Category: humor

Lee Jussim finds a home for his “Orwelexicon”

February 2, 2020 • 1:45 pm

About two weeks ago I reported on a mini-kerfuffle at the Psychology Today website. Respected social psychologist Lee Jussim at Rutgers, responding to a piece in the British Medical Journal that created a number of Woke Neologisms, created his own piece listing anti-Woke neologisms. Here’s the original BMJ article, now publicly available (click on screenshot):

Now it’s not clear how serious that article is (BMJ tends to publish humor in the Christmas issues), but at least the authors Esther K. Choo and Robert F. DeMayo are real people.  And although the article seems to be lighthearted and semi-humorous, it does so by poking fun of men. In other words, if it were poking fun of women, it wouldn’t have been published since it would be seen and decried as a sexist screed. So it doesn’t really matter whether it was meant to be funny, for underlying it is a general critique of male behavior.

Jussim posted a response on his blog at Psychology Today: a list of his own neologisms mocking the wokeness behind Choo et al.’s piece.  But his piece was immediately removed, for while you can mock male behavior, you can’t mock wokeness. Here’s Jussim’s tweet after he was censored:

He clearly lost the appeal. But his “Owelexicon” post has reappeared—in Quillette, of course. Click on the screenshot to see it:

Although Quillette is promoting this article heavily, the terms are of variable humor quality. Here are a few I like:

Blancofemophobia: Prejudice against white women, as exemplified by dismissing the beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors of white women with phrases such as, “White women white womening.” See here for a real-world example.  [JAC: Check out those examples; there’s more than one.]

Brexistential fear: An irrational fear that Brexit will lead to the end of the world as we know it.

Brophobia: Fear of men having a conversation among themselves.

Emotional imperialism: The strange belief that your feelings should dictate someone else’s behavior.

Evopsychophobia: Fear of evolutionary psychology, especially of the possibility that social groups (such as men and women) might have evolved different psychological traits and behavioral tendencies.

Istaphobia: Fear of being called an “ist” (racist, sexist, fascist, etc.), usually followed by self-censorship. [JAC: This is my favorite, for it is real and drives a lot of behavior.]

Wokanniblism: A low-carb, high-protein diet consisting mainly of eating your own.

What bothers me about this kerfuffle is the double standard used in such spoofs, as evidenced in BMJ publishing one that calls out men, and Psychology Today censoring one calling out wokeness. Psychology Today is clearly suffering from istaphobia.

Anti-woke spoof censored in Psychology Today

January 18, 2020 • 11:30 am

Yesterday at Psychology Today, a website that can be pretty dire, Lee Jussim, a professor and social psychologist who happens to be chair of the Psychology Department at Rutgers, published an “Orwelexicon”:  a spoof of a genuine Woke Lexicon published by another journal. For spoofing wokeness, Jussim had his piece taken down by the Psychology Today.

First, though, we should note that Jussim has street cred in social psychology. According to Wikipedia,

He has published and spoken extensively on scientific integrity and distortions in science motivated by politics, stereotype accuracy, prejudice, bias, self-fulfilling prophecy, and social constructionism. His works have won professional awards: his 2012 book Social Perception and Social Reality: Why Accuracy Dominates Bias and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy won an American Association of Publishers’ Prize for best book in psychology, and his 1991 book Social Belief and Social Reality: A Reflection-Construction Model received the Gordon Allport Prize for Research in Intergroup Relations. During his recent 2013–2014 sabbatical, he worked with colleagues at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in the Behavioral Sciences and co-founded Stanford’s Best Practices in Science group.

Jussim’s piece was meant as a response to a woke and humorless lexicon published a year ago in BMJ, the new name for the former British Medical Journal. That piece resides behind a paywall, but you can see a run-on transcript here, or a judicious request might yield you a pdf:

Here are some of the neologisms created by Choo, DeMayo, and “Glaumoflecken” (obviously a coward who won’t reveal his/her/hir name). They’re neither clever nor funny, they can be perceived as somewhat misandristic in that they single out white males for special criticism (they could never do this with other groups which, of course, are perfect compared to white males), and this kind of woke stuff doesn’t belong in a medical journal, which is simply flaunting its virtue.

(I do like “Ovalooked, though!)

Well, if you think this kind of mockery is suitable for a scientific journal, more power to you. But apparently it rubbed Jussim (as it rubs me) the wrong way, and he responded by putting up his own “Orwelexicon” mocking the woke mentality that produced the BMJ glossary. You could have seen Jussim’s piece yesterday if you clicked on the screenshot, but what you get if you do that now is the second screenshot:

The article has disappeared!

Jussim is angry about this, as his Orwelexicon (a clever name) was a spoof. The journal simply removed it:

But you can still see it! You can see it at the Imgur link here, and I also have a transcript and screenshot. Here’s Jussim’s introduction and a few terms he coined:

In an article published in BMJ, a major biomedical journal, Drs Choo & Mayo presented a “Lexicon for Gender Bias in Academia and Medicine.”  They argued that “mansplaining” was just the “tip of the iceberg” and so they coined terms such as:

Himpediment: Man who stands in the way of progress of women.

and

Misteria: Irrational fear that advancing women means catastrophic lack of opportunity for men.

This Orwelexicon is offered in a similar spirit of capturing biases, albeit quite different ones, that pervade academia.  It is also a bit different, at least sometimes, because these words often capture the Orwellian disingenuousness with which some terms are used in academia.

A few examples of neologisms—psychological syndromes—from Jussim’s original Orwelexicon:

If you want to see all Jussim’s examples, go to the Imgur site above.

Well, we all know that every venue of mainstream or liberal journalism (at least those I read) is becoming more woke, so it’s not that surprising that Psychology Today would take down this post mocking Wokeness at the same time that BMJ publishes an article that mocks male behavior. Granted, men in academic situations often behave in a peremptory, sexist, or domineering way, but the medical lexicon is grating and cringeworthy, as well as being a form of racism/sexism that would not be tolerated if directed at any other group—unless all other groups behave perfectly and in a non-tribalistic way.

And, at any rate, Jussim’s spoof is not directed at any ethnic or gender group in particular, but at the pathologies of Wokeness itself. It didn’t deserve to be censored, as it does make fun of things that need to be mocked.

We’ll see if Psychology Today puts it up. Jussim is hopeful; I’m not. For if they reinstate the piece, the Woke will hound the journal to death, calling for the editors’ resignations, and probably for Jussim’s as well. So it goes.

Another interview with Titania McGrath

January 13, 2020 • 12:00 pm

Titania McGrath, who is actually comedian Andrew Doyle, goes on Fox News—who else would have him?—to talk for 26 minutes about Titania McGrath, Her Wokeness. You can hear the show by clicking on the screenshot below

Some of the stuff you might know from the talk by Doyle I posted before, but there’s also new stuff here, too.  One is Doyle’s reaction to Ricky Gervais’s “comedy” monologue at the Golden Globes, where he was host. I’ve put the monologue below, which didn’t go down well at all with the privileged audience who took themselves quite seriously.

Another is that Titania is writing another book—for children! Have a listen.

Gervais’s comedy was really biting, and I pretty much liked it, as did Doyle. You can see why.  My favorite line is this: “If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.”

He also goes after Apple, Amazon, and other corporations. You can be sure that he won’t be hosting this, or any other similar show, in the future.

 

 

Standup comedy by Titania McGrath!

January 3, 2020 • 2:30 pm

Apparently Andrew Doyle has recruited someone who looks and acts like Titania McGrath to do standup comedy.  So here is a seven-minute excerpt from her gig in a London comedy club. My verdict is mixed. Some of her jokes fall a bit flat, and some go past me because the references are British, but a couple are chuckle-worthy.  I suppose this is what it would sound like if the real Titania (who doesn’t exist), were to go onstage.

Credits: “Titania played by Alice Marshall. Script by Andrew Doyle.”