When a college feminist decided, one cold night in 2014, to burn her personal copy of pseudofeminist Christina Hoff Sommers’ book The War Against Boys, the internet’s antifeminists responded as if Hitler himself had risen from the grave.
“Universities bring book-burning back, one page at a time,” declared a blogger at TheRebelMedia. After an extended comparison with the infamous book burning campaigns of the literal Nazis, he declared that “[t]he burning of Hoff Sommers’ book is a striking visual synecdoche for the malaise afflicting free expression across not only North American college campuses.” In a featured article, A Voice for Men described the burning as a “disturbing” example of “misandry in academia.”
On the Men’s Rights subreddit, meanwhile, one angry dude declared that
If you’re burning a book, you’re basically admitting to being not just a bigot, but one who doesn’t even have enough confidence in the strength of their own views to believe that they can stand up for themselves without needing to silence and censor those that oppose them.
If we set aside the fact that, unlike the Nazis, who confiscated the books they burned, a person burning their own copy of a book that is readily available to others is not actually censoring anything, he’s got a point.
So it’s interesting to see how many of the Internet’s antifeminsts and Anti-Social-Justice-Warrior-Warriors are embracing a proposal from one of their own to literally censor all academics who teach stuff they don’t like.
On Change.org, professional feminism-hater Carl Benjamin, known on YouTube as Sargon of Akkad, has started a petition demanding that “UNIVERSITIES” — presumably, every single one of them — immediately “Suspend Social Justice Courses” because he thinks that “social justice” professors are up to no good.
In vague but melodramatic language Benjamin proclaims that
Social justice has become scientifically illiterate, logically unsound, deeply bigoted and openly supremacist.
He doesn’t specify exactly what kind of supremacism he’s complaining about here; presumably not white.
Nor does he ever define exactly what courses count as “social justice courses.” There aren’t any departments of Social Justice that I’m aware of. [EDIT: Oops! Turns out there are.] Does Benjamin mean a tiny handful of, say, women’s studies courses taught by radical feminists? Or does he hope (at least in his wildest dreams) to take down the humanities and social sciences as a whole?
Social justice professors are indoctrinating young people into a pseudoscientific cult behind closed doors that is doing damage to their health, education and future.
Well, technically, I guess, virtually all college courses are taught “behind closed doors,” since the doors of lecture halls generally do get closed before class begins. Technically, I’m writing this post behind closed doors, because I don’t leave the doors of my apartment wide open. (People might wander in; the cats might wander out.) I suspect that Benjamin himself wrote up his petition behind closed doors!
Benjamin goes on to declare that
[s]ocial justice … has become another ideology fit only to pave the road to Hell, so it is time to turn around and choose another path that is concerned with reason, science and improving the lives of every human.
If only some evil Social Justice English professor has indoctrinated Benjamin in the devilish art of writing without resorting to hackneyed cliches.
But that’s pretty much all there is to Benjamin’s petition. Somehow, thought, the vagueness of Benjamin’s plan hasn’t stopped 9,878 people — so far — from signing the petition.
It is, however, possible that some of the signers are a little bit confused as to what exactly they’re signing.
Indeed, the top two most-liked comments on the petition, for example, were written by people who seem to think that Benjamin’s proposal to peremptorily censor all college courses that he thinks are excessively social-justicey is, somehow, a defense of free speech?
Benjamin has posted a video in which he explains his crusade in a little more detail. It’s possible that somewhere in it he answers the question of how exactly his plan to drive all professors he doesn’t like from all the college campuses in the world is actually a crusade for free speech.
Here’s the video in question:
Oops! Wrong video. Let me try again:
Huh. I don’t think that was it either.
No, that’s clearly not it.
Ok, ok. I found the real one here.
But it’s 40 minutes long. I sampled the first 2 seconds, and that was about all I could bring myself to watch. So I guess I’ll just have to resign myself to a life of servitude under the jackboots of the Social Justice warlords. Still, that’s a far better option than actually watching a Sargon of Akkad video all the way through.
The whole “there can’t be a wage gap because everyone would just hire women to save money!” just-so story is part of a common tendency I notice because I read a lot of spec fic: Extrapolating how people would behave in a given situation based on what’s logical, reasonable, and/or beneficial to them or society.
The trouble is that people don’t always (or even usually) behave logically or reasonably and often act against their own interests for various reasons. Reality is messy. So stories that try to predict how people would behave often fall way off the mark from how people actually behave in similar circumstances. (Compare Galt Gulch to the mess left at Malheur, for instance.)
If it’s in fiction that’s just bad literature, but it becomes a problem when you extrapolate how they think people would logically behave if a premise were true and then conclude that the premise is false because people don’t behave that way. But that isn’t actually evidence that the premise is false. All it proves is that people don’t always behave the way you expect.
It’s also the story that economists told one another to explain why civil rights legislation wasn’t needed and racism would just economic itself away. I mean, if you can hire a black person for 60% the going rate, why would you ever hire a white person at a premium? And black money spends the same as white money, so why wouldn’t businesses accept black patrons in order to maximize their customer base and revenue?
Economists kept telling this story for most of a century, and every time they told it, the end of racism was just around the corner. Every time, it turned out that racism wasn’t necessarily perpetrated by rational actors seeking to maximize their profits. Occasionally it turned out that maximizing profits meant racial discrimination; if you serve a black person and that makes 50% of your white racist customers stop patronizing your business, being racist yourself against that one black customer is actually a profit-maximizing action.
It’s really common for uneducated people who play at being economists on the Internet to spin stories like this. They aren’t any more true when applied to sexism than they were when applied to racism. “Rational actors maximizing profit/utility” is a simplifying conceit in economics, not a reflection of reality.
@Katz, yes! it’s the economist’s curse, I think – viewing everyone as rational actors.
People are irrational actors. If they weren’t, then we’d have no need for the scientific method – we would naturally just become more right as we age and collect information. Our decision making is a shoddy set of evolved heuristics that are meant to keep us alive, that’s it.
I get why economists do it – you can’t really simulate that sort of messy heuristic decision making over an economy. As far as I know (I’m no economist) they point this out in intro economics courses, too! But they run with that assumption far too easily from that point on.
Ah, humans, why you got to be so messy.
EDIT: Sniped by PoM, who said it better. Woops!
What you’re asking me is the equivalent of asking what would prove the bible is true. The answer to that is, I don’t know what would convince me. As far as I am concerned racism and sexism are for the most part non-answers until you can prove that it is racism or sexism(as is the case with stem fields) (especially when talking about the subtle racism/sexism) which can be filled in wherever there may be (unexplained) difference. You arguably would have address each individual issue in order to convince me. (same as with the bible, just because one passage is grounded in truth, doesn’t mean the rest of it is)
For each issue it would be a study with a hypothesis (ergo it is falsifiable), with a reproducibility rate of at least 80%, which passed peer review.
I am not going to have time to respond for a while after today (a few days, got a lot of work coming up).
SCIENCE folks! A true STEM mind at work. I stand in awe.
Dude, you could have just said “I’ve already decided that there’s no such thing as racism and sexism and I’ll never change my mind no matter what.” Would have saved us a lot of time.
@polyliker, so let me see if I understand you properly. You feel that we live a post-racism, post-sexism society, except for when it comes to STEM fields (where most of the money is made these days) and in education (which everyone is subjected to by law). Yet even though these two areas represent the basis of most of the current and future power in our culture (education and money), you’re saying that racism and sexism in these fields has no impact whatsoever on the rest of society?
I’m on it
http://49.media.tumblr.com/384dc39de99a6078a057a6f96ca831ef/tumblr_nw6p2kOj1j1uetswio1_1280.gif
@Zen
Hiya, I’m Axe. I’m not a particularly good or nice person. If I were, perhaps I’d give a shit about what you feel. I don’t. At all. That’s your own issue, and it’s neither my job nor my hobby to acquiesce to how you think shit should work. Now, I could care, if you had a good reason why you feel some kinda way. Say, if your objection wasn’t simply ‘I don’t like it’. Unfortunately, no such luck
To your points:
Why? Other than ‘I don’t like it’, I mean. Some kinda efficacy argument? The entirely unnecessary analogy muddled the whole thing, so I’m more than a bit confused. Also, you confuse me with somebody else. I don’t want to help poor minorities. I want my government to do its fucking job and help people, period. Affirmative action is one way, in which this is done. If you got beef with the program, tell them (or us in the interim) why, other than that it inconveniences you to think about the assistance you assume you received. And learn to quote correctly, for fuck’s sake
Good! I wasn’t planning to do any such thing
You should note I never said it wasn’t racist. I will, if you like, but I didn’t, so why be so adamant in yelling all caps at me that it is. It doesn’t matter if it’s racist. Little secret, the government is allowed to be racist, if there’s a good reason, and it meets certain criteria (I layed them out in an earlier comment aka strict scrutiny). Any arguments vis a vis said criteria? I’ll wait
And by the way, everybody else…
I’d been lurking awhile before I actually started commenting. Quick question. Is it just me or are there way more… characters now than there were 6 months ago. Maybe it’s cos they’re popping up in my email now? Whatever…
@Polyliker,
(I’ll try to be quick, since you’re pressed for time._
You… do acknowledge that your standards of proof are unreasonably high, yes?
You’re comparing social justice concerns to faith in the bible – implying that you can’t be convinced by rational argument (generally people don’t believe in the bible because of rational argument, they believe because they have faith). You also require specific evidence for each facet of these social justice concerns, of which there are a great number.
This is not how to pursue truth; it’s how to be wrong.
Having very high standards of evidence isn’t a sign of strong character or good skepticism; it’s a sign of being unwilling to confront ones’ own opinions.
Your standards of evidence are akin to the young earth creationist crying about missing links. Every piece of evidence shown to you isn’t evidence, it’s an opportunity to find a flaw. Every statistic is something to critique and not ingest – critically, of course, but ingest all the same.
This is what wrong feels like – it feels like strong conviction. Please, take a good look at why you need such high standards of evidence in this area.
And I note that this reply may seem harsh – I’m sorry about that. Usually I try to be nicer, and will just give up in this case. But you’re so close, and you’re clearly concerned about the poor and needy – this argument is about who is needy, for which reasons, and how it ought to be handled. You’re worth it, so I’m going to try.
@Scildfreja
I would use the term “unfalsifiable.”
@PoM, that too!
@Axecalibur,
Channers have recently decided to visit the board from time to time. They are providing a lot of colour, at least!
katz:
OMG, that mess left at Malheur is so nasty. :O
Welp, I guess that “I will be busy for the next few days” likely meant “I don’t know how to reply so I’m pulling the ripcord on this conversation.” Sigh. Just like always. @Polyliker, please do at least think about these things.
Also, thank you! I rarely get the opportunity to stretch my brain out like this with these conversations – too often the people who wander in here don’t engage with the points being discussed. They just repeat their points, and avoid talking about any rebuttals. You didn’t do that, you were actually engaging. So, thank you, and don’t stop doing that!
It’s pretty par for the course. We had an unusually quiet period during the last half of 2015.
At least our current trolls tend to meltdown and flounce or get banned quickly rather than come here every single day.
*puts on old lady shawl and onion belt*
Trolls these day just don’t have the attention span or dedication to troll a blog long term anymore. They don’t make ’em like they used to.
That’s probably for the best.
WHY WOULD YOU LITERALLY SHIT ALL OVER THE PLACE YOU WERE LIVING
ESPECIALLY IF YOU WERE TRYING TO CONVINCE THE PUBLIC THAT YOU HAD A RIGHT TO BE THERE
Those alpha males gotta mark their territory don’chakno.
katz: The entire mess looked like they expected someone else to pick up their trash and do cleaning on their behalf.
But even that… even that can’t explain shitting where you sleep and eat. FFS, don’t they know anything about camping?
BTW, the “predicting how people will act” mistake doesn’t necessarily mean overestimating how rational people will be; it just means assuming that you can figure out how people in some hypothetical scenario would react to something without looking at (or without accepting) how people in real life react to similar things.
@Polyliker,
Walk with me, if you will, on a journey of imagination.
Suppose that I said to you, “employers discriminate against women in STEM,” and you said, “I’d say that’s unlikely. Sexism is not a big problem these days; you’d need pretty compelling evidence to convince me.” Suppose that I gave you this evidence, and you said, “You’ve convinced me; sexism is still a problem in STEM industries.”
Suppose that I said to you, “high school teachers discriminate against female students in all disciplines,” and you said, “that seems unlikely; outside the STEM industries, sexism is not a big problem these days; you’d need pretty compelling evidence to convince me.” Suppose that I gave you this evidence, and you said, “You’ve convinced me; sexism is still a problem in STEM industries and in high schools.”
Suppose that I said to you, “women in hospital are less likely to receive painkillers than men who report the same level of pain,” and you said, “that seems unlikely; outside STEM industries and high schools, sexism is not a big problem these days; you’d need pretty compelling evidence to convince me.” Suppose that I gave you this evidence, and you said “You’ve convinced me; sexism is still a problem in STEM industries, high schools, and hospitals.”
Suppose, at last, that I said to you, “Married women do more housework than their husbands even when they work the same hours for equal money,” and you said, “that seems unlikely, outside of STEM industries, high schools, and hospitals, sexism is not a big problem these days.” Suppose further that I said to you, “Well, now you’re just being ridiculous.”
——————————-
Currently you don’t think that feminists are very credible. When a feminist makes a claim about sexism, you estimate that the chance they’re correct is low. That’s fine, I guess. But you need to be willing to change more than just your opinion about one issue. You need to be willing to change you assumptions. Every time a feminist argument turns out to be correct, you should treat future feminist arguments as slightly more likely to be right. Every time you look into a problem and find that sexism is responsible, you should view sexism as a slightly bigger problem. This is the essence of Bayesian reasoning, but also the essence of being reasonable.
@ polyliker
I do like ice-cream.
As to your other points, people have already addressed them better than I could so I hope you don’t think I’m rude if I don’t add to what they’ve already so succinctly put.
The issue is really one of misrepresentation of these courses. Students or their parents subsidized in one way or another by government are paying for an education. In reality for many of these course they are getting indoctrination into a SJW cult without any education in critical thought or evaluation of the theories and assumptions they present as facts.
Personally I think it is simply false advertising and every graduate with a women’s, gender studies degree would have a right to be reimbursed for the false marketing.
The same applies to degrees in pseudoscience like Chirporactic and naturopathy
If people want to pay for indoctrination that is fine by me. If you choose to pay for a course in Buddism or evangelical cristianity then you should be able to but the government should not provide support in the form of student loans or grants.
Andrew Carter, great supporter of academic freedom, thinks that students who receive loans should only be allowed to take classes he personally approves of.
@Viscaria
Not just those who take out loans, but any government subsidy, so anyone who attends a public college/university must only be taught the things Andrew agrees with.
Clearly Andrew Carter has done extensive research into these classes, and also into the “SJW cults” into which they indoctrinate unsuspecting students. I have no doubt that Andrew has published peer-reviewed original research to this effect, and no doubt that Andrew will share the names and citations of these articles if anyone were to ask for that information.
Because otherwise everything Andrew said up there was pure assfax, and a superior STEM mind would never produce assfax, but only meticulously researched data.
Oh, gosh, this thread again? My goodness, someone stirred up the pot tonight. @Andrew Carter, I do hope that you have read up to the thread at this point, because there’s been a lot of ground covered, and you wouldn’t want to come in without reviewing the –
– oh, okay.
I see.
I’ll be brief, Andrew.
All institutions of higher learning are subsidized. Often even the private ones. Universities are expensive!
There are hundreds of scientific journals, with thousands of yearly papers, representing hundreds of thousands of work-hours of dedicated effort, on these topics. They are indexed, catalogued, studied, and heavily scrutinized, and feature the same sort of chain of reference as any academic papers. They feature the same quality of statistics as those which landed astronauts on the moon (depending on author of course!) and the same attention to detail as a microbiology lab.
If you have issue with the literature as a whole, you had best come with examples. Otherwise, you’re just being anti-science.
Unfortunately, sir, your feelings are not equivalent to empirical evidence, nor are they justification for policy. The quality of a program, and its worth to a graduate, should be determined by an outcomes-based metric. Do you have some example outcomes from these programs you’d like to confront? I’d be thrilled to talk about that with you.
Those two fields do not have the large, research, internally-and-externally-supported infrastructure of theory and knowledge which gender studies enjoys.
You know, the same infrastructure which lends credibility to the STEM fields. Statistics and mathematics.
Religion is important in a social sense – understanding a religion helps one see its place in world affairs, even if one does not believe in it.
Again, your opinion is not justification enough. Evidence, please.
Sorry if that was a bit on-the-nose, I’m sort of blunt today!