d guess, but certainly not enough for anyone to have made a “whole career” out of.”
Like you and your academic failure mates, Weinberg?
6. “The thing is, he is not a trustworthy testifier on this topic.”
Why would anyone trust an obnoxious authoritarian bully like Weinberg? Weinberg engages in aggression and bullying; and then blames those, like Diogenes, who protest about Weinberg’s aggression and bullying.
7. “I suspect Diogenes wouldn’t know sexism if it put his hand on his thigh. But since he did not direct this insult at anyone in particular I’ll let it slide this time.”
Irrespective of what Weinberg “suspects”, the fact is that Weinberg’s enthusiasm for sexist witch hunts, authoritarianism and public bullying of professional philosophers is legendary.
8. “In general, I’m ok with erring on letting Diogenes’ silly remarks through.”
How brave of the authoritarian bigot to tell us he’s “ok”! No, Weinberg, you’re not “ok”. You’re an aggressive authoritarian bully, known for public smearing and harassment of professional philosophers.
9. “The people who should really be concerned with his comments are serious philosophers who have thoughtful complaints about whether political considerations, worries about offensiveness, and social conformity are playing too large a role in contemporary philosophy.”
Weinberg et al’s method of ensuring conformity by publicly destroying people has a terrible history in the 20th century: it was the method of Stalin and Hitler and their henchmen.
You seem upset.
Hear hear!
Calm down dude.
I’d like to see more comments from Andrew Metz!
Lots happening at the Pilos… our News in the Profession segment went really well, with some very able people chipping in. We put up a collage in honour of Putnam, who will be missed. Feel free to share your favourite stories there, or simply say how you feel.
Next up we are probably going to continue with Pilos Profiles. Any suggestions of philosophers to cover?
Jason Stanley and Nikolay Sokolov!
Thanks, these are all great suggestions. Not sure about the true nature of NS yet but Jason Stanley seems like a fine candidate!!! Stay tuned. First we have to complete Bertand Russell’s life.
“Any suggestions of philosophers to cover?”
How about various philosophers who’ve been publicly smeared and witch hunted by the SJW crowd led by Saul, Weinberg, Barnes, Schliesser et al over the last couple of years?
No. Jason Stanley and Nikolay Sokolov!
Apparently, Saul’s new social justice project is called “What is it like to be a feminist rapist in philosophy”, profiling her convicted rapist feminist colleague, Anna Stubblefield.
Care to elaborate?
Hm, Sokolov first, or Stanley? Difficult choice.
Oh, where’s Sir Ranksalot when we need him most?
I have their campaign slogans all ready for them.
And who deserves the credit? And who deserves the blame?
Nikolai Stepanovich Sokolov is his name!
Stanley: we want to help you do things right.
Tranley: “Feminist glaciology is first philosophy!”
A mildly thoughtful article on the vapidity of much contemporary moral discourse:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2016/03/24/problematic_is_a_misleading_vague_word_for_something_that_causes_specific.html
If there’s something weird
And it don’t look good
Who you gonna call?
Jazz Tranley!
Jason Stolezal
Hey why don’t you explain what’s supposed to be funny about “Jazz Tranley”?
Stan Lee?
Enjoy the new survey:
http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/vote.pl?id=E_6243289c3c3b20d6&akey=87414a3ee70252e4
Where’s the “singularly unhinged” Rachel McKinnon?
Good to see Jenny Fempedo in there. Who can disagree? Raping the disabled is “incredibly complicated”, when a feminist does it!
When did Dorothy Edgington solve Fitch’s Paradox?
Of course, all the greatest logicians and philosophers have all been women. They enter the discipline and suddenly there is progress, because they are at least as brilliant as all men or have the special female perspective that unclouded of male chauvinism sees truth immediately.
Your first question is, happily, quite easy to answer:
Edgington, D., 1985. “The Paradox of Knowability,” Mind, 94: 557–568.
Lame, as if there was consensus that her “solution” worked.
Exactly.
In philosophy, unless there is a consensus that p, you shouldn’t assert p.
I can’t tell if you’re being serious. But just in case you are: the lack of consensus about something has little bearing on whether it is true or reasonable to believe/assert. If you think Edgington’s solution clearly fails to be either true or reasonable to believe/assert, write up a paper arguing as much and submit it to Mind. Take care to use a few keywords from this thread so that when I referee the article I’ll know it’s from a meta-meta-meta-blogger and put it on the fast track for acceptance.
It was sarcasm. Sorry.
I’m pretty sure if the High Standard were actually adopted, philosophers wouldn’t assert anything at all.
The greatest philosophers existed when women weren’t educated. Fail.
Lance the Boil claims that Ranksalot’s suspicions are a “patent absurdity”. But that dude is all over Facebook, rude as hell (by his own admission!) to anyone who disagrees with him, and especially to young philosophers. That he doesn’t see this as bullying behavior is hilarious.
Lance’s buddies are shocked, shocked to find bullying going on in his establishment.
I’m suspicious of anyone who has people telling them they are “an ally to thousands”.
Sorry, but I can’t take people seriously who as professors use the same language as highschoolers (Kukla).
Has she finally found someone who is willing to put his/her/its penis/hand/tool into her underfucked supermuscular vagina on a regular basis? Because people like Lance and Kukla become the persons they are because of sexual frustration. Turns out your fuckability decreases heavily if you are an self-absorved sanctimonious asshole.
you are repulsive. we do not need shit like this
Well, she deserves it. And how else can one interpret her behaviour?
No one deserves that repugnant, 7th grade bullshit. fuck off
A “supermuscular vagina” actually sounds pretty cool, so the joke’s on you 3:00/3:23
Spare me that bullshit about etiquette! It is the internet, an anonymous blog that thrives on the insane actions and statements by the profession’s best connected people. There is exactly one person that occurs constantly in online discussions whose arguments and behaviour is impeccable: David Wallace.
I find it funny that all the character assassination is fine with everyone across all blogs as long as they fit some party allegiance. Making fun of someone with relatively harmless attacks is somehow bad, because it uses such nasty words as “vagina”. Sorry, but when I came across her piece in the HuffPo about her new sports regimen I could only think about some of those pathetic craigslist ads for hooking-up, especially with those pictures.
And yes, I think people like Kukla, Lance, Saul, Stanley, even Leiter deserve all the ridicule they can get. None of them has shown any dignity in the way they respond to views they might find not in line with their own. They all resort to either name calling of a much worse kind or use their power to suppress others.
Where was the big outcry when some people insinuated repeatedly (and falsely) that TS has had a string of relationships with UG students? That is actually slandering and let to only a few critical responses.
there’s an obvious difference between ridiculing someone for their foolish views and insulting them based on their “supermuscular vagina” (whatever the fuck that means), which is misogynistic and puerile. The metablog can be a great place to mock Lance et al, *for their views and posturing,* particularly since grad students and junior faculty cannot do so under their own names. However, the above insult just reinforces the view that this place is a cesspool.
It’s important that we refrain from reinforcing this impression, because, despite their protestations otherwise, I imagine that many people in the profession read this blog, at least occasionally. A good way to push more people toward the SJW side of things is to keep up the misogyny.
how do we know it wasn’t a false flag?
Much like Lance’s weiner, this critique is a flop.
And they ought to know how great the disdain for them as academics and as public personae is. They are not open to arguments, they simply do not process them. The whole problem is not that they entertain certain ideas and hold certain opinions, it is that they are not any longer engaged in discussion but in a crusade.
Would you engage with Trump and Cruz in a debate? No!
To shut up narcissists you tell them how disgusting they are on every level.
I agree that the person who made the “supermuscular vagina” comment shouldn’t have done so. It’s a low blow and it makes the PMMMB look bad. There are plenty of good critiques of the social justice warriors that are fair and intellectual and keep it clean.
Still, it’s stupid to call the comment “misogynistic”. What a wild conclusion, to assume from the fact that the person made that silly joke that he hates women in general! What the fuck? Like the vagina comment, it really discredits the case if the person who made it. Thoughtful people don’t jump to wild but trendy conclusions that easily.
The “supermuscular” comment was painful, yes. But it simultaneously theorized that a man (Lance) and a woman (Kukla) have the views they do because they aren’t getting lad, which in turn is because they’re not “fuckable”. Cringeworthy? Yes. Unfair? Yes. A low blow? Yes. But the misogyny charge doesn’t hold water. It’s clearly not even the car that a woman is being singled out for special criticism, since in that same sentence a man is given the same criticism.
The reference to muscularity is clearly a riff on the fact that Kukla never stops bragging publicly about her strength training, depicting herself in gym costume lifting weights, etc. If a male philosopher did what she does and constantly harped on the details of his weight lifting routine and accomplishments at the gym, we’d at least say it was annoying. The person who made this comment about her was doing what many comedians do and what has been done here about many other antiheros: finding a distinctive but innocuous feature about the person he’s criticizing in order to make some fun. In this case, the sexual element of the criticism of both her and Lance crossed the line of good taste. But calling it misogyny is just knee-jerk mindlessness.
I wrote both the original comment and the comment you responded to. Was it in bad taste, of course. Do I regret it? No. Is it insulting? I hope so. I honestly find the insinuating of mental deficiencies much more insulting than any reference to bodily features. So any complaints about the mentioned neuroses would have been more apt in my opinion. Of course it is not mysoginistic as you aptly explained.
But as I wrote, the SJWs and Leiter to a lesser degree use insults far more severe and at a higher frequency. And in the former case, there really is no reasoning possible. The are crusading and nothing short of force will stop them. I am not saying that this force is physical (of course this would be totally wrong), but they need to taste their own medicine and need to be shut down.
I don’t understand why you think mentioning a man gets the poster off the hook for misogyny. If a person wrote a long post describing Obama using stereotypes about black people, and then chucked in an ‘oh yeah, and (white politician) also has feature X’ it would still be racist.
And bringing up a woman’s attractiveness/fuckability and using her supposed lack of both to discredit her is a sexist stereotype. Going into detail describing her genitals is gross (and note, that if you think ‘parity’ rescues the case here, the male is not described in that same level of detail at all.
I think if you’re objecting to the use of ‘misogynistic’ here it may be because you are operating with an unusually narrow view of what the term means. It doesn’t simply refer to comments which, for example, explicitly state “I hate women.” All you need to do is google it to see that most definitions of misogyny are broader than simply ‘hatred of women’ and also include things like ‘contempt for women’ or ‘prejudice against women’. A quick google will also throw up tons of examples in which the broader definition is clearly the one being used. And the comment under discussion pretty clearly shows not just contempt for *a* woman, but is making features of the target’s gender and sexuality a focus of the criticism when there is no particular reason to do so. The insult is in part successful because evaluating women in terms of their appearance/fuckability in a professional setting (by which I mean this is a blog about philosophy, and is evaluating her participation in the philosophical community) is a particularly effective way to undermine them, and is not so frequently or successfully used to undermine men.
(Similarly, there are some insults which, when aimed at men, are in part successful because they invoke sexist stereotypes against men. They’re of course also sexist, even if the so-called ‘joke’ doesn’t explicitly say “I hate men” but relies on some negative stereotype.)
I mean, do you think it is just a total coincidence that the poster chose to use an insult like that rather than almost any other kind of insult they could have used that insulted Kukla about something that was actually relevant in this case, like what she said/did etc? Isn’t it a bit bizarre to go straight from talking about someone’s annoying way of talking to some weird tirade about whether or not they are getting laid? Why go there – well, because it is a particularly effective way to undermine a woman.
12:20,
Sorry, your justifications are just as off as your original charge of misogyny.
If someone described both Obama and a white person as having a characteristic that black people are often thought to have, the fact that the describer also describes a white person that way *would* make the attribution of racist intent less plausible. Also, it is commonly said of both men and women that they are tense because they haven’t got laid recently. So is criticizing people by calling them unattractive. Happens with men all the time. Open your eyes and stop trusting feminist theory to guide you, and you’ll see it everywhere. What: nobody criticizes Donald Trump’s appearance or fuckability? Come on.
The difference between the description of Lance and the description of Kukla is that Kukla is described with the word “muscular”. What you don’t seem to be getting is that Kukla repeatedly writes and boasts about how muscular she is. That’s the basis of the (tasteless and unnecessary) joke.
I also never said or thought that misogyny requires one to say the words “I hate women”. I know, hatred or contempt for women = misogyny. I’m denying that the joke implies a general hatred or contempt for women our a bias against women. It seems you’ve been conditioned to feel entitled to engaged in mind-reading when you hear something unkind said about a particular woman and to think, aha, the explanation for this can only be that the writer has a general hatred for women. That’s just jumping to conclusions. There’s as much evidence of woman-hatred here as there is evidence of a general hatred of bodybuilders. Like a disturbing number of people in academia these days, you’re applying the word “misogyny” way too carelessly.
Well put 1:43. The mind-reading stuff is spot on. People need to stop impugning vicious motives on the basis of such scant evidence. And it doesn’t help when it’s gussied up with groupthink for reading the tealeaves of misogyny.
Loving Rebecca Kulka’s measured response: “My new plan is to bombard him with screenshot after screenshot of me typing things like go fuck yourself Brian and mind your own fucking business Brian and what the ever-living fuck are you even talking about Brian.”
Isn’t this where we’re meant to raise the delicate issue of ‘civility’ Rebecca?
Hey, her hobby is punching women in the face, but WE are the misogynists!
That’s not how it works. You’re supposed to be civil to the SJWs, but their opponents deserve what they get. (sarcasm)
Lance (and all of his “comrades,” who are falling all over themselves to show “solidarity” [read: kiss ass] on fb) are trying to capture the discipline in order to propagate all of their goofy bullshit views. Thus, bullying is OK so long as its aimed at the right targets. If BL emails someone repeatedly to mind their own fucking business, that’s causing “harm.” Rebecca Kooky does it and, you know, it’s all for the cause! I mean, who doesn’t get angry on social media sometimes?
All in the name of the oppressed, right guys? How fortunate are the oppressed, to have a wealthy Georgetown professor with a GRUELING workout routine (did I mention how in shape Lance is? because, he is. he needs to be ready for when the revolution arrives).
Brotevi tries to distract by killing the messenger https://www.facebook.com/john.protevi/posts/10207219907567825?pnref=story
mycoffeepotproductions at gmail dot com
We ❤ Darlene
I’ve seen references to a “coffee pot” joke or something (apparently related to this Darlene person). I don’t get it. Can someone explain it to me?
Darlene Deas posted at Leiter’s blog late last year. Being both funny and sensible, this caused some FP feminist fruitloops to throw a tantrum at Deas. One of the loons – Fempedo, Einsatz, Pogin, Yapper? – came over to the metablog, whining about Deas’s mentioning buying a coffee pot on amazon. Feminist loon complained about Deas’s “tone” and how it made the femloon feel “uneasy”. Hence the coffee pot joke.
Current poll results:
1. Sir Ranksalot (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)
2. Glaucon loses to Sir Ranksalot by 10–4
3. Diogenes of Sinope loses to Sir Ranksalot by 12–2, loses to Glaucon by 8–4
4. Tied:
Spiros loses to Sir Ranksalot by 13–1, loses to Diogenes of Sinope by 5–4
Pilos aka Purple Haze loses to Sir Ranksalot by 13–3, loses to Diogenes of Sinope by 6–4
6. Tied:
Magickal Replacement loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Spiros by 7–2
Rooster Burn loses to Sir Ranksalot by 13–1, loses to Spiros by 5–3
Crispy Artwell loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–0, loses to Spiros by 6–2
Generic Lou loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Spiros by 7–2
10. Justice Whineberg loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Crispy Artwell by 4–3
11. Jenny from the Blog loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Justice Whineberg by 4–2
12. Philodaria loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Jenny from the Blog by 3–1
13. The Ghent Balloon loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Philodaria by 4–2
14. Tied:
Comrade Drabek loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to The Ghent Balloon by 4–2
Mr. Can’t Stop Rough Blogging about Chalmers and Stanley loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–0, loses to The Ghent Balloon by 4–2
16. Splinter loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–0, loses to Mr. Can’t Stop Rough Blogging about Chalmers and Stanley by 2–1
17. Ed “Blackadder” Quasiarian loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Splinter by 2–1
18. Noetika loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–1, loses to Ed “Blackadder” Quasiarian by 2–1
19. Tied:
Brotevi loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–0, loses to Noetika by 3–2
Lance-a-lot loses to Sir Ranksalot by 14–0, loses to Noetika by 3–0
It’s an honor just to be nominated.
I take it’s a genuine quality ranking: best opinions at the top, worst at the bottom.
What is the meaning of the poll? Does voting for Jenny Fempedo, Magical Einsatz, Justice Whineberg, Louie Genitals or the Balloon mean you like their stuff? Or rather that you think they’re deranged zealots or something similar? Well, Fempedo and Einsatz are deranged zealots; whereas Whineberg, Genitals and the Balloon are merely narcissistic bullies.
At 7:07: looks like your head just exploded from pondering this conundrum!
THE PUNNY NICKNAMES ARE EMBARRASSING. STOP IT.
“Lance’s weiner … is a flop”
Hmm, so how do you …? – anyway, well, just say you heard it at the metablob, folks!
Privileged Canadian white women lynching a man of color. What does that remind you of?
Philosophers.
Imagine with me that a philosopher (let’s call him “TP”) has been accused of sexual misconduct. Several friends, students, and colleagues step forward, all testifying that TP isn’t that sort of guy. “He didn’t harass or assault *me*!”, they say. “TP would never do that!” Or, “That’s not at all the TP I know! The charges are humbug”.
Would such testimonials from friends, students, and colleagues be given much weight? No, they would not, and rightly so. For they have no bearing at all on the testimony of those who claim that TP has engaged in misconduct towards them. They are besides the point. And in a way, they are a tool of epistemic injustice, for they mostly serve to silence the voices of victims.
It is interesting to see a structurally similar situation unfold with respect to Lance. On his Facebook page, friends, students, and colleagues are stepping forward to say that ML isn’t the sort of guy to bully, that he’d never do that, and that “well, he never bullied *me*!”. These little testimonials completely miss the point, and they should be given as little weight as “character witnesses” are given in the context of allegations of sexual misconduct.
Did Pogge fuck Lance?
I was thinking much the same. In the thread ML even admits he is “rude” at times. How does he (and his univocal chorus of facebook “friends”) *know* that at least one of these instance of “rudeness” did rise to a case of bullying, harassment, or intimidation of a junior colleague for sharing a link to a blog he doesn’t like? I’m not saying it did, I have no idea. But this is the same guy who has just quoted Black Socrates warning us about sanctimonious white knights having inadequate self awareness and epistemic humility! But expect to see much more of these antics if, thanks to the APA and its supporters, we continue down the path of “niceness” a professional norm.
correction: “did NOT rise to a case…”
Did you see Brotevi’s story on the Cocoon? He’s a pathetic, overcompensating spousal hire. Just like Magickal Replacement aka Barnes.
Indeed. If someone had an interesting philosophical project to carry on they wouldn’t spend time SJWing. All of these people are nobodies or have-beens.
High position for sensible bloggers, low position for obnoxious preening idiots:
http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/vote.pl?id=E_6243289c3c3b20d6&akey=87414a3ee70252e4
Someboy should link to it from BL, DN..
For the poster above who asked about the backstory to Darlene’s coffee pot. This was posted in the first March thread:
Good to see there’ll be return at Leiter’s blog for Darlene Deas. Who can forget the femtrum against Deas last year! And the femloon who wandered over here to complain about Darlene’s problematic coffee pot, and her “tone” …
I think the following memorable comment summed it all up.
——-
Yeah, her tone. What a tone! I can’t believe someone would have a tone like that. Especially a woman outside the profession. Did I mention the tone? So inappropriate! who has such a tone?
And that coffee pot: geez, don’t get me started. How completely inappropriate! And surely there’s some reason why that coffee pot post appeared on Leiter at the same nanosecond as someone was sexually harassed. Timing, anyone? And we’re supposed to believe that it’s a coincidence.
If it were just the tone, I’d have felt strange, but let it go. If it were just the coffee pot, I’d have felt uneasy, but let that go, too. But both together from the same person? And combined with the timing? Hello… this is mega inappropriate. Yet another reason why Leiter needed to step down from the PGR and why we’re better off with the SPEP report. Leiter didn’t just provide Deas with a platform, he also has a tone problem himself. To say the least. Also, he has a coffee pot. He may have also recommended that others buy a certain coffee pot on Amazon. And PLEASE nobody say that he didn’t just because he wasn’t publicly accused of doing it. Word gets around about these things. ‘Nuff said.
So Deas has got to go. It’s not just the feminists who think so anymore, it’s the dyed-in-the-wool antifeminists who are fed up with her tone and her coffee pot remarks. Never mind the content of her comments: really, really, please, I beg you, don’t read her comments for the content and think about it. Just remember that coffee pot thing and nod your head and play along. And her tone. And her timing. And then let’s all just agree that she’s making it hard for anyone to take the problems with academic feminism seriously. Really. We can do better. No more Deas.
The Philosophers’ Cocoon: Profiles in Failure
“…I’ve organized speaker events for our department (most recently, Jason Stanley’s visit)”. Can’t make this shit up.
Is there anyone who wouldn’t want to check out Kukla’s “supermuscular” vagina?
Over the years it has claimed many victims, so watch out!
That makes it sound like a modern version of Charybdis.
Until it’s lifting surfboards, I don’t want to hear about it.
Motion to the floor: stop using the metablog to talk about the naughty bits of philosophers. Or of anyone, really.
For sale. Lance’s weiner. Still in original box. Never been used. Not a naughty bit.
Though not a home run in terms of amusement, this was the response OP deserved for writing “naughty bits”.
Seconded. It’s boring and dumb. Even just considering humor alone, these people should be easy as hell to lampoon and some boring weiner/vagina/fuckability jokes are the best folks have got? Yeah, a real comedic crack squad we’ve got working the room here.
BL has been posting Kukla’s funny attempts to explain herself. She’s digging Lance’s hole deeper.
http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/03/why-rationalism-is-irrational/
No words
Whatever Mark Lance has said against Leiter (I’ve no idea), Lance had a reputation at the New APPS blog back in the day – maybe 2011 or thereabouts – for repeatedly insulting and bullying other commenters. Pretty sure even was made to back down on occasion because of his aggressive certainty of his own opinion. Not surprising then that people might eventually get sick of his aggression towards others.
I looked at a sample of Lance’s comments from New Apps from around 2011, and I did not find anything that I would call insulting or bullying. Mostly, he was quite appropriately clinical in discussing ideas, considering and sometimes answering objections, and so on. I saw one exchange where Lance was a bit condescending, addressing an anonymous and quite annoying interlocutor as “dear boy” — hardly a serious case of bullying.
So far, however, no “evidence” of Lance-a-lot’s alleged bullying. If Sir Ranksalot has some, he should produce it, otherwise he should take the post down and perhaps apologize. I don’t much care for either of those two, but it is not right to publicly assert something that damages someone’s character and have no evidence to back it up that would show that it deserved to be so asserted.
I’ve seen it several times: Lance is trying to make it socially unacceptable to link to Leiter Reports, so he posts scathing comments underneath people’s status updates. He will fail and that’s probably he seems to have stopped of late, even before Leiter called him out.
Specific examples?
trying to get people to boycott Leiter is not bullying.
“…. otherwise he should take the post down and perhaps apologize”
Is Leiter not merely reporting what others have said? If others have accused Lance, then by normal philosophy profession standards, he is guilty. Are you seriously suggesting we need a “due process culture”? What a peculiar idea! I thought it had been established (by Anna Stubblefield’s Rutgers colleague, Prof Ruth Chang) that evidence is irrelevant to truth and that accusation is guilt?
Similarly, is Jean-Yves Beziau not automatically guilty of “sexism” and “homophobia”, based on the accusations from Audrey Yap, Justin Weinberg, et al? Should they take down their accusations against Beziau and apologise? Similarly, is Laura Kipnis not automatically guilty of something based on accusations from Lauren Leydon-Hardy and Kathryn Pogin? Should Leydon-Hardy and Pogin et al take down their posts and apologise?
Your suggestion seems to be that the SJW tactic used in the philosophy world – false accusation and public smear/shaming campaign – should end. How likely is that? When will FP and DN announce a moratorium on their tactic of false accusations and smear campaigns?
The difference is that those saying Beziau said sexist stuff could point to the passages and say “see, that’s what I mean.” People could disagree, but there was material that people could disagree about. Here, no one has produced any material about Lance that could be scrutinized as to whether it constituted bullying or not. So let’s see what kind of dossier Leiter is able to compile.
It is true that Leiter has not produced evidence, other than accusation. However, the guiding assumption of philosophy’s SJWs is that accusation = guilt. This is the SJW tactic, used over and over, to fuck up people’s lives, in serious ways, without evidence. No one wants a “due process culture” – Ruth Chang said so. Philosophy’s SJWs – Saul, Weinberg, Schliesser, Chang, Barnes et al – have made the “rules” that the profession is expected to live by. It looks like Leiter is simply playing by the SJW “rules” to teach them a lesson. Perhaps SJWs might treat this as a “learning experience”, that mere accusations are not evidence? And that some accusers are lying bastards? Maybe SJWs will begin taking down their false accusations and issuing apologies?
No one will be holding their breath.
Blast from the past:
I have just one last response to this total bullshit. I am literally shaking with anger, and literally finding it hard to type. Please remove my name from the petition. I do not want to be associated with it any longer. Your bullying and obtuseness have made me unwilling to be associated with it. I know you are a good philosopher, so your utter refusal to follow the argument is perplexing. In any case, I no longer wish to have my name on a petition initiated by you.
link? screenshot? who is saying what to whom, when, and where?
I was about to post the same quote! I can’t get into NA archive comments on Tor for some reason, but it was some philosopher, Neil somebody, overflowing with good will toward the NA program and trying to engage with, I think, the Gendered Conference Campaign. He was reduced to a quivering mass of rage by an egregious case of what was a constant feature of ML’s tenancy at NA, viz his patronizing, snide, nasty and — yes — bullying responses to commenters, including sometimes friendly ones.
“I looked at a sample of Lance’s comments from New Apps from around 2011, and I did not find anything that I would call insulting or bullying.”
Not 2011. It’s September 2012.
If you enter “shaking with anger” into the New APPS search box, this comes up: http://www.newappsblog.com/2012/09/leitersresponse.html The “Neil” in the thread is almost certainly Neil Levy, who has posts at Oxford and Melbourne, and who mutually kissed and made up with Lance by the time the thread closed. So not a grad student or junior faculty.
“Anon Grad Student said…
I have to say, Mark Lance has been an awful bully on this thread. Bad show, New APPS.
21 September 2012 at 00:25”
More from New APPS
“matt smith said…
…. Not to put too fine a point on it, people can disagree with Lance and Schliesser without thereby demonstrating that they are stupid jerks who need to be told off. I was interested in Leiter’s (and others’) response to this project and came over here to read New APPs. What I found was vitriol and pettiness. Lance’s pointlessly snide comments about “obviously”? Come on. So what if that annoyed Lance? He’s the one with the power here. He should let it go and try to respond respectfully and constructively. I don’t think that this is meant to be a place for slamming people’s faces into the dirt if one spots a argumentative failure. … Also, more pointedly – I call on Schliesser to be as willing to call out Lance’s abuse of power as he is willing to call out other people’s bad arguments. …
21 September 2012 at 06:00″
Keep reading. Lance and Schliesser both apologize in a couple of comments afterwards, with Lance saying “To all the readers: I apologize again for contributing to the degenerating tone. And I hereby resolve to take up Matt’s approach, to ignore rhetoric that offends me and simply respond to substance.”
Then Smith says in reply to Lance: “Mark – that is really, really gracious of you. You deserve a lot of praise. I appreciate your openness to constructive interventions, even if critical. I meant to be constructive since I support the goal of gender equality in the profession. As my dad would have said, thanks for being such a mensch… Finally, it sucks that Leiter is using my comment in the way that he is. I am going to email him.”
Seems like a dead end.
Can somebody post some of what ML wrote? What was so bad about it?
Go and read it yourself.
A very interesting discussion between Jonathan Haidt and Tyler Cowen:
View at Medium.com
Some highlights:
COWEN: But is it at least possibly the case that we’re seeing the greatest threat to intellectual diversity in some of the areas which matter least, and when the stakes are high we overcome it. Physics looks pretty good, computer science looks pretty good.
HAIDT: No, it’s not — there are two universities now, but it’s not which ones matter more and which ones matter less. It’s what is the sacred value. The sacred value of universities from sometime in the 19th century through maybe the 1980s was truth. Now it was not perfect, but we all talked that way. Look at the mottos of Harvard and Yale — Veritas, Lux et Veritas, it’s right there on the motto, veritas, truth.
We made a big show — it was largely true — of saying this is what we’re here for, we’re here to find truth. But in the 1970s and ’80s as we had a big influx of baby boomers who were involved in social protest, who were fighting for very good causes, civil rights, women’s rights — they flood into the academy in ’70s and ’80s, they get tenure in the ’80s and ’90s, but also in the 1990s, the Greatest Generation begins to retire. There were a lot of Republicans who became professors after World War II.
But the ’90s is the decade where everything flips. At the start of the 1990s, the overall left‑right ratio of the academy, taking all departments, was two to one, just twice as many people on the left as right. That’s fine, that’s not a problem. But by 2005, it had gone to five to one, five people on the left for every one on the right. Those people on the right are mostly engineering, nursing, things like that. If you look at the core — the humanities and the social sciences, other than economics, it’s closer to 10 to 1 or 20 to 1.
In other words, right‑wing, or libertarian, or social conservative voices have basically vanished between 1995 and 2005. This has made us unfunctional, but it’s in the social sciences and humanities where the sacred value has become social justice and the protection of victims. That’s the division. One university of the sciences still pursues truth, the other university in the social sciences and humanities pursues social justice.
[…]
COWEN: Let’s say you were put in charge of undergraduate admissions at Yale, and you could more or less do what you thought was best without constraint, what would you change?
HAIDT: Oh gosh, I’d change a lot of things. One thing that I would do is I would start admitting for signs that you can contribute to an intellectually diverse environment. That means that I would look for people who — so Yale in particular, but all of the top schools have a huge problem, that they have basically social justice warriors who are so empowered, so angry, that they dominate discourse and you basically have the small illiberal left has completely terrorized the larger liberal left.
Yale right now is quite dysfunctional. Students there say they can’t speak up, they can’t speak up in class, they feel pressure on Facebook, if somebody sends around a petition for some left-wing cause they have to endorse it, even if they don’t want to. Yale’s a mess right now, as a lot of schools are. That should be the top diversity issue, is intellectual diversity. I would stop admitting for social justice cred, in other words, if you say, “Oh, I started this protest group, and we got this overturned.”
Basically I think a lot of students know is the way to get into a top school is show your social justice activism. Well, top schools are now full of social justice activists, and they’re no longer places where people can say anything that contradicts the social justice activists. What’s that old joke? “Doctor, it hurts when I do this. Well, stop doing this.” They should stop admitting social justice warriors and start admitting people they’ve got the guts to disagree.
[…]
COWEN: What’s the best replacement for religion in modern, secular society?
HAIDT: Oh boy, the best replacement.
COWEN: Good question. Durkheimian question.
HAIDT: Yeah. A few years ago I would have tried to give you an answer and say we should have some other sacred value to replace it, but given what’s happened in the last year on campuses, I’m really afraid of it, because you might think, “Humanitarianism should replace it. We should all have a religion of helping the poor, helping each other.” Now, of course, it’s really important to help the poor. It’s really important to help people who are oppressed.
But once you make it a religion, that means you are impervious to evidence. You are committed to certain religious rituals even if those rituals make things worse. For example, I’ve been studying the research on affirmative action and diversity training. As far as I can tell there’s no evidence that they make things better and there is some evidence that it makes things worse.
Now, it’s messy. I can’t say for sure that they do, but the point is, we seem to be doing things on campus that are making things worse. The activists are largely asking for things that will make things worse. Much more affirmative action, much bigger racial preferences, which will cause much bigger gaps between Asians at the top and African-Americans at the bottom. Which is going to inflame prejudice, not reduce it.
Once you make something a religion, you’re not open to evidence. You do really crazy, stupid things. What I would say is, let’s not have a replacement for religion. Let’s set things up so that there isn’t a big religion that unites us all to take on our enemies. Let’s try to return to a climate in which people find meaning and purpose in their private lives and in their smaller associations, but we don’t have a big sense of national purpose.
Excellent, affirmative action for conservatives at Yale.
Bill Buckley would be so proud!
“Bill Buckley would be so proud!”
Oh look. Paranoid psycho has arrived.
Yale should admit students on the basis of their political ideology: so says Jonathan Haidt, the liberal social psychologist.
Hooray for politicizing the college admissions process! Go, Jonathan!
Paranoid psycho, “Yale should admit students on the basis of their political ideology: so says Jonathan Haidt, the liberal social psychologist.”
What’s wrong with you? Haidt says the exact opposite, you paranoid psycho.
“They should stop admitting social justice warriors and start admitting people they’ve got the guts to disagree.”
You didn’t read it, huh?
That quote means the opposite of what you think it means.
Haidt has no idea how Yale’s admissions process works. He’s talking out of his ass.
My god, metametametabloggers are so gullible.
Pot, kettle.
Haidt knows exactly what he’s talking about, you dishonest loon.
From my experience in elite universities there are *plenty* of “social conservatives” running around on campus. The idea that they’re not being admitted is laughable.
If the “social conservative” intellectual well is drying up, it’s because these folks are on the wrong side of history with regard to civil rights for minorities, women, and LGBTQ folks. Read any Ross Douthat column if you want an idea of the (lack of) intellect these people bring to the table.
Exhibit N.
http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/vote.pl?id=E_6243289c3c3b20d6&akey=87414a3ee70252e4
More votes needed…
JUST WOW If this isn’t a joke or a hoax…
But of course Stanley said no issues of freedom of expression on campus…
It’s real: http://www.conservativeoutfitters.com/blogs/news/94969025-white-student-assaulted-for-cultural-appropriation
Butler is giving the Tanner Lectures at Yale. Stanley is enthusiastic about it (and his response to her) on social media. Leiter denounces Butler as an obscurantist bullshitter on his blog. Know where philosophy is headed if the SJWs consolidate their power-grab.
If Leiter said it, that settles it.
Butler is a bullshitter. That’s two.
I’m more convinced than ever now! Leiter *and* one of the anonymi at PMMMB: no one is going to read Butler ever again.
On Those Who Say Butler Bullshits
You know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may think he’s
Really sick and they won’t take him.
And if two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and
They won’t take either of them.
And if three people do it! Can you imagine three people walkin’ in, singin’
A bar of “Butler Bullshits” and walkin’ out? They may think it’s an
Organization!
And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people a day . . .
Walkin’ in, singin’ a bar of “Butler Bullshit” and walkin’ out? Friends,
They may think it’s a MOVEMENT, and that’s what it is.
^ well played, good sir, very well played indeed.
Forget philosophy. Tone policing just went national:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10153530262209205&id=210277954204
#ToneDownForWhat
I find this the most fascinating thing about the current election: the discovery that the real source of the contemporary culture of narcissism, entitlement, and SJW pseudo-leftism was the Baby Boomers all along, never the millennials! Every single characteristic that has been used to slander millenials–the it’s my turnism, the priveleged whining about injustice, the constant accusations of racism and sexism–have been the defining features of the Clinton campaign and its supporters.
It’s not such a surprise, I suppose. The baby boomers, the true entitlement generation, as teachers and helicopter parents and grandparents tried to get the kids to swallow their crap, then used their kids as scapegoats. The kids vomited it back up for a while. But eventually they got sick of it and left for Bernie, the ideological equivalent of the pre-boomers.
Leiter also on the side of the angels on the pushback against the Title IX kangaroo courts.
Leiter is a goddamn genius. How much weight do you think he can lift with his underdeveloped penis?
Spectacular stupidity from Jacob T Levy here
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2016/03/safe-spaces-academic-freedom-and-the-university-as-a-complex-association/
Levy seems not to understand the most elementary ideas of a liberal society: the right not to be harassed and the right to free speech.
And that friends is what is called begging the question. Assuming you already know what a liberal society is, unargued for, and using it to critique an article that sets out to establish what exactly the right not to be harassed or the right to free speech could mean when the state allows for free and private associations. I’m excited when you to run into a Catholic church on Sunday and yell “Hail Satan” and then wonder why they throw you out. I HAVE A RIGHT NOT TO BE HARASSED… FREE SPEECH!
Levy dislikes free speech, but thinks harassment is ok.
Sensible people like free speech, and think harassment is not ok.
Does anyone outside the SPEP-New Consensus matrix think that Penn State has done something laudable by fêting and graduating an impressive number of black women? Here in Athens, a philosophy degree from PSU worth about as much as abiology degree from Bob Jones University. Is it different elsewhere?
I am a black woman.
Checking in with the first RM sighting at the Pacific. Freakish and unpleasant, natch.
Did Rage Machine bring The Eastern ‘Allies’?
Ya but you gotta respect that guy’s thighs
This is disgusting. STOP.
RM?
Reckless Metabro – a commentator known to engage in unfounded and libelous accusations all over the metablogs.
Christ guys, knock it off.
Who is Rage Machine?
Oh, got it…
They’re referring to Ragin’-mad Kinnon. I can’t see any value in posting creepy stalker-y updates about “sightings” online though, let alone the “freakish” comments. That’s just unpleasant, as bad as anything she’s ever done. Stick to criticizing her obnoxious online interactions with other philosophers: plenty to write about there.
+1
+2 – no reason to tell us about “sightings” of Rage Machine. Rage is a minor player in the ecology of philosophy’s free-fall into SJW hysteria, witch hunts, paranoid conspiracy theories and all around lunacy.
“Oct 8, 2011, 2:44 PM from Spoon. Tomorrow I think. He’s not staying with me, he’s staying with another friend. Unrelated: why is Jennifer fucking with me? Why won’t she just give me my paper with comments? Answer: because she *likes* fucking with me, because she is evil.”
Explain?
Lauren Leydon-Hardy said that Jennifer Lackey “likes fucking with me, because she is evil”. What happened to Leydon-Hardy after Lackey fucked her?
The preposition “with” in the first sentence should be included in the second. But then you couldn’t get a hate-fap going, so I guess I see why you dropped in.
dropped *it*
Yeah, there’s someone who posts here who is singularly unhinged. Ignore hir.
From the new study:
“Because our study found that women are less likely than men to en-
joy the use of thought experiments as philosophical methodology (Sec-
tion 4.3), it might be appropriate for instructors to incorporate a wider
variety of philosophical methodologies and sources in their classes
(e.g., experimental philosophy, scientific readings relevant to philoso-
phy, and perhaps also relevant literature or media articles)”
So don’t teach what is distinct about Philosophy, but change the discipline into some wishy-washy all of the above…
Methods. Not “methodologies.”
Basically, it says: shred philosophy (and science) teaching, because women find abstract thinking hard. They don’t “enjoy” it. After all, the point of philosophy (and science) is to “enjoy” it, and not to find out the truth.
I.e., anti-intellectualism. How depressing to see philosophy sink so far.
Hit the nail on the head 11:16!
I think that this study is actually really impressive and has some very interesting results. To name just two, the researchers find that neither (a) the number of women on the syllabus nor (b) the gender of the instructor have a significant impact on women’s interest in continuing in philosophy.
It’s good they did this study. I skimmed enough of it to see what the various hypotheses were that they entertained. They included quite a few, and that in itself I find useful, because it caused me to think of a hypothesis that they DON’T entertain and which I have never seen anyone propose on the feminist blogs or the metablogs or other blogs or in conversation.
At another point I will try to state it clearly and in relation to some of the points they bring up in this study. The basic idea of it takes off from their concern to explore the question whether women “identify with” the subject of philosophy. The authors do something quite different with this line of inquiry than they might do.
My hypothesis contrasts with such hypotheses as those that say women leave philosophy because it is not the kind of activity they enjoy or are good at. There’s the possibility that some women who leave very strongly identify with it and think they are good at it, but for that very reason depart from the current academic practice of it. I remember thinking when I was young (long before Women’s Studies departments were found on campuses) that all that was happening in class discussions was men comparing the size of their … voices… hands … or something, and I very explicitly remarked to a female friend that that excluded me and her. What I am suggesting is not the hypothesis that women don’t like aggression or forcefulness in discussion — which is obviously false given that half the lawyers are women. It is the hypothesis that able potential philosophers who are women leave academic philosophy because, as practiced at least in undergraduate classrooms and the surrounds encountered by undergraduates, it is not philosophy but some other game.
Why would this result in young women leaving but not young men, you say? Well, answer, there is something additional, besides philosophy, that men but not women gain from the way philosophy is practiced in undergraduate classrooms and from the way our culture of philosophical practice in other ways gets passed down. They are staying for the other benefits.
I’m sympathetic to your view.
“all that was happening in class discussions was men comparing the size of their … voices… hands … or something”
Why don’t you just say it? You don’t like nerds because they’re socially dumb, and you think it’s OK to make fun of their genitals.
But do you think it’s also OK when posters in this thread make jokes about R Kukla’s genitals? Kukla is a woman who also happens to be nerdy and socially dumb, which she has proved by bragging about her workout at HuffPo.
If you can’t see any relevant differences between talking about the bad habits of some undergraduate men and making a personal comment about a specific woman’s genitalia, get out of the fucking profession.
Maybe try working through a few thought experiments to work out the relevant variables?
‘Talking about their bad habits’ by making jokes about their penises? If you can’t see the similarity, then in your words get the fuck out of the profession.
And no, I didn’t say there weren’t ‘any differences’. That’s just a strawman you made up to argue against. The only important difference is between naming and not naming names, but we all have male undergrads and it hurts them just the same.
lol speaking of straw men, don’t use quotation marks when you’re not quoting. I said ‘any RELEVANT differences’. no straw man on my side bb 😉
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: Joe anonymously posts “I remember thinking when I was young that many women I knew had STDs ” on an online forum. John anonymously posts “Marissa Whelk has STDs and a dirty vagina.” Are there any relevant differences that might give the two posts a different moral status?
If you think “well the only difference is that Joe didn’t name names,” you get an F.
April 1, 3:07, misses the point and redirects attention to something stupid.
“because women find abstract thinking hard”. It seems like you find reading comprehension hard. Good luck finding that in the article.
Moreover, it’s reasonable to think philosophical methodology that emphasizes thought experiments is not intellectual at all; it emphasizes bullying and confirmation bias instead of reasoning.
The study is also factually incorrect about proportions of women who apply to study philosophy as a degree course at university. It is approximately 30-35%. The US is an outlier here because its application process is so unusual compared to the rest of the world. In the rest of the world, you apply to do a degree. It’s surprising that the authors did not consider the vast expanse of reality outside the US.
Women do not “leave” philosophy. Around 30-35% apply to study a degree in philosophy. Around 30-35% then go on to postgraduate study. Around 30-35% obtain PhDs. This claim they “leave” philosophy is a myth. Will we be reading articles entitled, “Why do men leave law, medicine, biological sciences, humanities and social sciences”? For these are subjects with majorities, often very large majorities, of women. One doubts it.
The complete lack of concern for truth and evidence shown here is staggering.
Where are you getting this info from? I can’t remember the source now, but I thought it was the case that pretty much equal numbers of men and women did intro philosophy, but that women were less likely to go on – that is, that the leak in the pipeline is between first and second year study.
Yes, this person is just making things up. They say they want “evidence” but cite none.
The Paxton Figdor Tiberius 2012 study found: (Here only the first gap is statistically significant)
43% of intro course participants are women
35% of majors are women
31% of PhD students women
32% of professors are women
The GSU data before this study was:
55% of intro course participants were women
38-41% of majors were women (2006-2011)
No data after this.
‘I’m just not interested’
‘Would it better if … ‘
‘I don’t care.’
‘But why? …’
‘I have better things to do.’
‘You don’t know your own best interest. Here watch this 10-minute promo video’
‘Did that do anything for you’
‘No.’
‘Is it cuz you think philosophy requires innate brilliance?’
‘No.’
‘But survey shows lots of people think that philosophy requires innate brilliance.’
‘I don’t give a shit.’
‘It must be that you think philosophy requires innate brilliance. And you must be underperforming due to stereotype threat’
‘No. I got an A in the course, I enjoyed it. But I have no intention of taking another class in philosophy next semester.’
‘That’s inexplicable unless you felt unwelcome or were mis-treated or can’t get behind intuition-driven thought experiments which as we all know is how philosophy is practiced everywhere on all occasions.’
‘No, no and no. I want to explore other course offerings’
‘Is it cuz the jobs prospects of philosophy majors are gendered? We suggest managerial and administrative positions …’
‘I haven’t yet figured out what I want to do.’
‘Remember to remind me to add to the list: parenting, teaching, writing, and activism.’ [can’t make this shit up. see fn. 37]
‘…’
The whole feminism thing in philosophy is now essentially a conspiracy theory, no different from belief in Area 51 or creationism or climate change denial. People will look back. in perhaps 20 years’ time, with horror at the stuff that went unchallenged.
Actually you made all of that up.
No shit, of course I did. Based on these findings: (i) There was no gender difference in this factor, PerceivedInstructorFairness, (ii) There was no gender difference in this factor, PerceivedStudentRespect (iii) There was no gender difference in this factor, AlternativeClassroomPreference (iv) There was no gender difference in this factor, Field-SpecificAbilityBelief (v) We found no significant difference in the grades of men and women.
So, (partly) yes, “our field should avoid turn ing women away from philosophy for bad reasons — for instance, by over-emphasizing particular methodologies, by instilling a lack of confidence in women, by engendering the idea that philosophy requires abilities that cannot be developed with practice, by promoting a gendered schema of philosophy, and so on.” But these are not shown to be factors. So why do women leave philosophy?
It’s hard work for poor employment prospects. It’s also nerdy.
Only patriarchy can explain the appallingly low representation of women in national suicide statistics.
“it’s just like that,” the gold standard of explanatory hypotheses.
What’s your point? I made no such claims. On the other hand, “It’s just like this,” and continue to believe it’s just like this when it’s not and irrelevant, the gold standard of ideological advocacy research.
“Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa · March 30, 2016 at 6:47 pm
“Safe spaces are routinely set up when a speaker comes to campus that is ideologically distasteful.”
I have seen this asserted before—but exclusively by handwringers about Today’s Coddled Youths. Is it true? What are these kinds of safe spaces like? Having consulted with some friends and colleagues who also have never seen any such things, I’m starting to think this sort of thing is just a big myth. I’m familiar with particular offices or environments that are designated safe spaces, where, for instance, people are invited to discuss sexual assaults without fear of judgment or attack, and maybe women’s-only lounges in dedicated locations. But I kinda think this kind kind of portable fainting couch zone is pure reactionary fantasy. It’s hard to prove a negative, but I’ve never seen such a thing—frequent assertions about what is ‘routine’ notwithstanding.”
Here are just a few examples of what Jonathan Ichikawa Jenkins falsely claims is a “myth”:
Germaine Greer no-platfoormed
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/25/germaine-greer-prejudice-trans-people
Julie Bindel no-platformed
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/feminist-julie-bindel-banned-manchester-student-union-talk-free-speech-1522670
Milo Yiannopolous no-platformed
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/02/19/student-protests-and-university-cancellations-follow-milo-yiannopoulos-speaking-tour
Peter Tachell no-platformed
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/13/peter-tatchell-snubbed-students-free-speech-veteran-gay-rights-activist
And this is only the start of the list.
Jonathan Ichikawa Jenkins is either unable to read a newspaper or is simply a liar.
He’s talking about campuses actually setting up safe spaces – like a room or something – hence the description of a ‘portable fainting couch zone.’ I just skimmed them, but none of those articles mentions anything like that. They ate all about no-platforming, which may be objectionable but is not what ichikawa is talking about.
They are discussing “safe spaces”, liar.
OK, I thought you had just misunderstood but it looks like you are being deliberately unreasonable. You are right that they use the words “safe space” but it is clear from the context that they are discussing actual spaces, as I described, not no-platforming. But the fact that your immediate response to someone who disagrees with you about how to interpret something and gives reasons why is to call them a ‘liar’ makes it clear that there’s no point trying to have a reasonable conversation about this. But the quote is above, so I guess the few people who care can decide for themselves who is ‘lying’.
To be fair, they literally happen all the time, eg last month we saw:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/23/michigan-creates-safe-space-for-students-afraid-of-debate-on-feminism/
Google is your friend if you can be bothered to find more. The more worrying question is why do Stanley + Ichikawa Jenkins persist in this “well I haven’t seen it, so it can’t be true” schtick rather than, you know, opening Google or following the conservative media who are all to happy to point out instances? Do they think they are somehow above it?
Maybe for the same reason that idiots like 8:41 persist in their ‘deliberately misinterpret then call everyone who points this out a liar’ schtick. Its propaganda masquerading (though in some cases not very well) as discussion.
Looks like 9:06 has gone to debate classes taught by Donald trump.
“I thought you had just misunderstood but it looks like you are being deliberately unreasonable.”
The only person being deliberately unreasonable is you. Anyone can read about the relevant incidents and see how “safe spaces” and “safe space policies” are used to block or prevent invitations of speakers, or disrupt those talks. If you do not wish to read the evidence, that is your choice, but it is unreasonable. If you cannot process this immediate evidence, this again is unreasonable, and reflects poorly on you and you alone.
Oh my god, are you that dumb? I did not disagree with you that the incidences of no platforming you mentioned were objectionable.
“Christina Hoff Sommers Lecture Leads to ‘Trigger Warnings’ and ‘Safe Spaces’ at Oberlin and Georgetown”
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/04/22/christina-hoff-sommers-lecture-leads-to-trigger-warnings-and-safe-spaces-at-oberlin-and-georgetown/
How did Georgetown come to be infested with SJW faculty? It’s Catholic after all. What kind of game is the church playing?
SJ has always been pretty big in the Catholic Church.
I blame the Sermon on the Mount.
“why do Stanley + Ichikawa Jenkins persist in this “well I haven’t seen it, so it can’t be true” schtick”
Because they are apparatchiks.
I am completely confused about all the hate that this new empirical study is getting here. The authors do not simply take on board the usual SJW views. Rather, they *test* those views, and they provide evidence *against* a number of them.
I don’t know your definition of ‘hate’. Most comments have been on specific points related to the study. It is only you who have chosen to construe it as an ideological conflict.
They provide evidence against some of them, but then they propose new SJW schemes instead. Replace thought experiments with X-phi and newspapers? If that’s what women supposedly want to read, then why not just major in gender studies (newspapers) or in social psychology (X-phi)?
The idea is that you can use *real examples* to base your discussion around. This is basic pedagogy, why is this a foreign idea to you guys
Please define and explain why *real examples* matter.
Being the person who posted the “sexist remark” about Kukla, I have to admit that Leiter contacted me beforehand and asked me to write the comment. Seriously though, Leiter has also a rather loose definition of sexism
“… ‘deliberately misinterpret then call everyone who points this out a liar’ schtick.”
The deliberate dishonesty of Stanley, Ichikawa Jenkins and others, about publicly available facts, concerning the routine use of “space space” mentality to bully, silence, threaten and harass speakers and other individuals – Greer, Hoff Sommers, Tatchell, Yiannopoulos, etc, etc. – there are countless cases, well-documented and frequent occurrences – is not “propaganda”.
It is telling the truth.
It is exposing propagandist academic apparatchiks – like Stanley and Ichikawa Jenkins – for organized harassment and violence against other academics whom they want to see threatened, bullied and silenced.
“The deliberate dishonesty of Stanley, Ichikawa Jenkins and others…is not propaganda. It is telling the truth.”
Deliberate dishonesty is telling the truth? Liar.
Looks like you subscribe to the Old Infantilism. Want to add a “pants on fire”?
I have seen studies which show that 55% of liars are men. Its disgusting.
Why do 46 million Korean teenagers leave Wisconsin each year? Have philosophers ever examined this serious social problem? If not, why not? To be frank, I think it’s disgusting that philosophers hate Korean teenagers so much.
Its particularly disgusting that philosophers (who are mostly white men) hate Korean teenagers.
Imagine If Conservatives in Academia Could Safely ‘Come Out’
For the book, political scientists Jon A. Shields and Joshua M. Dunn Sr., who are themselves on the political right, conducted detailed interviews at 84 universities with 153 conservative and libertarian professors from six disciplines — economics, political science, sociology, history, philosophy and literature.
Women do not “leave” philosophy. It is a myth. There is not one single piece of evidence for this bizarre myth. Around 35% of those who *apply* to study a philosophy degree are women. Repetition of a myth doesn’t make a myth true. The myth remains false however many times the myth is repeated.
Do you have a citation for that? Because someone has cited studies above that seem at odds with your claim. If you know of studies that reach a different conclusion about the statistics (which I assume you do as you are citing specific percentages) it would be good to link to them.
“Because someone has cited studies above that seem at odds with your claim.”
That is false. No one has. You are trying to deny that the proportion of female applicants to study for a *degree* in philosophy at university are around 35%. I have seen these figures in detail for several universities and they are fairly uniform.
You deny this. Ok, well state the evidence. Thank you.
What the hell? I’m not trying to deny anything. You keep stating a percentage, and despite being asked twice, you’re refusing to provide any evidence. I was assuming that you didn’t just pull 35% out your ass, but given your hostile response to someone who simply asked you for the citation, I guess not.
That’s not how it works. You can’t just pull a number out the air, refuse to provide any evidence for it, then demand that your interlocutor state evidence that shows your figure is wrong. If you are making a statistical claim, the onus is on you to provide evidence for it. Did no one teach you this?
I have seen evidence that the percentages for female applications to study a philosophy degree are around 35-40%. For Cambridge University, here are the application figures for 2011-2014:
2011: Male 61.3%, Female 38.7%
2012: Male 56.3%, Female 43.7%
2013: Male 60.1%, Female 39.8%
2014: Male 62.6%, Female 37.4%.
This averages to 39.9% female, 60.1% male. The figures for other Universities I’ve seen are similar, some slightly lower and few slightly higher.
So, closer to 40% than 35%. Describing this as ‘around 35%’ is pretty dishonest, given that the average is 39.9% and one thing in question is where the leak in the pipeline is. If the average was in fact 35%, you would have a much stronger basis for the claim that women don’t drop out, given the stats on what percentage of PhD students are women. But if its 40%? Not so much. I also understand now you are talking about the British system, where people apply to take a particular subject. But Jesus Christ, why not just clarify that that was what you were talking about if people cite studies from other regions, rather than throwing a tantrum accusing people of trying to deny things?
It’s hilarious watching the numbers sneak up. The first time the claim was made, it was 30-35%. Then someone asks for evidence. Then the claim is repeated, but now it’s ‘around 35%’. Someone asks for evidence again. Some is actually provided, but now it’s ‘around 35 – 40%’ to describe an average of 39.9%.
What’s “hilarious” is your own ignorance. I’ve seen figures for another university which are consistently around 33%. And others around 35%. You seem incapable of understanding the idea that evidence matters. There is no phenomenon of women “leaving” philosophy. It does not happen. It is a myth.
OK. You’re right. I am ignorant of those figures – though I’m not sure why that’s hilarious. But you have ‘seen’ the figures. Fine. What is your source? Which universities are you talking about? Where could a person go to read such figures in order to cure themselves of their ignorance?
Also, at most your stats would support the claim that in Britain, women aren’t leaving philosophy. But someone has provided actual figures from a different region – and they have actually provided a source – which does show a drop off. So your claim that “there is no phenomenon of women leaving philosophy. It does not happen. It is a myth” is much too strong. Nothing you have said supports the claim that ‘it does not happen.’ At best you have provided support for the claim that it does not happen in systems where people apply to study a philosophy degree, but as has been pointed out multiple times, you are yet to provide any evidence for the statistics you cite. “I’ve seen figures for a university” which you do not name, where even the lowest figure is higher than your initial claim, is not evidence. You need to say where you are getting these figures from, otherwise we have no reason to believe that you’re not just making them up.
“If the average was in fact 35%, you would have a much stronger basis for the claim that women don’t drop out, given the stats on what percentage of PhD students are women. But if its 40%?”
Women do not “drop out”. That is a myth. The evidence I have seen suggests 35% is closer, but I’ve seen lower figures for applications & current enrolment, and also higher ones too. Cambridge’s average is 39.9% over a recent four year period. I’m not going to do other people’s research for them, simply because they’re too dishonest to do it and instead prefer to spout myths which are not supported by evidence.
Looks like you can’t be bothered to do your own research, let alone other people’s. Tell you what, next time you write a paper that makes a statistical claim, put a footnote that says “I’ve seen this figure somewhere but I’m not going to bother saying where because I’m not going to do the reader’s research for them!” And see how far that gets you.
What do you mean, ‘myth not supported by evidence?’ Someone gave you the figures above which supports the claim – see the comment from March 31 at 2:14. They even told you where these figures came from. You’re the only one spouting figures which you haven’t provided evidence for.
When did this site get so boring?
Right?! Turns out earnest finger-wagging wasn’t just an artifact of heavy-handed NC comment moderation.
Glaucon?
This is by social psychologist and feminist Carol Tavris. Recall back in December ’14 that a blogger at Fem Philers reaffirmed that she regarded Emily Yoffe as a “rape apologist” for her articles for Slate discussed here…
THE DELICATE DILEMMA OF DEFINING RAPE
http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/the-delicate-dilemma-of-defining-rape/