I remain on the "gender" topic with some items I have mulled over at random:
1. Today was "Women's Day" where we are obligated to celebrate "Women" and the contributions and advances they have made over the last how many years? I personally think women have been critical to our existence since we came out of the trees, which in itself a pretty big contribution in my mind, but then again some might say I have a Caveman Mentality?
2. On this "Women's day" I was surprised at some postings on my "LinkedIn feed". A quick scan of comments about MacDonald's flipping the M upside down appeared to have an equal number of pro and con comments from women. I found it interesting that most of the "positive" comments came from University Professors and "Corporate Diversity" Officers. Most of the negative comments came from women in Marketing, Healthcare, the food industry and my favorite "Insurance". With regard to Academia, Stay tuned for my WSJ piece below!
3. Ok what's with the movie lead? In my last post ,which a few of you have read, I tried to give a sense of what I learned about "gender" and man-women relationships from my parents. Today I want to "go to the movies" with a few thoughts thrown in along the way.
So many movies and TV shows these days push the idea that women need to be shown as powerful heroines, kicking ass and taking names. It makes me crazy (and I make my Faithful and Obedient Companion Crazy when I bitch about it) when they show 105 pounds of female fury (say Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Lawrence etc) Kung Fu'ing the Crap out of 15 or 20 muscular misogynist misfits. Now don't get me wrong my Daughter-in-Law is a Federal Parole officer who packs. I have no doubt she might well kick my ass if she had to. However, realistically, in virtually all cases, such scenes are pure BS. The last time I looked not one female Marine could pass the Marine Corps Physical Combat test...so we will be rewriting the test I surmise. More on that some other time. In all honesty I see no reason why a women cannot drive a tank, fire a scud, fly a plane, or pull the lanyard on an old howitzer (Molly Pitcher did that in 1776 for Pete's sake!). Many great war leaders have been women. I am simply saying that women and men have obvious different Physical Capabilities.
I also think biology (as in male and female sexual attraction) in combat zones is not always convenient. How so?
A girl who I taught in Sunday School joined the Army, rose to the rank of Sargent and shipped off to Iraq where she helped our forces kick ass and take down Saddam Hussein. I will never forget the day her mom and dad told me she got pregnant, literally, in Saddam's fallen Palace. You see she and her boyfriend apparently froliced in his bathtub! Uhm yes they were "on duty". Why any parent would share such a story (or their kid would even tell them) is beyond me. However, in an age where Future Presidents are caught on tape bragging about female conquests and get elected or when a sitting President uses a cigar on an intern, and his wife is "OK" with that, well what the heck why wouldn't a parent be darn proud their daughter got down and dirty with a fellow service member in Saddam's marble bath? What's the big deal... they got married after she got pregnant. Not surprisingly they divorced a few years later leaving a few kids to pick up the pieces. One night stands in palace tubs are not a great screening process for long-term relationships, but heh who is looking for a long term commitment these days?
Our cultural "self fulfillment" concept that every man and women's should seek that which makes them feel good is a product of the "sexual revolution" combined with a society that advertises individual freedom and the "pursuit of happiness". Thus if you grew up watching LA Law, Friends, even good old Seinfeld" you saw sack jumping with co-workers and friends as an integral part of work and "friendship". Of course when our framers worked to establish such a society there were strong religious and family structures in place. Not so much any more.
Do not get me wrong, I know all about Ben Franklin's frolics etc. While as for me I know "he who is without sin should cast the first stone" so maybe I am not fully qualified BUT there was in our society an underlying framework or "ideals" that society held up as a standard of behavior. I refer again to the WSJ piece below.
OK speaking of the "Military" if you have not scene Clint Eastwood's new movie "15:17 To Paris" I highly recommend it. Aside from having the "heroes" played by the actual heroes instead of some pretty boy Hollywood actors, it is a wonderful story to boot. In a nutshell it is about three men who were willing to give up self preservation for a higher cause than themselves
The movie also touched a few of my "male" emotions.
First, it shows the adolescent angst of 3 young boys (actually the focus was on two of them), raised by single mothers. A familiar meme, at one point their teacher strongly suggested they should be "drugged" for ADD. In reality they were nice kids, quite active but perhaps a little "onry". My dad called it "ass wickets".
Second, like any boy or girl they struggled with adolescence, With no male presence, I found their "Bonding" experience playing paintball and military games very realistic. Interestingly their Mom's seemed supportive of that, perhaps because they did not know what else to do? Finally one of the boys must "go back" to his father because Mom could not "handle" him any more. All three had a sense of loss and isolation when this occurs.
As the story progresses two boys join the military while one goes off to College each going their own way, but staying in touch. You all probably have an idea what unfolds when the three reunite for a European get together, and fatefully end up on a Paris bound train.
When I left the movie theater I reflected that so many of the items I have pondered the last several years regarding the Malaise of "young men" were depicted in the movie. This story had a very interesting and happy ending but I could clearly see how with a slightly different t twist or two these guys could have ended up in a bad place. Instead they became decorated heros, and not the Kung Fu movie kind! I think it is worth a watch if you have not seen it.
I will leave you with an OP-Ed in the WSJ from 2/16 which I find relevant. It deals with the difficulty in academia to even discuss any type of historical morality. Of course good old Jonathan Haidt is mentioned!
The op-ed, which I co-authored with Larry Alexander of the University of San Diego Law School, appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Aug. 9 under the headline, “Paying the Price for the Breakdown of the Country’s Bourgeois Culture.”
It began by listing some of the ills afflicting American society:
Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries.
We then discussed the “cultural script”—a list of behavioral norms—that was almost universally endorsed between the end of World War II and the mid-1960s:
Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.
These norms defined a concept of adult responsibility that was, we wrote, “a major contributor to the productivity, educational gains and social coherence of that period.” The fact that the “bourgeois culture” these norms embodied has broken down since the 1960s, we argued, largely explains today’s social pathologies—and re-embracing that culture would go a long way toward addressing those pathologies.
In what became the most controversial passage, we pointed out that some cultures are less suited to preparing people to be productive citizens in a modern technological society, and we gave examples:
The culture of the Plains Indians was designed for nomadic hunters, but is not suited to a First World, 21st-century environment. Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-‘acting white’ rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants.
The reactions to this piece raise the question of how unorthodox opinions should be dealt with in academia—and in American society at large. It is well documented that American universities today are dominated, more than ever before, by academics on the left end of the political spectrum. How should these academics handle opinions that depart, even quite sharply, from their “politically correct” views?
The proper response would be to engage in reasoned debate—to attempt to explain, using logic, evidence, facts and substantive arguments, why those opinions are wrong. This kind of civil discourse is obviously important at law schools like mine, because law schools are dedicated to teaching students how to think about and argue all sides of a question. But academic institutions in general should also be places where people are free to think and reason about important questions that affect our society and our way of life—something not possible in today’s atmosphere of enforced orthodoxy.
What those of us in academia should certainly not do is engage in unreasoned speech: hurling slurs and epithets, name-calling, vilification and mindless labeling. Likewise, we should not reject the views of others without providing reasoned arguments. Yet these once common standards of practice have been violated repeatedly at my own and at other academic institutions in recent years, and we increasingly see this trend in society as well.
One might respond that unreasoned slurs and outright condemnations are also speech and must be defended. My recent experience has caused me to rethink this position. In debating others, we should have higher standards. Of course one has the right to hurl labels like “racist,” “sexist” and “xenophobic”—but that doesn’t make it the right thing to do. Hurling such labels doesn’t enlighten, inform, edify or educate. Indeed, it undermines these goals by discouraging or stifling dissent.
So what happened after our op-ed was published last August? A raft of letters, statements and petitions from students and professors at my university and elsewhere condemned the piece as hate speech—racist, white supremacist, xenophobic, “heteropatriarchial,” etc. There were demands that I be removed from the classroom and from academic committees. None of these demands even purported to address our arguments in any serious or systematic way.
A response published in the Daily Pennsylvanian, our school newspaper, and signed by five of my Penn Law School colleagues, charged us with the sin of praising the 1950s—a decade when racial discrimination was openly practiced and opportunities for women were limited. I do not agree with the contention that because a past era is marked by benighted attitudes and practices—attitudes and practices we had acknowledged in our op-ed—it has nothing to teach us. But at least this response attempted to make an argument.
Not so an open letter published in the Daily Pennsylvanian and signed by 33 of my colleagues. This letter quoted random passages from the op-ed and from a subsequent interview I gave to the school newspaper, condemned both and categorically rejected all of my views. It then invited students, in effect, to monitor me and to report any “stereotyping and bias” they might experience or perceive. This letter contained no argument, no substance, no reasoning, no explanation whatsoever as to how our op-ed was in error.
We hear a lot of talk about role models—people to be emulated, who set a positive example for students and others. In my view, the 33 professors who signed this letter are anti-role models. To students and citizens alike I say: Don’t follow their lead by condemning people for their views without providing a reasoned argument. Reject their example. Not only are they failing to teach you the practice of civil discourse—the sine qua non of liberal education and democracy—they are sending the message that civil discourse is unnecessary. As Jonathan Haidt of New York University wrote in September on the website Heterodox Academy: “Every open letter you sign to condemn a colleague for his or her words brings us closer to a world in which academic disagreements are resolved by social force and political power, not by argumentation and persuasion.” Two signers of the open letter, Jonathan Klick and Jonah Gelbach, responded to Dr. Haidt’s post by writing pieces for Heterodox Academy that challenged the substance of the op-ed, with the latter adding a defense of the open letter’s condemnation of my views.
It is gratifying to note that the reader comments on the open letter were overwhelmingly critical. The letter has “no counter evidence,” one reader wrote, “no rebuttal to [Wax’s] arguments, just an assertion that she’s wrong.... This is embarrassing.” Another wrote: “This letter is an exercise in self-righteous virtue-signaling that utterly fails to deal with the argument so cogently presented by Wax and Alexander.... Note to parents, if you want your daughter or son to learn to address an argument, do not send them to Penn Law.”
As Humpty Dumpty said to Alice, we can make words mean whatever we want them to mean. And who decides what is code for something else or what qualifies as a dog whistle? Those in power, of course—which in academia means the Left.
My 33 colleagues might have believed they were protecting students from being injured by harmful opinions, but they were doing those students no favors. Students need the opposite of protection from diverse arguments and points of view. They need exposure to them. This exposure will teach them how to think. As John Stuart Mill said, “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.”
I have received more than 1,000 emails from around the country in the months since the op-ed was published—mostly supportive, some critical and for the most part thoughtful and respectful. Many expressed the thought, “You said what we are thinking but are afraid to say”—a sad commentary on the state of civil discourse in our society. Many urged me not to back down, cower or apologize. And I agree with them that dissenters apologize far too often.
As for Penn, the calls to action against me continue. My law school dean recently asked me to take a leave of absence next year and to cease teaching a mandatory first-year course. He explained that he was getting “pressure” to banish me for my unpopular views and hoped that my departure would quell the controversy. When I suggested that it was his job as a leader to resist such illiberal demands, he explained that he is a “pluralistic dean” who must listen to and accommodate “all sides.”
Democracy thrives on talk and debate, and it is not for the faint of heart. I read things every day in the media and hear things every day at my job that I find exasperating and insulting, including falsehoods and half-truths about people who are my friends. Offense and upset go with the territory; they are part and parcel of an open society. We should be teaching our young people to get used to these things, but instead we are teaching them the opposite.
Disliking, avoiding and shunning people who don’t share our politics is not good for our country. We live together, and we need to solve our problems together. It is also always possible that people we disagree with have something to offer, something to contribute, something to teach us. We ignore this at our peril. As Heather Mac Donald wrote in National Review about the controversy over our op-ed: “What if the progressive analysis of inequality is wrong…and a cultural analysis is closest to the truth? If confronting the need to change behavior is punishable ‘hate speech,’ then it is hard to see how the country can resolve its social problems.” In other words, we are at risk of being led astray by received opinion.
The American way is to conduct free and open debate in a civil manner. We should return to doing that on our college campuses and in our society at large.
It began by listing some of the ills afflicting American society:
Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries.
We then discussed the “cultural script”—a list of behavioral norms—that was almost universally endorsed between the end of World War II and the mid-1960s:
Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.
These norms defined a concept of adult responsibility that was, we wrote, “a major contributor to the productivity, educational gains and social coherence of that period.” The fact that the “bourgeois culture” these norms embodied has broken down since the 1960s, we argued, largely explains today’s social pathologies—and re-embracing that culture would go a long way toward addressing those pathologies.
In what became the most controversial passage, we pointed out that some cultures are less suited to preparing people to be productive citizens in a modern technological society, and we gave examples:
The culture of the Plains Indians was designed for nomadic hunters, but is not suited to a First World, 21st-century environment. Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-‘acting white’ rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants.
The reactions to this piece raise the question of how unorthodox opinions should be dealt with in academia—and in American society at large. It is well documented that American universities today are dominated, more than ever before, by academics on the left end of the political spectrum. How should these academics handle opinions that depart, even quite sharply, from their “politically correct” views?
The proper response would be to engage in reasoned debate—to attempt to explain, using logic, evidence, facts and substantive arguments, why those opinions are wrong. This kind of civil discourse is obviously important at law schools like mine, because law schools are dedicated to teaching students how to think about and argue all sides of a question. But academic institutions in general should also be places where people are free to think and reason about important questions that affect our society and our way of life—something not possible in today’s atmosphere of enforced orthodoxy.
What those of us in academia should certainly not do is engage in unreasoned speech: hurling slurs and epithets, name-calling, vilification and mindless labeling. Likewise, we should not reject the views of others without providing reasoned arguments. Yet these once common standards of practice have been violated repeatedly at my own and at other academic institutions in recent years, and we increasingly see this trend in society as well.
‘Hurling labels doesn’t enlighten, inform, edify or educate.’
So what happened after our op-ed was published last August? A raft of letters, statements and petitions from students and professors at my university and elsewhere condemned the piece as hate speech—racist, white supremacist, xenophobic, “heteropatriarchial,” etc. There were demands that I be removed from the classroom and from academic committees. None of these demands even purported to address our arguments in any serious or systematic way.
A response published in the Daily Pennsylvanian, our school newspaper, and signed by five of my Penn Law School colleagues, charged us with the sin of praising the 1950s—a decade when racial discrimination was openly practiced and opportunities for women were limited. I do not agree with the contention that because a past era is marked by benighted attitudes and practices—attitudes and practices we had acknowledged in our op-ed—it has nothing to teach us. But at least this response attempted to make an argument.
Free Speech: Colleges in the Crossfire | Moving Upstream
We hear a lot of talk about role models—people to be emulated, who set a positive example for students and others. In my view, the 33 professors who signed this letter are anti-role models. To students and citizens alike I say: Don’t follow their lead by condemning people for their views without providing a reasoned argument. Reject their example. Not only are they failing to teach you the practice of civil discourse—the sine qua non of liberal education and democracy—they are sending the message that civil discourse is unnecessary. As Jonathan Haidt of New York University wrote in September on the website Heterodox Academy: “Every open letter you sign to condemn a colleague for his or her words brings us closer to a world in which academic disagreements are resolved by social force and political power, not by argumentation and persuasion.” Two signers of the open letter, Jonathan Klick and Jonah Gelbach, responded to Dr. Haidt’s post by writing pieces for Heterodox Academy that challenged the substance of the op-ed, with the latter adding a defense of the open letter’s condemnation of my views.
It is gratifying to note that the reader comments on the open letter were overwhelmingly critical. The letter has “no counter evidence,” one reader wrote, “no rebuttal to [Wax’s] arguments, just an assertion that she’s wrong.... This is embarrassing.” Another wrote: “This letter is an exercise in self-righteous virtue-signaling that utterly fails to deal with the argument so cogently presented by Wax and Alexander.... Note to parents, if you want your daughter or son to learn to address an argument, do not send them to Penn Law.”
Shortly after the op-ed appeared, I ran into a colleague I hadn’t seen for a while and asked how his summer was going. He said he’d had a terrible summer, and in saying it he looked so serious I thought someone had died. He then explained that the reason his summer had been ruined was my op-ed, and he accused me of attacking and causing damage to the university, the students and the faculty. One of my left-leaning friends at Yale Law School found this story funny—who would have guessed an op-ed could ruin someone’s summer? But beyond the absurdity, note the choice of words: “attack” and “damage” are words one uses with one’s enemies, not colleagues or fellow citizens. At the very least, they are not words that encourage the expression of unpopular ideas. They reflect a spirit hostile to such ideas—indeed, a spirit that might seek to punish the expression of such ideas. I had a similar conversation with a deputy dean. She had been unable to sign the open letter because of her official position, but she defended it as having been necessary. It needed to be written to get my attention, she told me, so that I would rethink what I had written and understand the hurt I had inflicted and the damage I had done, so that I wouldn’t do it again. The message was clear: Cease the heresy.Only half of my colleagues in the law school signed the open letter. One who didn’t sent me a thoughtful and lawyerly email explaining how and why she disagreed with particular assertions in the op-ed. We had an amicable email exchange, from which I learned a lot—some of her points stick with me—and we remain cordial colleagues. That is how things should work.Of the 33 who signed the letter, only one came to talk to me about it, and I am grateful for that. About three minutes into our conversation, he admitted that he didn’t categorically reject everything in the op-ed. Bourgeois values aren’t really so bad, he conceded, nor are all cultures equally worthy. Given that those were the main points of the op-ed, I asked him why he had signed the letter. His answer was that he didn’t like my saying, in my interview with the Daily Pennsylvanian, that the tendency of global migrants to flock to white European countries indicates the superiority of some cultures. This struck him as “code,” he said, for Nazism. Well, let me state for the record that I don’t endorse Nazism!Furthermore, the charge that a statement is “code” for something else, or a “dog whistle” of some kind—we frequently hear this charge leveled, even against people who are stating demonstrable facts—is unanswerable. It is like accusing a speaker of causing emotional injury or feelings of marginalization. Using this kind of language, which students have learned to do all too well, is intended to bring discussion and debate to a stop—to silence speech deemed unacceptable.
‘Students need the opposite of protection from diverse arguments and points of view.’
I have received more than 1,000 emails from around the country in the months since the op-ed was published—mostly supportive, some critical and for the most part thoughtful and respectful. Many expressed the thought, “You said what we are thinking but are afraid to say”—a sad commentary on the state of civil discourse in our society. Many urged me not to back down, cower or apologize. And I agree with them that dissenters apologize far too often.
As for Penn, the calls to action against me continue. My law school dean recently asked me to take a leave of absence next year and to cease teaching a mandatory first-year course. He explained that he was getting “pressure” to banish me for my unpopular views and hoped that my departure would quell the controversy. When I suggested that it was his job as a leader to resist such illiberal demands, he explained that he is a “pluralistic dean” who must listen to and accommodate “all sides.”
Democracy thrives on talk and debate, and it is not for the faint of heart. I read things every day in the media and hear things every day at my job that I find exasperating and insulting, including falsehoods and half-truths about people who are my friends. Offense and upset go with the territory; they are part and parcel of an open society. We should be teaching our young people to get used to these things, but instead we are teaching them the opposite.
Disliking, avoiding and shunning people who don’t share our politics is not good for our country. We live together, and we need to solve our problems together. It is also always possible that people we disagree with have something to offer, something to contribute, something to teach us. We ignore this at our peril. As Heather Mac Donald wrote in National Review about the controversy over our op-ed: “What if the progressive analysis of inequality is wrong…and a cultural analysis is closest to the truth? If confronting the need to change behavior is punishable ‘hate speech,’ then it is hard to see how the country can resolve its social problems.” In other words, we are at risk of being led astray by received opinion.
The American way is to conduct free and open debate in a civil manner. We should return to doing that on our college campuses and in our society at large.
—Ms. Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. This essay, adapted from a speech she delivered in December, is reprinted by permission of Imprimis,
Here is Phil's Comment on yesterday's post!
ReplyDeleteHey Jim...The way I reached your blog didn't allow me to make a comment online
....so here it is....If you wish you can cut and paste it for others to see.
From the editorial.......
" I asked him why he had signed the letter. His answer was that he didn’t like my saying, in my interview with the Daily Pennsylvanian, that the tendency of global migrants to flock to white European countries indicates the superiority of some cultures. This struck him as “code,” he said, for Nazism. Well, let me state for the record that I don’t endorse Nazism!Furthermore, the charge that a statement is “code” for something else, or a “dog whistle” of some kind—we frequently hear this charge leveled, even against people who are stating demonstrable facts—is unanswerable. It is like accusing a speaker of causing emotional injury or feelings of marginalization. Using this kind of language, which students have learned to do all too well, is intended to bring discussion and debate to a stop—to silence speech deemed unacceptable."
First - the Daily Pennsylvanian has no interest in discourse....it is a student newspaper with questionable editorial practices. In my experience many journalists and their editors want sensational headlines, quotes and content with their only interest in increasing readership (also true for TV "news"). The Daily may be among the worst in this regard..
Second - your discussion and the editorial with comments are thoughtful and lengthy - a rarity today. There is precious little deep conversation in a world which prefers 280 characters (well yes...up from 140). Many of the today's issues are complicated and nuanced and cannot realistically be summarized in a sound bite.
Third - to be accused of being a Nazi sympathizer for expressing a viewpoint outside the norm for academia is outrageous.
Anyhow....enough for this morning....thanks Jim for taking the time to write.
I have read your last three blogs with a seriousness I usually save for my work life. I usually try to live on the lighter side of things when I am away from work, because there is too much reality at my job. I deal with lots of children from one parent households and believe me when I tell you that dysfunction occurs in all sorts of households and children of both genders are equally affected. I mostly deal with these children with honesty and compassion, while I deal with their parents with honesty and frankness on what they are doing to their children. Like you I am passionate about the rearing of boys in our country. I am sure this is a personal journey for me in that I have only raised boys. They may have been privileged, in fact I am sure they were, but they were also raised accountable. Compassion for others was a clear value and if they "did the crime, they paid the time". Something our parents taught us as well.. Oh well I am digressing here. White males are being hammered at every turn. Those who have been raised by strong fathers are, in my opinion, able to weather this storm better than those who have no mentor in which to turn. I am sure my children have thrived because of the love and example my husband has given them. They both still seek out his advice and companionship and it warms my heart that they do so. They needed us BOTH, and as I have stated over and over strong families are important to not only children but to our culture. I can end this all only by saying that I returned to your blog after reading an excerpt from "The Cut" on Apple News the article was titled How To Raise a Boy by Will Leitch. It was the normal lean to the left ideology that I was expecting regarding raising boys to not expect a "male privilege". But these parents wanted to raise their boys with a willingness to explore who they could be so they moved to Athens Georgia from NYC. I really was okay with most of this until they started to talk about kindness and a need to have their children understand it's importance. Sounded okay so far. So the last few lines continue with discussions on "our misogynistic asshole president"...and there they lost me. How do you teach kindness while referring to the President as an asshole? So for all the discussions on raising children and who should raise the children and even how we are making the children these days (with surrogates, and fertility help, yada.yada.yada.) these gender discussions will test our tolerance on what is best in developing young minds.
ReplyDelete