philosophysmoker-Mstarz

Here. It’s behind a paywall, and unfortunately I don’t know of anyone who has posted a PDF to the internet like last time. Sorry.

It paints a horrible picture of McGinn using mostly his own words. It has him saying stuff like, “a superior person is not necessarily arrogant, but just superior”; and how he is “the most enlightened person in the world”; and how “his situation will fan anti-American sentiment” (in the words of the author, but attributed to McGinn). He complains, again, of everyone else’s lack of senses of humor and irony.

(Which is really old hat, right? “It's not that I'm a jerk; it's that your sense of humor sucks.” Y’all jerks need to work on your excuses.)

But as far as I can see, it doesn’t say anything new or groundbreaking, other than a few stray details, with one fairly notable exception. It does contain what would seem to be the verbatim text of the handjob pun: he says that he “had a handjob imagining you giving me a handjob.” First off, that’s awfully yucky. Secondly, even if his claim that it was a joke in which ‘handjob’ doesn’t mean “handjob” is credible, it seems to me that it’s still pretty clearly inappropriate. Thirdly, although he makes another attempt to connect the stuff with the handjobs to his research, it still seems to me like that entire avenue is complete bullshit. Fourthly, even if you interpret it as McGinn says he intended, it’s still really weird. He, McGinn, had a manicure while imagining her, his research assistant, giving him a manicure. What? A) who thinks about their research assistant while getting a manicure? B) who thinks about getting a manicure from their research assistant under any circumstances? C) what is he talking about? I mean, he’s free to insist that he had created a context in which ‘handjob’ is to be read as “manicure,” and where anyone who doesn’t see that is has an irony-related disability. But the fact is that if you read it that way, the message doesn’t make any goddam sense. And this is why nobody who has ever read it has read it that way.

It has him describe his relationship with the RA as an “intellectual romance.” Whatever that means. Seriously: what does that mean? Why would anyone ever say something like that? If I were in his position, I think I’d be very careful to avoid using the term ‘romance’ in any capacity whatsoever.

He seems to suggest that the “genius project” literally had that name while it was going on, in spite of what he says in one of his blog posts:

Another time, the professor says, the student expressed reservations about her job prospects in philosophy. He devised a solution, an undertaking he called the “genius project.” He describes it as an experimental learning endeavor in which he hoped to help the student improve her philosophical abilities by fostering creativity and encouraging taboo busting.

I totally understand being worried about your job prospects. I could not be more sympathetic. I worried about that when I was in grad school, and my worries have not been assuaged since then. And I completely understand approaching your faculty honcho person with these concerns for advice and counsel and stuff. Makes perfect sense. And I totally get why the faculty member might start a formal or semi-formal project designed to put the student in the best position possible to go on the job market. I understand. With perhaps less explicitness, something exactly like that happened with me and with basically everybody I knew in grad school. We were all worried; we all went to our advisors for advice; our advisors all tried to help us get prepared. Nobody ever gave it a name, as though they were the first person to ever think of helping their students get ready for the job market, or they were really special for actually going through with it, but we were all engaged in some kind of Genius Project. If you twisted my arm, I would have just called it “My Graduate Training.” The “Ph.D. Project.” Whatever.

What I don't get is why “taboo busting” always so high on the list of Genius Project techniques. My “Ph.D. Project” consisted, in part, of various discussions with my advisor: what I should read; what I had read; how to approach the material; where my ideas fit into the larger literature/conceptual space; etc. Another substantial chunk of the project consisted of submitting written work; receiving withering criticism in return; revising the work in response; receiving more withering criticisms; and so on. We spent a lot of time working on my teaching, too.

Now, I understand that the Genius Project involved spending part of each day thinking about your own ideas without relying on outside texts, and that it also involved asking, “is that really true?” a lot, and that sounds good to me. And I don’t have any problem with the tennis or the paddle boarding. Seems basically normal. But I don’t get why busting taboos was such an important part of the project. Is there some reason to suspect that unbusted taboos cause problems for candidates on the job market? And what was the pedagogical purpose of agreeing that manicures will henceforth be called “handjobs”? That seems to come out of left field, as far as mentorship goes.

(Just kidding, kind of. I realize that the reason that the “taboo busting” aspect of the Genius Project has been getting so much press is that the taboo-busting stuff is what got him in trouble, and that the press its been getting is not necessarily proportional to its prominence in the Project. But seriously. It got him in a shit ton of trouble, and it served no clear pedagogical purpose. It was a bad idea, and he should have known better.)

There's also this passage,

When he saw the student, they would perform a “ceremony,” he says, during which they went through a series of “hand grips” simulating closeness and social interaction.

Which sort of makes it seem like they had a secret handshake. What the hell? Is he a Mason? And what would it mean for a “hand grip” to “simulate social interaction”? Is that something people do?

Another passage reads,

“The relationship was difficult,” he says, speaking in his living room. “It wasn’t natural. It was constrained by the fact that I was a professor and she was a student. … We couldn’t just go in the way people normally would.”

Which really makes you wonder. Hadn’t he been teaching for a long time? The ins and outs of the teacher/student relationship shouldn’t have been that bizarre for a senior professor like him. You’d think that it would be sort of normal. He’d been around the block a few times by then.

But it seems to me that the most substantial new piece of information is that according to the RA’s boyfriend,

McGinn once wrote to the student that they should “have sex three times in my office over the summer when no one else is around,” Mr. Yelle [her boyfriend, that is] says. He also says the professor once suggested that the student should wear shorts more often because he thought her legs were attractive.

McGinn denies suggesting sex, and says that he merely told her that her legs were muscular. He also declined to share the emails.

Now, there are a lot of potential reasons why he might not want to share those emails, and the fact that he doesn’t share them doesn’t mean he said what Yelle says he said. And from our standpoint, there's a very real sense in which this is just a he-said/she-said thing. And if you just look at how he describes his style of interacting with people in general and her in particular, it’s fairly clear that the best-case scenario for these emails is that there's a lot of very borderline, easy-to-misunderstand material there, interspersed with a few things that are genuinely inappropriate (such as the oft-mentioned handjob pun). So, best-case scenario, releasing the emails won’t help him very much, and it makes sense for him not to release them.

On the other hand, on the best-case scenario, McGinn seems like the kind of person who wouldn’t realize how harmful releasing the emails would be. Case in point: everything he’s said up until now.

--Mr. Zero

(Just so we're clear, the Pinker text is bold and      offset; my text justified normally and in italics.)

STEVEN PINKER
Harvard College Professor
Johnstone Family Professor 

So far, so good. He knows who he is and where he works.

Professor Edwin Ervin 

I'm kinda sure it's 'Erwin' with a 'w', not 'Ervin' with a 'v'. Somehow I don't get the idea that this is going to be Pinker's most thoughtful work.  

Department of Philosophy
University of Miami
Miami, FL

 Coral Gables. 

June 13, 2013 
Dear Professor Ervin, 

Again, it's Erwin. With a 'w'. At least he's consistent.

I join you and other scholars, writers, and activists in protesting the threat of dismissal

According to McGinn, any threat of dismissal has been neutralized by the fact that he resigned. 

Also, activists? What activists?

of a brilliant and distinguished scholar, Colin McGinn, from the University of Miami for apparently nothing more serious than exchanging sexual banter with a graduate student.

McGinn claims that the only charge the University was considering was a failure to disclose a consensual but non-sexual relationship. But since the University has yet to publicly comment on the matter, it's difficult to know with any confidence what they thought he was up to, how serious they thought it was, how serious it actually was, or whether he would have been dismissed over it. 

Also, depending on whether the student was interested in engaging in sexual banter, the exact nature of the banter, and whether the student's participation was strictly and completely voluntary, engaging in sexual banter with a student could be fairly serious misconduct. Again, who knows what was really going on? Certainly not Pinker.

Even if the University had a clear policy that regulated communications between professor and student,

As far as I can tell, the University of Miami does have a pretty clear and sensible policy on this stuff. As I read the policy, very little in the way of professor/student communication is prohibited, though they are careful to point out that the uneven balance of power inherent in the professor/student relationship creates practical difficulties in establishing that the student has genuinely consented. 

It also says, and I have no idea whether this is strictly relevant, that faculty are required to disclose certain kinds of "amorous" relationships to a supervisor, and that they must do whatever is necessary to guarantee that they are not in a position of evaluative authority over someone with whom they are in such an "amorous" relationship. Failure to do so would create a clear conflict of interest, it says. It threatens the faculty member's ability to evaluate the person's work objectively. It can create the appearance (or fact) of favoritism. It creates a risk that the junior person might be exploited. It creates a risk that the faculty member or the University will be sued for sexual harassment, it says. Now, I'm not saying this is the kind of wisdom you'd consider going all the way to Dagobah to receive. But at the very least, it's fairly decent advice, and McGinn seems to have largely ignored it. At his peril. 

the punishment is ludicrously disproportionate to the alleged offense.

Again. McGinn says he wasn't "punished" or even charged by the University. He says he resigned and thereby halted any disciplinary procedures before they began. There's no such thing as the punishment. It doesn't exist.

As well as harming the reputation and intellectual quality of the University of Miami,

There's some low-hanging fruit here, but I'm not going to take it. Instead, I'm going to point out that this is one of the things that makes it so hard to square McGinn's version of the facts with reality. The story doesn't jell. 

McGinn really was one of the more prominent members of the UMiami philosophy department. Though I don't mean to disparage the other members of the department, it seems to be widely acknowledged that McGinn was disproportionately responsible for the department's overall reputation. The administration would have to have known this when they called him into a meeting and told him whatever they told him about what they found out about his "relationship" with his RA, explained to him that he was required by University policy to have disclosed it, and informed him of his options going forward. And whatever they told him must have been at least kind of bad news, or else he wouldn't have resigned rather than fight the charges or accept sanctions. It is at least a little unlikely that they would have done that unless they thought it was sort of serious. Add to that the disconnect between what he seems to have done and what he says the charge was going to be, and I'm not sure how to make it add up. 

Of course, for all I know, the administration was mistaken about how serious it was, or they were out to get him even though they knew he didn't do anything wrong. 

Of course, for all I know, they were not mistaken, or he is paranoid and has a persecution complex. 

On the other hand, maybe Pinker knows more about the case than I do. No he doesn't. 

such an action would put a chill on communication between faculty and graduate students and on the openness and informality on which scholarship depends. 

Perhaps Pinker's scholarship and teaching habits differ from mine (McGinn's seem to, after all), but I have not had to rely in my teaching on lurid puns about handjobs. To a captive audience. And from what has been made public, McGinn didn't get into any actual trouble until he inserted the RA herself into the jokes, and made handjob puns that were literally about her. I don't think I'd be chilled by a policy prohibiting handjob puns involving the students themselves in my communications with them. I don't think that would make me less "open" with them--and if it would make me more closed off, that just speaks to the necessity of the policy. A policy like that would really just codify what I've already been doing this whole time, in an attempt to avoid being thought of as a creep or having to explain my offbeat sense of humor to the Dean. 

There is such a thing as too much openness informality, you know. 

If the dismissal proceeds, I will certainly bring it up with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, on whose advisory board I sit. 

Pinker can rest assured that the dismissal will not proceed, because of the apparently little-known fact that McGinn has resigned his post. 

But really. Although McGinn's posting of the Pinker letter suggests that he substantially approves of it, it doesn't really seem as though FIRE's involvement is something that McGinn would welcome--and I base this entirely on McGinn's statements and actions, and not at all on my own suspicions concerning his innocence or guilt. He says doesn't want to spare the time or resources that a serious defense would require; he's unsure whether his passion for teaching could survive the ordeal; he's concerned about how it would affect his wife and family; he didn't like working at Miami anyway. He says he wants to put this whole mess behind him and move on. So he decided not to contest whatever charges an investigation might have turned up and resigned instead. Take this job and shove it, as the fella says. 

(On the other hand, McGinn doesn't totally act like someone who wants to put this whole mess behind him and move on. Someone who wanted to move on from this might begin by not posting fifteen blog posts about it, including seven following the one where he said he was done talking about it.)

I'm also far from convinced that this is the kind of case that FIRE could really dig its teeth into. I don't follow FIRE's activities very carefully, but it seems like they tend to go after freedom-of-speech/freedom-of-religion/due process cases where there's a relatively compelling prima facie case that someone's Constitutional rights were violated, or that the University jumped the gun in applying discipline, such that the accused didn't get a fair shake. Whereas, based on what has been made public, this seems like a case where the accused really did kind of break the rules, and where it's not possible to know whether he would have gotten a fair shake because he resigned before any shaking took place. I'm not an expert on this sort of thing, but it's hard for me to see where FIRE might find a handhold.

Feel free to circulate this letter, and to add my name to any list of McGinn’s supporters. 

Shorter Pinker: I'm not sure who I'm writing to, and I don't have any idea what's going on, but I have chosen sides and am attaching my name to this half-baked letter, which you should feel free to spread around. 

Man, what a pointless waste of everyone's time.

--Mr. Zero

As I guess we all know, Colin McGinn has chosen to resign from the University of Miami rather than allow the University to proceed with an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct involving a research assistant. The article at the Chronicle of Higher Ed is here (paywalled); Sally Haslanger has posted a PDF of the whole thing here. Discussion at NewApps here, here, here, and here; discussion at Feminist Philosophers here; discussion at Leiter here and here.

Briefly, what seems to have happened is this: McGinn had a Research Assistant who was a female graduate student. Last spring, the RA started feeling uncomfortable with McGinn. Then, last April, McGinn allegedly started sending her sexually explicit email messages, including one in which, according to the RA's boyfriend and two unnamed faculty members, “McGinn wrote that he had been thinking about the student while masturbating.”* Wowza.

The RA then contacted the Office of Equality Administration. According to CHE, “after the university's Office of Equality Administration and the vice provost for faculty affairs conducted an investigation, Mr. McGinn was given the option of agreeing to resign or having an investigation into the allegations against him continue in a public setting, several of the philosopher's colleagues said.”

It's hard to know exactly what to make of this. On one obvious interpretation, there's a clearly implied threat: if you don't resign, we're going to publicly drag your name through the mud. And I'm not sure how normal the prospect of a “public” investigation is in this kind of circumstance. For example, if I recall correctly, the Oregon case from a couple of years ago involved an investigation that was supposed to have been kept private, and was made public only in violation of the University's procedures. But procedures vary from institution to institution, and I don't have any expertise here. I don't really have any idea whether this is unusual or not, although my suspicion is that it is at least a little unusual.

It therefore seems reasonable to worry about whether the procedures Miami followed here were respectful of McGinn's right to due process. But it's worth emphasizing that the CHE article is not very clear about precisely what happened—for example, Leiter says that McGinn had legal representation and was acting on his lawyer's advice, but the CHE doesn't mention it. It is also worth emphasizing that the account in the CHE comes from unnamed “colleagues,” not McGinn or his representatives or any official source at the University. And this comment at Feminist Philosophers, the veracity of which I am not in a position to verify, makes the meeting seem at least a little less troubling. On that account, it was more like, we've got some pretty compelling, well-documented evidence of misconduct, which we are duty-bound to pursue; but we'd like to give you the opportunity to resign now and save us both a big headache.

Additionally—and here I want to emphasize that I don't know what happened, I haven't seen the emails, and I don't have any special insight into the matter—my other suspicion is that the allegations are at least somewhat likely to be at least a little true. Again, I don't know anything, but my evidence for this suspicion is how the University has behaved. It seems to me—and it could be that I am being very naive and trusting and totally wrong about this—that if it really is just a “he-said/she-said” type deal, the allegations don't go anywhere. It seems to me that if an RA accuses her supervisor of sending her sexually inappropriate emails and then cannot produce the emails, or the emails don't say what she said they say, the allegations don't go anywhere. Particularly, it seems unlikely that the university would ask the single most prominent scholar in a given department to resign like that in the absence of pretty solid corroborating evidence. But that's not dispositive, and I haven't seen the emails, and I don't know what really happened.

The CHE article also contains this noteworthy passage:

Advocates of Mr. McGinn, however, say that the correspondence may have been misinterpreted when taken out of context.  

Edward Erwin, a supporter of Mr. McGinn who is a professor of philosophy at the University of Miami, said Mr. McGinn was working on a book about human evolution and the hand. Part of the reason Mr. McGinn was sending messages that could be interpreted as sexually explicit, Mr. Erwin said, was probably because of communication about that research.

I'm reading between the lines here, but this explanation—that the discussion of masturbation was an innocent byproduct of research related to human evolution and the hand—makes sense only if McGinn's idea is that masturbation played some non-negligible role in the evolution of the human hand. Now, I'm not a biologist and I'm not competent to evaluate that idea, so I'm not going to tell you how stupid I think it sounds. It doesn't matter how stupid I think this idea is. And I don't really want to speculate about the plausibility of genuinely research-related emails, even on this topic, being misinterpreted in the manner described in the CHE article. I don't want to speculate about how someone might misinterpret a research-related message that innocently discusses the role masturbation played in the evolution of the human hand as saying that he, McGinn, “had been thinking about the student while masturbating.” Or how this alleged misinterpretation might come to be shared by what seems to be at least four different readers, including the RA, her boyfriend, and the two unnamed faculty members. The fact that all this seems totally preposterous is of no interest to anyone whatsoever; I haven't seen the emails and I don't know what they say. For all I know, this preposterous thing is exactly what happened. All I really want to say about this passage is, with friends like this who needs friends?

Professor Erwin goes on:

“There was some sexual talk, banter, puns, and jokes made between the two,”  Mr. Erwin said. “The written records, I believe, show that this was an entirely consensual relationship.” 

No, no. That is not how it works. It is remarkable how profoundly this misunderstands the student/professor relationship. A professor's relationships with his or her students are not “entirely consensual” like that. Student/professor relationships inherently have a highly unequal balance of power. That includes students in one's undergraduate and graduate classes, obviously, but it also includes teaching- and research assistants; academic advisees; people whose thesis or dissertation committees one sits on; exam proctors; everyone. Everyone. Anything a student says or writes to a professor has to be seen in that light. Suppose the professor engages in sexual banter and the student banters back. Maybe that's because she consented and wanted to banter, but maybe it's because the power differential inherent in the relationship placed her in a position of duress, in which she felt like she had to banter or face unpleasant consequences. If the return banter was performed unwillingly or under duress, there is no reason to think that the written records will reveal it.

But the larger point—and on a certain level this is so obvious that it is not worth saying, but on another level it clearly needs to be emphasized—is that when you are dealing with other people, it is not all about you. It is also about the other person. You have to be careful with other people. You have to go out of your way to ensure that they feel comfortable and respected. This is your responsibility if you want to go into the world and deal with the other people there, and it is especially your responsibility if you are a prominent scholar in a highly-respected research university who oversees graduate students who do work for your academic department.

And so it seems to me that there's no scenario in which McGinn is blameless, even if Professor Erwin's story is literally the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The student was a research assistant working for McGinn's department, and he was a prominent scholar serving as her supervisor. He had a responsibility in that capacity to ensure that she felt comfortable and respected. Obviously, given the sexual nature of the research topic, a certain level of sexual content is to be expected, and an RA for such a research topic needs to either be comfortable with that content or ask to be reassigned. (And the researcher needs to make it clear that it is okay to ask to be reassigned.) But Professor Erwin's remarks make clear that McGinn's conduct with this RA went beyond mere discussion of the research material and into “sexual talk, banter, puns, and jokes.” This sexual stuff seems to have made the RA deeply and extremely uncomfortable, and it had a similar effect on her boyfriend and several other faculty members. And McGinn seems to have kept it up for kind of a long time.

You can't do that. It therefore seems to me that the best-case scenario for McGinn is that his behavior warrants disciplinary action, and from there the possibilities only get worse.

--Mr. Zero

*All quotes are from the CHE article.

I recently underwent diversity training at my university. Good times. Part of the course materials included a paper on gender bias in hiring, which contained a list of recommendations for institutions (for avoiding bias in hiring decisions), but also included the following evidence-based recommendations for women seeking employment (to help them counteract bias and implicit bias in hiring decisions). As we often get questions on the blog about things like interview attire, family status issues, etc., this seemed pretty relevant as we approach the interview season. (My posting of these recommendations should not be construed as an endorsement of any of them. I can't say that I ever did any of these things, at least not consciously. If you're interested in the reasons for the recs, read the article.)

Recommendations for female applicants
● Provide some evidence of communal job-relevant behaviors (e.g., being helpful and sensitive to the needs of subordinates)
● Indicate clear evidence of competency (e.g., resume, third-party endorsements) but avoid appearing self-promoting in an interview
● Do not show anger or discuss previous job-related situations that made you angry
● Best to avoid feminine-scented perfume, but wearing masculine-scented perfume may be beneficial (although you would need to pretest the scent to ensure that it is considered “masculine”)
● Avoid revealing parenthood status until job and salary are secured
● In your initial application, if you have a female-gendered first name, consider using initials only, and if you have a gender-ambiguous name, consider removing gender-identifying information
● Strive for an “attractive” but neutral appearance for interviews or application photographs. Avoid interviewing in overly feminine clothing (more masculine clothing and facial features may be beneficial)
● If you are visibly pregnant, it might be wise to obscure it with your clothing
● Avoid tentative speech patterns (e.g., use of intensifiers such as “really” and “definitely,” hedges such as “I guess” or “sort of,” and hesitations such as “well” or “let’s see”)

("Interventions That Affect Gender Bias in Hiring: A Systematic Review." Carol Isaac, PhD, PT, Barbara Lee, PhD, and Molly Carnes, MD, MS Academic Medicine, Vol. 84, No. 10 / October 2009)

These are basically about countering implicit and unconscious bias -- bias the discriminator doesn't even recognize as bias -- and many of them are common sense. Probably best to avoid ranting about your previous scumbag employer, although apparently, that goes double for women. The issue of self-promotion, and avoiding it if you're a woman, clearly points to a double standard. Talking about your work in a non-self-promoting way in a job interview is going to require some real verbal finesse. Hiding an advanced pregnancy would be pretty hard for a lot of women. Some of this advice seems, on the face of it, kind of offensive. You might well ask yourself why women should have to hide a pregnancy or wear "masculine" perfume (AXE body spray anyone?). (Although if you ask me, just don't wear perfume. That goes for you guys too.) But again, this is about getting past implicit bias.

And I'll tell ya. The interactions with others in the diversity workshop revealed a level of ignorance about gender bias, and what constitutes bias, and what is legally permitted in interviews that was pretty eye-opening. You might think that people actually taking a workshop on diversity would not publicly say crazy shit that is discriminatory, sexist, and racist, but they do, and I'm going to guess that it's because -- despite efforts to re-educate them -- they just don't know better. Which is just to say that sexism is alive and well in academe, and forewarned is forearmed. Some of this advice probably applies equally well to minority candidates (use initials if you have an "ethnic-sounding" name, don't show anger, etc.). I have not been able to find comparable practical recommendations for countering racial bias, but I'll post it if I do.

~zombie

Vincent Hendricks recently gave an interview in which he discusses the recent photographic fiasco. (Background here and here.) Since it's in danish, Berit Brogaard of NewAPPS has done us the favor of translating it.

The interview is pretty interesting. There are some things I'd like to discuss. In what follows, quotes from the interview are offset, the interviewer's questions are in bold, Hendricks's responses are in italics, and my remarks are regularly regular. Also, I'm not quoting the whole interview; I'm snipping out the bits I find most interesting/astonishing.

A: First, why did you agree to be photographed as ‘the man of the month’ for Connery.dk?

V: I, along with many other Danes engaged in cultural, political or business projects, help promote a nonprofit charitable project called ‘youmeshopping.dk’. The pictures for Connery.dk were made in collaboration with youmeshopping.dk to build awareness of the charity initiative. This is the reason I agreed to be the man of the month in February. It is in this context that the images should be seen and understood.

This is interesting. The pictures were for charity. I don't totally understand how the pictures can be for charity, though. How do the pictures build awareness for "youmeshopping.dk"? It didn't seem to me that the pictures I saw were doing much in the way of raising awareness for charity. If it's just that the pictures accompanied an article in which he mentioned a charity, that's not the same thing as the pictures themselves promoting the charity.

A: But wasn’t the criticism directed at the photos as displayed in a different context, namely that of your own website?

V: ...Let me also point out that the criticism ended, even in the U.S., as soon as it became public that I did this as part of a charity initiative.

This is sort of interesting, because I followed this pretty closely, and I had no idea until just now that he'd done the photos as a part of a charity initiative. Or that the criticism of him had ended. Is this correct? Is this something that people knew about, and that had some effect on the criticism?

A: What was the purpose of advertizing a logic course using photos of yourself surrounded by half-naked women dressed in school uniforms?

V: ...I also wanted the course to have some appeal to young men who read these kinds of magazines but who rarely sign up for logic courses.

This is pretty fucking interesting. Hendricks's schtick throughout this whole thing has been all about how caught off guard he was, how he didn't mean to offend anybody, and how surprised he is that everyone got all bent out of shape about it. But here he is acknowledging that photos like these have a limited appeal--that their appeal was not universal. They appeal to a certain kind of person: he says 'young men' but what he means is, men with an adolescent sense of sexuality. And that he was specifically trying to appeal to these adolescents.

And once you realize that this is the kind of person to whom the photos appeal (which you have to do in order to use the photos in an attempt to appeal to them), it's not crazy to imagine that they might not be appealing to the women, who often don't like those kinds of magazines. (And other people who don't like that kind of magazine.) And that advertisements for university-level logic courses ought to be designed to appeal as widely as possible. And that these advertisements should, in particular, not be specifically and intentionally aimed at young men and away from women. And that an advertisement that appeals to male students by illustrating that you regard your female students as sex objects might aim away from female students. The dots are there.

And let's face it. It's pretty obvious why a thoughtful person would see the need to increase the number of young men in his logic courses. I think we can all agree that it's the one area in philosophy in which the men just cannot seem to gain a toehold.

A: You say that the pictures are self-mocking. How so?

What? The photos are not self-mocking. "Look at me! I'm a sharp-dressed professor surrounded by half-naked 20-year-old female students, who are dressed in sexy schoolgirl outfits and posing in sexually suggestive ways! I'm mocking myself!" What the fuck?

V: Look, what’s the chance that a professor at a university would be associated with anything that might even remotely resemble the scenario depicted in the pictures?

That's not what mocking yourself is.

It's not my world. I am Professor of Formal Philosophy. I'm not a Clark Kent, model or rock star.

I mention this just to point out how much he doesn't understand the concept of Clark Kent. (Also, I think he kind of thinks of himself as a model.)

A: Many of your critics are philosophers. Do you think that people in philosophy are too uptight?

This is pretty much of a bullshit question.

A: Didn't you realize that the pictures could perhaps seem a bit offensive?

V: Yes, I did. ... The key mistake I made was to fail to clarify where the photos came from and what purpose they were serving. I regret not doing that.

I still think they key mistake he made was using the photos to advertise for a course he was teaching. I don't think it would have helped all that much if he'd mentioned that the photos were from a magazine, and that in the magazine article he promotes a charity. I don't see why the fact, if it's a fact, that the photos are a nifty way to promote a charity in some teenager sex magazine indicates or suggests that it would be a good idea to use them to promote your university logic class.

A: The photos have been criticized for maintaining gender stereotypes, and for being quite sexist. Is it okay to display sexist pictures for the purpose of charity?

V: It is, of course, reprehensible if charity work adds to chauvinism or sexism, racism or other prejudice. It was not sexism or anything like that that was driving my willingness to participate, and I don’t think the charity initiative youmeshopping.dk or magazine Connery.dk intended these photos to be an expression of sexism.

Hmm. The idea seems to be that it's not sexist because he wasn't trying to be sexist. I'm not sure I see this as a sound inference. I guess it's necessary at this stage to point out that it's possible to be sexist without intending it. That it's possible to be sexist by accident. I don't know why, but I keep thinking about how when I was a little boy, my grandmother used to say this saying about what the road to hell is paved with. Unfortunately, I can't remember what she said. I think it was fruit salad. I don't know why I mentioned it. Nevermind.

--Mr. Zero

When I was in grad school, none of the faculty taught any summer school; summer courses were the exclusive domain of the graduate students. And since there were a lot of us, competition could get pretty stiff--it wasn't at all unusual for classes to be cancelled due to low enrollment. As a result of this, there was a real incentive to advertise for your summer courses, and for those advertisements to make the courses seem interesting, relevant, and worthwhile to people with little background, experience, or prior interest in philosophical topics. People would put posters up around campus with funny slogans and pictures and stuff, trying to attract students.

But (while I was there, at least) nobody ever thought to advertise his course by putting himself in a photo surrounded by a bunch of barely-dressed women in schoolgirl outfits. And if somebody did do that, my sense is that the person would have been made to take the posters down immediately, had an unpleasant discussion with the department chair, and been thought of by the department at large as having behaved foolishly (to say the least).

It is also my sense that this person would have to have been a fucking moron. It's pretty obvious, I think, that that kind of thing isn't appropriate for an advertisement for a university-level philosophy class. And it's pretty obvious that for every person who would be attracted to the course on the basis of something like that, there's at least one who would be turned off in a big way. And it's pretty obvious that the people who would be turned off by it would have a pretty solid point. And so I think it's pretty obvious that it would be a piss-poor advertisement qua advertisement, apart from the disrespect for women in general such a thing might display.

Just an observation, for no particular reason.

--Mr. Zero

As you may have heard, there has been some discussion of a piece written Zachary Ernst of Missouri, in which he vocalizes his frustration with the fact that his wife has been subject to an unfavorable tenure vote by his department, and in which he suggests that sexism was a major contributing factor in this vote, and which you can find here.

I spent some time poking around the Mizzou philosophy department webpage the other day, and I think 3 things are clear: 1. Prof. Ernst is understandably very frustrated and upset; 2. This is not at all a case in which a denial of tenure was warranted on the basis of insufficient research--her record would have gotten her tenure where I now teach and at every place I've interviewed where they told me what I'd need to do to get tenure; 3. There are a bunch of facts we don't have, such as: the tenure procedures and criteria employed at Mizzou; how tough it is generally to get tenure there; the content of her reference letters; details about teaching; etc. So although the charge of sexism does not seem implausible, neither is it obviously true in light of what we don't know.

This is a sensitive issue, obviously, so let's try harder than usual to stay cool. I'm going to exercise more discretion than usual in comment-moderation in this one.

--Mr. Zero

Doing some reading for the class I'm teaching, specifically John Doris' piece on criminal law and the psychology of excuses. This stood out for me:

TSS asked (on another thread):

An anonymous Smoker writes:

I'll be hitting the American and the European job market this fall. To avoid making a bad impression, I would like to know what conventions there are in academic interviews in the philosophy market. This varies a lot between disciplines (I've been told that in physics or computer sciences, people show up in t-shirt and jeans and successfully land jobs). I don't want to overdress, but I don't want to underdress either. I am especially interested in women's clothes, and also in the accessories (jewelry or not, makeup or not, length of heels, etc). Whenever I inquire about this to my mentors like my advisor, they remain very vague (e.g., just dress nicely), so it would be helpful to get specific information.

I don't really know anything about this, but one thing I have observed from following Mrs. Zero into such stores as Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Macy*s is that women have a lot more options than men when it comes to "dressing up," and not everything that would count as "dressing up" for a woman is the least bit professional, and that all this makes things tougher on women. So what do you say, Smokers?

--Mr. Zero

I've been busy all day and haven't had a chance to read this, but there's a long article on the Climate Guide in Inside Higher Ed today.



--Mr. Zero

The University of Oregon is on the "strongly recommended" list on the Pluralist's Guide's Climate for Women page. But by now it is well-known that this department's climate for women shows clear signs of being terrible: their undergraduate program director is alleged to have made sexual advances toward female undergraduates and to have groped female undergraduates in his office, and another, "feminist" faculty member is alleged to have orchestrated a coverup of this information so as not to interfere with their being recognized for their friendliness to women. As far as I can see, these charges have not been disputed. (If they have, please let me know.) Why hasn't this school been removed from the list? The "Pluralists" removed Oklahoma from the "needs improvement" list almost immediately when it became clear that they had been working to improve the climate. I mean, if there was ever evidence of a chilly and inhospitable climate for women, that's gotta be it.

But as of this morning, it's still up.

--Mr. Zero

I've been following with interest this discussion concerning the Pluralist's Guide to Philosophy Programs's "climate" ratings, which contains "information" concerning the degree to which various philosophy departments are hospitable to women. What seems to me to be the most interesting discussion is taking place in comments here.

What happened was, Linda Alcoff, Paul Taylor, and William Wilkerson have edited a ranking of philosophy departments that is supposed to compete with the PGR, and whose advantage over the PGR is that this ranking is more "pluralistic." The pluralistic rankings also contains some informatin about the climate for women, in the form of two lists: one for "strongly recommended" departments; another for departments that "need improvement." These lists are fishy. For one thing, the "strongly recommended" list is currently seven times longer than the "needs improvement" list. Based on what I've been led to believe about the actual climate for women in this profession, that seems like it couldn't possibly be an accurate representation of how things are.

For another thing, it seems that they didn't actually ask anybody at any of the "needs improvement" departments about the climates for women in those departments. At least, that's how Leiter puts it. But I think, if you read Linda Alcoff's comments in the Gender, Race and Philosophy thread, it's closer to the truth to say that they have no idea how the data was collected. The general procedure for collecting data for the Pluralist Guide was to ask experts to rate departments along the relevant dimension; this procedure was also followed for the climate ratings. We don't know who was asked to rate the climate at, say, Rutgers (who have defended themselves with the most vigor), though presumably the organizers do. It does seem clear that nobody who is currently affiliated with Rutgers, or who was until recently, was consulted. And Alcoff seems to have admitted that she has no idea how the people who rated Rutgers (e.g.) got their information (see the parenthetical remark in point #1 here). It seems to me, then, that we have no way of knowing whether the data was reliable, up-to-date, and paints an accurate picture of the climates of these departments.

This is really shameful. It's sort of unbelievable that this is actually happening. The "Pluralists" have published a web page saying that (e.g.) Rutgers is one of three departments whose climate for women needs to be improved--which strongly suggests that Rutgers (et al.) has a particularly chilly and inhospitable climate for women--and they didn't ask anybody at Rutgers whether this was true, or whether they were doing anything to improve the climate. This can also be seen in the way that Oklahoma was initially on the list but was removed when it came to light that they had been actively working to improve the climate there; it has been pointed out that the Oklahoma incident also suggests that the editors hadn't done their homework. Alcoff has made a bunch of excuses about how difficult it is to collect good data on a topic like this, but I don't see how that justifies the use of bad data.

I mean, seriously. Did they really do that?

--Mr. Zero

In comments here, Former Dick writes,

A little relevant background: I'm a male analytic philosopher and an activist, even a "hard core" analytic philosopher. I'm now a few years post-PhD in a TT job. I have always thought of myself as very liberal and progressive, particularly with respect to gender and feminist causes.

But here's the thing: in my youth, particularly right at the beginning of grad school, I used to be kind of a dick about it. (I'm using that gendered insult on purpose.)

One thing I would do is uncharitably assume that everybody else was on the wrong course with their activism (perhaps because I had just learned about the problem, and the problem still existed despite some people having worked on it a long time already.). But many of these problems are very hard to solve, and there are no easy or silver bullet solutions. Also, as you learn more about the problem, you come to see greater complexity regarding the possible solutions.

Another thing I would do is start out as if (or perhaps genuinely) in sympathy with my interlocutor's cause, but I would be a total jerk in how I participated in discussions. I would get all "analytic philosopher" on people, but in the bad sense, not in the good (clear argumentation) sense. I would think that I was just trying to be clear, but what I was trying to do was win an argument, rather than have a discussion. So I would uncharitably construe what people were saying; I would trot out straw men; I would whine about how people hadn't actually *responded* to my pages long argument; I would use aggressive rhetoric (calling ideas "terrible" or "ridiculous" or "stupid" and starting sentences with "Look,..."); and I would spend a lot of time numbering premises and claims while missing the most important points, or while missing what people were really getting at (even if they hadn't said *precisely* that).

Another thing I would do is act as if I knew more than I did. (The discussion of how conferences come up with their non-keynote speakers--this fantastic world of pure blind review!--was particularly glaring in this regard.) Sometimes you have to hang out in a world for a while before you know how things work, and before you know how they might be changed.

The end result of all this: I was a "good guy" or so I thought, but I found that people would tire of talking to me about these things.

I wish I could go back and be less of a dick. One thing I've realized is that most people in this philosophy world are *very* smart. Maybe in high school and college you could assume that you were right and they were wrong (you were thinking clearly and they were muddled and misguided), but you can probably stop with that implicit assumption. Or at least assume that the other person is more of a peer than (just) a person who can learn from your brilliance.

I know, I know, you'll deny that you've done anything wrong. PB will say things like "I was interested in thinking through new, creative, and sometimes subtle ways of making professional philosophy more hospitable for women." But were you really? Why did you assume that others weren't? Even when they have spent years--real years!--of their lives doing exactly that?

Just FYI, calling out someone like Sally Haslanger in this context, in the way you did, just highlights all of the obvious dickishness. I don't think anyone is into hero worship here, but she's someone who has *obviously* done a ton for women in philosophy, so even if you think another direction is the way forward, have some respect!

It seems to me that this sort of thing happens a lot. I see some of this in myself. Worth thinking about.

--Mr. Zero

In comments here, Philosophical Boyfriend mentions some concerns his girlfriend, Philosophical Boyfriend's Girlfriend, had about discussions of sexism in philosophy. He writes:

First, she felt that any discussion of sexist incidents in philosophy should focus on _solutions_, not simply on endless, depressing reports of problems. For instance, there was the story of the woman who, after presenting a paper, had a male audience member apologize to her for asking such difficult questions and then _kiss her ear_(!!). If that sort of thing is going on, then (my girlfriend said) what is most important is for people to sort out good methods for _dealing with_ that sort of thing. What should one do if that happens? What sorts of ways of acting and presenting would make it least likely for that to happen? How should other people present react? Discussions of these things would be extremely useful; but she finds them almost nowhere. And that, she said, seems really defeatist: it's as though people are saying 'hey, this crap happens, so I guess it's better to leave the profession', which of course plays into the hands of the truly sexist.

Second, she really wanted to see more dialogue between those who believe that there are problems facing women and those who don't. Part of the reason was that she wanted to know whether all the negativity she was feeling was really justified; but much of her motivation was so that strategies could be developed for dealing with doubters if there are good grounds for despair in the present climate. She felt that a closer engagement with these doubters would have the dual function of helping to persuade them of the extent of the problem and of removing their ability to feel their views are being censored or attacked merely in the name of political correctness.

And third, as I mentioned before, she thought a positive way to move forward would be to break the association in people's minds between philosophers who are feminists, women philosophers, and people doing so-called 'feminist philosophy'.

I pointed out that the What It's Like blog has a sister blog about What We're Doing About It, which has been far less successful. They've had a much harder time getting people post constructive strategies for dealing with the kind of shit on display in the what it's like blog.

I also mentioned that I suspect that these difficulties are, at least in part, a result of the fact that the kinds of sexism that seem to be most commonly experienced nowadays is subtle rather than overt, and this makes it especially difficult to combat. People do a bunch of little things that serve to belittle and exclude, where the individual impact of each thing is potentially minuscule, but where the overall impact of them, taken as a whole, can be very significant.

I also admitted that I don't have what I would regard as a concrete helpful suggestion.

CrabbyAbby posted a helpful list:

Philosophical boyfriend (and affiliated philosopher) -- I think there has been some really fantastic things spring out of the discussions of the sexism that is rampant in our discipline. A few things off the top of my head include:

(a) the proposal that philosophers known to be sexist be shunned from participating in conferences. (An Inside Higher Ed article here)

(b) an on-going campaign on the Feminist Philosophers blog to call out conferences and anthologies that under-represent women in the discipline. This is, I take it, meant not only to show how women are under-represented but is also meant to be an act of social shaming for those organizing those conferences and anthologies. (Here's one such blog entry)

(c) A discussion, again on Feminist Philosophers, about how to make conferences parent-friendly. (Here's one such blog entry about it)

(d) A new mentoring program in place for untenured women in philosophy.

And I think there is also a renewed awareness that we need to come up with other solutions to the sexism. While I'm a young philosopher, it seems like the discipline is, more than ever, recognizing that there is a problem and thinking, collectively, about how to respond. Which is itself an important development. (Actually, I worry that I'm being overly optimistic about this.)

But all of this needs to happen alongside the accounts that we see on 'What it's Like' and other such blogs. We can't stop telling our stories of sexism and being open to hearing the stories of others. Why? Well, (1) because there are still people who doubt that the discipline is sexist at all; (2) because those sorts of stories offer a level of solidarity and support to other women (and men) in the discipline; (3) because they can be cathartic for those who submit stories, as an important way to work through traumatic events is discussing it with others; (4) because the accounts also help us think about new ways to combat the sexism in our discipline. Indeed, it is also useful so that those who think about going into philosophy have a clear idea of the state of the discipline.

What would you add, Smokers?

--Mr. Zero

I received an email last night from the author of an article in a forthcoming issue of the APA's newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy, about the changes to the comment policy. She writes:

In light of Mr. Zero's change to the comment policy, I thought I'd point out that an article I have written for the APA's Feminism and Philosophy newsletter references some comments that were posted to an old entry in The Philosophy Smoker. I tell the story about my first year on the job market: I turned to your blog for advice about interview attire, and was shaken by some extremely sexist comments posted on your blog -- I lost all my confidence and saw the profession in an extremely different light, due to those comments. In the article, I focus on how the anonymity of the internet relates to our identities as professional philosophers. I thought my experience with anonymous commenters on your blog was a valuable story to tell.

I was planning on alerting you guys to the article once it was published, but I bring it up now to highlight how valuable this recent comment policy change may be. (I also hope you're not upset to see your blog publicized as hosting some really sexist comments. Sorry about that. If it's any consolation, I also point out some really sexist comments on Leiter's blog, too.) Thank you for taking seriously the effect comments on your blog can have. I really enjoy reading (and occasionally commenting in) The Philosophy Smoker, and I think you generally do a really good job dealing with sexism and related issues.

This is exactly what I want to avoid. The thought that someone would come to this blog for help and be hurt by what she found here makes me sick. I believed then and I believe now that there was, at that time, a legitimate reason to permit those comments to be published, in spite of the obvious and serious drawbacks. But things are different now, and there is no longer any legitimate reason to do this. This blog is part of the solution, not part of the problem. This has always been our goal, and the recent change to the comment policy is designed to better accomplish this.

--Mr. Zero

The following request for reasons to stay in philosophy was posted over at the What it's Like blog and Feminist Philosophers, as well as New APPS:

I am about to start my PhD at an excellent Leiter ranked program. I have a BA and and MA from excellent schools. I have worked closely with ground breaking philosophers in my field. I have published, I have an excellent teaching resume, phenomenal letters of recommendation, and moreover I love my job. I am a good philosopher, and I am thinking about leaving philosophy.

I have been a secretary and a chauffeur. I have been disingenuously promised research assistantships and letters of recommendation, in return for dinner dates and car rides. I have been asked if I was married while my colleagues have been asked what they think. I have been told that I’m both cute and idiotic. I have passed on professional opportunities because I am a woman, and no one would believe that I deserved those opportunities — accepting would make me seem like a slut, since men make it on merit, and women make it in bed. So, ironically, I have been praised as professional for having passed on professional opportunities. I have been the lone woman presenting at the conference, and I have been the woman called a bitch for declining sexual relations with one of the institutions of hosts. I think I have just about covered the gamut of truly egregiously atrocious sexist behaviour. So I just have this one question that I think I need answered: Is the choice between doing philosophy, and living under these conditions, or saving yourself, and leaving the discipline?

This is an open call for reasons to stay.

I would say that since she's just about to start a new Ph.D. program, she should give it at least a year. See how things are in the new department. I think that there's almost no chance that the problems she's experiencing will disappear, but I think there's somewhat of a chance that they'll be at least manageable. Although, I guess I don't know what the chances are that this will happen, and it depends heavily on what levels of sexism she finds "manageable."

But if, after a year or two, she still finds that she's unhappy, I would advise her to follow her instincts and get out. Philosophy is a wonderful way to make a living, but only if it makes you happy. And if the A-holes and D-bags are making you miserable, it is completely sensible to seek an environment in which they are less of a factor. I think this is the best job in the world, but if the constant hum of sexist nitwits was making me chronically miserable, I wouldn't think it was the best job in the world anymore.

So, my advice is, give the new Ph.D. program a fair shake, but if things don't get better in a year or two, get out before you've invested so much time that it'll be hard not to throw good money after bad. But (and I'm not sure I fully understand this idiom) you shouldn't be afraid to throw bad money at philosophy. Or whatever.

--Mr. Zero

Regarding the Synthese kerfuffle, Anonymous wrote:

I don't know how seriously I can take all this, given the background of the atrociously bad editorial practices I suspect most journals really engage in... So the Synthese editors engaged in what seems to be bad editorial behavior. But until I have reason to believe they alone among top journals behave in this way, why shame them?

One thing the Synthese editors did, it seems, is publish Beckwith's 23 page reponse without peer review. This is based on the fact that it was received and accepted on the same day, Feb 7. This is Synthese's editorial policy:

Synthese follows a double−blind reviewing procedure. Authors are therefore requested not to include their name or affiliation in their submitted papers. Self−identifying citations and references in the article text should be avoided. Authors should thus make sure that their names and/or affiliations are NOT mentioned on any of the manuscript pages. If authors do include their names on submitted papers, anonymous reviewing cannot be guaranteed.

Obviously, Beckwith's response could not be double-blinded, since he refers to himself continuously throughout the essay. And there are fully two pages of references in which he cites his own work. And he put his own name in the keywords. But that the diatribe could not be blind-reviewed does not mean it should not be subject to peer review at all... or does it? He also in places dismissively refers to Barbara Forrest as "Ms. Forrest" rather than Dr. or Professor Forrest. And he writes this:

A request was made in comments when this topic last arose for a discussion of why we should care about the difficulties faced by women in philosophy when everyone has it so rough. If it's tough on everyone, why does it matter if it happens to be tough on these particular people? I thought about it for a while, and at first I was disinclined to take the bait. But then I thought, what the hell. Maybe it's not obvious, even though it sort of seems like it is.

The reason why we should particularly care about women and ethnic minorities when everyone has it rough is this: women and minorities have it rough in all the ways white men do, and then a bunch more ways piled on top. We did some back-of-the-envelope math a couple of years ago, with clear results: the percentage of job market candidates who are women is equal to the percentage of hires that are women. Being a woman seems to be neither a net advantage nor a net impediment to getting a job in philosophy--once you've made it through grad school. This last part bears emphasizing: women face an especially obstacle-laden path to the Ph.D, and then are subject to no special benefit once they finish and are on the job market. This suggests that the female philosophers are as good (if they weren't, they'd get hired less often) and have it as rough the men (on the job market--rougher in grad school); it's just that there are way, way less of them (because they go to grad school less often and drop out more often than do men).

It's hard to get a job in philosophy even if you're a woman, and then there are all these dickheads thoughtless people calling to mind in an especially vivid way how much happier you'd be in a less male-dominated field. Read any of the posts at What is it Like to be a Woman in Philosophy. Nothing remotely like that has ever happened to me, but it happens to women all the time. Every female philosopher I know has several stories where someone has treated her abominably in a way that directly relates to her gender. Although this sometimes happens to men, too, it is not widespread. And you should ask yourself how much of that kind of shit you'd be willing to take before you started shopping around for a new profession. If you care about justice--if you care about whether people are being treated the way they ought to be treated--you care about this.

But you should also care about this if you care about philosophy in itself; if you care about discovering philosophical truth; if you care about reading insightful philosophy papers; if you care about being made aware of novel philosophical ideas; if you care about solving philosophical puzzles. We should want as many smart people as possible working in philosophy. But a prominent group of people are being systematically edged out. This is bad for the people who are being edged out--it's a serious injustice that I don't mean to minimize--but it's also bad for us men. It is as bad for us as the Negro-League era was for Major League Baseball. Think of it: in 1945, Jackie Robinson tried out for the Boston Red Sox, and the Red Sox did not sign him. So in 1946, when the Red Sox were losing the World Series in 7 games to the Cardinals, Jackie Robinson was playing for the Montreal Royals. This situation was, obviously, extraordinarily bad for black people who wanted to be professional baseball players. It was bad for Cool Papa Bell; it was bad for Josh Gibson; it was bad for Buck O'Neil. These players were victims of a profound injustice. But it was also bad for Ted Williams and Bobby Doerr, who were, to a lesser extent, also victims of this injustice. Women and minorities have actual philosophical contributions to make. Many of these contributions are going unmade because the people who would make them are being edged out of the profession before they have a chance to do it. It's not fair to them, and it's not good for us. It's bad for everyone.

--Mr. Zero

Sometimes nothing; sometimes a lot. In a long comment thread here, Elizabeth puts it so well that I didn't want it to get lost there:

You know, I'm still thinking about the discussion that emerged in this thread about whether it's OK to jokily remark to a female colleague and friend, among friends, that a man who talked to her about her research was really interested in something else.

I share the reaction of another female commenter that it would be demeaning and, for me, humiliating, and I want to try to explain why.

First, though, I have to say that I find odd the whole idea that this reaction on my part shows my humorlessness and is somehow an infringement on men's right to tell jokes. What we find funny is always personal and situational. Are there contexts that produce this reaction outside of jokes that call to mind, to oppressed people, their oppression?

Like, let's say my mom is seriously mentally ill and I don't appreciate friends joking about it. If you were my friend, would you think that was a frustrating limitation in my humor? Maybe, but... I kind of doubt it. So how come when oppressed people let us know that certain jokes make things hard for them, the immediate reaction is to discount them? Why couldn't the commentator who got this response think about how it shows his own calibration of how his humor might affect some of his female friends in philosophy might be off, instead of reacting in frustration to the woman who told him this?

That said, here's why this would hurt me if I were his friend. Every day that I do my intellectual work, I rely on the useful fiction that no one in that work sexualizes me. Realistically, from a position of remove, I'm sure that that's not the case, because that's just not how sex works. And from a remove, that's OK with me. (I have a sex drive and a fantasy life too!) But up close, it really isn't.

I don't think the men insisting in this thread that women lighten up and accept their sense of humor have any concept of this. When you have to genuinely wonder whether apparent interest in your ideas is really about your ideas, or instead is about you as a sexual object, it instantly removes every external basis you might have for feeling confident. You no longer have any ability to assess where your ideas stand. Every indication of intellectual worth you've received is suddenly in question. Think about that. Women have to deal with that in some way or other. I deal with it by obstinately blocking it out. The joke would hurt me because it would puncture a strategy I need in order to do my work.

By the way, to the commenter who asked about telling this joke to a male friend about a female questioner: If I overheard that I would be hurt in the same way. The person being demeaned wouldn't be your male friend; it would be the woman whose question was assumed to be unserious.

That implicit accusation -- that the person isn't an intellectual agent, just a sexual one -- just doesn't carry the same meaning when applied to a man most of the time as it does to a woman most of the time. (I imagine, though, that some men of color in philosophy might have something to say here.) Just like, return to my example, a "yo momma's crazy" joke means something different to someone whose mother is mentally ill. Why is this so obvious in so much of normal life, but so hard for some people to grasp when the issue is oppression?

--Mr. Zero