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.
@littleknown
I forgot to say, no not everyone who disagrees is indoctrinated.
I apologize if I get a bit rambly, i am still sick.
@Polyliker,
Hello! You seem well-intentioned, here, but I’ve noticed a pattern in your replies. Let me isolate some of them.
Do you see the commonalities between these lines? The thread that ties them together is the fact that they are all your opinions.
Opinions are great! They are also very important in discernment of the truth. But they must be checked, and checked very hard – we have a natural and very strong subconscious impulse to favour our own opinions overtop of other conclusions. This is where science enters the fray as a means of separating good conclusions from bad, but that’s a bit outside of the scope of my point.
I get your point – that we should be addressing all matters of unfairness! I agree with you, as does anyone who’s concerned about social justice.
Affirmative action acknowledges that there are human biases at play in society, and tries to offset them. You can argue about whether they are effective – you wouldn’t be the first! It’s not a perfect system, certainly. But you can’t just go on your opinions or feelings. Bring some numbers to the table, and then we’ll talk.
(I have not viewed the video, unfortunately – i’m rather ill and don’t want to listen to audio. do you have a transcript or summary, or maybe you can summarize?)
@WWTH,
That’s what I was trying to get into my reply, thank you. Intersectionality is an important concept, Mr Polyliker! You can’t effectively disentangle many of these concepts, so the traditional reductionist answers at best only solve a slice of the problem and at worst will make the overall problems worse.
@Poly
Help for the poor already exists. Fucking FAFSA, man. Help for both minorities and the poor is not mutually exclusive. Your argument seems to be (and by the way, notice how this is a complete non sequitur to the actual ‘point’ of Sargon’s petition) that any financial aid to black people or whatevs needs to be turned into aid for poor people, cos otherwise it’s racist, and racism’s bad, mkay
The US government (the entity that actually does the affirmation, so they’re the ones to convince), as set forth in case law, considers discrimination in either of 2 ways. Some discrimination is good, in that it serves a compelling state interest in a way that’s directly related to said interest and not a substantial inconvenience (taxing rich people more based on income is not classist), and some is not. To argue against affirmative action, ya gotta explain how affirmative action doesn’t meet the interest bit, the relation bit, and/or the inconvenience bit. Good luck
ETA: not really saying anything, by questioning how we got onto affirmative action. Just wanted to point out it’s weird
@ scildfreja
@Alan, daw, thank you <3
@Axecalibur, that is a really good point that i did not know about affirmative action! Thank you for that.
So many Benjamin Fanboys decided to show up. I’ll start with my favorite
@Stile
Incorrect, try reading the fucking petition:
@Scildfreja
Oh, you don’t hafta… That’s a gross oversimplification and… I mean…
http://33.media.tumblr.com/92334f7c83ed4ff5a9ca750b995791ea/tumblr_inline_nicqufcv0c1sggbtc.gif
“Do you think Affirmative Action is racist?”
I sure as hell do, and I’m likely someone that has actively benefited it as a pretty visibly brown Hispanic who got to check that box. It deeply upsets me that while I had some good scores in certain things, I may not have ended up where I am because of my own actions but because I look different than some people. That is fucking disturbing to me.
@Axecalibur
“Your argument seems to be (and by the way, notice how this is a complete non sequitur to the actual ‘point’ of Sargon’s petition) that any financial aid to black people or whatevs needs to be turned into aid for poor people, cos otherwise it’s racist, and racism’s bad, mkay”
Yes, and it is, and I say this as a minority in a state with AA who very likely actually did benefit from this. I think it’s fucking wrong. There is no conceivable way you can justify it to me. I knew poorer white kids than I was who worked just as hard and did the same things and the idea they may have been denied a chance to get into a university on a basis of inclusiveness is deeply upsetting to me. It is wrong. It IS racist.
@Axecalibur
“taxing rich people more based on income is not classist), and some is not.”
Being rich is something you have direct control over in terms of choosing to use or save money. You can’t un-black or un-white yourself. It is also, by far, overwhelmingly more a bedrock of inequality on the scale of, “Person [x] who worked objectively hard but in an economically unprofitable field gets one cake and person [y] who works in an economically profitable field gets *23 million* cakes”. The degrees of inequality expressed in wealth are so wildly disparate by anything beyond what race has done that they are barely comparable, and they are also not an innate, unchangeable condition.
If you want to help poor minorities, help them because they are poor, not because they are minorities.
@weirwoodtreehugger
“There’s no reason why we can only deal with sexism and racism at the expense of poor people. There’s no reason helping poor people means you can’t help women or people of color.”
Yes, but is it in principle fundamentally right to help women or people of color *because they are women or people of color*? The reason people want to help marginalized groups is because they are in usually some tangible way marginalized, not just because they are part of an arbitrarily selected group.
If you told me that you were going to help me “because I was poor”, I would say “great, cool”-if you told me that you were going to help me because I’m not white, I’d be done with you.
@Alan Robertshaw
First I have to say, you really like icecream, don’t you? Me too.
And I agree that giving everyone equal scoops is indeed good. But we first have to establish that there is an inequality. I am in favor of anything against inequality, however I am not always going to be in favor of equity. Simply because of the capabilities of someone. Your example assumes everyone has to do nothing for their icecream. But what if there was a race being held and the winner got four scoops, the second got three, the third two and the rest of the participants only one.
And I am not saying that discrimination is inherently bad, what I am saying that discrimination based on race/skin color is bad.
This is exactly what I am talking about, preferring minority ethnic groups just because they are members of that group will negatively affect other groups. First we would have to demonstrate that there is a disadvantage of being part of an ethnic minority group or specific gender. I would in fact abolish the system as we have it now and advocate for a meritocracy. As race shouldn’t play any part in your admission.
@weirwoodtreehugger I am saying that it needs to be demonstrated that being black itself means you have a disadvantage (cuz you’re black). I think that poverty can account for most disadvantages.
You state:
And why is this happening? Is it because they statistically commit more crime than any other demographic? Yes. Why is that? Because they are poor and need to do that to survive (and also police discrimination against the poorer classes and ones who commit more crime, duh). Why are they poor? Because they haven’t had a good education. Why is that? Because their family was poor.
And there the vicious circle begins. I would say that by making sure people get a good education and discriminating based on financial status is not arguable at all while racism can be argued against as the police actually treat people in poorer neighborhoods the same and treats rich and poor differently.
What I am saying is that I do not think that there is an inherent disadvantage in being of a specific race but that there is a disadvantage in being poor.
Also to react to your comment before this:
I am not saying that a professor must be completely unbiased, although my phrasing was not the best. What I intended to say is that a professor must be as unbiased in their teaching as they can be. Ergo, a professor who teaches about religion cannot present a specific religion as the truth. A professor can favor one religion and discuss that more, that is fine, but one cannot only discuss one religion or actively argue in favor of a certain religion or present that as if it is truth as there is only assertion. The same goes with these social studies, if it is based on facts and the teacher simply teaches facts and explicitly says what their interpretation of the facts is, that is fine, but to teach their interpretation as truth they would leave their intellectual honesty and academic integrity in the trash, while it should be in the classroom. Most social studies are based on assertion, they are no hard science and should never be taught as fact.
What would you say if a teacher was actively advocating that a study of which only 40% of the same types of studies found similar results, has any significant value in their reasoning?
What would you say if a teacher was actively advocating that studies which have a skewed methodology has any significant value in their reasoning because they can be reproduced?
What would you say if a teacher says that studies which find the ‘1 in 5 women are raped’ figure are accurate(they aren’t and are full of assertions) and then goes on to use that in advocating that there is a rape culture?
In a classroom there is very little criticism towards the teacher, I’ve sat in such a classroom (about rape culture, where she actively advocated that there is a rape culture) and I criticized the teacher a lot, I can tell you, mine wasn’t open to that.
And that is what I would call trying to indoctrinate, if I wouldn’t have been there there would probably not have been an opposing voice.
“Stile”? Fucking seriously? Why not just name yourself Goatse while you’re at it…
Hi @polyliker; you brought up some metaphors and points which aren’t quite on the button. Here’s one:
Professors do this all the time, in many fields. Biologists talk about the facts involved in how species change over time, and then provide the interpretation of evolution, along with evidence to support it. When there is a change in understanding (such as when Gould’s punctuated equilibrium model was introduced), these new factors are introduced as evidence for them improves.
So too with the social sciences. One can’t quite achieve the six-sigma accuracy of physics, but understanding of statistics goes a long way towards increasing confidence.
Can you get specific on this as to what the assertions are? Because you’re basically calling some very large institutions, with very high quality data, incompetent. You’re free to do this – even big institutions make mistakes after all – but I’m free to ignore you until you support it. The “assertions” I’ve seen so far are pretty much all begging the question.
It’s been well established that misogyny and racism exist and cause inequalities.
Actually, most of the mass incarceration is for drug crime. White people are just as likely commit drug crimes as black people. Black people are far more likely to be arrested, charged, and jailed for drug crimes though. This is why the war on drugs is the new Jim Crow.
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2014/09/30-war-on-drugs-black-social-mobility-rothwell
Forgive that it’s a blog post. It does contain links to the sources if you want to investigate further though.
You claim to like facts and want colleges to only teach facts. Yet the facts don’t back your opinions that sexism and racism are over, black people are criminals, and rape culture isn’t a thing. I suspect you’re not upset because professors don’t teach facts. You’re upset that they do.
@ Mish
Thank you for the great pictures! Very enjoyable.
For you and anyone other fan of medieval marginalia, may I recommend the poem by Ian Duhig “Margin Prayer in an Ancient Psalter”?
@ WWTH and Poly Liker
re:
And you’d have to keep re-reading them all every few years.
In British Medical Schools (OK: in the two British Med Schools where I have friends, and probably elsewhere too) they now tell undergraduates that 30-40 % of what they are now learning as current best practice will have become obsolete by the time they reach the end of their careers – the problem being that nobody knows which things will be obsolete and which will still be robust.
On the other hand, this is how science progresses. They try to equip them with the skills to assess the evidence, and even to design tests of their own and get them done. Which is a lot better than relying on the all-knowing professor or eminent consultant and their personal charisma, experience and ability to command respect.
This is one of the things I find strangest about conversations with MRAs, the alt-right, and general ne’er-do-well’s. They are all “you guys need to be rational and do science!” which – well, yes, that is a thing which needs to be done in the pursuit of truth.
So we reply “We are being rational and doing science!” and they go all boggle-eyed, as if they didn’t understand that different groups of people, testing different hypotheses, can in fact come up with different things. Science ain’t perfect, because it’s done by humans.
(Someone in this thread or another recent one was saying pretty much the same thing; sorry that I forget who said it.)
It also bugs me how much they say they care about rationality, but how little they seem to care about applying it to themselves, whereas self-application is literally the only use for rationality.
You apply the principle of parsimony (Occam’s razor) to your currently held beliefs; you apply the principle of charity (no snappy name) to the beliefs of others.
You stay mindful to the enormous probabilities that you are currently wrong about most things you believe.
You learn statistics and probability, so as to discern between well-formed and poorly-formed data. You train yourself to let these be your guide and not your opinions.
I wish more people would get this!
I have to say, we have sidetracked a little in this thread. This was not my intention when I asked the question.
@Scildfreja
I do indeed try my best to be devils advocate and am open to reason and evidence. If it is an argument about semantics, a logical explanation or refuatation should hold enough ground. But you’re right, I need to bring some numbers to the table.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/upshot/police-killings-of-blacks-what-the-data-says.html?_r=0
This is a link to a NY times article which explains my line of thinking and here are the factual numbers:
Ethnic make up of the US
Crime and race
As you can see in these two demographics you see ~12% of the entire US population is black but is charged with ~30% of all crimes(this is a giant disparity).
If we now have a look at the poverty rates, you can see that both blacks and natives have enormously high poverty rates.
If we now take the numbers we find:
We have blacks or african americans making up 12% of the population and ~26-28% lives in poverty(which means ~4% of blacks live in poverty). Whites make up 72.4% of the total population and ~11% lives in poverty(which means ~8% of whites live in poverty).
If we now look at the crime statistics and race we see:
Whites make up 69.3% of the charged and African-Americans/Blacks make up 28.1% of the charged.
These numbers in and of themselves do not prove that poverty and crime are causal or connected.
If we were to look at specific crimes you can see a clear rise in the percentage of black crime when we’re talking about things such as robbery/theft/burglary/gambling/prostitution, basically anything which is profitable. This does indicate a correlation and even causation between crime rates and poverty.
Ergo, police are probably not as racist as everyone makes them out to be. This is not to say that there are no racist cops or that there is no racism involved at all, but the numbers seem to have a logical explanation.
Unfortunately I have no numbers on the courses issue but from my experience and by looking around me, I find a troubling pattern.
@Polyliker:
One of these things is not like the other…
Claiming not to be racist, and claiming not to care about race, are two very different things.
If you don’t care about race — that is: if you think that hundreds of years of slavery, followed by a hundred years of disenfranchisement, segregation, and terrorism, followed by housing and hiring discrimination that persisted in our society far past the Civil Rights Movement; don’t greatly inform the social and economic realities of the present; then your “not caring about race” is really just what you are using as a shield to protect the relative privilege that comes from being born white.
The only way we would expect black people to make up the massive differences created by our brutal history, on their own, with absolutely no advantages, would be if they were vastly superior to white people. Please, really think about that.
Yes, let’s imagine a race. Before the race, the rich white people put leg irons around the ankles of the other competitors. The poor white people are attached to 10-lb rocks that they have to carry; the minorities, to 20- or 30- or 50-lb rocks. After lapping the poor white people, the rich white people detach the rocks from their leg irons. Later, they detach their irons, too. Then, they slowly reduce the sizes of the rocks the minorities have to carry, until eventually no one is carrying any rocks, and at that point, they take everyone’s leg irons off.
Most of the minorities try their best to catch up. Some do catch up to the poor whites. But unsurprisingly, most don’t. Some give up trying. People cry foul, and say that as a class, the minorities should get some extra help. Luckily, to prevent such a grave injustice, the rich whites remind the poor whites of the minorities who have caught up to them, and the ones who have stopped trying…
Oh, and you really can stop pretending that you’re a liberal, when everything you write is a conservative talking point. To take just two: Let me count the number of liberals I know who think affirmative action is insulting to minorities, and rape culture doesn’t exist: oh, right, it’s zero.
Because you’re such a massive tool that you’ll see a woman as less competent than a man even when she has identical qualifications, and so oblivious to your own bias that you’ll swear up and down that she was a bad candidate. Glad to clear that up for you.
Also because historically when it was legal and acceptable to pay women less, employers still weren’t hiring women over men.
@weirwoodtreehugger
Please provide the evidence.
And yes, I do see that there is a disparity between the amount of perpetrators and arrests, however, this doesn’t prove that this is a matter of racism. There could be other explanations for that. Inserting racism would be an argument from ignorance.
I do like facts and have not seen any to support that there is a huge problem of racism.
@Polyliker,
Thank you! The numbers you’ve supplied will help things quite a bit. Let’s get to it, then.
http://media.giphy.com/media/xTiTnhpQOwsiFo1QT6/giphy.gif
(And again, I’m still in a pretty illness-addled state, so do check my results, everyone)
Poverty Issues:
African Americans make up 1 of every 8 americans, whereas Caucasian Americans make up 6 of every 8. Yes!
However, you quickly go off of the rails, I’m afraid, sir. Your results aren’t that 4% of blacks live in poverty; it’s that 4% of the total population of the US is both black and poor. Meanwhile, 8% of the total population is both white and poor. Do you see the difference between this and the conclusion you came to?
Splitting the demographics, we have 1/4 of the population of African Americans being poor, whereas somewhere around 1/12 of the population of Caucasian Americans are poor. Poverty rates amongst African Americans are immensely higher than those amongst other demographics – which you admit – and this is evidence of systemic racism, on its own.
Crime Issues:
Others here are better with the crime stuff, but I’ll just say that the null hypothesis is that we should see rates of charging being around the same as the population amounts.
Marginally higher for the African American community, notably lower for the Caucasian American community. Your tables unfortunately do not account for a margin of error, but given the sheer volume of samples we can consider any deviation to be at least somewhat notable. Again, though, I’m no expert on law things. Others here are, and will likely make themselves known!
(Also, there is in fact a correlation between socioeconomic factors and crime rate.)
I’m gonna have to stop you there. The gulf between correlation and causation is vast, and you can’t claim causation because it feels right. It is a mathematical relationship between members, and I’ve … got a hard time believing that you have proof of causality here.
“Experience” and “Looking around” are no ways to truth, they’re ways to confirm your bias.
No, I mean it! And not even an insult, honest. We’re all human, we all have bias. It’s how the brain works. This is not something to be beaten by willpower – that just buries the bias under layers of rationalization. Acknowledge it and surrender to the math.
You’ve already shown that you don’t like any facts that don’t already agree with you. You’ve already shown yourself to be a disingenuous little shit who is arguing in bad faith.
I’m headed off to work and don’t have time to do your homework. Maybe someone else will do it. You could just Google it yourself, but I’m fairly certain you are one of those trolls who delights in wasting everyone’s time and have no intention of actually learning from anything anyone posts. I’ve already given you more links than you deserve.
If you truly want to learn you can Google “Lily Ledbetter” and that will probably lead you to lots of information about pay discrimination against women or you can try “women don’t really talk more than men.” You can Google “stop and frisk + racism” or “resumes with black sounding names more likely to be thrown out.” I kind of doubt you will though. Unless this is your first day discussing social justice issues on the internet, it is likely you’ve been shown plenty of evidence that sexism and racism are still things and dismissed it.