Open Thread and Link Farm: Divine Knew Edition
- Graysexuality | Thing of Things
“Graysexuality is fascinating because we get to watch the process of a new orientation being constructed in real time.”
- The Optimizer’s Curse & Wrong-Way Reductions | Confusopoly
An interesting discussion of the limits of how Effective Altruists choose between charities. (Via.)
- Schools Are Full of Hungry Kids Who Aren’t Learning Anything. Why Don’t We Feed Them? | Center For Global Development
Free lunches for schoolkids in the developing world could be an effective way of improving educational outcomes. (For one thing, feeding kids is an effective way of increasing school attendance.) (Via).
- On #MeToo’s Anniversary, ‘Mattress Girl’ Doesn’t Need You to Believe Her
Emma Sulkowicz seems to have moved to a “restorative justice” position, although they don’t use that phrase in this article.
- This fifteen second video of someone drawing eleven lines (not counting some little hash marks) is extremely satisfying to watch.
Also enjoyable, in a different way, are the many responses in which people posted their (usually) failed attempts at drawing the same eleven lines.
- When a Town Takes Uber Instead of Public Transit – CityLab
An article about a Canadian town that found that adding a bus system would be too expensive, so they decided to subsidize Uber trips instead. But the program was so popular that they’re having to limit it to cut costs. (I think that, whether it’s Uber or traditional, most cities should be spending a lot more subsidizing public transit.)
- Kilogram, redefined: Why the world’s new definition of mass is such a big achievement – Vox
- No, I Will Not Debate You – Laurie Penny
“To refuse to debate someone is an act of discourtesy. It is rude. It implies that you do not consider that person’s ideas or behavior worthy of basic respect.”
- julia serano – a transgender glossary of sorts
The glossary is very useful (well, not for everyone, obviously). But I’m also linking it for the introduction, where Serano argues against word-elimination strategies: “This approach ignores the fact that most words are highly contextual, exhibiting multiple meanings or differing connotations depending upon the context. Many words and phrases can be used in both positive and negative ways, or in productive and disparaging ways. Yet, word elimination strategies insist that any negative usage (whether present or past, commonplace or occasional, real or perceived) automatically trumps all potentially neutral, positive, or productive uses of the term.”
- What It’s Like To Drive The Worst Car Ever Built
Which is the 1951 Hoffman. “It’s not a piece of shit, build-quality-wise. It’s just that every possible design decision made on this car is somehow the absolute worst decision you could make.”
- Notre Dame fire: a historian on rebuilding the cathedral – Vox
One interesting question (asked but not answered in this article): The spire that burned down was not the original spire. When they rebuild, do they rebuild the spire we’re used to, try and approximate what the original spire looked like, or create a new spire?
- The Centr of Controversy – Kivan Bay – Medium
Kivan very much opposes the use of the fat suit in Endgame.
- Dain Yoon’s Twitter feed.
Korean body paint artist Dain Yoon paints amazing and beautiful optical illusions on her face.
- No more ‘shortcuts’ in prescribing opioids for chronic pain – STAT
The CDC is, depending on your view, either walking back or clarifying its previous instructions on prescribing opioids. They’re saying they’ve been misinterpreted and that they don’t want chronic pain patients to be involuntarily forced to cut down or cease opioid use.
- The problems with one-size-fits-all laws on opioid prescriptions – The Washington Post
Presidential candidate Kristin Gillibrand has been forced to walk her position back after proposing a terrible opioid control bill.
- AMERICAN THEATRE | All Sizes Fit All: The Case for Normalizing Fatness Onstage
- A History Of Violence – Pop culture news, movie, TV, music and gaming reviews. | The A.V. Club
If you’re a fan of action movies, Tom Breihan’s series of article, with his choice for the most important action films year by year, is very entertaining reading. (Or I found it so.) And will almost certainly add some new titles to your “I wanna watch this” list.
- Back in 1896 men didn’t call women sluts. They called them “bicycle face”.
“Why? Because bicycles helped women make their own dating choices. IOW bikes were the first dating app. That scared men.” Interesting thread on Twitter.
- Licensing Reform Opponents Say Unlicensed Barbers Would Be as Dangerous as Unlicensed Chefs. Chefs Aren’t Licensed.
- (140) GOPRO Goes on Japanese Sushi Conveyor Belt (Beautiful Slice of Japanese Life) – YouTube
Gets a lot less interesting after the plot twist at 3:40. I really enjoyed this on first viewiing – all those little slices of life contained in restaurant booths – but also had some doubts about the ethics of making such a film, especially after reading this article.
- “The Prostitution Problem”: Claims, Evidence, and Policy Outcomes” (pdf link)
A readable journal paper, giving an overview of the debate and evidence about sex work.
- Velocity is strangling baseball — and its grip keeps tightening – The Washington Post
More pitchers are throwing faster balls – and the result is a(n even) duller game.
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The study in #21 sounds interesting, Unfortunately, the link isn’t working.
A counter argument to #22. I find it very convincing.
Thanks for pointing that out. Link has been fixed! :-)
J Squid, thanks for that link – I thought the info about how pitchers are now able to train better to do sliders was especially interesting. It adds a new dimension to the other article – fastballs have been getting faster, but also curves and sliders are getting better. It seems likely that both are contributing to the increase in strike-outs.
In an example of the harm caused by the #metoo movement, actor Geoffrey Rush is awarded $2.9 million in damages for defamation.
The thing about faster fastballs is that there appears to be an upper limit at around 106 mph. But even 106 mph pitches get crushed now and again. Major League hitters have such good eyesight and such quick reflexes that, eventually, they get the timing down. The vastly increased break combined with tunneling is going to be a lot harder for them to identify & react to. In large part because the average fastball is so much faster than it used to be. So they kind of work together. But, holy crap, if you watch video of some of the breaks (and composite videos showing tunneling), how quickly and how far some of these pitches bend is incredible. It’s almost like whiffle ball.
Desipis:
It’s not really a typical #metoo case, though, is it? For one thing, according to the judge, it came out before #metoo was known as #metoo. For another, it’s a case of a Murdoch newspaper chasing headlines against the (alleged) victim’s wishes. Which is certainly not how anyone involved in #Metoo thinks it should work.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff in that article.
What’s the movie analogy to #10? Something made with obvious professionalism and craftsmanship using the best cast and crew that made the wrong decision at every point? Two that spring immediately to mind for me are “The Golden Compass” and “Hunger Games.”
Also, I love everything about the Hoffman. If I had the time and/or money I’d build one for myself and drive it around town.
Re: 22 – I was a kid when the mound was lowered. Why don’t they lower it again?
Speaking of examples of harm caused by the #MeToo movement, what do you think of the fact that Harvard removed the very first black person to be the faculty Dean of a residence hall from that position after 10 years of such service because a group of student claimed that his act of taking a position on Harvey Weinstein’s defense team was “trauma-inducing” and made them feel “unsafe”?
It is often claimed on the left that the right despises academia because the right is anti-intellectual. I think that these days the right despises academia because academia is anti-intellectual. And anti-liberal, in what used to be the accepted use of the term. It’s worth clicking through to the Reason article that the above NYT article has a link for:
Apparently Harvard now accepts the view that only certain kinds of defendants deserve competent representation – or that people associated with Harvard should only defend certain kinds of defendants. That may not be what their Law School is teaching (although that’s certainly possible), but it’s what Harvard’s administration is teaching.
They’re using the independent Atlantic League to test out moving the mound back 2 feet to 62′ 6″.
Mostly I just wish they would go back to unjuiced baseballs. Home runs get boring when they happen all the time.
Anybody watch the Tonys?
And in particular, anyone notice the complete omission of any mention of the impending Hereville Musical?
I get it–afraid of the competition. But they could be at least a little sporting about it, doncha think?
I actually did watch the Tonys with Lizzie (composer, whose site you just linked) and Robby (lyricist). I hadn’t seen most of the nominated shows, but they were very pleased Hadestown did so well.
I did ask Lizzie how long she thinks it’ll take for Hereville to actually get on stage IF everything goes well. Her answer? Four years.
FOUR YEARS?
Ok, let’s hold off on casting the Mirka role for now….
Representative Norma Torres called Republican Congressmen who support restrictions on abortion “sex-starved” males:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/democratic-rep-torres-im-tired-of-hearing-about-abortion-rights-from-sex-starved-males
It’s one thing to argue that men don’t understand what it means to be pregnant. But “sex-starved males” is clearly shaming men for lack of sex. Let’s see if feminists condemn her the same way they would a Congressman who called Democratic Congresswomen sluts.
An interesting article on how good faith analysis choices can still lead researchers to different conclusions using the same data set to answer the same question: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2515245917747646
@Michael: does it do that? Or did Rep. Torres mean that some of her male colleagues are harassing women who have limited legal recourse? (Admittedly, Congress has changed the rules somewhat as of a few months ago.)
Are you saying you have a model of reality which predicts Rep. Torres would shame male colleagues simply for the amount of sex they have? If so, can you explain how this model works?
@hf- “@Michael: does it do that? Or did Rep. Torres mean that some of her male colleagues are harassing women who have limited legal recourse?”
(a)nobody mentioned sexual harassment- this entire debate was about taxpayer funding for abortion and (b) not all sexual harassers are sex starved and not all sex starved men are sexual harassers.
“Are you saying you have a model of reality which predicts Rep. Torres would shame male colleagues simply for the amount of sex they have? If so, can you explain how this model works?”
I’m saying that men that don’t have a lot of sex are often shamed for it- that’s common knowledge. (Exhibit A- your own comment equating sex-starved men with harassers.)
The idea that men who don’t have sex are often shamed for it is new to me.
J. Squid:
It’s not new to me. In particular, beyond a certain age, being a virgin is considered shameful. (This is true for women as well, although I think some of the nuances are different). “He’s a loser because he can’t get a date” is definitely one of the nasty stereotypes I was arguing against in my Neckbeard cartoon.
If that is what Torres meant, then that’s gross and objectionable. (Although it’s somewhat mitigated because she immediately withdrew it).
But I think, Michael, that you’re reading a lot into an off-the-cuff comment that was withdrawn in under sixty seconds. “Sex-starved” can mean “can’t get laid,” but I think in this context it’s more likely to mean “someone who is unsatisfied no matter how much sex they have and is always seeking it” (for example, by hitting on interns and assistants). When this New Yorker article described Miley Cyrus as portraying a “sex starved” persona, she wasn’t implying that Cyrus was playing the character of someone who can’t get laid; she was implying that Cyrus was portraying the character of an insatiable vixen.
Even if what she said was as clear-cut as you claim, it would be odd to expect feminists to condemn her the same way.
First of all, for many (not 100%) feminists, sexism against women is their main issue area. Is it necessarily hypocritical to have a main issue area that you pay more attention to? For example, a prisoner rights advocate may object voraciously to guards administering a beating on a prisoner, while not commenting at all on union-busters beating a union organizer. That doesn’t mean they favor beating union organizers.
Second of all, we live in a two-party system, in which one party is incredibly bad for women (for instance, by trying to ban abortion). In such a context, I don’t think feminists should give everything democrats do a pass (and they don’t – see all the criticism Joe Biden is currently receiving for his sexist comment about a 13-year-old girl). But I do think it’s unfair, and unrealistic, to expect feminists to pretend to be apolitical saints with no pragmatic concern for politics at all.
Harlequin, that article is very interesting, thanks very much for posting it.
Reporters keep hassling Trump over his claim to have a secret plan with Mexico to fight immigration.
It’s not as if this is the first White House to claim to have a secret plan.
I LOLed watching that clip, Nobody!
I mean, sure, being a virgin was embarrassing in high school where virginity was laughed at. In the abstract. I never witnessed anybody being personally shamed about it by others. I was a virgin past 20 and was never shamed for it. Post high school, outside of TV & movies, I’ve never seen it happen. To the point that it seems much more like an audio visual trope than a thing that happens in real live. I’ve had friends who were virgins to older ages than that and, though they were ashamed, I never saw – and they never related – any personal shaming of their virginity.
Sure, it’s possible I’ve lived the most sheltered of lives. But that doesn’t mean the concept isn’t new to me.
@Ampersand#20- OK, I found an interview where she clarifies:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/13/1864494/-Democratic-congresswoman-calls-out-sex-starved-males-obsessed-with-abortion
“In an interview, she later explained that “You have to be pretty sex-starved to keep thinking about sex every single minute of your day and keep bringing this issue up on everything, whether it’s foreign aid, whether it’s domestic aid, whether it’s health care—they bring it up.” ”
That could go either way- either your interpretation or mine. At least some of the commenters seemed to think she meant “not having sex”, since they mentioned “boner pills”
Hf, if you understood “sex-starved” the same way Barry did, my apologies.
“Is it necessarily hypocritical to have a main issue area that you pay more attention to?”
But the actual result, since feminists have more cultural power than sexually unsuccessful men, is that there’s going to be much more stigma against slut shaming than virgin shaming. So sexually unsuccessful men have to be careful not to say anything sexist but people can shame them without serious consequences. How are they not justified in resenting that?
Feminists have cultural power? Donald Trump is the president of the United States. Two men credibly accused of sexual harassment are on the Supreme Court. Hell, even the front runner for the Democratic nomination keeps saying sexist shit.
The state of Alabama, after voting to outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, just decided that terminating the parental rights of convicted rapists over the children who are the product of that rape was a bridge too far (except in cases in which a father rapes his daughter – uncle and brother rapists are still secure in their parental rights). This ties these victims into co-parenting relationships with their rapists for eighteen years. It also leaves them no recourse to protect their own daughters from these proven predators.
That’s how much “cultural power” feminists have. But, someone made a snarky comment that hurt Michael’s feelings, so isn’t he right to resent the fact that women who are fighting for our basic bodily autonomy, don’t drop everything condemn the mean lady.
The New York Times has decided that it’s too hard to do political cartoons in a politically correct world:
Kate,
You seem to have pattern matched to your bugbear, rather than what Michael actually said. He didn’t talk about formal power; nor did he talk about feminism vs anti/non-feminism in general.
That slut-shaming gets way more attention than virgin-shaming seems pretty obvious to me, if you read any newspaper. Also, Wikipedia has a pretty big page on slut-shaming, but nothing about virgin-shaming (despite 90% of Wikipedia contributors being men).
I don’t think it’s feminists that hold a disproportionate amount of cultural power (as opposed to political power), so much as the left generally, and feminism is just along for the ride.
I think a major reason for this is that leftists are all about the struggle to achieve progress, while the right is mostly about just being against the left. I’m not being flippant. As a pluralist, I think “being against the left” is of vital importance, just as struggle and progress are. I just think that the type of person who want to influence and shape culture to make the world a better place is likely to feel at home on the left, as the right doesn’t really have the tools to do this. The right is the home for the sort of person who looks over a set of blueprints or a business plan and spots failure modes. It’s home to those who are skeptical about the people’s ability to solve problems without making things worse. It’s hard to tell an inspirational story about this sort of person. To be a revolutionary on the right is to be a reactionary, but to be a revolutionary on the left is to be a liberator… well at least in theory. That many supposed liberators end up harming those they wish to liberate is why the world needs boring conservatives to help moderate the excesses of the left.
@Kate#26- I meant, for example, that TV shows, movies, etc. over the past few years are FAR more likely to condemn slut shaming than virgin shaming.
And yes, people do have the right to be offended by what politicians say in discussions of bills, no matter how important those bills are. If a politician is pushing the fairest criminal justice bill ever and talks about “black thugs”, then black people have the right to be offended. If you can’t handle that, don’t go into politics.
The consequences of being slut-shamed are that your body is considered to be public property and you can be sexually assaulted with impunity. Virgin shaming (which can also happen to women and feminists), as bad as it is, does not have parallel consequences for the victim of that shaming.
And, sure, you can be offended by what individual politicians say and do. That doesn’t mean that you throw out the valid points of a whole movement because that movement includes a few assholes. Every large group of people includes some assholes.
Kate,
No, the consequence of slut-shaming (which can also happen to men) is that people consider a person to act or be immoral. In some (sub)cultures, people who are immoral are considered legitimate targets for sexual assault, but that is hardly synonymous with slut-shaming.
Kate — thanks for your comment. The idea that just because things can be seen to have some parallels, they are therefore equivalent in all ways — nah. That’s a simplistic and incorrect way of interacting with the world that you’ve rebutted nicely.
Men, particularly marginalized men (eg. non-heterosexual men, men of color, poor men) are often shamed for being promiscuous (or perceived as such). But, the particular terminology “slut” tends to be so strongly gendered (although applied to feminine-presenting people of various gender identities) that it usually is specifically qualified as “male-slut” when applied to men.
…or just look immoral, often based on nothing more than the fact that their breasts developed more quickly than the other girls in class.
…or are perceived as immoral because they were born into a family with a bad reputation.
Conservative Christianity is not a “subculture” in the U.S.. It is one of the dominant cultures.
That is a distinction without a difference to victims of slut-shaming in those cultures.
Slut-shaming and (heterosexual male) virgin-shaming (because I assume we here are not talking about gay men who have not yet had gay sex) are each rooted in heteronormative values that are used—in very different ways, to very different degrees, and with very different consequences (almost all of them gendered)—to police gender and sexuality. Each is worthy of its own critique, but there are significant differences between them, and we do, I believe, a real disservice to men, and to heterosexual men in particular, when we elide those differences in the interests of creating the kind of false equivalence that I think was at least implied in Michael’s original comment.
LOL gestures in the direction of this difference in his disagreement with Kate when he says that “the consequence of slut-shaming (which can also happen to men) is that people consider a person to act or be immoral,” neatly eliding any discussion of the internal logic and gendered structure of that morality—which is what Kate’s comments on this subject have all been directed at. Leaving aside, though, the question of whether slut-shaming directed at men, on the rare occasions that it occurs, is in fact identical to slut-shaming when it is directed at women—I don’t think it is—LOL is not wrong that slut-shaming is, fundamentally, an accusation of immorality.
Virgin-shaming is not. Rather, it is an accusation of inadequacy, and a potentially very powerful one at that. More to the point, its material consequences to heterosexual men, and how their lives might be shaped or how they might shape their lives in response to those consequences, would, I think, were we to examine them on their own terms, reveal themselves as very different from the consequences to women of slut-shaming. (I make no claim about the degree of hurt that individual men and women might experience as a result of these kinds of shaming.)
I wrote very inadequately about my own experience with a kind of virgin-shaming here. (I want to stress the word inadequately; I am not interested in revisiting that piece of writing in and of itself, but only insofar as Jennifer’s statement that “You’re no different from any other guy. You wanted to do that. You’re just not man enough to admit it!” is relevant to this discussion.) Since I need to get back to grading papers and I don’t have time to say more, however, I’ll pose this as a question: What do you think is at stake in virgin-shaming? What do you think the material consequences are to men who are so shamed? I’ll be interested to see if we can have this conversation without someone returning to the comparison to slut-shaming.
@Richard Newman#35- yes, virgin shaming as it’s been done the past few years is an accusation of immorality. There’s definitely a tendency within feminism and the larger society to turn every male virgin into Eliot Rodger. After Charlottesville, for example, Michael Rapaport posted a video to white supremacists saying “try to get to second base you losers”. Articles like this promote the stereotype that alt-right=virgin:
https://babe.net/2017/08/13/were-not-going-to-fuck-you-you-nazi-losers-10463
And Jordan Peterson is just as bad, suggesting that sexually frustrated men need to have wives because they’re violent. But the larger point is after an incel shooting, male virgins feel like Muslims after a terrorist attack. And feminists don’t stick up for them like they stick up for Muslims, because the incels are right-wing, while Muslims are the victims of the right-wing. (Yes, some feminists criticize but not the same way they criticize Islamophobia.)
As for the harm done by virgin shaming- virgins are silenced. There are places in meatspace where people can talk about being gay, being trans, etc. There are no similar places where people can talk about a virgin late in life. Their pain is erased.
As for Kate’s and Mandolin’s claims that slut-shaming is worse than virgin shaming because it leads to rape, I don’t think that you really believe it completely. Look at the Central Park Jogger case. Trisha Meilli was shamed by the defendants’ lawyers and supporters the way that few women are in their lives. Her name was printed in the Amsterdam News. The victims’ lawyers slut shamed her in court, and outside of the court, their supporters chanted that she was a prostitute, talked about how man men she dated, accused her of covering for her boyfriend. And yet everyone considers the defendants innocent of rape. Nobody says that what was done to her by their lawyers and supporters was almost as bad as if they had raped her. (Personally, I think it’s ridiculous to claim that the defendants weren’t trying to bully her into changing their testimony. We can debate the ethics of lawyers slut shaming in court to acquit an innocent defendant but what was done OUTSIDE court was basically trying to intimidate her. Everyone agrees that it’s wrong for an innocent man to threaten a witness who just can’t remember- I don’t see how this was different.)
Women who are still virgins are called things like bitter old maids… Women are heavily shamed for not being in relationships at various points in their lives. It’s a slightly different framework — we’re not inadequate men if it happens to us, but it is an accusation of inadequacy. Sometimes also immorality. The implication being if one were more adequate, or more moral (by wearing different things, by sleeping around less or more, drinking less or loosening up, being prettier or “I don’t understand; you’re so pretty. Why are you mean?” Or whatever.) then one would be able to find a partner.
There’s a huge amount of it framed around women nagging men to commmitttttttt and get maaaaaaaaaaried and have kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiids. The old ball and chain wants to weigh the man down! This implies that relationships are a favor men do for women — but that you’re inadequate if you don’t find someone to do you that favor. In real life, some people of both genders like pair bonding!
The amount of this framed around attractiveness is not to be underestimated. In our discourse, we talk about how a female body is read as belonging in a binary to either virgin or whore–but movement between statuses is inflected by how pretty you are. You whore; you’re too pretty. You virgin; you aren’t pretty enough. Or pretty in the wrong way.
If you are a female virgin, the fault will generally be read as lying with you, whether it’s something wrong with your personality (too shrill! too shy!) or with your appearance (you look like a slut! you look like a school marm! you’re so fat — how could anyone love you? Wear makeup. Don’t wear makeup! You’re being distracting with those clothes. Well, what kind of woman goes to that kind of party? Well, you’ll never find a husband if you go drinking. You’ll never find a husband if you never let loose and go drinking. Well, what do you expect–you went drinking!).
These things are happening to both men and women, though socially it looks different, and the consequences are different. But I always find it a little weird when something that has been the subject of a lot of feminist analysis is presented as something that never happens to women, such as being shamed for not being successful at monogamous relationships. Or the idea that feminists haven’t been talking about toxic femininity since the dawn of feminism; we’re only now reconciling ourselves to the possibilities of maintaining a non-toxic femininity. For a long time–and a bit still–the solutions were all about “stop doing those feminine things, thats gross,” and not “knitting seems generally harmless–but you might want to think about why you apologize anytime someone looks at you.”
In general, our culture has a tendency to conflate “can get a partner” and “is adequate.”
I’m sorry to everyone that hurts.
Citation, please?
ETA: To clarify, I’m not doubting that this happened whatsoever. I’m wondering about your attribution of this to “the defendants’ lawyers and supporters” in general, as if this were a common consensus among the defendants’ lawyers and supporters.
Forgive me, Michael, but I find this comment very hard to follow:
Link(s) please.
I don’t see how this is an example of a tendency within feminism to do what you claim in the previous sentence.
This seems to me an almost willful misreading of the article, but I could be wrong, so could you explain how you see it that way?
Peterson, of course, is not the first person to say this. Robert Bly said it in his way when the mythopoetic men’s movement was all the rage; David Blankenhorn wrote a book about this called Fatherless America, and while I disagree with it profounfly, it seems to me far more intelligent than anything I’ve heard Peterson say. None of these, however, are targeting male virginity per se. Rather, they are talking about the ostensibly necessary socializing influence (that men are in need of) not of sex in and of itself, but of marriage and family and the obligations they impose on men. In other words, I think this is an example of something different from (though perhaps not entirely unrelated to) virgin shaming. Again, I’d be curious to hear you make your argument.
This seems to me like out and out hyperbole, so I’d be interested in reading something that makes this argument in a substantive way. Any links?
This seems to me to be onto something, though I wonder what “their pain” is and how they would characterize it. I’m not implying that it doesn’t exist. I am wondering about the difference between the pain of not being able to find a heterosexual partner—casual or otherwise—and pain that is, for example, connected to the cultural and social meaning of heterosexual male virginity.
ETA: Of course those two pains are related, but, intuitively at least, they seem to me also distinct from each other. Figuring this out is part of why I’d be interested to read a substantive take on it.
Sorry, I should have been more clear- by lawyers I mostly meant Moore:
From a interview of Meili by Oprah:
http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Oprah-Interviews-the-Central-Park-Jogger
“I’ll tell you what—I didn’t feel wonderful about the boys’ defense attorneys, especially the one who cross-examined me. He was right in front of my face and, in essence, calling me a slut by asking questions like ‘When’s the last time you had sex with your boyfriend?'”
This article describes Moore’s cross-examination:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1310&dat=19901103&id=oVNWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kusDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6767,463485
Moore asked her if she had sex with a friend, suggested a man she knew might have attacked her and accused her of mentioning the name of someone she knew while intubated- an amazing feat of ventriloquism.
On pages 183-184 of Meili’s book I am the Central Park Jogger, she cites an article describing the abuse she faced:
“Why don’t they find her drug dealer that she went into the park to meet?”
“Lynch all her boyfriends! She had many of them!”
Also, Sarah Burns’s book the Central Park Five:
On page 150, she describes how the defendants supporters called her “whore” and “prostitute”. To be fair they also called three of her lawyers “Sellouts” when they refused to cross-examine her.
On page 81, she notes that Moore was the Amsterdam News’s source.
It was Moore that was playing to the supporters. The other lawyers were mostly respectful.
The Central Part Five did not commit that rape. What’s more, they were CHILDREN, with no legal training. Their lawyer was responsible for the abuse of Trisha Meilli. Not them. I lived in New York City at the time. Feminists most certainly DID defend the then anonymous victim from victim blaming, although all I remember is the then general judgement that she was asking for it by going jogging alone in Central Park. Moreover, to our shame, many, perhaps most, white feminists did not defend the children who were framed for the crime. White feminism still has a racism problem, but it was even worse then.
#83- One correction- in High Profile Crimes by Lynn Chancer, page 145, another lawyer, Robert Burns, implied that the jogger hadn’t really been raped because only her boyfriend’s semen was found on her.
Michael:
I’d like to point out that this is a bizarre non-sequitor. That rape victims are slut-shamed is not a contradiction of the idea that women who are slut-shamed are being threatened with being made targets for rape, it is actually part of how slut-shaming women is an implicit threat of rape. Furthermore, the claim that Mandolin and Kate don’t really believe that slut-shaming leads to rape because the defense attorneys in the Central Park Jogger 30 years ago engaged in slut-shaming is just stunningly incoherent nonsense. No matter what happened to her, it has no bearing on what Kate or Mandolin actually believe, nor does it actually provide any argument that slut-shaming is not an implicit threat of rape.
Traditional gender perceptions are that it’s relatively much easier for women to find sex partners, while for men it’s the opposite. If this is true and if we look at it like a market, then this means that sex with a woman is worth much more than sex with a man. You can observe the validity of this in prostitution, where male prostitutes that cater to women are nearly non-existent, while the opposite is not true, suggesting that sex with men is low in value. Experiments where quite attractive men approach random women for sex and vice versa, with extremely lopsided results, also suggest a strong disparity in value.
So then in a transactional sense, a woman and man who have sex are exchanging gifts of unequal value.
This model might help explain very many things:
– Why women who have a lot of sex are seen as ‘cheap’ or as prostitutes (depending on whether the perception is that they exchange sex for money/goods or not), but why men who have a lot of sex are often seen as high-value (but not if this involves prostitutes)
– Why so much language around sex suggests that women give something valuable (or even their entire being) to men when they have sex, but not vice versa
– Why women tend to expect men to pay for dates
– Why women tend to expect men to woo women
– Why men can have an expectation of sex when women accept their gifts (under the assumption that she accepted an implied payment to balance the sex scales)
– Why even in the absence of children, men tend to accept a wealth transfer to their female partner
– Why older men divorcing and going after a younger partner happens/happened much more than vice versa
Men who fail to entice women then are pretty much automatically considered losers who don’t provide an attractive package that extends (far) beyond sex. Shaming for women is a bit different and tends to be based on the idea that there is a significant repulsive trait, especially poor looks. So women are shamed for not being able to get a (high-value) man to commit to long term relationship (where it is/was assumed that the man provides for her), while men are much more shamed for not having sex with pretty women.
Virgins also get threatened with rape? “She just hasn’t had a cock in her” “She’ll turn for me” “She needs some dick” etc etc. So-called collective rape, rape as used as a tool of war or otherwise to inflict pain on the men who love the women being raped… Lots of “She’d want it if she knew what it was like” or “she’s just being inhibited by social pressures and lying about what she really wants.”
We have at least two men on this board whose virginity was used as an excuse to rape them. If you think I’m not mad as hell about that…
Look, they’re just different things with different operational parameters. I didn’t actually say which one is worse, because I think that’s a stupid question. (If I did, and I am not seeing it, then I was either wrong or more probably using poor phrasing.) There are similarities between the two that can be discussed and analyzed and which may be close enough to be addressed the same ways sometimes. But I think it’s stupid to say that slut-shaming of women and virgin-shaming of men are so identical they must be reacted to with the same strategies and intensity all the time. You’re not “catching anyone out” by noting that people react to them differently.
We do use the word “virgin” to shame men, and imply that men would not be violent if given access to women, a proposition which domestic violence clearly undermines. There is a point to be made about men who feel entitled to sex using that entitlement to justify violence (or to pointing out that “nice guys” who can’t get dates are sometimes misdiagnosing both themselves and the problem), but shaming virgins isn’t an appropriate strategy for that criticism. I have done it, and I’m trying to learn not to. There are many people who want partners and can’t find them, and many of those people are good and kind, and it’s a truth that really, really sucks.
Harvard is free to do whatever they want. But screwing up the life of a 18 year old over something stupid they wrote 2 years ago online is a crappy thing to do.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/17/us/harvard-parkland-student-kashuv-trnd/index.html
Not trying to derail the conversation, but it seems related to the comic.
[I didn’t agree it was related to the comic – at least, not related enough – so I moved this to an open thread. –Amp]
I wrote about the Harvard case (Harvard dis-accepted an 18 year old, Kyle Kashuv, because of racist comments Kyle wrote when he was 16) in a Twitter thread.
Cut the melodrama, please. Not getting to go to Harvard isn’t “screwing up” anyone’s life. Kyle will be fine.
Most people apply to get into college at the age of 17. If you can’t judge them based on what they said and did at 16, what exactly, would you judge them on?
This is part of a pattern. If you speak out for things that progressives dislike, your history will be examined for any missteps and you face repercussions. On the other hand, extremist progressives typically get excused (see the anti-white racist tweets by Sarah Jeong that didn’t stop her from being hired).
I believe it’s called structural oppression.
LOL, wasn’t the campaign against Kyle Kashov led by the far right?
The OCR is bringing Title IX cases against major universities for offering female-only scholarships and programs.
The following is especially interesting to me. Note that I added the paragraph break for clarity. While this applies to a specific case of a “women in communications” program, it’s worth considering that women outnumber men in colleges overall and thus this logic could be extended either generally or for current female-dominated fields such as Education, Nursing, Obstetrics and whatever they call Human Resources these days in universities:
As most of you may remember, I’m in I.T. and am a Scout leader and have been for quite some time. In my industry, at my company and even in Scouts there are constantly new programs, funding and other kinds of support to get more women in educational and industry programs for STEM. We are told that this is necessary because diversity makes for better products and services. It seems to me that this logic should apply to female-dominated fields as much as male-dominated ones.
Russ Douthat has a thought-provoking essay inviting us to understand the perspectives of religious social conservatives and their increasingly apocalyptic mood:
Ampersand,
According to Kashuv (with an u), people from both sides contacted Harvard. If you read your Daily Beast article closely, they say “led a campaign” rather than ‘led the campaign.’ So I suspect that this is one of these ‘technically not lying’ articles where they deceive people by omission and insinuation.
It’s all rather irrelevant though, because my objection is first and foremost to the people in power who bow to these kind of demands. You will always have people who will attempt a heckler’s veto and the more so when they get their way.
I think withdrawing admission after he’s declined scholarships to go to other schools is a real harm.
I’m happy to use another phrase than screwing up. How about negatively impacting in a real and financial way?
Kate, do you think an revoking admission based on an isolated incident of being a racist asshole for shock value is a fair and appropriate response?
Do you think the fact that he admitted it was wrong, and apologized, at all mitigates it?
Do you think other colleges should let him in? Or do you think what he did makes him unworthy of higher education?
Final question, he’s 18, this was 2 years and a personal tragedy ago. How far back do you think an isolated incident has to be before it’s ok to say it’s not really relevant?
Two occasions (that we know of). And the text message doesn’t look like he’s just going for shock value; it looks like he’s casually using the N word in a conversation where he’s complaining that an attractive girl likes a Black student.
I do think he should go to college. And I’m 100% sure he’ll be able to. But losing the chance to attend an incredibly exclusive college because he got caught saying this shit (and he only apologized because he got caught) seems like a proportional consequence for his actions.
Is it your view that he should face no consequences at all, ever, other than having to issue a public apology? If not, what do you think a proportional consequence would be?
(As I said in my twitter thread about this, I don’t think this should follow him around forever, and think it’s wrong that it probably will.)
As I understand it, they were private comments intended for a very small audience. I don’t think it’s fair to judge these comments from the outside anymore than it’s fair to judge how someone looks or poses in a nude photograph that’s been hacked or shared by a vengeful ex.
Holding someone’s nude photos against them is wrong, regardless of if they posted them in public or in private. “Said racist things” and “took a nude picture” are therefore not parallel in an important way.
I agree with you to some degree, and disagree to some degree. Certainly it is mitigating that they were intended to be private, in that saying those things publicly would be even worse behavior. But I don’t think it’s 100% mitigating.
You didn’t exactly answer, but your answer certainly implies that you’re in the “he should face no consequences at all” camp. Is that correct?
I think that “he was a teenager” is a much more mitigating circumstance than “he thought only some people would see his comments.” I also think “there is more to everyone than their worst moments” is an important thing to remember. For these reasons, I don’t make global judgments about his character based on these comments, and I don’t think they should follow him around forever.
However, I do think it’s fair for colleges to make admissions decisions about incoming students based on the things they said and did at ages 15-17. That’s how college admissions work.
Yes, especially an institution that gives its graduates the immense social power that Harvard does. But also, we have no reason to believe that these incidents were isolated. I also don’t think that saying something for “shock value” is a mitigating factor.
Not at all. He only admitted he was wrong and apologized when he was caught. Moreover, this:
does not sound like a contrite young man who has learned his lesson to me. He sounds like he is still the type of arrogant douchebag who would think being “a racist asshole for shock value” was a hoot, and if he stays in the public eye, I fully expect he will show his ass again.
I don’t think this would even be an issue if he hadn’t publicized the incident to raise his public profile. But, different schools can, should and do have different standards. As I said, I am sure he will be fine.
It is customary for colleges to weigh the junior year most heavily, with less weight placed on the sophmore and freshman years. Certainly no further back than that.
Ampersand,
Given he didn’t cause anyone harm, I don’t see there any need for any punitive or formal consequences.
If individuals in his life want to make their own judgements, and make negative comments or decide not to socialise or whatever in their individual capacity, then that’s fine. As long as these things don’t reach the level of being bullying or harassment.
Ampersand,
This decision consisted of banning a person who made certain political statements, which are IMO noxious, but the noxiousness is subjective. We’ve seen many examples where mere support for Trump and/or his policies, who got support from nearly half the American voters, is considered noxious enough to try to get rid of this person from the university. See this example.
Furthermore, there are many examples of progressives going after people for what they did decades ago, when much younger and with an unclear context, where many people assume the worst. See various yearbook scandals, for example.
With the far greater lenience to progressive transgressions by the progressives who dominate most colleges, the potential exists for a gradually increasing ‘cleansing’ of universities of non-progressive staff and students, while radical leftists are tolerated.
The logical consequence is then that colleges become fully partisan institutions, insofar that this isn’t the case already. This is going to result in a backlash, part of which we are already seeing.
Either you defend the right to an education or you don’t. Without a Schelling point, you cannot defend this right. If Harvard gets to do this, how can you deny it to any other college?
desipis:
A groundless assumption, and not quite likely if you actually know or care about the effect this word has on black people.
LoL:
Calling black classmates “niggerjocks” and expressing incredulity over white classmates dating them is a “certain political statement?” Do you really think that’s how Kashuv intended his remarks?
Either you defend the right to an education or you don’t. Without a Schelling point, you cannot defend this right. If Harvard gets to do this, how can you deny it to any other college?
For better or worse, there is no “right” to a college education in this country. And Harvard “gets to” do a lot of things in screening individuals that other colleges don’t do. It’s literally the most prestigious and selective school in the world. The idea that we are debating whether it can keep a kid out for any reason, let alone racist comments, is absurd to me.
I’d like to point out that Kashuv could go to an open admissions college, even (the horror!) a community college, like the one where I teach, get good grades and then transfer pretty much anywhere he wanted/could get into pretty much without having to make any reference to his high school record/behavior (beyond the fact of his diploma). Indeed, taking this route and doing well might even be a way of demonstrating to Harvard that he was a changed person (assuming that he really did change). Not a few of the students I’ve taught over the years have taken this route in circumstances not entirely unlike Kashuv’s.
LoL: There are also many examples of conservatives going after people for things they said on social media, and getting them removed from their campus positions. More professors have been fired (or let go) due to right-wing activism than due to left-wing activism, for example, although it’s certainly happened from both sides.
If you actually care about this issue, then a discussion of the general problem should acknowledge that it’s a both-sides problem. Casting it as a problem of left-wingers harming free speech on campus, or as right-wingers harming free speech on campus, without acknowledging the larger reality, changes this from something that free speech fans regardless of views can agree on, to a partisan football. For that reason, I think it’s better for discourse if we avoid doing that.
I think that “someone who said an offensive thing as a kid can’t go to college at all, when otherwise they’d be able to” would be a reasonable threshold at which I’d say things have gone too far. I might think that if we were even approaching that threshold. But we’re a million miles from that point.
I think the public apology and shame is a consequence.
I think having to understand why this is wrong and learn how it caused harm would also be appropriate.
I think revoking admission this late in the process is too far.
That’s asking to prove a negative. We know these statement exist. We have no evidence there were other statements. We have no evidence this is part of a pattern.
Regarding ‘shock value’ I guess we just disagree. Some that said racist a-hole things to be shocking is different to me than someone that said racist a-hole tings to fit in with friends from storm front and is different from someone that said them because they believe explicitly that white people are superior.
This guy < Milo < David Duke
Joe –
There are two incidents we know of, so we know “statements” exist, not “statement.” (That may have been only a typo on your part.)
And another student said that he talked like that a lot, so that is evidence that this is part of a pattern. It’s not proof positive, of course, but to say “we have no evidence” is an exaggeration.
I agree that saying racist things to be shocking isn’t the worst kind of racism imaginable, but it’s still racist. So insofar as “it could have been worse” is mitigating, then it’s a mitigating factor. However, Harvard is entitled to decide for themselves if they believe him when he says he only said it for shock value and no other reason.
I agree that public apology and shaming is a consequence. If Harvard had decided to allow him to attend as planned, while working to improve in some relevant way, that would have seemed good to me. But I also don’t have any objection to them rejecting him. I just don’t see the right for this particular kid to be admitted to that particular institution as being all that important, I guess. So many worse things happen than not going to Harvard.
As for “this late in the process,” he was already planning to take a gap year, so he has plenty of time to arrange to attend a different college. And if he was going to attend Harvard without a scholarship, then he’ll be able to afford attending somewhere else without a scholarship.
He wasn’t even attending this fall? Sheesh.
I’m just posting this link here to get five more entries for this free ipad contest. I guess I’m abusing my position as blogrunner, but whaddagonnado?
I hope you win!
Chris,
Racial hatred and shaming for miscegenation is no less a political statement than speaking out for multiracial societies and such.
When the NYT hired Sarah Jeong, they argued that her anti-white racism was fine, since she merely ‘imitated’ her harassers. In my opinion, this was pure rationalization, where the NYT simply doesn’t mind hateful statements against white people very much.
The problem with allowing ideological purity tests by colleges and such, but not having the courts decide specific cases, is that most humans aren’t fair in the assessment of what is hatred, resulting in oppression of certain beliefs.
Note that many broadly held beliefs are considered extremely hateful by some people.
The more that it becomes the norm to punish people for saying ‘evil’ things, the more important it becomes to be the person who is oppressing ideological opponents and making sure they never get into power; and the less it makes sense to cooperate (and attempt to change things peacefully) if you are not in power. It is extremely harmful.
It doesn’t ultimately matter to me what Kashuv intended. I think that government and semi-government (like Harvard) should not be in the business of restricting welfare, education, healthcare, etc to those with ‘acceptable’ beliefs.
Ampersand,
That seems unlikely, since colleges are overwhelmingly liberal. Do you have any evidence of this?
It is a both-sides problem, but the problem is worse on one side:
– colleges are majority and increasingly liberal
– the colleges that tend to form a pipeline to positions of power are more often liberal than conservative
I believe that this is an appropriate place for: check your side’s privilege.
I guess that by that kind of standard, most Jim Crow laws were no big deal. Black Americans still got to go to school, after all.
I don’t think you particularly care about what happens to those who are not far-left, and certainly far less than the people who will actually suffer due to this. So when you think that things have gone too far, things will have gotten really bad and there may not be any going back…or not without literal skulls.
I think Havard has every right to deny applicants due to the things they say on social media, but I think it was a bad idea this time- not because it’s unfair and a disproportionate response to a teenager being edgy or whatever, but because of how it happened. Their decision creates an incentive for kids to police and report one another. Don’t like a classmate? Jealous that your peer got that full ride to a prestigious school? Comb through his social media, as there is a real chance you’ll find something terrible in his or her past, because teenagers don’t have fully developed brains.
I immediately think of Freddie Deboer’s “Planet of Cops,” essay.
I don’t understand why you find this unlikely. Given that professors are overwhelmingly liberal, wouldn’t you expect there to be more right-wing activism against them than left-wing activism against them?
Kashuv and most of his defenders argue that his words were not political statements, but merely juvenile attempts to be shocking. You’re actually making him look worse by positing that they could reveal genuinely held racist beliefs.
But I’m curious how far you would take this position. Membership in the KKK, for instance, would be more reflective of deeply held political beliefs than Kashuv’s statements. Is it your position that Harvard would be wrong to deny admission to students who held membership in the KKK? What about students who endorse the Islamic State on their social media accounts?
And yet, denying admission due to someone using racial slurs is perfectly fair. I’d wager it’s more of a fair standard than dozens of other factors Harvard considers when admitting students. It is, again, the most elite university in the world. The idea that expecting incoming students to not have written racial slurs about their classmates is unfair is ludicrous.
It never fails to amuse me how conservatives started embracing moral relativism as they began losing cultural power. “Considered extremely hateful by some people” is not the standard here. A white person calling black people the n word is about the closest thing we have to an objectively agreed upon standard of hateful behavior in this country. But God forbid a white person actually suffer even the mildest of consequences for it–such as not being accepted into the most prestigious university in the world, something that is not even a remote possibility for the vast majority of human beings–because then we have to reconsider whether that standard is fair because hey, doesn’t everyone consider some things offensive, man? Give me a break.
Please tell me what the harm is of not allowing people who use racial slurs into power. I’m dying to know.
Harvard is not a “semi-government,” and it is not “restricting” Kashuv’s education in any way.
Harvard does have a disproportionate amount of power, however; most Supreme Court justices went there, and its alumni tends to go on to be leaders in other halls of power as well. But I’m not persuaded that “Let more racists go to Harvard!” is a solution to the problems associated with that one school having so much sway. Can you explain how that is a solution to that problem?
This is insane. Being of a certain race and using racial slurs are not moral equivalents. The former is inherently outside of one’s control, and the latter is not. You must know this. Denying admission on account of someone’s race is unfair on as objective a level as there is. Denying admission because someone used racial slurs is not.
Furthermore, the harm to black students under Jim Crow laws and segregated schools so drastically outweighs the harm done to an individual whose own stupid actions made him unable to attend Harvard that to compare the two reveals a near-sociopathic lack of empathy on your part. How could you possible think such an analogy would be persuasive to anyone who understands the history of oppression blacks were subjected to–the very history that makes Kashuv’s statements worth condemning at all? I remember defending you against allegations of bad faith on this blog recently; I’m starting to wonder if that was a mistake.
it is okay for harvard not to let in someone because he did a stupid thing as a kids, i think. alot of kids do stupid things, some of them are racist and some are drinking and some are fighting and some are drugs. colleges already look at those things. i do not know if i like that alot, because kids are stupid and we should not make them be perfect but schools need a way to decide who to let in, so this is okay.
but i think it is not-okay for harvard to change their mind because they found out he did a stupid thing as a kid, unless they would also change their mind for finding out that other kids did other stupid things, like drinking and fighting and drugs. i do not think schools care about that alot, and if i sent a letter to Ampersand’s new school saying “Ampersand was drinking and he is underage” they would not care if he was already in, so i do not think they should care about this.
I’m just trying to square the circle of “It’s totally wrong to compare what’s happening to kids on the border to concentration camps” with “What’s happening to Kyle Kashuv can be fairly compared to Jim Crow.”
Can anyone help me with this?
LOL, Quoting me:
That graph is from There Is No Campus Free Speech Crisis: A Close Look at the Evidence – Niskanen Center
LOL wrote:
Your argument doesn’t acknowledge that academic censorship can come from outside the campus, for example in the form of a social media campaign to get a professor fired, or of pressure or even legislation coming from the state government. There are also cases of conservative students trying to get opposing speech on their campus shut down (for instance, by suing to stop a pro-Palestinian conference).
When you take those things into account, it’s hard to say that “the problem is worse on one side.”
As Chris said, this is a ridiculous and racist argument.
I think that you’re making personal attacks because, at some level, you realize that the case you’re trying to make is incredibly weak.
Also, I’ve made multiple posts defending the free speech of people who aren’t far-left.
Chris, great post. I agree with 99% of it. But of course, I’m going to respond to the 1% instead of the 99%. :-p
I know what you mean here, but I’d quibble with your framing. Racism used in an instrumental manner – for example, to impress friends with how edgy one is – is still racism. Therefore, believing that it’s okay to use racism instrumentally – as Kyle did at one time – IS a genuinely racist belief.
For me, the inclusion of “near-sociopathic” pushes this over the border into the kind of personal attack I prefer people avoid making on “Alas.” It’s better to attack people’s arguments that to attack people personally, on “Alas.”
But, again, I thought your post on the whole was great. Thanks for making it.
Jeffrey – I don’t mind Harvard’s decision, but I do think it’s generally bad for people to try and get each other fired, expelled, etc..
I don’t know why it’s incentives “for kids” that you single out for concern here. The main people who worked to get Kashuv un-admitted were adult activists (both right and left), not kids. And they did it for political purposes, not for envy or personal dislike.
Thanks, Amp, and I debated whether or not to go with that term—I see now that I should have done without it.
I agree that saying racist things to be “edgy” is still evidence of racist beliefs, as it assumes that the feelings of the target of the joke are less important than one’s own need to be edgy. I suppose it’s a difference of degree—if someone is intending to make a political statement that one finds black people are inferior, I find that worse than if someone is simply inconsiderate of the feelings of black people. Both are racist, but the former more so than the latter.
In my application to Harvard, I stated that I had been employed as a Military Counter Intelligence officer in Communist Bulgaria. They accepted me as a transfer student. So did MIT.
Recently, my wife and I have interviewed high school students for MIT, and some of the kids admitted, without being asked, that they had a criminal history. I did not forward the information, but I spent a lot of time agonizing over it, the first time. I did express reservations in one of the cases, though. In at least one (other) case, the student was accepted, despite the application essay mentioning the criminal history.
Also, while I was at MIT, the Institute provided me with a lawyer, for free, to fight a charge of disarming a police officer (Boston, not Campus). Without her, I’d have been deported, for sure.
I’m not quite sure how I feel about the fact that statements juveniles made to close friends in a private setting count against one more than six years (from 16 to 22) spent undermining the enemies of a Communist State, or criminal activities that can be easily pursued on campus.
Also, I really wonder what kind of people would feel comfortable working or even interacting with Kashuv’s ‘friends’. And consider whom this statement is coming from.
An article at Heterodox Academy – not at all an SJW publication – making the case that suppression of campus on speech is, or should be, a non-partisan issue.
Political Firings of Left Leaning Faculty – Heterodox Academy
Huffpo broke the story about the Kushuv’s racist comments, and claims it’s sources were his classmates, and Vox suggests Harvard started a review immediately. I’m not sure if Kyle’s classmates wanted his acceptance rescinded or not, but this is an established precedent now, and I expect we’ll see more of it, and teenager’s shitty google docs comments can become national news stories. But maybe this this is all worth it? I mean, if we want a society that enforces norms against racist behavior, there has to be an enforcement at the societal level of those norms, and I’m not really sure what the enforcement should look like for a racist comment on google docs. I don’t know what’s proportionate, but I do know a whole bunch of kids might start watching what they say online.
Thanks for the correction.
If this makes white kids less likely to throw around the N-word, then that would certainly be a benefit. I suspect not many kids pay attention to news like this, though.
Regarding the Supreme Court’s decision that no federal court can ever block partisan gerrymandering, no matter how extreme:
It’s so painfully stupid that Democrats have instituted strong anti-gerrymandering laws in the two largest safely blue states, NY and California.
Gerrymandering is evil. It’s beloved by the GOP because Republicans know that they’re incapable of winning fair elections, so they’re desperate to do whatever they can to prevent elections from being decided by voters.
The decision of Democrats to be principled in large, solidly blue states is now officially suicide. If the Democrats play fair, allowing Republicans to have proportional representation in Congress in solidly blue states, while the Republicans do nothing but cheat, that creates yet another huge structural advantage for Republicans.
I think the other thing that’s clear is that Democrats, next time we can, need to add more seats to re-balance the Supreme Court. 15 of the last 19 SCOTUS justices were appointed by GOP presidents, while the GOP won the popular vote only once. What happened to Merrick Garland makes it clear that the GOP will never let elections determine the make-up of the Supreme Court if Democrats keep on playing by the norm (not law) that says we shouldn’t re-balance the court.
How does court packing work in the long run? I’ve always wondered this. Sure, president Warren adds seats, and fills them. What’s to stop president Haley from just adding more seats and on and on until the supreme Court is a giant disfunctial body like the house or senate? Is the whole point of this to basically destroy the court as we know it because right now, it seems to be a weapon in the hands of the right? I see the logic, don’t keep hitting the “cooperate” button if the man across the table keeps hitting “defect,” but damn that could be the beginning of a crisis.
Jeffrey, if it leads to liberals having the court in alternating presidencies, that would be enormously better. We’d have the court approximately 50% of the time, which is a great deal more than 0%.
If it does become so ridiculous that it’s unmanageable, then maybe a reasonable compromise could be worked out – there are a few proposals out there to make Supreme Court seat allocation fairer. But right now the GOP is guaranteed control forever – they won’t permit any Democrat to have their nominee on the court, and the court will make rulings enabling more and more GOP vote-blocking measures. If the Democrats don’t do something, then the GOP will never allow the status quo to change.
Also on my list of things Democrats should do as soon as possible: Make D.C. and Puerto Rico states (assuming Puerto Ricans are willing).
Really? ‘Cuz I hear that President Ford wants to make Puerto Rico a steak.
Now, why does he have to make them a steak? I didn’t think those people even liked meat.
Now, let me warn all of you: If you make Puerto Rico a steak, the next thing they’ll want is a baked potato! With sour cream! and chives! and little tiny bacon bits and pieces of toast!
And then they’ll probably want a salad bar! Why, they’ll be lined up for miles!
If President Ford wants to be remembered as a great president in his final days, he should do something about the price of coffee! Not steak! It’s outrageous! I can’t believe what that man is doing….
AJD,
Not necessarily, because most activism is internecine, or at least the actually effective kind.
What I expect is that the median case of actually effective activism is going to be left-wing activism against left-wing professors, due to:
– most professors and staff being left-wing
– narcissism of small differences
– self-segregation
– a tendency by people to avoid obvious harms
Most, effective activism is sympathy-coercive activism, where the activists coerce those in power to bow to their demands by appealing to their ideological beliefs, emotional attachments and such that those in power have, which are exploited by the activists. For example, activists typically prefer to present sympathetic cases involving children over those involving adults, cases involving women over those involving men, pretty people over ugly people, etc, etc; to appeal to human bias in whom they sympathize with more.
People in power tend to be more easily swayed by activists who are similar to them, who can exploit ideological sympathies (and/or make the person look bad to their peers). In other words, a far-left person can more easily coerce a center-left person in power than a center-right person in power (and vice versa).
Due to self-segregation of those in power, as well as professors, left-wing professors and left-wing administration tend to end up at the same places. Ideologically dissimilar people are more likely to not encounter each other, because they are more likely to be at different colleges or at different departments within a college.
Finally, most people are not stupid/brave enough to make themselves an obvious target. So the far/center-right person in a far-left environment will typically keep his beliefs to herself (and vice versa). People who end up in front of the firing squad often misjudge the situation, for example because their statements/behavior are fine in their bubble, but not in the larger context.
This all means that Jerry Falwell is not going to face effective activism, unlike Bret Weinstein, even though the activists who got Weinstein removed have beliefs that are way closer to Bret than Falwell.
Chris,
It would be wrong, IMO. If the person seems violent or tending to violence, the police should be notified. Public spending/services should not be restricted by ideological purity tests by those who get paid to teach people, not to make subjective assessments, outside of their expertise, of who has harmful beliefs. If it is legal to say and thus not harmful enough to warrant exclusion from society by way of prison, then why exclude the person from using publicly funded services?
You may believe that the administation of colleges is capable of making such assessments well, enforcing extremely broadly held beliefs of what is unacceptable, without personal bias, but I don’t. I think that they can’t help enforcing their personal Overton Window. Furthermore, they are not properly held to account. The courts have circuit & supreme courts to enforce consistency and high standards. Colleges don’t.
I strongly doubt that they would deny someone who would use racial slurs against certain other groups, given that we’ve already seen how the NYT reacted to Sarah Jeong, so it’s probably not fair at all.
You seem to regard the Harvard administrators as objective and principled, while you also seem to be a SJ advocate whose very ideology presumably holds that people are not objective and principled. Can you explain how this works?
Not trusting people to objectively decide what is right and wrong is not moral relativism.
What is the harm of not allowing communists into power?
Anyway, my worry is the slippery slope. Many progressives already consider certain common beliefs and policy preferences to be extremely harmful to certain groups, similar to racial slurs.
Harvard gets government funding and government directives. Are you familiar with Title IX?
Harvard is also the top tier in US education, so of course being banned from it restricts someone’s education to a lower level.
You are misinterpreting my example. It was considered unacceptable when black people were restricted to worse schools and/or schools with worse prospects, even though they still got an education, but now you are claiming that it is no big deal when this person is restricted to worse colleges and/or colleges with worse prospects.
I was pointing out what I see as an inconsistency, where racial school segregation is considered a huge harm by pretty much all progressives, yet fairly obvious worse prospects for this guy don’t even result in a recognition that he is harmed.
Ampersand,
That graph merely suggests that the firings happened mostly to people making left-wing statements, not that the criticisms came from the right. Left-wing people can go after left-wing speech. There were plenty of left-wing people in the gulags.
Looking at the examples from the article, I see a major issue. They give two example of liberal professors who were fired, one of which is Phillip Lestmann, who has taught for 40 years at the small, evangelical Christian Bryan College where the faculty members must endorse a statement of faith and that was founded after the scopes trial, in honor of a witness called William Jennings Bryan who testified in favor of a law banning the teaching of evolution. Your article justifies calling Lestmann a liberal by arguing that he was perceived as anti-Christian, which makes it seem like he was an atheist or progressive Christian fired for being progressive. This seemed strange to me, as this college was literally founded to deny evolution, so it seems about as likely to find a progressive here as finding a black KKK member, so I looked into it.
Lestmann was actually fired for opposing the administration and the accusations of lack of Christian values that I found were all levied against the administration, not by the administration against the fired professor. This is what our “anti-Christian” professor wrote himself:
“Praise the Lord! The light is finally getting shined on the darkness at Bryan College. […] The prayer group was started in the fall of 2014 when I asked myself why the Lord was not acting to correct what I perceived to be egregious evil carried out by the college leadership. It hit me that maybe He was waiting for some of us to get serious about praying for the college and His Name. It was never intended to be a “political action committee,” a mob of rabblerousers, or an “opposition group.” We were praying for Bryan College to be healed and restored from what we perceived as great evil. We wanted God to be glorified above all. We could have hardly accomplished that if we had descended into fleshly desires for retaliation, revenge, or harm to come to those with whom we disagreed. […] My role in all this was to act as a conduit of information via private e-mails and to encourage continual prayer.”
This is not left-wing speech, at all. The complaints against the administration seem to be a cover up of a sex scandal, financial misconduct (stealing money from the National Association of Christian Athletes), nepotism and making the statement of faith more strict, which is really the only part that could be considered a complaint by a less conservative Christian against a more conservative Christian, although Lestmann himself seemed far more concerned with the financial misconduct. When Lestmann was asked by a reporter about the changed statement of faith, he didn’t actually object to it getting stricter, but argued against the speed of the change, the disruption it caused and argued that it might have been a smokescreen to distract from the financial problems.
Frankly, this is similar nonsense to what I saw when I looked into reports that supposedly proved that hate crimes by certain groups are much more prevalent, where the classifications seemed extremely biased in favor of a narrative and thus weren’t a fair assessment.
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Another issue is that the bias that I allege exists, includes what is considered to be very serious transgressions. Two of the examples given in your article are of people who called for the killing of specific people, which seems like a proper reason to fire (and prosecute) someone. The third was Lestmann. The fourth was Paul Griffiths, whose conflict with the administration was pure culture war, with him assuming that the diversity training would be “intellectually flaccid: there’ll be bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty.” He was called a racist, even though I haven’t seen any evidence of actual racism, but merely objections to Social Justice.
This is exactly why I worry about the slippery slope. For many Social Justice advocates, hateful speech doesn’t merely consist of actual hatred, but also of the questioning & rejection of SJ ideology.
These tend to be ineffective if the administration favors the behavior/opinion of the professor, as I argued in my response to AJD. Of course, a right wing campaign can get left-wing administration to act if the professor is so radical that more moderate left-wing can’t stand it. Moderate lefties can go after the far-left, just like moderate righties can go after the far-right.
On the contrary, I’d expect that people in power are more easily swayed by people with more power—wealthy donors or potential donors, and (in the case of public universities) legislators, both of whom are more likely to be conservative.
To clarfy, are you talking about the two people who tweeted saying that Trump should be killed? (e.g.,”To save American democracy, Trump must hang. The sooner and the higher, the better”?)
“Hang” means execution, eg for that treason he likely committed. If we were talking about African-American men it might mean extra-legal lynching; this is because there’s a real chance that if you got a mob together, you could lynch a random black man. There is no chance you could do this to the President of the United States.
Of course, a black President would be an edge case. However, a credible threat or call to violence in that case would still involve guns, not a rope (assuming it is directed at the President rather than random black citizens). Your reading is not remotely credible, unless you are conflating lawful with unlawful killing, or suggesting that a realistic target could be held responsible for the crimes of Angry Orange and Vladimir Putin.
@Ampersand#95- I wonder if he was talking about Ciccareillo-Maher- “Bring back Fields. Do him like Old Yeller”:
https://www.inquirer.com/philly/education/How-a-Christmas-Eve-tweet-roiled-a-university.html
Although Fields’s behavior was reprehensible (and criminal) I can see why a college might have concerns about such a tweet.
Ampersand,
No, I am focusing on the four people that your article presents as examples (the tweet you are referencing is not one of theirs):
As Michael notes, Ciccariello-Maher was one of them, although he made a bunch of pro-violence tweets. The Old Yeller tweet was one of them. Old Yeller was put down, so this seems like a call for murder to me. It’s also part of a pattern, with the guy also tweeting: “Off the Pigs.”
He also called for white genocide, which he claims was sarcasm (which doesn’t necessarily make it acceptable). I might find this plausible, if he had not sent out a tweet the next day: “To clarify: when the whites were massacred during the Haitian revolution, that was a good thing indeed.”
There’s also the fact that he calls himself a communist and tweeted: “Make communism brutal again.” Note that communists have performed killings of 10’s of millions of people.
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The other person was Susan Quade, who supposedly said she would kill Kaepernick.
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So of the four examples given:
– Ciccariello is a liberal who was fired for death threats and/or calling for a white genocide
– Quade is a conservative who was fired for a death threat (which the administration didn’t think she meant literally, but that she didn’t apologize sincerely enough for, in their eyes)
– Lestmann is a conservative fired for accusing the administration of financial misconduct and who is falsely presented as a liberal
– Griffiths is a conservative who left for having a pretty run of the mill view on diversity training (that is is based on dogma, basically)
So just for this small sample, the actual ratio between liberal and conservative seems to be 1:3, but it is presented as 2:2. So at that point, I don’t trust the graphs they present about the ratio.
I also don’t trust their categories, because their example of ‘anti-white’ is a person who called for violence and otherwise made racist statements against white people. Their example of ‘anti-minority’ is a person who made a threat against one specific activist, to whom one can be opposed without hating black people in general. For example, one might hate Kaepernick for lack of patriotism or one might disagree with his claims about systemic racism. Note that it seems quite popular in the social sciences to equate the rejection of a progressive narrative on race with racism.
Absurd. I repeat, again, that Harvard is the most elite institution of higher learning in the world. Their whole job is to take the best of the best. The idea that Harvard should not take membership in the oldest hate group in the country into account when evaluating who they want to join their institution is absurd.
Ah. So membership in the KKK shouldn’t be a disqualifier to attending Harvard, but if someone “seems violent,” (a very subjective thing), the police should be called.
Your theory of freedom of speech is completely incoherent.
Harvard is mostly privately funded.
What I am saying is that college administrators already make hundreds of decisions in choosing who gets to attend their institutions, based on both objective and subjective criteria. I am defending an objective standard: don’t let KKK members in. I am also defending a standard that is somewhat objective, and somewhat subjective: it’s OK to not let people in who have a recent history of using racial slurs. Administrators don’t need to be perfectly fair and rational actors in order for me to think that applying this standard is fair.
Again, that is not at all necessary to my argument.
I would be OK with Harvard denying admission to self-professed communists as well.
Now, if Harvard tried to get self-professed communists black-balled from other institutions, as well as put them on trial and used legal pressure against them to rat out other communists, your McCarthy analogy would be apt, and I’d have a problem with that. But that’s not even close to what happened to Kashuv, so your analogy is ridiculous whining.
Because, as I explained, and as I shouldn’t have needed to, the harms are nowhere near equivalent, nor are they anywhere near equally justified. I can’t believe you missed this.
The fact that you think this is an inconsistency is super weird.
He harmed himself through his own actions, and that harm is still nothing like what black children suffered under Jim Crow. Your argument remains racially insensitive and hysterical.
Chris,
The best what? The most capable at handling advanced education is a reasonably objective standard. The most moral isn’t.
Calling the police allows them to investigate in a way that the university is not capable of. It’s orthogonal to allowing them in.
Note that the current KKK seems to consist of a small number of societal rejects whose main past time is handing out fliers, since they have great trouble getting enough people together to hold rallies. They can’t even be properly called an organization. The current KKK is more of a label. Letting a KKK kid into Harvard is a gazillion times more likely to result in him/her changing their beliefs than in radicalizing others.
So not entirely. Public money, public rules.
And they shouldn’t. The more subjective the criteria are, the more they result in an elite favoring their own.
It’s not objective, because:
– the KKK is your outgroup.
– you are defending a specific case, not a general principle
– you are not actually giving a reason for why you single out the KKK
It’s only objective if you come up with a general principle, that can be and is applied reasonably objectively to decide who should be banned.
OK, so does that include anti-white statements? Why limit it to race? Why not gender, sexuality, religion, etc?
If you exclude those (from pipelines to power) who violate the norms of one subculture in our society, but not people who violate the norms of many other subcultures, you are oppressing those other subcultures*.
Of course you think that the norms of your subculture are reasonable, because that’s your bias. But by enforcing your norms through government, you are not trying to spread them with reason, but by coercion. The people who are being coerced may just start voting for people like Trump or worse.
* And this is still not cultural relativism…
PS. Note that it is not so much about this one kid, but about the visible double standard.