Feminist "Scholarship": Where Sense And Reason Go To Die
I've long had the impression that papers in feminist academia are written by throwing a bunch of words in a jar ("hegemonic" and its various relatives), shaking the thing out on a countertop, and putting the words down on the page in whatever order they're picked up.
Well, there's been a beautiful hoax, a la the Sokol mumbo jumbo scientific paper a while back (in 1996), and this new one is by Peter Boghossian annd James Lindsay.
They have a piece about it in Skeptic magazine, which I get by e-subscription.
The Hoax
The androcentric scientific and meta-scientific evidence that the penis is the male reproductive organ is considered overwhelming and largely uncontroversial.That's how we began. We used this preposterous sentence to open a "paper" consisting of 3,000 words of utter nonsense posing as academic scholarship. Then a peer-reviewed academic journal in the social sciences accepted and published it.
This paper should never have been published. Titled, "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct," our paper "argues" that "The penis vis-à-vis maleness is an incoherent construct. We argue that the conceptual penis is better understood not as an anatomical organ but as a gender-performative, highly fluid social construct." As if to prove philosopher David Hume's claim that there is a deep gap between what is and what ought to be, our should-never-have-been-published paper was published in the open-access (meaning that articles are freely accessible and not behind a paywall), peer-reviewed journal Cogent Social Sciences. (In case the PDF is removed, we've archived it.)
Assuming the pen names "Jamie Lindsay" and "Peter Boyle," and writing for the fictitious "Southeast Independent Social Research Group," we wrote an absurd paper loosely composed in the style of post-structuralist discursive gender theory. The paper was ridiculous by intention, essentially arguing that penises shouldn't be thought of as male genital organs but as damaging social constructions. We made no attempt to find out what "post-structuralist discursive gender theory" actually means. We assumed that if we were merely clear in our moral implications that maleness is intrinsically bad and that the penis is somehow at the root of it, we could get the paper published in a respectable journal.
This already damning characterization of our hoax understates our paper's lack of fitness for academic publication by orders of magnitude. We didn't try to make the paper coherent; instead, we stuffed it full of jargon (like "discursive" and "isomorphism"), nonsense (like arguing that hypermasculine men are both inside and outside of certain discourses at the same time), red-flag phrases (like "pre-post-patriarchal society"), lewd references to slang terms for the penis, insulting phrasing regarding men (including referring to some men who choose not to have children as being "unable to coerce a mate"), and allusions to rape (we stated that "manspreading," a complaint levied against men for sitting with their legs spread wide, is "akin to raping the empty space around him"). After completing the paper, we read it carefully to ensure it didn't say anything meaningful, and as neither one of us could determine what it is actually about, we deemed it a success.
Consider some examples. Here's a paragraph from the conclusion, which was held in high regard by both reviewers:
We conclude that penises are not best understood as the male sexual organ, or as a male reproductive organ, but instead as an enacted social construct that is both damaging and problematic for society and future generations. The conceptual penis presents significant problems for gender identity and reproductive identity within social and family dynamics, is exclusionary to disenfranchised communities based upon gender or reproductive identity, is an enduring source of abuse for women and other gender-marginalized groups and individuals, is the universal performative source of rape, and is the conceptual driver behind much of climate change.You read that right. We argued that climate change is "conceptually" caused by penises. How do we defend that assertion? Like this:
Destructive, unsustainable hegemonically male approaches to pressing environmental policy and action are the predictable results of a raping of nature by a male-dominated mindset. This mindset is best captured by recognizing the role of [sic] the conceptual penis holds over masculine psychology. When it is applied to our natural environment, especially virgin environments that can be cheaply despoiled for their material resources and left dilapidated and diminished when our patriarchal approaches to economic gain have stolen their inherent worth, the extrapolation of the rape culture inherent in the conceptual penis becomes clear.
This isn't to say the journal lacks standards:
They didn't accept the paper outright, however. Cogent Social Sciences' Reviewer #2 offered us a few relatively easy fixes to make our paper "better." We effortlessly completed them in about two hours, putting in a little more nonsense about "manspreading" (which we alleged to be a cause of climate change) and "dick-measuring contests."
They bring up two problems:
Conclusion: A Two-Pronged Problem for Academia There are at least two deeply troublesome diseases damaging the credibility of the peer-review system in fields such as gender studies:1. the echo-chamber of morally driven fashionable nonsense coming out of the postmodernist social "sciences" in general, and gender studies departments in particular and
2. the complex problem of pay-to-publish journals with lax standards that cash in on the ultra-competitive publish-or-perish academic environment. At least one of these sicknesses led to "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct" being published as a legitimate piece of academic scholarship, and we can expect proponents of each to lay primary blame upon the other.
This so clearly shows what feminist academia is: an ideology mill in which you don't have to make sense; you just have to hit all the right marks while using impenetrable (heh) language that makes women out to be cartoonish victims and men out to be cartoonish perps.
Daniel Dennett on the mumbo jumbo of post-modernism (at Edge, via @SteveStuWill):
Postmodernism, the school of "thought" that proclaimed "There are no truths, only interpretations" has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for "conversations" in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster.
Interestingly, a sex differences researcher I respect, Joyce Benenson, points out that while men are comfortable with hierarchy and competition, women don't like any woman to stand out beyond the rest. They tend to hang out in twos (rather than in groups like men) and to bond through sharing vulnerabilities. (No queen of the hill for the women or the wymyn!) Post-modern academia and all of the relativism that drives it seems to be molded around this psychology.
On the plus side, at least wit hasn't died in peer-reviewed academic journals in the social sciences. Even if no genuine feminist academics were involved in writing it!
L. Beau Macaroni at May 20, 2017 3:48 AM
I think the insights of Joyce Benenson and other sex differences researchers have far broader implications here. Here are a few overlapping dimensions:
1. Female sociality tends to be characterized by indirect conflict, rather than by direct conflict. The strategies that we are seeing feminists employing to gain power and influence in the academy, while avoiding challenge, are straight out of the female intrasexual competition handbook: destroying reputations, no-platforming, combative networking, appealing to third parties to act on their behalf, denouncing and demonizing outsiders, closing ranks, harnessing the power of the group, etc. The recent Tuvel/Hypatia case is a great example of what this looks like.
2. Manliness tends to be ordered around themes of agency: strength, courage, mastery, and honour. In the academic arena, the code of manliness can easily be harnessed to the quest for truth through challenging discourse. The man is expected to demonstrate the strength to act and be treated as a combatant in the field of ideas, the courage to put his reputation and ideas in jeopardy in direct conflict, the mastery of the issues necessary to hold his own in debate, and the honour not to employ underhand tactics or avoid direct challenge. The academy has historically rested heavily upon such a code of manliness. As women become the majority in the academy, it is not surprising that we are struggling with a closing down of free speech on controversial issues. Women don't typically operate according to the code of manliness, so, if universities want to remain a place of robust and adversarial discourse, they will have to teach them to do so.
3. Both women and their communication are typically much more 'people' oriented and much less 'thing' oriented than men and their communication. When engaging in discourse, women will typically be much more sensitive to and concerned about the social effect of the discourse. This is part of the reason why female groups are much less accommodating when it comes to direct argument. While the arena of debate can be a realm for men to enjoy sparring with each other, proving their strength, and bonding through the challenge, as a realm it is more alien and separate from typical female sociality. Even women who love debate and argument will often have to seek it in male-dominated groups. However, as universities and other such institutions become both highly integrated and predominately female, the masculine contexts of discourse will dry up and the discourse that remains will be heavily coloured by feminine tendencies in sociality.
4. The university has historically been a place overwhelmingly populated by privileged men. These privileged men were expected to adhere to a code of masculinity and act in a manly fashion. As such, they gained honour through proving their strength through challenge, by acting as combatants. Historically, this culture was shaped by oral disputes and the need to prove the strength of one's position in robust adversarial speech. The modern university is ordered around the form of the essay, which largely abstracts thought from the realm of interpersonal challenge. The modern university, by contrast with the historical university, is populated in large measure by people socially coded as non-combatants, victims, and the vulnerable. The result is that such people close down challenging discourse, functioning as human shields around controversial issues.
5. As female intrasexual conflict depends heavily upon appeal to third parties and women tend to enjoy protected status as vulnerable non-combatants, the rise of female sociality in the university setting can produce a concomitant growth of administration designed to protect, assist, and advocate for them. This growing administration can create a stifling environment, where challenge cannot be voiced.
6. Decent human beings are naturally sensitive to the feelings of other within society, especially those whose membership of the group is precarious, or who are particularly sensitive as individuals. Some forms of sociality are liberating because they reduce the need for social sensitivity. Men can bond through argument and combat and low personal sensitivity is an important part of this, freeing us from a need for intense social sensitivity. Almost every man knows that women are typically different and that you can't speak as directly and forcefully with most women as you can with your male peers. Women's acute attentiveness and sensitivity to sociality creates an environment where thought in the university and elsewhere is increasingly driven by its social impact and less by truth. Feminism is what happens when palliating white lies about the causes of men and women's different outcomes harden into totalizing ideology. The 'studies' disciplines are in no small measure the ideologization of white lies, designed to affirm the vulnerable and the marginal in their membership of society, but lacking in commitment to truth. However, the more fragile character of female sociality means that one cannot directly challenge feminist ideas in the academy without being seen to challenge women themselves.
7. Being less 'thing' oriented than men, less systematizing, less adversarial, socializing in smaller and more intimate groups, and having a logic of identity that rests less upon robust external agency, women and their groups don't have the same tendencies and men and their groups. One of the main problems in this area is that the distinction between issues and persons is much less clearly defined in female conversation. For men the objectivity of things, ideas, and systems provides an opportunity for bonding through shared agency or proving the strength of one's agency through ritual combat. Male groups tend to be more object- and task-oriented. They also tend to function more according to implicit or explicit 'codes', which lends to their externalization of their order in institutional form. The realm of male challenge is one set apart from regular human sociality; it implicitly involves a movement away from the more intimate realm of social relations. It is a realm where you put yourself on the line and prove yourself. However, it is also a realm from which you can retreat. Placed within this realm, intellectual enquiry is more 'objective' (both in the sense of being distinguished from the realm of immediate human passions and in the sense of being goal-oriented). There is a break from regular sociality. You shake hands with your opponent as you enter the field of debate and you shake hands when you leave. The conflict that occurs on the field isn't taken so personally. However, these dynamics of identity, sociality, and discourse are much less operative among women. The result is that discourse is much less aerated, can be taken much more personally, and is much more stifled by the norms governing close personal relations.
Obviously, if I am on the right lines here, it is all extremely inconvenient, unwelcome, and troublesome. However, as I suspect I am, we need to face up to and address it more directly.
zugzwanged at May 20, 2017 6:16 AM
Obviously, if I am on the right lines here, it is all extremely inconvenient, unwelcome, and troublesome. However, as I suspect I am, we need to face up to and address it more directly.
zugzwanged at May 20, 2017 6:16 AM
Artemis? Is that you again?
Isab at May 20, 2017 8:55 AM
I have a bunch of engineering type friends. When we get together many real-world topics come up, from home repairs to taxes to immigration law to cars. We will debate things but if someone knows what he is talking about others will back him up and acknowledge his expertise. No one gets their feelings hurt. In fact, realizing that there is an expert in the room leads to others grilling that person for information. I have never seen women do this. I think women think that explaining tax law is unfeminine or obnoxious or something.
The only quibble I have with the above essay is that many academics, in contrast to my group of friends, will never admit they are wrong, whether male or female.
cc at May 20, 2017 9:33 AM
These chicks think of my cock more than I do.
Steven Daniels at May 20, 2017 10:42 AM
Amy, it isn't just feminism. Deconstructionism was first applied to literary analysis, where it is all opinions about fiction. It was claimed that no writer could escape his background/culture when writing. True if perhaps trivial. But it is now applied as if it is a greater truth to topics in science to claim that a discovery in psychology or biology or even physics is culture bound, as if there might somewhere be an alternate physics or geology that is not "western" or "male". This is where it gets truly insane.
cc at May 20, 2017 12:21 PM
Isab, I don't think I've commented on this site before today, and have only left one other comment (on this thread).
zugzwanged at May 20, 2017 3:14 PM
PENIS, penis.
Crid at May 21, 2017 6:29 AM
Maybe the penis hoax wasn't all that beautiful.
Crid at May 21, 2017 9:35 AM
"...settling for 'conversations' in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed."
Except, of course, for people of the out-group (whatever it happens to be at the moment). They are always wrong, and thus the academics who claim to not believe in absolute truth have one. An easy-to-use one. Is a person of the out-group expressing an opinion? Then the correct answer is the opposite of that. Is a person of the out-group observed to engage in a certain behavior? Than the moral and just behavior is the opposite of that.
cc has it right; this is just one aspect of the Foucault bomb that detonated in the humanities half a century ago. The destruction was already apparent to me when I was in high school in the mid-1970s. It used to be that the humanities were considered the driving force behind all fields of academic inquiry. A person with a humanities degree was sought out in all kinds of capacities -- companies and governments wanted them for managers, executives, and policy advisers. Humanities majors started businesses, charities, and civic organizations. They became military officers. Or, they went back to school and got a second degree in a more specialized field, which made them even more valuable.
Then something happened. Leftists, whose main talent consisted of running their mouths, moved in. They used some existing social problems (notably the black and female civil rights movements) as foot-in-the-door strategies. They quickly learned that they could exploit the traditional ethics of the humanities to shame and silence their opponents. Having accomplished that mission, they next faced the problem of getting the larger world to take them seriously despite knowing, in their heart of hearts, that they had no learning and no skills beyond being able to talk a good game.
So they looked around at Western civilization to find some source of respect that they could co-op. And they noticed the STEM fields -- the "natural" sciences (physics, chemistry, and biology), mathematics (and its handmaiden, computer science), and the engineering disciplines. One problem the STEM fields often run into is discovering and working with concepts for which there are no words, because no one ever thought of them before. They wind up having to invent appellations so they can communicate these concept precisely. And so a jargon develops. Within the field, the purpose of a jargon is not to obscure -- it's the opposite: to make communication more clear. But an unfortunate side effect is that, because the words do not have conventional language definitions (or are being used in a specialized sense outside of their conventional definitions), it sounds like gobbledygook to the layman.
The pseudo-humanists in the post-WWII period looked around and realized that the public's respect for STEM people was rising rapidly. At first, there was a lot of resentment of this, and the pseudo-humanists tried character assassination to try to diminish respect for STEM. That was only partly successful; they succeeded in slandering a few fields (like chemistry), but the microcomputer revolution and its obvious benefits foiled that plot, for the most part. So they gave up trying to destroy STEM and instead decided to ride on its coattails, by co-opting the outward appearance of technical jargon. (Comparisons to the Middle Ages mystery guilds, whose members walked around in public mumbling random Latin words, are apt.) Liberally peppering their speech with very loosely defined ten-dollar words, they created a jargon of sorts.
Now, the purpose of this jargon was to obscure. The pseudo-humanists didn't intend for anyone to understand them, not even each other. It worked in three respects: they gained respect by making their speeches and papers "sciencey". People were impressed by all the big words; they assumed it must have some scientific grounding. And, it gave them intellectual cover; because the speech was so obscure, it allowed to them to claim, at various times and in front of different groups, that the speech meant whatever they wanted it to mean at the moment, and anyone who disagreed was obviously too stupid to understand. This led directly to the third benefit: power politics in the form of speech. Whoever could succeed in cranking out the jargoniest bullshit won, and gained the right to denounce opponents.
So here we are. The humanities, as we knew them, are dead in the academy. The social sciences are on life support, and the prognosis is poor. No one wants to hire a humanities major any more; in fact, such a degree often marks a person as a grievance-monger and a "do not hire". The relatively few remaining adherents of the traditional humanities are left grappling with designing a moral and intellectual framework that will allow them to expel the pseudo-humanists and get back on some sort of foundation. So far, they haven't had a lot of success.
Cousin Dave at May 22, 2017 7:42 AM
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