Here’s a find tweeted out by James Lindsay, who, with Peter Boghossian, wrote the “conceptual penis” hoax paper. That paper has gotten the knickers of Regressive Leftists in a Mobius-like twist as the ideologically ossified do everything they can to discredit the authors. (This, of course, comes from the increasing willingness of people to show that many papers in cultural and gender studies are intellectually vacuous as well as abysmally written.)
The original post (from reddit?) may itself have been a joke, but the passage is not; it comes from this article—in a journal that the RL’s admit is a good one (it was the one that initially rejected the hoax paper but passed it to a related journal).
Here’s the passage reproduced at the top of the tweeted-out post:
On the basis of this sex–gender distinction, a discussion concerning the character and psychogenesis of phallic masculinity, informed by psychoanalytic thinking and experience, is made possible (see ‘Masculinity as project’). My main point is that phallic masculinity is to be understood as a project, entailing a denial of our existential conditions such as vulnerability, transience and dependence. The psychoanalytic revelation of unconscious processes and unconscious intersubjective exchanges allows us to explain phallic masculinity as a repudiation of the feminine/motherly containment and a response to a humiliated, narcissistic ego. Interestingly enough, in the psychoanalytic disclosure of phallic masculinity one can find a connection to a phenomenological description of the masculine character I am thinking of Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas concerning the meaning of the fate of the male body in terms of transcendence (see fn. 16). The concept of transcendence will be further elaborated upon in the final section of this article, which deals with the alienating consequences of phallic masculinity, and where I will profit from phenomenological thinkers (most notably de Beauvoir and Iris Marion Young) and psychoanalytic thinkers (most notably Donald W. Winnicott).
You can read the whole paper, and then tell me if this is a substantive contribution to scholarship, obscurantist c.v.-burnishing, or some mixture of the two. I’ll have another post today with a paper that is either a hoax or a real one, and you get to guess.
Click to enlarge:
Look, it’s simple logic. No matter how many times Trump tweets something stupid and ungrammatical it doesn’t prove anything about him.
/s
next he’ll start raping the internet space around him
It’s just an isolated incident!!!!!
Trump should try tweeting about the conceptual penis instead!
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.
How the hell did psychoanalysis – a remnant from the steam age of psychology which teaches us little girls believe they have been castrated for wanting to have sex with daddy or that in adulthood the orgasm will migrate from the clitoris to the vagina – become the core ‘psychological’ model of the mind for feminism?
I was going to make a similar comment. Psychoanalysis seems to be referenced in a lot of the worst word salads.
It has big words and no definitions.
I’m not just being flippant. There are people who are willing to be wrong (who go into STEM) and people who aren’t. Those who aren’t, which includes gender studies mavens, congregate around imprecise stuff like psychoanalysis.
If nobody can understand a bloody word you’re saying, they can’t prove it’s bullshit.
(That was the impersonal ‘you’, not you, Craw 😉
‘Words mean – what I choose them to mean’ – Humpty Dumpty.
cr
So true! 😉
Although I think Sokal, this hoax’s authors, and a growing number of others have been doing so successfully. We just need some more momentum…
I don’t know precisely, but has something to do with how language is central to it and thus the connection to the language departments and then to “cultural studies”.
Frederick Crews has explored some of this.
Also, as I discovered when taking a philosophy class *taught* by a psychonanalyst, a lot of people seem to gravitate to psychoanalysis precisely because it is antiscientific. Urgh.
From the abstract:
To borrow a line from Office Space, I wouldn’t say that I’m ‘missing’ them.
Well done! 😀
Brilliant, Taz! 😀
Nice one, boss.
It’s a bit one-sided.
Yeah, but it just won’t quit.
Perhaps even singularly edgy!
Oops. Meant to be in response to Craw.
See my forthcoming topology paper ‘Crack Asymmetries: Towards the morphological deformation of the gusset’.
Ack!
If one values one’s sanity (!) one should not bring up topology and psychoanalysis in the same conversation, because … Lacan.
Is it about how plumber butt cracks are microaggressions/sexual assault?
(Side note: still glad to see “microaggressions” is not recognized by spellcheck on here)
As I said in the comments under the original thread, NORMA most likely did not reject the paper because they thought it was bullshit, they rejected it because they did not consider it important enough as it wasn’t saying anything they haven’t already printed many many times. So they sent it down the impact factor ladder.
The criticisms focusing on the initial rejection as some sign of the system being in good shape fail to understand that. Which is because they’re coming from people too busy with activism to be actively publishing papers, as a result leaving them with a poor understanding of how these things work…
Since this paper has been brought up again I feel compelled to link this interview with James Lindsay followed by Thomas Smith of the Serious Inquires Only podcast’s analysis of the gender studies papers that Lindsay presents as evidence that there is a problem with the gender studies field. I think any objective listener will realize by the end that Lindsay knows nothing about the field, and couldn’t have even bothered to look into the papers he himself cites beyond a parody sites description of them. I can only conclude that the authors have an ideological objection to gender studies, and perhaps women as well.
Sorry forgot to add that end a for the link.
I wanted to add that I know little about the gender studies field myself, but after that analysis of Lindsay’s evidence of it’s problems, I’m convinced I know more than either Lindsay, or Boghossian.
Since you know little, but more than either Lindsay or Boghossian (both white males het cis scu piex of sh by the way), could you please tell me how can one distinguish between
– A paper on the penis better understood as a social construct that reinforce patriarchal norm.
– A paper on menstruation better understood as a social construct that reinforces heteronormative patriarchal structures.
Thanks.
P.S.: the paper on menstruation exists and it is not a hoax.
Could you please clarify a criterion to distinguish the “hoax” paper from “real” papers in xx studies that use a deconstructionist postmodernist approach?
Of course, that is the only possible conclusion, isn’t it. All the evidence points there, but I urge you also to consider the structurally patriarchal society we live in as a concatenated cause in which the hypothesis dissolves in a post-colonialist framework that addresses the intrinsic hegemonic cis-het-whit framework of the western capitalistic society.
“Of course, that is the only possible conclusion, isn’t it.”
Listen to the podcast, and if you have objections to my conclusion, or come to a different one I would love to hear specifics, perhaps you’ll convince me I’m wrong.
Can you give me an example of any positive benefit this shit has produced?
Has maternity leave increased one second because of
Has one extra cent been spent on sheltered accommodation for victims of domestic abuse?
At least false ideologies of religion produced great art.
+ 1
There is just harm; apart from resources wasted on paper, printing, professor salaries etc. and the intimidating atmosphere created by the “Studies” on campuses, they fed some bad stereotypes about women. I have read about a dozen times (in different places) that women created gender studies because their brains are not suitable for real stuff like STEM.
For the same reason, I’d advise black people to avoid their “Studies” like the plague.
Amen.
+1 I can’t stand this kind of “feminism”; or the conflation of activism and ideology with science; or freudianism; or the victim model of female identity. And I can’t stand the post modern/crit theory/modern european philosophy’s war against assessment of likelihood from the balance of material evidence.
I work in a European university and I have never heard about the war you are talking about. If there is one it does not seem to go beyond the borders of social science schools.
And anyone who mocks homeopathy can only have an ideological objection to curing cancer.
I did suffer through some of that. I disagree with Mr Paps. To save time I suggest you listen to what Thomas says 1:03:30 at about this http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S8755461515000547
He misrepresents the claim as being just about the proportion of women contributors but it’s about “Wikipedia’s insistence on separating embodied subjectivity from the production of knowledge” which ” limits the site’s ability to facilitate any substantial, subversive feminist rhetorical action.”
The ideological objection to gender studies is not necessarily coupled with objection to women. I have the 1st objection without the 2nd one. Indeed, I am a woman, but I suppose that men can have similar thoughts.
In fact, most of the comments here defending the gender studies were by female readers. This saddened me. It made me think that many women have been abused so systematically that they are now willing to take any stick to beat men.
The ideological objection to gender studies is not necessarily coupled with objection to women. I have the 1st objection without the 2nd one. Indeed, I am a woman, but I suppose that men can have similar thoughts.
In fact, most of the comments here defending the gender studies were by female readers. This saddened me. It made me think that many women have been abused so systematically that they are now willing to take any stick to beat men.
(I tried to post this once, but it got lost on the way.)
“The ideological objection to gender studies is not necessarily coupled with objection to women.”
Which is why I didn’t flat out say they go hand in hand. That being said it’s clear that Boghossian. and Lindsay’s work is very popular with misogynists.
“In fact, most of the comments here defending the gender studies were by female readers. This saddened me. It made me think that many women have been abused so systematically that they are now willing to take any stick to beat men.”
And it couldn’t possibly be that women who are most impacted by gender studies are more likely to recognize its benefits?
“That being said it’s clear that Boghossian. and Lindsay’s work is very popular with misogynists.”
Is that a whiff of Tu quoque I smell? Or is it the faintly sulfurous odor of an association fallacy?
I’d say, they are more likely to see benefits where none exist. I am saddened the same way when I see poor and suffering people turn to religion.
The only thing where I agree with you is that there is a frightening degree of misogyny in the USA. But women are unlikely to overcome misogyny by doing gender studies or otherwise proving misogynists right.
One of the bones of contention is worth noticing. Lindsay defends science at one point by noting it is self-correcting. Part of that is replication, and part is refutation. Both involve citation. How many times was the vaxxer hoax paper cited in other papers refuting it? But Thomas *defends* gender studies on the basis of the low rate of citations. These papers don’t matter because they aren’t cited much he says. Even the paper from the top and most influential GS journal manages (I think) 4 citations.
I think that is part of what’s wrong with the field isn’t it? These papers are not intended to advance knowledge or understanding. They are intended to credential.
The individual papers are irrelevant indeed, but that does not mean that the overall body published work, in particular the books, has no effect on people. If that was the case, we would not have SJW mobs terrorizing college campuses.
I agree. It has an effect, as does the mass credentialing of ideologues and charlatans. But I was pointing out an issue with the standards of the field, not its social impact.
I forgot to mention. That “top” journal, top in terms of citations, is actually quite low compared to real journals. That was discussed in the podcast. Low citation seems to be the case for the field in general. Which bolsters my objection.
“But Thomas *defends* gender studies on the basis of the low rate of citations. These papers don’t matter because they aren’t cited much he says.”
Talk about an own goal…
I have an ideological objection too, but it is as justified as any objection can be.
We’ve been through this before, but let’s revisit it again, because it has to be repeated again and again until it is understood.
There are three different things that go under the labels “feminism” and “gender studies”
1. Genuine struggle for equal rights in areas where equal rights have been denied in the past
2. Outright misandry
3. A postmodernist philosophical framework that is in its essence even more hostile to science than creationism (I’ll explain that one in more detail below).
Nobody has any problem with 1), most sane people have a lot of issues with 2). But 3) gets the least attention even though it is the most problematic of them all.
And what happens in practice is that 1), which almost everyone is for, is used as a vehicle for 2) and especially 3). You are not allowed to say that you are anti-feminist due to you seeing the danger that 3) poses and you understanding that this sort of nonsense is incompatible with science (and at a certain level, with modern civilization in general), because people have fully internalized the false notion that “anti-feminism” is the same thing as “misogyny”, and will immediately accuse you of the latter, which is socially unacceptable at the moment. Using these sneaky linguistic tricks feminists easily win public opinion through emotional manipulation.
It looks like the same thing is happening here with you — when you are talking about how gender studies is not crap, I am quite certain that all you have is examples from category 1), while completely ignoring 2) and 3). But you cannot separate those things because 3) is in fact a core part of what they are teaching and “researching” in the field.
Feminist theory building on postmodernism denies that there are such things as objective truth and reality, rejects the scientific method as a tool of masculine oppression, and pushes an epistemological framework built around crazy nonsense such as “situated knowledge”, “standpoint epistemology”, etc.
This is, as I said above, more anti-scientific than creationism. Creationism and traditional theology reject the authority of science when it contradicts revelation and dogma, but other than that theologians (and primitive creationists too) are philosophical realists (“realists” not in the sense of the word that is used when discussing the problem of universals, that’s a separate issue) who accept the existence of objective reality, mostly agree (especially when the theologians are Catholics) that logic and reason are the tools to understand that reality, etc.. The disagreement with science is over whether such a thing as a deity is a fundamental feature of that reality.
Postmodernism and the feminist theory derived from it reject even those common points of agreement between scientists and theologians. Which indeed makes it more anti-scientific than creationism.
This has the following consequences:
1) Given how thoroughly anti-scientific at its core feminist theory is, the only viable position for a scientist is stringent anti-feminism (again, not to be confused with misogyny, it is not the same thing at all)
2) As I have said on other occasions, expect scientific realists to be forced to become unwilling allies with theologians in the fight against what is a common and very dangerous enemy.
Anyway, my question to you is the following:
Do you seriously think that the philosophy behind feminist theory is not dangerous anti-scientific nonsense when you say that not all of it s crap?
And since sense 1) feminism is about everyone, sense 2) is also misanthropy.
Sandra Harding abuses her sisters, mothers, etc. when she tells them that (effectively) Newton was a rapist.
“..because people have fully internalized the false notion that “anti-feminism” is the same thing as “misogyny”, and will immediately accuse you of the latter, which is socially unacceptable at the moment.”
So outside this moment, misogyny is acceptable? 😉
We tend to forget that outside of academia, second-wave feminism, which basically adheres to your first category (“General struggle for equal rights…”) is still the overriding political issue and we should not abandon it just because some small cadre of vocal idiots are holding forth in la-la-land lib arts bastions.
Everything is socially constructed, don’t you remember?
Right now we have socially constructed misogyny as a mortal sin.
But in other times and cultures it has been different
I think at this moment, it’s misandry that’s far more acceptable and in vogue.
No doubt
I’m sorry, I don’t speak pomo. 😉
The articles in this journal have many phallacies.
🙂
+1e9
Once I wrote an article outside of my field (cell biology). It was a history-of-science manuscript, about an artifact in an early electron microscopic study. This work, being interdisciplinary, turned out to belong nowhere. History-of-science reviewers returned it, saying that it has some value, but it is not exactly for their journals, plus I have not cited some authors that I should, but they did not tell me to revise the manuscript with these citations, they just rejected it.
Finally, I published the work in an obscure morphological journal with no impact factor (though I still like it better than some more successfully published works). I concluded that every publishing field, apart from the written rules in the instruction for authors, has its unwritten rules that are followed by intuition. To publish my work successfully, I should have recruited a co-author from the respective field.
So I suppose that the true reason the hoax article was rejected by NORMA was failure to conform to the unwritten rules. Had the authors recruited an accomplice with gender studies background, maybe they would publish in NORMA and wherever they wanted. Take notice, future hoaxers!
Yes – to be successful with interdisciplinary work (either for legitimate or parody reasons) one has to learn carefully who to cite, particularly in certain parts of philosophy and the social sciences. Within reason this makes sense, but it is sometimes overdone. For example, in my MA thesis (which is in metaphysics, the philosophy of science and touches on questions of special relativity) I had to include an entire chapter on the *logical* and *semantic* background to where Davidson (my starting point) got metaphysical inspiration. In my view Davidson does all the “bridge work” himself (and continued the semantics, which I have no direct interest in) but … committee says, graduate student do. Same applies to journals.
I would say that the persistence of interest that this paper has a vote in people is symptomatic of a kind of addiction. Since if we truly felt that this paper was ridiculous because it was a hoax or whatever it is , and that the people who did it have something wrong with them then we would just completely ignore them which is what I’m gonna do now including any other comments about it.
Regardless of all the intellectual considerations of the facets of the ridiculousness, I see it as just plain inability to disengage from something that is obviously not worth anyone’s time.
In view of your comment your comment makes a lot of sense.
You are clearly far superior to the rest of us. I salute you!
lol.
I don’t know, it looks to me like there are some reasonable complaints about the particulars of the hoax coming from people who readily agree that “many papers in cultural and gender studies are intellectually vacuous as well as abysmally written.” In at least some cases the knickers got twisted over sloppy technique, not because ‘Regressive Leftism’ or whatever the term is.
It would be like complaints concerning a skeptic organization running a poorly designed test for psychic powers. Yeah, sure, we agree the psychics aren’t. But if the protocol is unscientific and unfair then it makes the whole movement look suspect.
For two days in a row @RealPeerReview has been tweeting abstracts of papers that are genuinely indistinguishable from the conceptual penis. I think that it is quite safe to say that any discipline based on postmodernism is beyond parody.
Of course it is possible to approach the social sciences in a well posed, empirical way. And indeed (the few) scholars that do it this way are typically critical of their postmodernist colleagues.
If it was simply run in Skeptic (to which I’ve been subscribing since the 3rd or 4th issue) as a parody or satire, I think the pushback would have been different, or there would have been much less. If something has been declared a “hoax,” explaining that it’s a great Poe isn’t enough.
It’s really this easy. I did this in about 20 minutes.
A new Section 1 for the Conceptual Penis, cowlicks combed down.
Research into the identification between the penis (as it relates conceptually to masculinity) as a project of masculinity has provided useful insights. For example, we find Gunnar Karlsson’s (2014) psychoanalytic account of “phallic masculinity” very insightful into the patriarchal anti-feminine and anti-feminist idealism entrenched in most, if not all, masculinity projects. Karlsson relies upon the insights of “Carol Bigwood’s (1991) understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s idea of the lived body in order to secure a distinction between sex and gender,” upon which “a discussion concerning the character and psychogenesis of phallic masculinity, informed by psychoanalytic thinking and experience, is made possible (see ‘Masculinity as project’).”
Karlsson extends Bigwood to make the point that “phallic masculinity is to be understood as a project, entailing a denial of our existential conditions such as vulnerability, transience and dependence. The psychoanalytic revelation of unconscious processes and unconscious intersubjective exchanges allows us to explain phallic masculinity as a repudiation of the feminine/motherly containment and a response to a humiliated, narcissistic ego.” (Karlsson, 2014, emphasis added) This he connects to “a phenomenological description of the masculine character” that is “usually characterized by a number of traits and formulated in such a way as being in opposition to femininity.”
According to Karlsson,
Karlsson goes on to caution us, however, about reading too much into phallic masculinity.
It is this crucial gap in the literature we wish to extend into the realm of “toxic hypermasculinity” via the “conceptual penis,” using feminist standpoint theory about the situatedness of male knowledges, constructivist theory on the nature of gender as a social construct, post-structuralist discursive analysis to gain insight into masculine social positioning, and hypermasculine linguistic tropes and conventions as examples. By identifying the conceptual penis with the primary behavioral expressions (rape, manspreading, domination, machismo, and a certain swaggering bent toward phallic braggadocio) of toxic hypermasculinity, we define a conceptual isomorphism that we name the machismo braggadocio isomorphism identifying phallic masculinity (per Karlsson, 2014) gone awry.
As a postscript: I’ll note that the comments further up are spot-on. I don’t know anything about the literature, but I could still mimic it like that in 20 minutes. Give me a day to fill in more references and another after that to tuck in more careful howlers, and who knows…?
It doesn’t matter: it is clear that your work and the one of Peter Boghossian are popular among misogynists (see above).
It has been wonderful watching some of the regressives (PZ Myers, Dan “Comrade Starbucks” Arel, etc.) and semi-regressives (Peter Ferguson) squirm with anger and embarrassment over the “Conceptual Penis” hoax. Almost as if they take the field of gender studies seriously, even though this hoax does not directly discredit the whole field*.
The legitimate peer-reviewed papers in the gender studies field DO discredit the entire field.