skirtcafe.org

A professor of "gender history" offers his mea culpa...

https://quillette.com/2019/09/17/i-basi ... uctionist/

Not a renunciation of everything, but an openness to other explanations, and an argument for more actual discussions and differing points of view being taken seriously. It also gives some insight into how ideological echo chambers operate. Worth the read IMHO.

From a quick scan it appears that, as most of the great unwashed do, he mixes up the things that we have discussed extensively here, sex, sexuality, gender, gender identity and social constructs, and seems to do it indiscriminately. So he talks about sex and gender as if they are the same thing, which they are not. He may be walking on this planet but his intellect and mind [0] are someplace else. I don't put much credence on what he said in the article apart from the fact that such "intellectuals" often just make up statistics and theories to fit their own world view and don't really have much relevance to "real life". He's an idiot and one that I can ignore. I disagree, not worth the time taken to read it, which is why I only scanned or speed read it. Much better use of people's time.

[0] No, they aren't the same thing either!

"I basically just made it up"

I'd say if you trace back just about any social custom, you'd find someone who did just this.

My initial "take" on the linked article, and another one I got most of the way through, is that there's more than a whiff of a reactionary bias to it.

I remain deeply sceptical about much of what's getting tossed around today "on campus" and in pop-science, but I also don't dismiss it out-of-hand. The linked article, and the other one as well, was an absolute repudiation of "modern theory" -- hence my interpretation of it.

Sinned wrote:From a quick scan it appears that, as most of the great unwashed do, he mixes up the things that we have discussed extensively here, sex, sexuality, gender, gender identity and social constructs, and seems to do it indiscriminately. So he talks about sex and gender as if they are the same thing, which they are not. He may be walking on this planet but his intellect and mind [0] are someplace else. I don't put much credence on what he said in the article apart from the fact that such "intellectuals" often just make up statistics and theories to fit their own world view and don't really have much relevance to "real life".

The thing is, he doesn't. He's not the "great unwashed" and knows his stuff. He got his PhD in this stuff when it was new, and was one of the early advocates for the exact differences you are talking about.

He talks about how his history was accurate, but his conclusions weren't. He wasn't making up statistics, he was making up the conclusions from cherry-picked facts. I'm not sure he did much with statistics at all.

I would agree that much of the theories pushed out by itellectuals like this guy don't resemble "real life" but rather can have huge, often times disastrous, impacts on the real world when they escape the acedemic bubble.

crfriend wrote:My initial "take" on the linked article, and another one I got most of the way through, is that there's more than a whiff of a reactionary bias to it.

He is in the process of walking away, so sure, but like I said, he didn't renounce all of it.

crfriend wrote:I remain deeply sceptical about much of what's getting tossed around today "on campus" and in pop-science, but I also don't dismiss it out-of-hand. The linked article, and the other one as well, was an absolute repudiation of "modern theory" -- hence my interpretation of it.

Sounds like a healthy scepticism. Articles written by journalists and columnists about science especially, are often just plain wrong, because they don't know what they are talking about. But there are reasons to be sceptical about the actual science at times, too. Especially the "soft sciences"...

I'm curious about the other article. Can you post a link here, or in a new thread? Or just PM me.

Dust wrote:Articles written by journalists and columnists about science especially, are often just plain wrong, because they don't know what they are talking about. But there are reasons to be sceptical about the actual science at times, too. Especially the "soft sciences"...

Well, for one, I do not regard any of the "soft sciences" (e.g. sociology or political science) as sciences at all. Science can be -- and sometimes is -- demonstrably wrong; in the the "soft" ones anything goes no matter how obviously wrong it is.

I'm curious about the other article. Can you post a link here, or in a new thread? Or just PM me.

That'd be the one on The New Patriarchy.

He may have a PhD but that doesn't make him "intelligent", have common sense or have any experience of the "real world". In fact he could have even less experience if he's spent his postgraduate life in academia. It also doesn't exclude him from being one of the great unwashed. He's still talking a flavour of cr*p. I've read more sense and conversed with more erudite people on this site and learnt more.

PhD....Piled Higher & Deeper



Uncle Al

What I consider good, is that he acknowledges that he was partially wrong and full of himself. I have seen many academics who aren't capable of stepping over themselves. The history of gender, a micky-mouse course somewhere?
Books by academics mostly are for 95% citations in order to provide the foundation for ones theories. Statistics are another means of providing proof, but like with questionairs, the answers given are mostly included in the way the question is put.

I like this statement about statistics. "Some individuals use statistics as a drunk man uses lamp-posts — for support rather than for illumination." A. E. Housman

Or, as I've heard in the past:-

'There are lies, damned lies and statistics'