9 ms·

The War over Academic Freedom

51 points by missinfo 5y ago

BitwiseFool 5y ago
"protesters overtook the campus square, setting off pink and blue flares, while Stock cancelled her courses and followed police advice to stay off campus and secure her home. I asked a protester whether the demo was designed to be intimidating. “We’re standing still,” they said. “Her presence to us is intimidating.” Emphasis mine. Is there a word to describe this? This frame of mind is deeply disturbing to me and it seems very insidious. I believe people need a term in order to understand the behavior/mindset that is being displayed here. And, to be able to inform others about it.
- jawarner 5y ago
  I don’t know the word for it, but virtually every conflict in history was predicated on the defense of something greater.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    For self actualization people need something to strive for, some conflict. This is universal.
- kfprt 5y ago
  I believe that traditionally would be called a violent mob.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    That would fit in describing the action, but I'm trying to get at the mindset of these people. The kind of self-righteous, belligerent, insolent, and 'we are completely innocent and have no culpability whatsoever because you made us do this' attitude I'm seeing. I can jot down synonyms for hours but I still don't feel like this truly captures and categorizes what we are seeing here. Maybe I'm asking for too much, but I feel like this can be described with a single word instead of merely trying to describe it at length.
    - pfortuny 5y ago
      Witch-hunt.
    - kfprt 5y ago
      Religious authoritarians. Puritans. Theological adherence is a spiral. They have an absolute doctrine. This is what happens when you shift your moral philosophy to doctrinal adherence. Introspection is not needed when you are a perfect adherent to the one true faith. It should also be noted that religion is older than language and has a basis in biology. Just because they do not fit the modern legal categorization of religion does not mean that culturally it is not the same.
      - AlanYx 5y ago
        I don't really follow the academic freedom debate that closely, but I did notice that in the video that was circulating yesterday regarding a protest at Netflix over this class of issue, one of the protesters was saying "Repent, motherf*ker! Repent!" The "repent" language does seem to have a strong religious authoritarian quality.
        iammisc 5y ago
        My pet theory is that puritanism is an inherited trait (not sure if genetic or cultural). america has a lot of it due to its history. The descendants of the puritans have given up all sense of religion, which actually, for them, was a net benefit, since having an external, well-organized religion actually would pull them back from their religious zealotry (by discouraging pride for example). Now, completely unmoored from their actually somewhat stabilizing traditions, these children -- already predisposed to puritanism, zealotry, etc -- have taken up new belief structures, except now there's nothing to bring them back to reality.
        kfprt 5y ago
        While no doubt there is a genetic component it would be less precise and more likely just account for a general authoritarian personality. I think this shift is too sudden to be attributable to genetics. The work of Robert Putnam on the decline of social trust in the west is more likely to be the cause.
- pfortuny 5y ago
  Witch-hunt.
- relaxandcrash 5y ago
  [dead]
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  "This is not activism". Here is President Obama speaking about this so called wokeness in Academia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM
- jawarner 5y ago
  Is there something particularly insidious about this protest? It stands to reason that any protest would find conflict with the person whose actions are being protested. In the political sphere, there's enough police protection that the people involved can still get to work, and this wasn't provided by the campus police. It strikes me that these protesters aren't that different than any others, but the security on campus is lacking so that they've had access to, for instance, deface the professor's office door.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    There's nothing insidious about the protest itself. There is something wrong with the mindset of the protesters. "I'm not being violent for having a protest; you're being violent for existing in my vicinity." That's... abnormal. Also ridiculous.
    - jawarner 5y ago
      To be clear, the quote implied the protestors weren’t being violent at all, right — at least in their view. Are we on the same page about that? Edit: I guess I’m not understanding your point. To me the protester’s narrative is “This is a nonviolent protest of a faculty’s exclusionary viewpoint,” which doesn’t seem that abnormal to me. What do you think I’m not seeing?
      - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        Well... setting off flares isn't the same as punching or shooting people. It's not directly violent. But it is kind of threatening, because they can point those flares at you, and it may hit you, and that's not going to feel very good (at best). So there's kind of a threat of violence, but not actual violence. And, yes, I think that in their own mind the protesters were either completely innocent of violence, or else completely justified in the implicit threat of violence because the mere presence of the opponent was so threatening. It's kind of like a guy with a gun on his hip, complaining that a gun control advocate is threatening him by wanting to take away his gun.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  I don't think there is a right word, but I recognize this behavior from history books. During the French Revolution the participants were similarly convinced they are doing the right thing, and they reinforced each other's views. The crowd had a feeling of a common cause and their combined strength. They believed that by beheading Marie Antoinette they are doing everybody a favor. Similarly during the Russian Revolution, the masses believed they are fighting for a great cause, some even died for it. But the revolutions are usually eating its children, and similarly now the revolutionary feminists of yesterday are being eaten by even more progressive trans activists. As Ricky Gervais said, the same will happen to the latter one day. [0] [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/ricky-gervais-woke-generation-future-b1941726.html https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/ric...
  - kfprt 5y ago
    "A l'exemple de Saturne, la révolution dévore ses enfants" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Mallet_du_Pan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Mallet_du_Pan
- yanderekko 5y ago
  Crybullying comes to mind. It lacks the connotations of puritanical self-righteousness underlying these sorts of protests but it is a term that has been popularized in response to this sort of behavior.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  The mindset seems to be that the existence of ideas that disagree with my perspective is violence toward me. The most succinct term I can come up with for this is "five year old". For an actual description, it almost has to have "narcissism" in it, doesn't it? "X narcissism"? Can anyone come up with the right value for "X"?
Grakel 5y ago
"Physical danger" is not caused by someone having a different opinion. Nobody has the right to change reality to suit the fragile worldview they've created for themselves. Rather, any rational worldview should be strengthened by investigation.
- throwaway9980 5y ago
  Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will annihilate me.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  Really? There seem to be some people who would like to do physical harm to those of differing opinions
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    There are. And when they try to do physical harm, we stop them. But don't blame the differing opinions.
    - netizen-936824 5y ago
      This is a good point, it is not the opinion itself that leads to danger but rather the interpretation/perception of it by another party
jaqalopes 5y ago
> The conflict dates back to May 2018, when Stock published a blog post that calmly raised concerns over the shift to self-ID. “Some have pointed out,” she wrote, that “this change in the law will allow some duplicitous or badly motivated males to ‘change gender’ fairly easily,” putting women at risk not from those who are trans but from predatory men. People (in the US) panicked when a black man danced with a white woman because "women need to be protected." People panicked when gay couples asked for the right to get married because "marriage needs to be protected." It's always the same fake concern, changing the subject so as not to deal with the actual problem at hand, the treatment of certain kinds of minority people as lesser than others. With trans people in particular the concern always seems to be that trans people somehow open the door to this kind of predation (see the "bathroom bills" in America). But why is that trans people's problem? A predator is a predator and should be dealt with as such. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not a trans person deserves the simple dignity of being recognized for what they really are (human people), rather than what is convenient for old-fashioned people to see them as (second-class citizens who are "confused" and don't know what is good for themselves).
- twofornone 5y ago
  >It has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not a trans person deserves the simple dignity of being recognized for what they really are (human people), rather than what is convenient for old-fashioned people to see them as Maybe part of the issue is the way that activists have dishonestly sidestepped any debate over sex/gender by pretending that its "settled science" (it's not) and implying violence to anyone who questions their inane demands. Being recognized as a "human person" does not entitle you to arbitrarily reengineer norms to your taste. The psychotic desires of a tiny, mentally ill minority (the DSM reclassification was pure politics, transgenderism/body dysmorphia are obviously mental illnesses) should not supercede the rights of the overwhelming majority to feel safe. And whether you wish to acknowledge it or not, a stranger's flopping dick makes the average woman uncomfortable in spaces that have been reserved for them (bathrooms, locker rooms, etc). We should be offering these people CBT or some other conventional treatment for them to accept themselves as they are, not encouraging them to mutilate themselves with hormones and SRS and forcing society to indulge in their delusions.
ashton314 5y ago
I just finished reading The Coddling of the American Mind by Haidt and Lukianoff. Fantastic book. Here’s the article from The Atlantic that started the idea: [1]. In the book the authors discuss exactly this phenomenon and some possible causes. I’m not going to do it justice, so just read the article. I’d love to be a professor because research and teaching sounds like a delightful vocation. Things like this give me pause. 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...
greenail 5y ago
My understanding is that in "queer theory" gender is 100% socially constructed. This essentially means "women" are socially constructed. It is hard to have feminism if you don't have "women". This seems to be at the core of the "terf" conflict. Ironically in critical race theory race is also socially constructed but racism forces race on people and therefore you must defeat racism before you can get to socially constructed race. This all quite complex so apologies if I didn't get that quite right.
- RNCTX 5y ago
  It's not quite that simple, in that it's not a nonsensical statement that there's no difference between the biological sexes as the zealots on the opposing side perceive it to be. It's more that the cultural perceptions and behaviors are socially constructed. The foundations of all of this are in Judith Butler (not coincidentally at Stanford) and Michel Foucault (not coincidentally French). In terms of race these two intersect (pun intended) with Kimberle Crenshaw. You're on to the crux of the issue with the word "forces" though, because the abstract consideration of all of these things is a question of power and coercion. So people who find themselves at odds with the proposed new norms would be wise to read these foundational texts to understand where their adversaries are coming from. In terms of race, this crosses paths with gender theory in the ideas of a professor named Kimberle Crenshaw, whose ideas were used to make the "preferential treatment" case back in a round of General Motors layoffs specifically, in which it was argued that by virtue of belonging to multiple disadvantaged groups, black women who were to be laid off from factory jobs were being unfairly persecuted (because the layoffs were done by seniority due to the union contract, and due to segregation and gender discrimination it was impossible for women or black people to have seniority at the time). Which of course is true, on the surface. It was impossible for women, and black women in particular, to have seniority as GM factory workers. But it is all a very overt exercise in intentionally disregarding the root cause of the factory layoffs, and in any case was predictably rejected by the US courts who refused to oppress one group instead of another in court rather than in commerce. Similar court cases have failed for similar reasons in the EU. The fact that she was challenging a union contract in court is why she works at any Ivy League school which is funded by corporations who very much do not like union contracts. Similarly, tech companies sending out transgender employees to do their most publicly distasteful deeds (like Microsoft recently did with the .NET foundation) is not coincidental to Judith Butler being at Stanford. If Judith Butler's ideas were not amenable to the goals of west coast corporations Judith Butler wouldn't be at Stanford. The root cause of the factory layoffs in the intersectionality case is the US empire post-WW2 had devalued its own currency to finance misguided and short-sighted wars like Korea and Vietnam. And the ruling class of the US was not going to pay for its own failed policies, it wanted its employees to pay and that's precisely what Jimmy Carter gave said ruling class, in the form of Paul Volcker. All of this is worth looking at in considering how these cultural theories have managed to position themselves so favorably in the eyes of corporations and 3 letter government security/surveillance agencies. Culture wars are a grand misdirection, employed by corporations and governments to turn people to any sort of conflict that minimizes the class conflict which they truly fear.
throwawaysea 5y ago
For those who want to protect academic freedoms, consider donating to FIRE (https://www.thefire.org/ https://www.thefire.org/), a nonprofit that in many ways is the new ACLU. You can read about their mission at https://www.thefire.org/about-us/mission/ https://www.thefire.org/about-us/mission/
- hihihihi1234 5y ago
  Nothing against FIRE, but they're an American org and this incident is taking place in the UK. Some UK organisations in the same general purview: Counterweight, Academics for Academic Freedom, the Free Speech Union.
pixelgeek 5y ago
Well I will certainly trust any article that immediately resorts to commenting on the spelling of protestors. > “Some have pointed out,” she wrote, that “this change in the law will allow some duplicitous or badly motivated males to ‘change gender’ fairly easily,” putting women at risk not from those who are trans but from predatory men. Well I can't see why people would object to her implying that trans people are just male abusers looking for cover to assault women. Seems a totally apolitical stance to take
yeetaccount 5y ago
I don’t really understand the whole trans thing and why it’s suddenly become the job of the whole world to reinforce someone’s self conception. Lots of people have body dysmorphia and think they are morbidly obese. Some will even go so far as to buy XL clothing and larger toilets because they think they need them. But they aren’t obese, and nobody is expected to treat them like that. For the sake of one group, we’re expected to accept an ideology and we’re now supposed to use language to fit within the boundaries of this ideology. Anyone who expresses skepticism can expect to be fired, harassed or simply brow beaten into lip service on the premise that being skeptical is hateful and bigoted. This isn’t how you gain acceptance, it’s merely compliance. It creates a culture of lip service, resentment and subversion. I don’t hate the trans crowd. I simply think the notion of gender is baseless and the tactics many of their activists use are misguided and obnoxious.
- hagbard_c 5y ago
  First of all it is sad to see a comment like this under yet another throw-away account. Just say what you want, using your regular account. The worst that can - and possibly will - happen is that you get shadowbanned in which case you just create a new account. There are a number of current theories around the woke phenomenon, of which the "trans movement" is but one exponent. Vivek Ramaswamy (writer of "Woke, Inc." [1]) sees it as an outgrowth of a corporatist agenda which is meant to channel public outrage - which was turning against them, viz. Occupy Wall Street - towards shallow social causes to draw away attention from a corporate power grab. James Lindsay (of New Discourses [2], Cynical Theories [3] and the grievance studies hoax fame) sees it as the latest iteration of a Marxist-inspired agenda intent on domination or, lately, as a deflection manoeuvre by the ruling class to try to steer society away from the second enlightenment where the marketplace of ideas will become a reality. Vladimir Putin - yes, the Russian president - compares it [4] to the ideology which led the Bolsheviks to hijack the Russian revolution for their own purposes. All of them are right, in their own ways. Corporations have jumped on the woke train, often using it to deflect attention away from whatever nefarious activities they're up to. There is no doubt about the fact that its proponents lean strongly to the left in their political opinions and favour Marxism or one of its many offshoots over other ideologies, nor over the fact that they're intent on injecting their ideology into all aspects of society - just like the Bolsheviks did in Russia after the revolution. Whether what we're dealing with here is an astroturfing movement created to drain the public of the will to resist, a new religion running amok, an aggressive political movement intent on domination or a combination of such I do not know, I suspect this actually depends on whom of the 'woke' you ask. What I do know is that the more people get drawn in to this movement, the more true grief it will cause, both for the people who are deluded into assuming whatever identity is being foisted upon them as well as for society at large. It is time to speak up, time to speak out against this divisive ideology which only serves to keep the public angry and confused, this ideology which tears apart communities, which threatens to dissolve whatever semblance of cohesion we have left in society. It is time to realise this has nothing to do with race, sexual orientation, ethnic background, nationality, skin colour, religious affiliation or whatever other identity category might be brought to berth. It is a power grab, pure and simple, by any mean necessary and no matter the cost to those who are being used as tools, as 'useful innocents' (or, more often, 'useful idiots') [5]. [1] https://www.vivekramaswamy.com/wokeinc https://www.vivekramaswamy.com/wokeinc [2] https://newdiscourses.com/ https://newdiscourses.com/ [3] https://newdiscourses.com/books/ https://newdiscourses.com/books/ [4] https://www.dailywire.com/news/putin-warns-wokeness-is-destroying-the-west-it-happened-in-russia-its-evil-it-destroys-values https://www.dailywire.com/news/putin-warns-wokeness-is-destr... [5] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/08/22/useful-idiot/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/08/22/useful-idiot/
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

51 points by missinfo 5y ago

"protesters overtook the campus square, setting off pink and blue flares, while Stock cancelled her courses and followed police advice to stay off campus and secure her home. I asked a protester whether the demo was designed to be intimidating. “We’re standing still,” they said. “Her presence to us is intimidating.” Emphasis mine. Is there a word to describe this? This frame of mind is deeply disturbing to me and it seems very insidious. I believe people need a term in order to understand the behavior/mindset that is being displayed here. And, to be able to inform others about it.

jawarner 5y ago
I don’t know the word for it, but virtually every conflict in history was predicated on the defense of something greater.
- kfprt 5y ago
  For self actualization people need something to strive for, some conflict. This is universal.
kfprt 5y ago
I believe that traditionally would be called a violent mob.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  That would fit in describing the action, but I'm trying to get at the mindset of these people. The kind of self-righteous, belligerent, insolent, and 'we are completely innocent and have no culpability whatsoever because you made us do this' attitude I'm seeing. I can jot down synonyms for hours but I still don't feel like this truly captures and categorizes what we are seeing here. Maybe I'm asking for too much, but I feel like this can be described with a single word instead of merely trying to describe it at length.
  - pfortuny 5y ago
    Witch-hunt.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    Religious authoritarians. Puritans. Theological adherence is a spiral. They have an absolute doctrine. This is what happens when you shift your moral philosophy to doctrinal adherence. Introspection is not needed when you are a perfect adherent to the one true faith. It should also be noted that religion is older than language and has a basis in biology. Just because they do not fit the modern legal categorization of religion does not mean that culturally it is not the same.
    - AlanYx 5y ago
      I don't really follow the academic freedom debate that closely, but I did notice that in the video that was circulating yesterday regarding a protest at Netflix over this class of issue, one of the protesters was saying "Repent, motherf*ker! Repent!" The "repent" language does seem to have a strong religious authoritarian quality.
      - iammisc 5y ago
        My pet theory is that puritanism is an inherited trait (not sure if genetic or cultural). america has a lot of it due to its history. The descendants of the puritans have given up all sense of religion, which actually, for them, was a net benefit, since having an external, well-organized religion actually would pull them back from their religious zealotry (by discouraging pride for example). Now, completely unmoored from their actually somewhat stabilizing traditions, these children -- already predisposed to puritanism, zealotry, etc -- have taken up new belief structures, except now there's nothing to bring them back to reality.
        kfprt 5y ago
        While no doubt there is a genetic component it would be less precise and more likely just account for a general authoritarian personality. I think this shift is too sudden to be attributable to genetics. The work of Robert Putnam on the decline of social trust in the west is more likely to be the cause.
pfortuny 5y ago
Witch-hunt.
relaxandcrash 5y ago
[dead]
systemvoltage 5y ago
"This is not activism". Here is President Obama speaking about this so called wokeness in Academia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM
jawarner 5y ago
Is there something particularly insidious about this protest? It stands to reason that any protest would find conflict with the person whose actions are being protested. In the political sphere, there's enough police protection that the people involved can still get to work, and this wasn't provided by the campus police. It strikes me that these protesters aren't that different than any others, but the security on campus is lacking so that they've had access to, for instance, deface the professor's office door.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  There's nothing insidious about the protest itself. There is something wrong with the mindset of the protesters. "I'm not being violent for having a protest; you're being violent for existing in my vicinity." That's... abnormal. Also ridiculous.
  - jawarner 5y ago
    To be clear, the quote implied the protestors weren’t being violent at all, right — at least in their view. Are we on the same page about that? Edit: I guess I’m not understanding your point. To me the protester’s narrative is “This is a nonviolent protest of a faculty’s exclusionary viewpoint,” which doesn’t seem that abnormal to me. What do you think I’m not seeing?
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      Well... setting off flares isn't the same as punching or shooting people. It's not directly violent. But it is kind of threatening, because they can point those flares at you, and it may hit you, and that's not going to feel very good (at best). So there's kind of a threat of violence, but not actual violence. And, yes, I think that in their own mind the protesters were either completely innocent of violence, or else completely justified in the implicit threat of violence because the mere presence of the opponent was so threatening. It's kind of like a guy with a gun on his hip, complaining that a gun control advocate is threatening him by wanting to take away his gun.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
I don't think there is a right word, but I recognize this behavior from history books. During the French Revolution the participants were similarly convinced they are doing the right thing, and they reinforced each other's views. The crowd had a feeling of a common cause and their combined strength. They believed that by beheading Marie Antoinette they are doing everybody a favor. Similarly during the Russian Revolution, the masses believed they are fighting for a great cause, some even died for it. But the revolutions are usually eating its children, and similarly now the revolutionary feminists of yesterday are being eaten by even more progressive trans activists. As Ricky Gervais said, the same will happen to the latter one day. [0] [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/ricky-gervais-woke-generation-future-b1941726.html https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/ric...
- kfprt 5y ago
  "A l'exemple de Saturne, la révolution dévore ses enfants" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Mallet_du_Pan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Mallet_du_Pan
yanderekko 5y ago
Crybullying comes to mind. It lacks the connotations of puritanical self-righteousness underlying these sorts of protests but it is a term that has been popularized in response to this sort of behavior.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
The mindset seems to be that the existence of ideas that disagree with my perspective is violence toward me. The most succinct term I can come up with for this is "five year old". For an actual description, it almost has to have "narcissism" in it, doesn't it? "X narcissism"? Can anyone come up with the right value for "X"?

Grakel 5y ago

"Physical danger" is not caused by someone having a different opinion. Nobody has the right to change reality to suit the fragile worldview they've created for themselves. Rather, any rational worldview should be strengthened by investigation.

throwaway9980 5y ago
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will annihilate me.
netizen-936824 5y ago
Really? There seem to be some people who would like to do physical harm to those of differing opinions
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  There are. And when they try to do physical harm, we stop them. But don't blame the differing opinions.
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    This is a good point, it is not the opinion itself that leads to danger but rather the interpretation/perception of it by another party

jaqalopes 5y ago

> The conflict dates back to May 2018, when Stock published a blog post that calmly raised concerns over the shift to self-ID. “Some have pointed out,” she wrote, that “this change in the law will allow some duplicitous or badly motivated males to ‘change gender’ fairly easily,” putting women at risk not from those who are trans but from predatory men. People (in the US) panicked when a black man danced with a white woman because "women need to be protected." People panicked when gay couples asked for the right to get married because "marriage needs to be protected." It's always the same fake concern, changing the subject so as not to deal with the actual problem at hand, the treatment of certain kinds of minority people as lesser than others. With trans people in particular the concern always seems to be that trans people somehow open the door to this kind of predation (see the "bathroom bills" in America). But why is that trans people's problem? A predator is a predator and should be dealt with as such. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not a trans person deserves the simple dignity of being recognized for what they really are (human people), rather than what is convenient for old-fashioned people to see them as (second-class citizens who are "confused" and don't know what is good for themselves).

twofornone 5y ago
>It has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not a trans person deserves the simple dignity of being recognized for what they really are (human people), rather than what is convenient for old-fashioned people to see them as Maybe part of the issue is the way that activists have dishonestly sidestepped any debate over sex/gender by pretending that its "settled science" (it's not) and implying violence to anyone who questions their inane demands. Being recognized as a "human person" does not entitle you to arbitrarily reengineer norms to your taste. The psychotic desires of a tiny, mentally ill minority (the DSM reclassification was pure politics, transgenderism/body dysmorphia are obviously mental illnesses) should not supercede the rights of the overwhelming majority to feel safe. And whether you wish to acknowledge it or not, a stranger's flopping dick makes the average woman uncomfortable in spaces that have been reserved for them (bathrooms, locker rooms, etc). We should be offering these people CBT or some other conventional treatment for them to accept themselves as they are, not encouraging them to mutilate themselves with hormones and SRS and forcing society to indulge in their delusions.

ashton314 5y ago

I just finished reading The Coddling of the American Mind by Haidt and Lukianoff. Fantastic book. Here’s the article from The Atlantic that started the idea: [1]. In the book the authors discuss exactly this phenomenon and some possible causes. I’m not going to do it justice, so just read the article. I’d love to be a professor because research and teaching sounds like a delightful vocation. Things like this give me pause. 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...

greenail 5y ago

My understanding is that in "queer theory" gender is 100% socially constructed. This essentially means "women" are socially constructed. It is hard to have feminism if you don't have "women". This seems to be at the core of the "terf" conflict. Ironically in critical race theory race is also socially constructed but racism forces race on people and therefore you must defeat racism before you can get to socially constructed race. This all quite complex so apologies if I didn't get that quite right.

RNCTX 5y ago
It's not quite that simple, in that it's not a nonsensical statement that there's no difference between the biological sexes as the zealots on the opposing side perceive it to be. It's more that the cultural perceptions and behaviors are socially constructed. The foundations of all of this are in Judith Butler (not coincidentally at Stanford) and Michel Foucault (not coincidentally French). In terms of race these two intersect (pun intended) with Kimberle Crenshaw. You're on to the crux of the issue with the word "forces" though, because the abstract consideration of all of these things is a question of power and coercion. So people who find themselves at odds with the proposed new norms would be wise to read these foundational texts to understand where their adversaries are coming from. In terms of race, this crosses paths with gender theory in the ideas of a professor named Kimberle Crenshaw, whose ideas were used to make the "preferential treatment" case back in a round of General Motors layoffs specifically, in which it was argued that by virtue of belonging to multiple disadvantaged groups, black women who were to be laid off from factory jobs were being unfairly persecuted (because the layoffs were done by seniority due to the union contract, and due to segregation and gender discrimination it was impossible for women or black people to have seniority at the time). Which of course is true, on the surface. It was impossible for women, and black women in particular, to have seniority as GM factory workers. But it is all a very overt exercise in intentionally disregarding the root cause of the factory layoffs, and in any case was predictably rejected by the US courts who refused to oppress one group instead of another in court rather than in commerce. Similar court cases have failed for similar reasons in the EU. The fact that she was challenging a union contract in court is why she works at any Ivy League school which is funded by corporations who very much do not like union contracts. Similarly, tech companies sending out transgender employees to do their most publicly distasteful deeds (like Microsoft recently did with the .NET foundation) is not coincidental to Judith Butler being at Stanford. If Judith Butler's ideas were not amenable to the goals of west coast corporations Judith Butler wouldn't be at Stanford. The root cause of the factory layoffs in the intersectionality case is the US empire post-WW2 had devalued its own currency to finance misguided and short-sighted wars like Korea and Vietnam. And the ruling class of the US was not going to pay for its own failed policies, it wanted its employees to pay and that's precisely what Jimmy Carter gave said ruling class, in the form of Paul Volcker. All of this is worth looking at in considering how these cultural theories have managed to position themselves so favorably in the eyes of corporations and 3 letter government security/surveillance agencies. Culture wars are a grand misdirection, employed by corporations and governments to turn people to any sort of conflict that minimizes the class conflict which they truly fear.

throwawaysea 5y ago

For those who want to protect academic freedoms, consider donating to FIRE (https://www.thefire.org/ https://www.thefire.org/), a nonprofit that in many ways is the new ACLU. You can read about their mission at https://www.thefire.org/about-us/mission/ https://www.thefire.org/about-us/mission/

hihihihi1234 5y ago
Nothing against FIRE, but they're an American org and this incident is taking place in the UK. Some UK organisations in the same general purview: Counterweight, Academics for Academic Freedom, the Free Speech Union.

pixelgeek 5y ago

Well I will certainly trust any article that immediately resorts to commenting on the spelling of protestors. > “Some have pointed out,” she wrote, that “this change in the law will allow some duplicitous or badly motivated males to ‘change gender’ fairly easily,” putting women at risk not from those who are trans but from predatory men. Well I can't see why people would object to her implying that trans people are just male abusers looking for cover to assault women. Seems a totally apolitical stance to take

yeetaccount 5y ago

I don’t really understand the whole trans thing and why it’s suddenly become the job of the whole world to reinforce someone’s self conception. Lots of people have body dysmorphia and think they are morbidly obese. Some will even go so far as to buy XL clothing and larger toilets because they think they need them. But they aren’t obese, and nobody is expected to treat them like that. For the sake of one group, we’re expected to accept an ideology and we’re now supposed to use language to fit within the boundaries of this ideology. Anyone who expresses skepticism can expect to be fired, harassed or simply brow beaten into lip service on the premise that being skeptical is hateful and bigoted. This isn’t how you gain acceptance, it’s merely compliance. It creates a culture of lip service, resentment and subversion. I don’t hate the trans crowd. I simply think the notion of gender is baseless and the tactics many of their activists use are misguided and obnoxious.

hagbard_c 5y ago
First of all it is sad to see a comment like this under yet another throw-away account. Just say what you want, using your regular account. The worst that can - and possibly will - happen is that you get shadowbanned in which case you just create a new account. There are a number of current theories around the woke phenomenon, of which the "trans movement" is but one exponent. Vivek Ramaswamy (writer of "Woke, Inc." [1]) sees it as an outgrowth of a corporatist agenda which is meant to channel public outrage - which was turning against them, viz. Occupy Wall Street - towards shallow social causes to draw away attention from a corporate power grab. James Lindsay (of New Discourses [2], Cynical Theories [3] and the grievance studies hoax fame) sees it as the latest iteration of a Marxist-inspired agenda intent on domination or, lately, as a deflection manoeuvre by the ruling class to try to steer society away from the second enlightenment where the marketplace of ideas will become a reality. Vladimir Putin - yes, the Russian president - compares it [4] to the ideology which led the Bolsheviks to hijack the Russian revolution for their own purposes. All of them are right, in their own ways. Corporations have jumped on the woke train, often using it to deflect attention away from whatever nefarious activities they're up to. There is no doubt about the fact that its proponents lean strongly to the left in their political opinions and favour Marxism or one of its many offshoots over other ideologies, nor over the fact that they're intent on injecting their ideology into all aspects of society - just like the Bolsheviks did in Russia after the revolution. Whether what we're dealing with here is an astroturfing movement created to drain the public of the will to resist, a new religion running amok, an aggressive political movement intent on domination or a combination of such I do not know, I suspect this actually depends on whom of the 'woke' you ask. What I do know is that the more people get drawn in to this movement, the more true grief it will cause, both for the people who are deluded into assuming whatever identity is being foisted upon them as well as for society at large. It is time to speak up, time to speak out against this divisive ideology which only serves to keep the public angry and confused, this ideology which tears apart communities, which threatens to dissolve whatever semblance of cohesion we have left in society. It is time to realise this has nothing to do with race, sexual orientation, ethnic background, nationality, skin colour, religious affiliation or whatever other identity category might be brought to berth. It is a power grab, pure and simple, by any mean necessary and no matter the cost to those who are being used as tools, as 'useful innocents' (or, more often, 'useful idiots') [5]. [1] https://www.vivekramaswamy.com/wokeinc https://www.vivekramaswamy.com/wokeinc [2] https://newdiscourses.com/ https://newdiscourses.com/ [3] https://newdiscourses.com/books/ https://newdiscourses.com/books/ [4] https://www.dailywire.com/news/putin-warns-wokeness-is-destroying-the-west-it-happened-in-russia-its-evil-it-destroys-values https://www.dailywire.com/news/putin-warns-wokeness-is-destr... [5] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/08/22/useful-idiot/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/08/22/useful-idiot/

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