December 28, 2015

"What if I told you that I’m sexist? Well, I am.... To make things worse, I’m an academic, a philosopher..."

Writes Emory philosophy professor George Yancy, purporting to free himself from "the lies that we men like to tell ourselves — that we are beyond the messiness of sexism and male patriarchy, that we don’t oppress women."
This doesn’t mean that I intentionally hate women or that I desire to oppress them. It means that despite my best intentions, I perpetuate sexism every day of my life.... As a sexist, I have failed women. I have failed to speak out when I should have. I have failed to engage critically and extensively their pain and suffering in my writing. I have failed to transcend the rigidity of gender roles in my own life. I have failed to challenge those poisonous assumptions that women are “inferior” to men or to speak out loudly in the company of male philosophers who believe that feminist philosophy is just a nonphilosophical fad. I have been complicit with, and have allowed myself to be seduced by, a country that makes billions of dollars from sexually objectifying women, from pornography, commercials, video games, to Hollywood movies. I am not innocent.

I have been fed a poisonous diet of images that fragment women into mere body parts. I have also been complicit with a dominant male narrative that says that women enjoy being treated like sexual toys. In our collective male imagination, women are “things” to be used for our visual and physical titillation. And even as I know how poisonous and false these sexist assumptions are, I am often ambushed by my own hidden sexism. I continue to see women through the male gaze that belies my best intentions not to sexually objectify them. Our collective male erotic feelings and fantasies are complicit in the degradation of women. And we must be mindful that not all women endure sexual degradation in the same way.
I skimmed this when it came out, on Christmas Eve and have had half a mind to write about it since then. My original idea of what I wanted to say has faded, mainly because I'm reading these 2 paragraphs more closely and realize that he's not admitting to much, in fact, he's promoting himself as a man who understands feminist critique and is aspiring to win admiration for trying to rid himself of aspects of sexism that most men (I think) are not willing to regard as sexism.

I mean, look at these failings. Not transcending the rigidity of gender roles in his own life? (A humblebrag? He's so inherently masculine.) Insufficient loudness in contradiction of male philosophers who diminish feminist philosophy? Acceptance of Hollywood movies? Lack of mindfulness? Lax inclusion in something called the collective male imagination? The real point here is that all men are necessarily embedded in sexism, an affirmative effort is needed to escape from it, he's so enlightened he knows that, and he's so good that he's striving and straining to escape.

On first read, however, I thought the confession of sexism was more damning, and I was going to blog about how a professor is admitting that he subjects his students to different conditions based on their sex, and that is, as a legal matter, sex discrimination. The line "I continue to see women through the male gaze that belies my best intentions not to sexually objectify them" is, actually, rather damning.

On the theory that the confession was damning, I wanted to ask: Why did Yancy feel free to write that? And I wanted to answer: If you go to the link, you'll see that the column is not about sexism. It's about racism. It's called "Dear White America." Yancy is a black man, and he'd like the collective entity called White America to recognize that we are necessarily embedded in racism, and his detailing of his own sexism is presented as a model of how to examine yourself and find the problem in you even though you resist and like to think of yourself as not belonging to the benighted crowd known as racists. So Yancy feels free to write that he's a sexist because it's part of an essay about the racism of white people.

But I felt he was endangering himself, even as he lured others into endangering themselves. Come on, watch me confess. It's good. It's just what we need. But how does he know that? What confidence can we have that this soul-baring exercise will work out well? He is perhaps overconfident, because he enjoys certain privilege as he speaks about race, but he could be wrong about how his confession will be received. Once the words are said, you lose control, and other people, with other agendas, will use those words against you. Ironically, his confidence is patriarchal. He seems to think women will appreciate his efforts and enfold him. Shouldn't part of the confession have been that he assumes women are nice and nurturing and incapable of fighting too hard?

Having done my second read, I have to say, you can follow his model of confessing to racism, but work on your skills. Put your confession in carefully honed writing, and ensure that it works to make you look better than virtually everyone else — the overt racists and the blind, benighted white people who won't admit to being racists. Think you can do that?

147 comments:

Anonymous said...

It all seems like socialist self-criticism. Or like a rather Calvinist notion of original sin.

Bob Ellison said...

The line "I continue to see women through the male gaze that belies my best intentions not to sexually objectify them" is, actually, rather damning.

I find it refreshing. Of course he has animal impulses. We all do, and we try to suppress them in areas like grading, consideration for jobs, and the like.

NPR fired Juan Williams, a very fine center-left journalist, for a similar admission.

Walk Dana Loesch into a panel discussion, and the first thing any heterosexual male will think is "pretty". Probably something similar happens for Barack Obama.

It doesn't mean we turn our brains off and stop suppressing sexual attraction in the search for fairness and merit.

rhhardin said...

I continue to see women through the male gaze that belies my best intentions not to sexually objectify them.

Raritan had a helpful piece on choosing a profitable academic author name for yourself, illustrating it with some well-chosen suggested titles, among them an experiment giving native tribes a movie camera

N!ai The First Tribal Cinema
Bayly Spawforth-Jones Can Tribal Cinema Stabilize San Culture?
Marie Desséchée The Male Gaze in Tribal Cinema

RAH said...

Justifying his moral superiority by social signaling. Stong lack of humility.

MikeR said...

Whipping the sea. He doesn't approve of those aspects of sexism that are the simple reality of what men (and women) are hardwired to be.

Biff said...

Oh, the things that aging professors will write in order to bed their students.

Shouting Thomas said...

I know that you think of yourself as moderate and sensible.

Your moderation and sensible-ness only exists within the insular confines of that wretchedly stupid academic world you inhabit. You long ago lost the ability to even step outside that for a moment. For instance, you think that Camille Paglia actually speaks to moderate middle class sensibilities. She's another silly, insular pedant.

American women never really had a bitch. The few minor ones they did have were quickly fixed in the late 60s and early 70s. Since then, it's been an embarrassing, corrupt spectacle of rich, idle white women like you playing the "I'm a nigger, too!" game for no other purpose than to game the system for perks and advancement, and to put a hammer lock on your pussified and easily cowed colleagues in academia.

Middle class women living outside of academia (and the elite levels of the legal profession) don't even bother with the feminism racket you embrace. And, they don't want to associate with men who play the stupid game this guy is playing. Those women don't even want pansies in hair shirts like Meade. They want real macho men.

JoyD said...

I appreciate this topic and your commentary, and it's interesting to read the professor's words and then reread them the way you have. I'll think about this some more and share with my DIL, and read his further writing, and see how it strikes me. Thanks for a good link this morning.

Sid said...

"Merciful God, we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart. We have failed to be an obedient church. We have not done your will, we have broken your law, we have rebelled against your love, we have not loved our neighbors, and we have not heard the cry of the needy. Forgive us, we pray. Free us for joyful obedience.."

Anonymous said...

"Think you can do that?"

Probably not, and I'm not willing to make the effort.

Better question -- for me, at least -- can it be done? Personally, I don't think so.

Michael said...

Shouting Thomas is correct. Only a very small and insignificant number of women are aware of, much less care about, this. Fewer women than there are midgets. And those that care deeply are employed to talk to each other, to squeeze any latent joy out of their cohorts.

Ann Althouse said...

"'The line "I continue to see women through the male gaze that belies my best intentions not to sexually objectify them" is, actually, rather damning.' I find it refreshing. Of course he has animal impulses. We all do, and we try to suppress them in areas like grading, consideration for jobs, and the like."

It is damning from a legal perspective. The students are entitled to equal educational conditions, and if the professor is continually filtering his interaction with the women through various distractions connected to their sex, the conditions are different for them. It's sex discrimination. A female student, participating in the classroom, should not be subjected to the situation in which the professor is thinking about her in a sexually objectifying way. Now, maybe it's unavoidable, and that's nature, and there's nothing that can be done about it but for the teacher to try to be fair, and Yancy doesn't neglect to say that he's trying. But if professors openly talk about it — write about it in the NYT — and the women now know they are in an environment where when they go to office hours or they speak in class, something different is happening for them than what happens to men, that affects them in additional ways that were not necessitated by natural realities. How would you like your daughter to have to go to office hours to seek help from a professor who was well-known for writing that he can't help but think about his female students' bodies and how sexy they are? How would you like your daughter to be in a seminar, earnestly trying to do well and express her thoughts, with a professor who'd made it known that when females speak, some percentage of his mind in on a sex trip?

Shouting Thomas said...

Your answer is another con job, prof.

Don't you ever get tired of playing that con game?

You've got plenty of money. Can't you find something better to do?

For a smart women, you're awfully stupid.

"How would you like your daughter to be in a seminar, earnestly trying to do well and express her thoughts, with a professor who'd made it known that when females speak, some percentage of his mind in on a sex trip?"

I'd conclude that he's the same as all men have ever been.

chickelit said...

How would you like your daughter to have to go to office hours to seek help from a professor who was well-known for writing that he can't help but think about his female students bodies and how sexy they are? How would you like your daughter to be in a seminar, earnestly trying to do well and express her thoughts, with a professor who'd made it known that when females speak, some percentage of his mind in on a sex trip?

How would you like your son to have a professor like you who takes the word of one man and objectifies it and applies it to all men unless they draft a confession? I'm certainly glad that my son isn't going to UW-Madison. I'm glad that you weren't anywhere near teaching me when I was there.

I'm with Shouting Thomas.

Meade said...

" They want real macho men."

Yeah — real racist macho men, pudgy men, men in cover bands. That's what they want.

Shouting Thomas said...

And, I have daughters and granddaughters.

Fortunately, I don't expect my daughters or granddaughters to stew away their lives in this awful stupid shit to which you've devoted your life.

I expect them to assume that sexual interest is always present in any interaction between a male and a female, and that that's the the way it will always be, too.

What a fetid, ridiculous, boring world it would be if it lived up to your expectations.

How did you get so fucking stupid with this shit?

MikeR said...

"How would you like your daughter to have to go to office hours to seek help from a professor who was well-known for writing that he can't help but think about his female students' bodies and how sexy they are? How would you like your daughter to be in a seminar, earnestly trying to do well and express her thoughts, with a professor who'd made it known that when females speak, some percentage of his mind in on a sex trip?"
Wow. What do they teach girls these days? Yeah, my daughters know that. Time was, everyone knew that. Are only religious people in touch with reality these days?

Bob Ellison said...

Wow, Professor, you seem to have gone into a feminist mind-trip.

I suggested above that it's human nature-- not man-nature or white-male-nature or heterosexual-nature-- to be subject to animal impulse.

How would I like my son to be in a seminar, earnestly trying to do well, with a professor who'd made it known that when men speak, some percentage of his/her mind is on a feminist rampage?

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Ann Althouse said...
It is damning from a legal perspective. The students are entitled to equal educational conditions, and if the professor is continually filtering his interaction with the women through various distractions connected to their sex, the conditions are different for them. It's sex discrimination. A female student, participating in the classroom, should not be subjected to the situation in which the professor is thinking about her in a sexually objectifying way. Now, maybe it's unavoidable, and that's nature, and there's nothing that can be done about it but for the teacher to try to be fair, and Yancy doesn't neglect to say that he's trying. But if professors openly talk about it — write about it in the NYT — and the women now know they are in an environment where when they go to office hours or they speak in class, something different is happening for them than what happens to men, that affects them in additional ways that were not necessitated by natural realities. How would you like your daughter to have to go to office hours to seek help from a professor who was well-known for writing that he can't help but think about his female students' bodies and how sexy they are? How would you like your daughter to be in a seminar, earnestly trying to do well and express her thoughts, with a professor who'd made it known that when females speak, some percentage of his mind in on a sex trip?


This is a little nutty. My daughter is only nine and I have already explained to her that men will watch young women do almost anything, except play golf, simply because they are young and attractive. Much worse than the scenario you envisage would be the situation where I raise a daughter to be clueless about how the world actually works.

David said...

I have no intention of failing to note the sexual appeal (or lack thereof) of women who fall within my gaze. I'm male, and even at my advanced age, that kind of response is unavoidable. I believe that it is hard wired into most of us.

But that does not mean that I have to leer at them, or do other things that will make them uncomfortable. Or judge their professional or personal merits based on their looks. Separating the two does not come naturally. it must be learned, and some (male and female) learn it better than others. Given the law and social climate, it's an important skill to acquire. But the skill does not require filtering out all sexual response. Indeed it may be better to realize that you are having one in order to prevent the response from becoming consequential.

Expat(ish) said...

@althouse - he doesn't say he doesn't do the same to men. Or ponies. So I'm not sure how the women will frame their complaint absent some measurable difference.

Remember, if lawyers are famous for parsing words ("it depends on the meaning of is") then philosophers wrote the parsing rules.

-XC

cubanbob said...

Its moderately interesting in how much can be spun from so little.
Althouse ever the lawyer sagely points out the potential world-of-shit Emory can find itself thanks to this professor. No doubt someone in Emory's Administration also has thought of this as well. And yes, as the father of daughters I do agree with Althouse @ 8.42

Mr. Yancy ought to ponder the philosophical observation that it is better to be thought a fool rather than open ones mouth and remove all doubt.

Ann Althouse said...

"This is a little nutty. My daughter is only nine and I have already explained to her that men will watch young women do almost anything, except play golf, simply because they are young and attractive. Much worse than the scenario you envisage would be the situation where I raise a daughter to be clueless about how the world actually works."

So picture your daughter with twice that many years of learning how the world works and then arriving in a college classroom. Now, have the male professor announce at the beginning of the semester that he likes to be fully open about what the world is really like and he confesses that he's sexually attracted to women and that there are lots of great women students with beautiful bodies in the class and he wants them to know that whenever they speak in class, part of his mind will dwell on their breasts and think about what it would be like to have sex with them. Think your daughter would accept classroom conditions like that?

There's a difference, as I have clearly said in my comments here that you are reacting to, between the reality of how people feel about sex and a professor openly talking about sexually objectifying his students.

chickelit said...

Meade wrote: Yeah — real racist macho men, pudgy men, men in cover bands. That's what they want.

Once upon a time even your vaunted Bob Dylan was a one man cover band. I suggest you walk in those shoes before you condemn them.

Shouting Thomas said...

File Althouse's response under the tag "Feminism Makes You Stupid."

Ann Althouse said...

"How would I like my son to be in a seminar, earnestly trying to do well, with a professor who'd made it known that when men speak, some percentage of his/her mind is on a feminist rampage?"

There is zero reason to think, based on what I've written here, that I would do that. I strongly believe that the teacher needs to treat the students equally and needs to treat them as individuals and as students. And you know what? It really isn't hard to do if you are a professional. Each student is an individual student, there to get an education, and you are in the position of educator. If you can't do that job properly, you should resign. Frankly, if I thought I wasn't doing that, I would have continual moral qualms that would be unbearable and I would resign.

The Godfather said...

It's 1984 and I love Big Brother.

Prof. Althouse teaches that I can get into legal trouble because of my thoughts and feelings. Thought crimes. At least I can get into trouble if I admit my feelings publicly. Then "the women [in Prof. Yancy's class] now know they are in an environment where when they go to office hours or they speak in class, something different is happening for them than what happens to men", etc. But is it different? What evidence is there, in Prof. Althouse's hypothetical world, that Prof. Yancy or any other male professor actually does treat women students differently from men students? Are we supposed, in Prof. Althouse's world, to be incapable of overcoming whatever prejudices and predelictions we have and treating people fairly? Or does it matter? Are the thoughts and feelings themselves enough to constitute the thought crime?

H said...

I find Althouse's perspective insightful, in the following way. There is a common suggestion that the country needs a "conversation about race". But most people who say this really want to have a "conversation" in which white people say, "Racism exists; all white people including me are inherently racist; white people including me must recognize, confess to, and must affirmatively resist their predilection toward racism," and black people nod wisely and say something like "On behalf of black people, I accept your confession and apology." In this conversation (as imagined by its proponents) there is nothing else that white people can legitimately say; any other statement about race would be racist.

SO here we have a black person modeling (and pretty well in my opinion) what he wants white people to say about racism.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Chemical castration is just the ticket for men who want to stop being male. I'm eagerly awaiting a medical cure for my whiteness.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

All the professor in question has done is note that we have inbuilt ways of seeing the world, just as you may not respond in a perfectly equal fashion to a white and black person in otherwise identical situations. This general point seems remarkable only for its lack of novelty.

Bob Ellison said...

Far better to simply lie about it in the NYT. Just write that a woman is a man is a woman is a man is a dog is a pig is a cow. Say a journalist is a Republican is a Democrat is an armadillo. A professor is a car mechanic is a violinist is an astronaut.

That'd be best. Just lie.

Peter said...

"It all seems like socialist self-criticism. Or like a rather Calvinist notion of original sin."

Or medieval flagellants ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellant ).

Mid-Life Lawyer said...

"I admit that I often few women as sexual objects. At times, I am too weak to resist the sexual impulses that occur as a result of my huge penis."

damikesc said...

So, he's sexist for treating women like adults who can handle their own problems. How noble.

The students are entitled to equal educational conditions, and if the professor is continually filtering his interaction with the women through various distractions connected to their sex, the conditions are different for them. It's sex discrimination. A female student, participating in the classroom, should not be subjected to the situation in which the professor is thinking about her in a sexually objectifying way.

At a core level, female professors do the same. To deny it is to deny simple biological reality.

And, to be blunt, women are ALREADY incredibly over-represented in college (which is why "hook-up culture" exists. More women than men means women have to do more things to attract a mate). They seem to be doing just fine. It seems female teachers, at all levels, seem to have a hard time not fucking their male students.

But if professors openly talk about it — write about it in the NYT — and the women now know they are in an environment where when they go to office hours or they speak in class, something different is happening for them than what happens to men, that affects them in additional ways that were not necessitated by natural realities.

...or they could dress appropriately. Given how college girls tend to dress, they are seeking men to stare at their cleavage.

How would you like your daughter to be in a seminar, earnestly trying to do well and express her thoughts, with a professor who'd made it known that when females speak, some percentage of his mind in on a sex trip?

That she's in the real world where the opposite sex wants to have sex. Same as I feel about my sons.

Now, have the male professor announce at the beginning of the semester that he likes to be fully open about what the world is really like and he confesses that he's sexually attracted to women and that there are lots of great women students with beautiful bodies in the class and he wants them to know that whenever they speak in class, part of his mind will dwell on their breasts and think about what it would be like to have sex with them. Think your daughter would accept classroom conditions like that?

Unless you wish to destroy the biological imperative to procreate, good luck in this effort. You're not going to get men to not look at women just as you won't get women to not look at attractive men.

And you know what? It really isn't hard to do if you are a professional.

But you're pretending he doesn't do that.

Can this guy --- pathetic little shit weasel that he is --- not be professional?

Using your logic, no man should ever teach any woman. Except it's women teachers who tend to rape male students with minimal consequences for doing so.

Fernandinande said...

white people who won't admit to being racists.

Whites are the least racist race, and men are less sexist than women.

damikesc said...

I'll be blunt: I don't care, one iota, about what college girls have to deal with. They have knocked that bit of chivalry out of me.

"Boo hoo, the professor is objectifying me in my 'Juicy' short shorts!"

They have a system that is rigged to benefit them and negatively impact males in education from start to finish. College men are fucked over seven ways to Sunday and we STILL have to sit here and bemoan the plight of college girls? Fuck that.

Education has taught girls to be helpless victims. From kindergarten upwards, they are taught that nothing bad is their fault and that they need more help than boys. Sure, boys kill themselves WAY more often and, sure, boys are failing out of school and going to college in massively diminishing numbers --- but they're just boys.

They're not REALLY humans. They like to look at women who dress like hookers on campuses while demanding to be taken seriously. What fools, huh?

Too damned bad for them.

tim in vermont said...

What does "objectify" mean? Is enjoying looking at an attractive girl a thought crime now? It's so hard to keep up with all of these new rules on what I can and can't think and can and can't say. In the sixties the song went "People everywhere just wanna be free." Stupid rubes.

On the plus side, these people are going to have a hard time reproducing. Maybe he could get himself gelded "for the movement."

mtrobertslaw said...

Out with makeup, out with any kind hair care and styling, out with any clothing that in any way brings attention to the female form, and on with the burka and face veil.

There, it's all fixed.

Jason said...

So... If I find a college age woman attractive I can't treat her equally?

This is getting stupider by the minute.

CJinPA said...

I can't bring myself to focus on his clunky "sexism" mea culpa, which is a fig leaf to cover his politically correct racism.

What's clear is that this "white privilege" concept was born and nurtured for years in academia, and its proponents feel it is finally ready to set off into the real world. But they're helicopter parenting it. It still can't survive on its own logic. It's needs the support of billion-dollar academic endowments and the world's most powerful media outlets.

For anyone born in the 60s, raised in the 70s, and emerging from college in the 80s, this is profoundly depressing. The obsession with race was slowly receding, until the politicians and the academic profiteers realized it was taking their power and incomes with it. So now: We'll wallow in race forever. For-ever. The best way to heal our racial wounds, they insist, is to constantly pick at the scab.

After all, our President did not say racism was America's disease that we have to cure. He said it was in America's DNA. We can look forward to tribal tensions for as long as our nation exists. Happy New Year!

JAORE said...

"There's a difference, as I have clearly said in my comments here that you are reacting to, between the reality of how people feel about sex and a professor openly talking about sexually objectifying his students. "

Virtue signaling by a narcissist. I'm better than you are. I'm better than you are. Nanny, nanny, boo-boo.

And, yeah, much better to keep that (nearly universal) feeling well hidden (and, yes, I know "the LAW makes it imperative to deceive). But you MUST admit your racism, homophobia, etc in order to progress.

Cath said...

As others have said, it's not him feeling this way that's weird or surprising, it's the fact of him making the point of writing a public piece about it. My immediate reaction was that he's gotten busted for looking at porn at work, and is trying to do some pre-emptive damage control by demonstrating that he's still one of the good guys because he's "struggling" with it.

Shouting Thomas said...

I can't believe college (or human nature) has dramatically changed since I was an ungraduate in the late 60s.

My female TAs and young female professors were all diligently trying to get in my pants. And, I was happy to oblige.

The male TAs and young male professors seemed equally diligent in their pursuit of undergraduate pussy. And, the female undergraduates seemed to be happy to oblige.

So, let's see, Professor Althouse really believes that TAs and young professors surrounded by 20 year olds reeking of hormones and eager to get laid aren't busy checking out the smorgasbord of meat in their classrooms.

I'm dumbfounded. That shit is my fondest memory of undergrad school. Have the feminist harpies really succeeded in driving this desire to sow one's wild oats out of young people?

AlbertAnonymous said...

More absolute garbage!

Why do some people insist that others have to do some sort of "privilege checking."

I saw this as a race thing almost from the beginning. It's the same theme. You all see me a certain way (which is BS and its own bias/prejudice), so you all have to confess.

Oh and by the way, some idiots will confess thinking it'll all be better, and they'll get crucified and we'll hear "we told you, we told you! Look look you're all racist!"

Whatever you, or some idiots, confess has nothing to do with me. Quit painting me with your broad brush of your own racial views.

Virgil Hilts said...

I know this is not the focus of the conversation, but -- "I have also been complicit with a dominant male narrative that says that women enjoy being treated like sexual toys." WTF? -- Is that really a dominant male narrative? That may be a common them in porn films (from what I have heard!) but I think very few men subscribe to the narrative that women enjoy being treated like sexual toys. Also, Bob Ellison is 100% correct. It is natural for a man to notice a woman's attractiveness and a reasonable man tries to make sure it does not cause him to treat the woman unfairly. If you want to live in a different world, then you are free to advocate for some sort of feminist eugenics that reduces the sex drive of males in future generations. Best of luck with that.

Jason said...

I'll believe that women think that being treated differently by men who find them attractive is a problem when women routinely don fat suits to go on job interviews and show up wearing no makeup.

Jason said...

In related news: The unemployment rate among hot, young women continues to hover around zero.

rhhardin said...

Althouse believes that women's thinking is better than men's, which is a vote for difference after all.

Guys tolerate this.

Chuck said...

It sounds like the 'Confession of Sins' part of church service; customized for 21st Century feminism in the era of microaggressions.

Chuck said...

I just want to say, having read further in the posts, that I would happily watch young women play golf.

LPGA players play like I do; the PGA men are in another dimension that very often I cannot even relate to. Women, at their best, make for beautiful golfers. Ben Hogan said that the best swing he ever saw was Mickey Wright's.

Just please do not make me watch women play softball, basketball or soccer.

tim in vermont said...

Maybe if the female students were required to wear burkas? You know, on account of men being unable to control themselves around them. We might have called them "habits" in the past, but that would be impossible now, so we could go with "burka."

policraticus said...

Confession-brag is the new humble-brag.

It seems like pretty small beer to confess that you react to a more attractive person differently than you do to a less attractive person. That is some rock bottom psychology and biology at work. That is what we used to call "human nature." Of course, it is what you do about that initial reaction that truly defines your morality. To say that you filter your reactions to women through various distractions is really just admitting to a small part of the filtering you do for everyone on different grounds like, gender, race, class, politics, etc. What about the filters he would need to employ meeting someone like me: a white, male, cis, heterosexual, Christian, libertarian, Republican, American, presumed racist? Human nature is what we were put here to rise above. As long as he was able to treat me fairly and judge my work and effort objectively I, for one, don't care if he harbors hate or love for me in his heart. That is beside the point. What would I think if I could make a window into the heart of my daughter's teacher and see the grubby, lustful, twisted perversions he keeps locked up deep down in the dark sub-basements of his soul? If they were truly locked away and played no part in his judgement of her ability, I would find him admirable. But, I'd rather not know, because knowing would force me to do all sorts of filtering, myself. Life is too short to spend time worrying about the inner workings of or fellow human's inner thoughts. It is much easier to look at what they do.

Roger Sweeny said...

I'll say I'm a sexist if you'll say you're a racist. Then we can both get special privileges to make up for all the structural badisms that our confessions prove exist.

Levi Starks said...

Oh my! He's a *gasp* normal man oh the horrors....

jacksonjay said...

Why would a lawyer encourage anyone confess to anything?

Fritz said...

It's pretty well known that boys spend their first six or more years in schools being taught by women who have a subtle bias against boys and their behavior, and favor the girls.

Just think of it as reparations.

Ann Althouse said...

"@althouse - he doesn't say he doesn't do the same to men. Or ponies. So I'm not sure how the women will frame their complaint absent some measurable difference."

Yes, it can be hard to prove something. But I can say that IF something is done then it is illegal sex discrimination, and whether a complaint is made or anything is ever proved, it is still useful to know, especially if you want to try to avoid doing what is illegal. A school should take care to avoid violating rights. And quite aside from the law, there is a moral question. Yancy is a philosopher and concerns himself with morality.

Anyway, Yancy called himself a sexist and is quite clear that he thinks of females differently from the way he thinks of males, not just that he's sexually oriented toward females but that he sexually objectifies females. Does Emory University want to have that reputation? Would it be acceptable if other male professors at Emory piled on and said that they too look upon women as sexual objects. At some point, Emory has a legal problem. But quite aside from when it's actionable, Emory should want to take care to have equal educational conditions.

You know, there was a time, not all that long ago, when male professors would talk openly to each other about which new female students they would most like to have sex with and when they justified literally taking their pick if they could, exploiting their prestige and power. We've progressed since then, but we should worry about the vestiges of that kind of inequality. It's a serious matter, whether you want to face up to it or not.

Sal said...

Our collective male erotic feelings and fantasies are complicit in the degradation of women

If there's one thing women want, it's for men to have fewer erotic feelings and fantasies. Right, ladies?

Fabi said...

I've watched Michelle Wie play golf. It's a good thing, ARM!

Ann Althouse said...

"What does "objectify" mean? Is enjoying looking at an attractive girl a thought crime now? It's so hard to keep up with all of these new rules on what I can and can't think and can and can't say. In the sixties the song went "People everywhere just wanna be free." Stupid rubes."

I'm not talking about thoughts. I'm talking about speech. If you go around confessing that you are a sexist and a racist, there are going to be reactions to that. You are affecting people. That's what speech is for. Yancy is pushing people to disclose far more of their thoughts, to make the whole world your confessional. That could have some healthy effects but it could cause a lot of trouble too.

Sometimes you might look at a colleague or a student (or a client, if you're not in education) and think "I hate him" or "I'd like to kill him." There's no thought crime, but if you chose to speak that thought, your work life is not going to go well. It's simply a terrible idea for teachers to say out loud that they are sexually attracted to their students. It's a completely stupid thing to do.

Gahrie said...

How would you like your daughter to have to go to office hours to seek help from a professor who was well-known for writing that he can't help but think about his female students' bodies and how sexy they are? How would you like your daughter to be in a seminar, earnestly trying to do well and express her thoughts, with a professor who'd made it known that when females speak, some percentage of his mind in on a sex trip?

Given the current status of academia, surely bigger problems are:

Your son has to go to office hours to seek help from a professor who was well-known for writing that she can't help but think about the Patriarchy and how oppressive it is?

Your son is in a seminar, earnestly trying to do well and express his thoughts, with a professor who'd made it known that when males speak, some percentage of her mind is obsessing about male privilege?

Bob Ellison said...

I'd like to see a few links on that, Professor-- "there was a time" "when male professors would talk openly" and all that. A link or two.

The links may not be available. Maybe it's all just old 70s shit.

I was a student at the time.

rhhardin said...

It's a serious matter, whether you want to face up to it or not.

Like grave-digging!

Condillac thought serious was a subgenre of frivolous, not its opposite.

rhhardin said...

Women are in teaching because they're attracted to their students, most of the time.

Original Mike said...

"I strongly believe that the teacher needs to treat the students equally and needs to treat them as individuals and as students. And you know what? It really isn't hard to do if you are a professional."

I never had any problem. I'm somewhat mystified that so many words can be expended on the topic.

rhhardin said...

Your son is in a seminar, earnestly trying to do well and express his thoughts, with a professor who'd made it known that when males speak, some percentage of her mind is obsessing about male privilege?

That's a woman's example that's supposed to work for men.

It doesn't.

Men are used to difficult women. Some of the best romantic comedies are made from it.

rhhardin said...

Some men like women without makeup.

Ann Althouse said...

"Once upon a time even your vaunted Bob Dylan was a one man cover band."

The oldest known usage of "vaunted" (in that adjectival form) is: 1635 A. Stafford Femall Glory To Masculine Rdr. sig. b6v, "Whose meanest perfection so farre excels all your so long vanted masculine merits."

That amused me — vaunted masculine merits — given the context of this thread.

William said...

I'm as sexist as the next guy, but in the workplace environment (which sadly did not resemble a porn set) I endeavored to treat my co workers and subordinates in a fair and respectful way. It's not that high a bar. Also I've noted that it's quite possible for young, pretty women to lose a good deal of their charm if they're consistently lazy or incompetent and for their plainer companions who are smart and fun to work with to become the more desirable coworkers. Sexism is a subjective and variable response. I suppose it's hard wired, but so is a sense of fair play.

Original Mike said...

"You know, there was a time, not all that long ago, when male professors would talk openly to each other about which new female students they would most like to have sex with and when they justified literally taking their pick if they could, exploiting their prestige and power."

I suppose this is true (not sure why I feel this way), however I started teaching in the mid-80s and it never happened in my presence. Not even once.

Ann Althouse said...

Let me refer you to a 2014 post of mine: "The old — but not gone — problem of professors dating students."

It includes a quote from "New Rules About Sex on Campus" (a 1993 Harper's article), by Professor William Kerrigan:

"There is a kind of student I've come across in my career who was working through something that only a professor could help her with. I'm talking about a female student who, for one reason or another, has unnaturally prolonged her virginity.... There have been times when this virginity has been presented to me as something that I... half as an authority figure, can handle — a thing whose preciousness I realize... These relationships exist between adults and can be quite beautiful and genuinely transforming. It's very powerful sexually and psychologically, and because of that power, one can touch a student in a positive way."

traditionalguy said...

Cut the poor guy some slack . The co-eds at Emory are exceptionally sexy when compared to Georgia Tech engineers and Agnes Scott feminists.

rhhardin said...

Audrey: Do you always look like an unmade bed?

Daniel: Uh-oh. You've either taken an immediate dislike to me for some inexplicable reason, or you're flirting with me. Which is it?

Audrey: I'll give you a hint. You're getting warm with the first one.

Daniel: What was the second one again?

- Laws of Attraction

George: No. I want something else from you.

Lucy: No. I am fully aware of your reputation and there's no way you're getting that. No.

George: Getting what?

Lucy: You know. The sex. That's not gonna happen.

George: No, that would be nice, but what I need is a new lead attorney.

- Two Weeks Notice

Bruce Hayden said...

There is plenty of illegal sexual discrimination on campus every day. Every time that a co-ed seduces, or even just has sex with, her prof, her TA, etc., it is sexual discrimination - but not against her, but rather, against the males to whom the prof or TA was not attracted. We all know how it works - the young woman goes to bed with the person with power, and they turn around and reward them, which typically means giving them better grades. Whatever the prof, TA, etc. ultimately gave the young women they slept with is the sexual discrimination, but against the guys who couldn't get such. And, yes, we have all known women to advance themselves in college, and esp. in my memory, law school, in this way. Though I will say that the woman I knew in college who slept with her entire med school recommendation committee did one better (and, yes, she did get into med school, graduate, and practice medicine).

As a woman, I doubt if you were really as aware of this as were the guys being discriminated against. Or, maybe more so. Back then, it bothered me, because I knew the women doing it, who were sleeping with their profs, etc. You would sit next to them in class, know more than they did, etc., and they would get the best grades. And, you knew them well enough that you knew what they had done to get it. What was interesting in law school though was not that it was still going on, but that for some of the profs, it was so blatant. Knew one male prof who was on his third LS student wife back then. He is now getting ready for retirement, and still wears that overly long styled hairdo. I can remember his female students telling me how dreamy he was, and how they were trying to interest him in sex.

cubanbob said...

Blogger Ann Althouse said...

"What does "objectify" mean? Is enjoying looking at an attractive girl a thought crime now? It's so hard to keep up with all of these new rules on what I can and can't think and can and can't say. In the sixties the song went "People everywhere just wanna be free." Stupid rubes."

I'm not talking about thoughts. I'm talking about speech. If you go around confessing that you are a sexist and a racist, there are going to be reactions to that. You are affecting people. That's what speech is for. Yancy is pushing people to disclose far more of their thoughts, to make the whole world your confessional. That could have some healthy effects but it could cause a lot of trouble too.

Sometimes you might look at a colleague or a student (or a client, if you're not in education) and think "I hate him" or "I'd like to kill him." There's no thought crime, but if you chose to speak that thought, your work life is not going to go well. It's simply a terrible idea for teachers to say out loud that they are sexually attracted to their students. It's a completely stupid thing to do.

12/28/15, 10:07 AM"

Perhaps Yancy is trying to come up with a secular form of the confessional booth but who will hear the confession and who will dispense forgiveness? As for your advise, common sense but it takes common sense to recognize common sense.

Shouting Thomas said...

It's a serious matter, whether you want to face up to it or not.

No, it isn't.

It seems a lot more serious since you and your professorial and administrative colleagues have been on a binge of looting guaranteed student loan programs and driving the cost of going to school up 10 fold. The fact that you and your colleagues have dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt on your students so that you can live in luxury makes everything look more serious, but it isn't.

It's still just fucking college. It just used to be possible to escape without a lifetime of debt hanging over you.

Much of that courtesy of the Diversity scam artists peddling your feminist bullshit. How much does the Assistant to the Assistant Provost for Diversity make at UW?

William said...

It's good for a man to sound sensitive and concerned about women's issues. It gives him a leg up in the dating game. But at a certain point it's cringe inducing and no longer a viable tactic. The professor needs to dial it back a few notches, although the bet here is that he has had a fair amount of success with this line........What are the chances of this teacher looking deep within his soul and deciding that his sexism was a part of his African heritage that he must struggle to overcome?

Bruce Hayden said...

expect them to assume that sexual interest is always present in any interaction between a male and a female, and that that's the the way it will always be, too.

Part of the problem in my mind is that a lot of the co-eds any more, at many colleges and universities, dress in such a way that they are easily objectified. As someone above commented - wearing their Juicy hot pants. Also showing a lot of cleavage, etc. I suspect that it would be hard for the guys walking around campus and seeing this every day not to have perpetual hard-ons. So many of the girls dress to be sexually stimulating for the guys. I don't blame the prof one bit - I would think impure thoughts if many of the young women wearing such immodest clothing showed up in my office asking for help, etc. Males are wired to respond to this sort of stimulus, and many of us consider those who don't to be somewhat defective. As do a lot of the women. The question is what you do with that stimulus. I am always reminded of Jimmy Carter, who pointed out his lusting in his heart. Which has always meant to me that he reacted to women as a male would naturally do, then recognizing it, suppress that reaction, and try harder next time.

Still, to some extent, it shouldn't be forgotten that females dress this way for a reason - because it gets male attention. You hear all sorts of excuses - like it is a cute outfit. But, in the end, they mostly know what guys like, or at least those who are the most sexually experienced do, and that is how the more blatant dress. Which typically means accentuating secondary sexual characteristics = showing off their tits, their long smooth legs, perky butt, etc. Their goal is to be sexually objectified (by attracting male attention at a subliminal level), and shouldn't be surprised when guys react that way. And, yes, there are plenty of young women who don't dress that way, and whom their profs don't objectify as much.

jacksonjay said...

Watching females play basketball is unbearable. Set shots and layups.

Paco Wové said...

Trying to follow along at home... so Althouse's primary objection is that this guy came out and said what everybody knows, but should have the brains and decency to keep under wraps?

SGT Ted said...

This is just more SJW bullshit that seeks to demean heterosexual men for enjoying female beauty. That ordinary women enjoy being thought of as sexually attractive is well established fact.

Also, women objectify men for their looks and provisioning capabilities. They routinely use their sex and sexiness as the lure to then use and manipulate men for their own selfish purposes as well. They use their sex to gain undue sympathy through emotional manipulation, playing Little Miss Innocent Victim if they can use it to escape accountability.

That male, heterosexuals, who happen to be professors, would like to sleep with young, pretty girls merely reflects biological reality, Althouse. They talk about it to each other? Crass, but guys do this routinely and it means nothing, as they will never have the opportunity. But, you don't think that there are young women who don't openly talk to each other about wanting to bed a professor they think is hot?

The modern feminist enterprise has ever been about maximizing the sexual freedom of women, while seeking to restrict that of men by demonizing heterosexual male sexuality as predatory. Your sentence about the professors open expression of their sexuality confirms this. Men are to be sexless in dress and comportment in public life, but expecting women to be same is "slutshaming" and "controlling".

Women are encouraged to openly and proudly objectify themselves sexually by dressing to show off their boobs, slim waist and their ass, but when a man notices, he is the bad person? He is the one who is "objectifying women" sexually, for noticing they are dressed up sexy? What bullshit. Again: this is seeking to maximize female sexual freedom while restricting male sexual freedom.

For every professor that wants to use his prestige and power to seduce young, pretty women, there are at least one (and probably more than one) young, pretty woman that would sleep with him to gain favor, power and advantage. Funny how no one seeks to openly police that. Only men are responsible for their sexual predations, while women are routinely given a pass and held unaccountable because of a presumed innocence or youth that somehow grants them privilege un-afforded to males. The female has been "taken advantage of" somehow, even though she was an adult and was well aware of what she was doing. She willingly spread her legs, but only the man is responsible. Little Miss Innocent, taken advantage of by the Big Bad Man. Because "power". Which utterly ignores the very real sexual power of women over men.

This is the dynamic the fake "rape culture" fantasists are using to portray young male college students as predators and women who willingly had sex as "victims". It is a bizarre return to Victorian notions of women as delicate creatures unable to handle the rough world of men and thus in need of special protections. Because "equality".

And there is zero "oppression" of women going on right now in the USA. That's just women playing "Little Miss Victim" on a grand scale.


TWW said...

Too many words. I didn't read it all. The subject isn't worth the time.

Howard said...

Basically, Althouse's point is that the good professor has violated the first and second rule of fight club.

I agree. Women know the score, but it's creepy when some blinkering codger in a corduroy jacket talks openly about it.

SGT Ted said...

"There is a kind of student I've come across in my career who was working through something that only a professor could help her with. I'm talking about a female student who, for one reason or another, has unnaturally prolonged her virginity.... There have been times when this virginity has been presented to me as something that I... half as an authority figure, can handle — a thing whose preciousness I realize... These relationships exist between adults and can be quite beautiful and genuinely transforming. It's very powerful sexually and psychologically, and because of that power, one can touch a student in a positive way."

He writes about an adult women (who may be pretending to be virgins for all we know), using their virginity to try to seduce him by appealing to his vanity, or by genuinely wanting an "experienced" man to deflower them and who willingly came on to him, obviously being attracted to him. Which is the plot line of every bodice ripper romance novel of the last 75 years and many movies aimed at a female audience.

And the problematic one is him alone. The latent Victorian sexual prudery stands out.

Ann Althouse said...

"Trying to follow along at home... so Althouse's primary objection is that this guy came out and said what everybody knows, but should have the brains and decency to keep under wraps?"

My primary object is that this professor is trying very hard to lure people into do something that has a big downside (confessing to racism, in detail). My secondary object is to point out that his sense of privilege in speaking about race seems to have lured him into doing something that has a big downside for him (confessing to sexism, in detail).

Shouting Thomas said...

Let me be more blunt.

The professor is rationalizing here an enormous system of corruption... the bureaucratic maze of the Diversity industry within academia that exists to plunder the guaranteed student loan program. That bureaucracy employs thousands of fag hag feminists devoted to overturning human nature, an impossible task, but one that pays apparatchiks very well.

I don't doubt that she approves of this and thinks it's a very serious endeavor. It lines the pockets of her ideological comrades.

I'm pretty confident that human nature hasn't changed. But the price of going to college has been catastrophically inflated to pay off her comrades, who multiply the insult by singing Dylan songs about freedom as they rip us off and saddle their students with a lifetime debt that forces them into virtual indentured servitude in the job market.

Michael said...

@Althouse: "It's simply a terrible idea for teachers to say out loud that they are sexually attracted to their students. It's a completely stupid thing to do."

It is stupid only because it is obviously true and thus unnecessary. Or should be unnecessary, but the teacher in question may have observed that his students are not as clued in to reality as one would think.

But don't worry about Emory, they are as locked in to PC as possible so even as we write on this thread there are students using their break to plot the over-throw of this dude. Or would have by now had he not been black which will cause some to pause. Especially the administrators because if they so much as give him a mean look they will get a load of his racist fury which they will sorely regret.

Anthony said...

Typical SNAG: Sensitive New Age Guy.

Also a shallow, sexist, narcissist.

Ann Althouse said...

And I don't think "everybody knows" the details of the sexist and racist thoughts in other people's heads. We may have a working theory that there are such thoughts roiling about in the minds of other people, but we only imagine those thoughts and without detail, what we imagine is a meaningless blur, just the general idea of the thoughts, more or less shared by everyone. If an individual decides to speak his particular thoughts, it's very different. First, this is a person who sees fit to say these things, which makes him different, first of all. Second, we know that detail, if detail is given. As my second read of Yancy revealed, he didn't really give any significant detail. It's mostly aspirational mush. He seeks approval from women by displaying himself as exquisitely attentive to things he imagines are cared about by the class of women he aims to please.

Shouting Thomas said...

Kiddies, tuition at the U of IL in 1968, before Althouse and her comrades figured out how to install an army of apparatchiks in their Diversity rackets, was $150 per semester.

Today, it is 10 times that in real dollars adjusted for inflation.

I graduated with zero (0) debt, as did my poor oppressed girlfriend. It didn't matter that much if we landed a job immediately after graduation. We could take some time to "find ourselves."

Today, thanks to the systematic looting of the guaranteed student loan programs by Althouse and her colleagues, you are probably going to graduate with at least $50,000 in debt.

But, Althouse and her comrades have saved you from leering professors!

jaydub said...

I never thought I would agree with much of anything Shouting Thomas or ARM wrote until this thread. Also, IMHO, you can always tell when the professor has lost an argument by the number of follow-up clarifications she has to make. I would say she was trounced in this particular thread.

In the military when males were accused of taking advantage of females it was called sexual harassment, but when females were taking advantage of males it was called sexual politics. There always seemed to be a penalty applied for harassment, but never one for politics, i.e., men were always the ones to suffer the consequences while the women just went on parading their assets, so to speak. I'm not really sure how to relate to anyone who seriously believes men and women aren't equally adept at using their gender to their own advantage, but the professor, whom I admire, is way out in left field on this one, even if the point she is trying to make involves that which is or is not acceptible to say in public.

SGT Ted said...

My primary object is that this professor is trying very hard to lure people into do something that has a big downside (confessing to racism, in detail). My secondary object is to point out that his sense of privilege in speaking about race seems to have lured him into doing something that has a big downside for him (confessing to sexism, in detail).

He appears to be engaging in the fashionable sort of self flagellation that progressive white males are expected to say in regards to their inherent racism due to "white privilege". What he says about being a sexist is routinely said by self proclaimed feminist men, who must acknowledge their "Male privilege" and all that rot, thus confessing their Social Justice sins before the tribe.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Ann Althouse said...And I don't think "everybody knows" the details of the sexist and racist thoughts in other people's heads.

Of course everyone knows, Professor! Everyone knows the opposition to President Obama--excuse me, the "historic opposition" is racist or, at best, partially based on racism. People who oppose the Left or who are even a little to out of line with Leftist thinking are racists, bigots, and homophobes. This is known! They cling bitterly to their prejudices and since that's the case we don't have to be fair to them, don't have to treat them with any respect, don't have to engage with them in any honest way--we can simply dismiss, attack, and mock.

You've listened to the President, read the NYTimes editorial page, and watched the Daily Show and Colbert Report; you know all this.

n.n said...

A philosophy of nothing or selective principles. The professor needs to discover individual dignity and intrinsic value, then personal integrity will follow.

Paco Wové said...

"the details of the sexist ... thoughts"

There's a conflation of "sexist" and "sexual" going on all over the place here. Yancy started it, but you seem to be playing along. Sexual thoughts are not ipso facto sexist. And heterosexual people can – and do! – have sexual thoughts about people of the opposite sex – ALL THE TIME – and not have it cripple their ability to interact with them.

As to your primary objection, I agree completely. Yancy is confessing to what he perceives as a minor sin, in the hopes of getting others to confess to major crimes.

rhhardin said...

I'd be a racist, under the classical definition, not by experience but by theory.

The average black IQ in the US is 86, and the average sub-saharan black IQ is 76, measured by people who are every reason to try to unconfound the measurements from everything but native intelligence.

My own experience is no difference, but I meet blacks in my school and blacks in my college, back when they made it there on their own merits.

My own experience also is that IQ doesn't matter. What matters is good character.

That in turn depends on who you're taught to admire, or better what you're taught to admire.

What's changed drastically is what black kids are taught to admire, with a link to no father in the home, which has a link to what Moynahan said - the state is destroying black families.

As to that IQ racism, the only place it matters is outcome-based civil rights laws. They'll fail and make things worse.

Go for good character.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Ann Althouse said...There's a difference, as I have clearly said in my comments here that you are reacting to, between the reality of how people feel about sex and a professor openly talking about sexually objectifying his students.

Let's work by analogy and think about, I dunno, a male conservative student in the class of an outspoken feminist sociologist professor. A professor who'd written editorials calling all men potential rapists, or justifying punishing men based on just an accusation (w/o evidence), or supporting unequal treatment for men in order to help women overcome historical oppression--something like that. A fair number of college professors have been quite vocal about their dislike for Republicans. If you're a Republican in that class and you know the professor's expressed opinions, does that not create a hostile environment for you? I know, I know, ideology isn't a special category like race or gender, but we're talking about morality here, so isn't that an analogous situation? I don't remember hearing too much sympathy for such students, though, it's usually more like "oh the Professor is a professional, those opinions won't influence how they treat students, you're just whining and need to grow up/realize this is the real world/leave if you can't take it," that kind of thing.

Is the only objection that his particular confession is on a topic/of a kind that might be legally actionable, or do you have a problem with people in positions of power in a University making known their mental habits and opinions when doing so might make the environment less welcoming for some students? If so we really ought to see vigorous crusades taken up by Administrators and teachers for more ideological diversity/balance in the University, oughtn't we??

rhhardin said...

The professor's secret agenda, secret even from himself, falls under lit. crit.

So long as it's not a judge instinct, it's only one step in a very large game.

Pope's Essay on Criticism has all the moves.

tim in vermont said...

It's simply a terrible idea for teachers to say out loud that they are sexually attracted to their students. It's a completely stupid thing to do.

No argument there. And I suppose it is true that not all men are attracted to women that young. I know that I no longer am in any serious way, anyway, I mean beyond an admiring thought perhaps following a discreet glance. Once they open their mouths it's all over anyway, for me. So I guess confessing is really confessing to something.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Now all of this discussion about the dangers of admitting one's sexism (even when doing so as a nakedly self-serving virtue signaling maneuver) has distracted us from the real question:

What does this presumably well-paid and well-respected black professor at prestigious, exclusive, expensive (private) Emory University want me, a less-important, less-powerful white man to do, exactly? I mean, my standard question is how much the writer expects me to pay. Is there a number, and amount attached to this particular editorial? I doubt very much the end game is just getting me to say "yes, I admit, I am irredeemably racist" unless perhaps I'm doing so while kneeling on broken glass. So: how much am I supposed to pay now?

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Shouting Thomas said...Today, thanks to the systematic looting of the guaranteed student loan programs by Althouse and her colleagues, you are probably going to graduate with at least $50,000 in debt.

My dear Thomas, Emory's tuition is about $47k per YEAR now. It's quite a nice campus, though (I live just down the street), and they really do attract some great professors, but getting out with less than $100k of debt is a challenge for most students who don't manage to get full scholarships.

Jason said...

Needs a "bullshit" tag.

T said...

This post is simply chock full of false premeses:

"I have failed to transcend the rigidity of gender roles in my own life." IOW gender roles based upon sex differences (men are physically stronger, women have a better penchant for linguistic skills, etc.) are inherently wrong and something to be overcome.

"I have failed to challenge those poisonous assumptions that women are “inferior” to men . . . ." IOW those sexual differences only exist to create the premise that women are inferior to men.

"In our collective male imagination, women are “things” to be used for our visual and physical titillation." Projection, much? Speak for yourself Mr. academician, Mr. philosopher.

"I have failed to engage critically and extensively their pain and suffering in my writing. [snip] I continue to see women through the male gaze that belies my best intentions not to sexually objectify them. Our collective male erotic feelings and fantasies are complicit in the degradation of women." IOW, men see women as their sexual complement (quelle horreur, men see women as women) and that fact alone objectifies women. Again, projection, much? Clearly men should see women the way women see women; nothing like buying into the feminist perception which is, as Ann Althouse has frequently noted: You can say anything you want about the difference between the sexes as long as you say that women are better.

An academic? A philosopher? Nah, a gamma-male cartoon!

Jason said...

The average student loan debt for new graduates who have student loan debt is just over $30k.

Bruce Hayden said...

What is interesting to me about Ann's theory that this guy is trying to seduce us to admit that we are racists based on his admission of being sexist is that the two are very different. I don't respond instinctively to Blacks here like I do to comely females With blacks, at least to me, the way I respond to them is based on my fear factor. If they are pretty much anything besides late teens to.early twenties males dressed as gang bangers, I really don't treat them any differently from comparable whites. And, yes, my fear of young black males dressed as gang bangers is rational - Blacks commit approximately half the violent crime in this country, while being maybe 15% of the population, and most of it is by those late teens and early twenties males. I fully expect the same response from a black college academic, if he were being honest. Maybe more dramatic, since most f their victims are other blacks. Which maybe is to say that the type of racism he wants us to address is not instinctive, and can be mostly overcome if you work on it, while the sexism he talks about is hard wired into our species - which is good, since it helps perpetuate the species.

Fen said...

"It means that despite my best intentions, I perpetuate sexism every day of my life"

Bullshit.

Next up, the professor will admit he has a thing for little girls, and that the rest of us should match his bravery by admitting we have the same problem.

Fen said...

Denial of your lust for little girls only shows how big a problem you have

damikesc said...

Also I've noted that it's quite possible for young, pretty women to lose a good deal of their charm if they're consistently lazy or incompetent and for their plainer companions who are smart and fun to work with to become the more desirable coworkers.

True. A gorgeous body is nice to look at, but it if attached to a crap personality...well, every gorgeous girl has plenty of guys who are sick of her shit. They tend to be the ones bemoaning the lack of good men to date when they hit their 30's and gravity starts to betray them.

Ditto, no doubt, for gorgeous men.

Watching females play basketball is unbearable. Set shots and layups.

I watched the NCAA Women's Finals because my alma mater was playing in it --- and lost. It was the sloppiest nonsense I've seen. Turnovers constantly. Missed layups. Just terrible. It wasn't more fundamentally sound" unless the fundamentals include bas passing, bad shooting, and bad ball handling.

And I don't think "everybody knows" the details of the sexist and racist thoughts in other people's heads. We may have a working theory that there are such thoughts roiling about in the minds of other people, but we only imagine those thoughts and without detail, what we imagine is a meaningless blur, just the general idea of the thoughts, more or less shared by everyone.

Is there really any doubt that hetero men will look at a woman who has her tits hanging out? I'm happily married and I do it (hell, my wife does it far more than I do). If a woman doesn't want a dude checking out her body, then don't dress in a way to accentuate it. Women can be quite attractive without you seeing everything but the nipple.

He seeks approval from women by displaying himself as exquisitely attentive to things he imagines are cared about by the class of women he aims to please.

As a hint, that is the case with every male feminist. They pretend to care to get in the feminists' pants. I've seen enough feminists to know that it isn't worth that level of effort.

There always seemed to be a penalty applied for harassment, but never one for politics, i.e., men were always the ones to suffer the consequences while the women just went on parading their assets, so to speak.

Look at the difference in treatment of male teachers who are caught having sex with female students and female teachers having sex with male students. Penalty is almost always much lower for the woman because the boy "isn't really damaged" and "he wanted it".

And, yeah, the boy probably wanted it. The girl who fucked her male teacher ALSO probably wanted it. Only one is viewed seriously.

No argument there. And I suppose it is true that not all men are attracted to women that young. I know that I no longer am in any serious way, anyway, I mean beyond an admiring thought perhaps following a discreet glance. Once they open their mouths it's all over anyway, for me. So I guess confessing is really confessing to something.

I'm the same. But a base, physical level --- yeah, I'd like to nail one. That's life. I'm also quite good at controlling urges and recognize that college girls are too crazy for it to be worth it.

Rusty said...

Meh.
As a superior to your students you can think whatever you want.
You can look, but not touch.
You can admire, but not verbalize.
Do your job.
Don't fuck your bread.
Simple.

Seeing Red said...

Will my boobs get me an "A?" Why do I care?

We know how the game is played and we use the assets we have.

Some in the animal kingdom strut and ignore, others shake their tail feathers. This is biology. It hasn't changed in a hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

In case you haven't noticed, Wymyn have been running this country for the past 50 years. And a fine job they're doing....not! The more they get, the more unhappy harpies they seem to become. The only thing he did was violate the unspoken rules by actually stating the rules.

And what about the war on men and too few make primary school teachers?

Michael said...

HoodlumDoodlum

You have the right question. If you read his article on racism, and you believe him, then you are not being asked to feel guilt and not being asked for an apology for your whiteness. You are being asked to acknowledge the obvious which is that by a stroke of luck you were not born black in the US. OK, done. Now what would you have us do, Professor, that would both satisfy you and get you to shut up?

If you read the Professor's QV you will see that he is nominally trained in Philosophy but wallows instead in race "theory" and the topic of whiteness. In other words, abject bullshit and gibberish.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

I stand corrected on the golf. In future I will inform my daughter that at least some men will happily watch young attractive women do literally anything.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Personally I think we should all feel sorry for this professor--it's not his fault, after all. I blame the female students; they're probably so hot it makes the professor sexist.

She's so hot it's making me sexist...bitch!


FOTC: Boom

Unknown said...

Is it too much to simply acknowledge that we are born into a race, a sex, a locale and that part of our life is spent defending our sex, our race, our family and place of origin and that it is nearly inevitable that we become defenders of our race, sex and origins? don't we each think our race is the best of the available choices? very few people decide they would rather be another sex, very few people extol the virtues of races other than their own. Why should it surprise anyone that women feel superior to men and vice versa?

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Jason: From College Factual website

The Average Loan Amount for All Undergrads at Emory University is $6,453 Per Year.

39.0% of all undergraduate students at Emory University utilize federal student loans to help pay for their college education, averaging $6,453 per year. This amount is 24.7% higher than the $5,176 amount borrowed by freshmen, indicating an increasing gap between available funds and college costs, and an increasing reliance on student loans.

Should you borrow at the average loan rate each year, over the course of two years you will have borrowed $12,906 over four year $25,812.


I note this is the average of the Federal loan amount and I couldn't find anything about the distribution (of amts), so I'm not entirely sure I buy an assertion that the average student with loans has about $30k after 4 years, but your $30k looks right for what info we have. Note also that this is just federal ed loans, so there could be more loan $ owed (to private lenders, etc).

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Yancey is safe from a Cosbying as long as he goes after Whitey.

J said...

Combine Catholic flagellation with COM SOC self-criticism and what do you get?The modern male academic.

T said...

"Why should it surprise anyone that women feel superior to men and vice versa?" [Kieth Nissan @1:24 pm]

What surprises me is that certain people such as our academician/philosopher feel inferior just because they are not women.

mikee said...

My vision has become fuzzy for objects less than a yard or two away from my face. And my astigmatism makes objects farther than a few yards away pretty fuzzy too. While my sight is corrected to 20/20 with use of glasses, I'd like a formal dispensation against having an objectifying gaze when not wearing my prescription bifocals, at least for women withing the distances 0 to 2 yards, and 5 yards to infinity.

Any women from 2 yards to 5 yards are pretty clear in my unaided vision, and I'll admit to admiring them as I see fit, and to hell with anyone who objects to this purely internal activity of mine. Such people are silly and deserve only ridicule.

Rick67 said...

This seems to be an increasingly common rhetorical tactic. "Look how humble I am, I ask you to confess your sins... but wait! see? I confess my own first! now... please confess yours (more specifically the sins that I say you should confess, see my opening paragraphs)". There's a sense in which the accuser presents himself as a "fellow sinner"... in order to help nudge us toward confessing what the accuser wants us to confess. It's manipulation dressed up as humility.

What also occurs to me is the nature of the sins this professor confesses and wants us to confess. They don't seem very personal or specific. Not "this is the bad thing I did" so much as "I am guilty as a member of a particular group, a group that benefits from this corrupt system".

Fernandinande said...

Jason said...
Needs a "bullshit" tag.


That's covered by the "feminism" tag.

Michael said...
You are being asked to acknowledge the obvious which is that by a stroke of luck you were not born black in the US. OK, done....

If you read the Professor's QV you will see that he is nominally trained in Philosophy but wallows instead in race "theory" and the topic of whiteness. In other words, abject bullshit and gibberish.


So how many of those lucky (and naughty!) white people have cushy sinecures spouting bullshit?

Paco Wové said...

"What also occurs to me is the nature of the sins this professor confesses..."

"I am guilty — of being a throbbing hunk of burning love!"

Michael said...

Ferandinande

Legions. I am afraid there are legions.

jr565 said...

""What if I told you that I’m sexist? Well, I am.... To make things worse, I’m an academic, a philosopher..."


Writes Emory philosophy professor George Yancy, purporting to free himself from "the lies that we men like to tell ourselves — that we are beyond the messiness of sexism and male patriarchy, that we don’t oppress women."

What if I told you that I'm not sexist?
Nice of you to own up to your own sexism, professor. Such admissions should get you canned from teaching. However, you do not speak for me, simply because you admit you are a troglodyte and you happen to share my gender.
Why are you such a sexist? I wouldn't have necessarily leveled the charge against you, except YOU are saying you are a sexist. Well then, if you label yourself that way, then who am I to argue otherwise.
Make way for the non sexists, sir.


jr565 said...

I bet he's also white privileged. Self confessed.
Sounds like a real scumbag.
He should be hung from a rafter.

n.n said...

Why should it surprise anyone that women feel superior to men and vice versa?

Because it is not a general condition of men and women, but of individual male and female supremacists with a narcissistic personality or god-complex (e.g. Feminists).

Birkel said...

I wonder if all the men in shorts in Althouse's classes feel they are treated differently because they are male (protected class) and in shorts (choice)?

Althouse has confessed how she feels and only described males in shorts negatively.

After all, it's about students feelings not actual treatment, right, Althouse?

jr565 said...

"So picture your daughter with twice that many years of learning how the world works and then arriving in a college classroom. Now, have the male professor announce at the beginning of the semester that he likes to be fully open about what the world is really like and he confesses that he's sexually attracted to women and that there are lots of great women students with beautiful bodies in the class and he wants them to know that whenever they speak in class, part of his mind will dwell on their breasts and think about what it would be like to have sex with them. Think your daughter would accept classroom conditions like that?"

OR picture the scene in the first Indiana jones movie where a still youngish Indy is teaching his college class and all the women are swooning over him. And then he looks at one woman who closes her eyes to reveal "love you" written on her eyelids.

jr565 said...

Just because you view someone sexually does not mean you view them ONLY sexually. So this objectification argument is really trying to turn sexual attraction into an evil thing.
Many feminists are fugly, and so have this chip on their shoulder that men, or other women, are not in fact looking at them the way they want to be looked at. And so it turns from resentment to anger.
If no one looks at them that way, its wrong to look at other people that way.
Do feminists think no women ever looked at Duran duran or One direction pictures with lust in their hearts? That's not objectification?
Even the quarterback gets looked at as an object. SO?

Drago said...

What's a little public Maoist self-criticism between "friends"?

jr565 said...

"called "Dear White America." Yancy is a black man, and he'd like the collective entity called White America to recognize that we are necessarily embedded in racism, and his detailing of his own sexism is presented as a model of how to examine yourself and find the problem in you even though you resist and like to think of yourself as not belonging to the benighted crowd known as racists"
Ah, he's actually black, so can't be white privileged. As a professor though, he sounds privileged. He's certainly male privileged. And maybe he sexism is a black thing.
Those blacks really need to own up to their sexism, I tell you.
He's not speaking for me since, he's a black guy. And its a black thing, so I wouldn't understand. But yes, he's right. Black men are sexists. They really need to atone for that sin.
Maybe some reparations are in order. The reparations that crack Emcee wanted for our white racism, would go to the blacks, and theyd in turn give it to the black women who they objectified all these years. Damn Sexists!

Just look at that video where the lady walks down the street and gets dozens of men catcalling her. ALl the men are black or Hispanic.
So, maybe this professor is right.

effinayright said...

"It is damning from a legal perspective. The students are entitled to equal educational conditions, and if the professor is continually filtering his interaction with the women through various distractions connected to their sex, the conditions are different for them. It's sex discrimination. A female student, participating in the classroom, should not be subjected to the situation in which the professor is thinking about her in a sexually objectifying way. Now, maybe it's unavoidable, and that's nature, and there's nothing that can be done about it but for the teacher to try to be fair, and Yancy doesn't neglect to say that he's trying.

Want to solve this "problem", of attraction to females? Put burkahs on them!

Bob Ellison said...

Not good.

"You know, there was a time, not all that long ago, when male professors would talk openly to each other about which new female students they would most like to have sex with and when they justified literally taking their pick if they could, exploiting their prestige and power."

Show the evidence. I'm really curious. I've been curious about lots of crimes. This one sounds awful. Can you back it up?

Lewis Wetzel said...

In the article, Yancy is defining himself. He is also defining all the members of that non-me group called 'white people'. This makes his racism ideas a lie (one of the characteristics of racism is that people are not allowed to define themselves), and mocks the idea that he is contrite over his confessed sexism.

Hyphenated American said...

I wonder why he did not confess of being racist against white and Asian people?

Birkel said...

So men in shorts feel put upon by Althouse, as men, and as such UW-Madison is in an ethically and morally difficult situation? How could Althouse possibly put aside her prejudices?

Or is Althouse somehow superior to professors with different prejudices? Is Althouse uniquely capable of setting aside her prejudices?

If not, what differentiates Althouse? And if nothing does, is it not possible other people can similarly set aside their personal feelings - publicly professed - and great people equitably?

Confess, Althouse!

Michael K said...

Man ! I got through about a dozen comm,tents and gave up. The professor sounds like Pajama Boy a few years older. Not "grown up" mind you.

You sound like the perfect audience for this crap.

I have four grand daughters. One , the oldest, is 13 and will be a handful for her mother as she is already staking her claim to the battle of the sexes. Girls learn this stuff by 13 no matter how much you lie to them. Did you have any other children, Ann or is your gay son the only example you have.?

Big Mike said...

George Yancy believes that white people think he's stupid because he's black. The reality is that white people think he's stupid because he really is stupid.

SGT Ted said...

Just because you view someone sexually does not mean you view them ONLY sexually. So this objectification argument is really trying to turn sexual attraction into an evil thing.

But, only when it's heterosexual men's sexual attraction towards women.

Many feminists are fugly, and so have this chip on their shoulder that men, or other women, are not in fact looking at them the way they want to be looked at. And so it turns from resentment to anger.

Only when it's hetero men openly expressing their sexual attraction towards women.

Lesbians and gay men get to celebrate their open sexuality with street fairs and have parades, complete with ass-less chaps and public sex acts.

But, hetero men? Those guys are pigs.

Michael K said...

"Lesbians and gay men get to celebrate their open sexuality "

I have a friend who is an operating room nurse. She tells me that the lesbians constantly gossip about their sexual adventures and dare the hetero nurses to complain. They know it is no use. The hospital administration is cowed just like university administrations are cowed, if not open allies.

JamesB.BKK said...

Just too redundant for him to confess to being an obsessed racist with his preening "confession" of sexism? Or, racialist, in case he has immunity, because not-white.

jr565 said...

Sgt Ted, I have to admit, you highlighted the double standard quite accurately.

Anonymous said...

The male professor is an arrogant prick. He uses his position to basically creep out his female students. To what purpose, who knows, maybe just to prove he can get away with being a creep. As for the male commenters on these comment sections, what a collection of misogynist jackasses. I don't know how Althouse can stand you jerks.

Paco Wové said...

we loves you too, Amanda. ((smooches))

Gahrie said...

As for the male commenters on these comment sections, what a collection of misogynist jackasses.

You forgot Patriarchal Oppressors. (I'm really proud of that one)

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Amanda is almost certainly Meade's sock puppet.

Birkel said...

I like how Amanda uses the term prick so casually. Is this a reference to male anatomy? If so, how can I not notice that Amanda is objectifying this man, and by extension all men?

We men are more than our sex organs, after all.

For all we know, by the way, some of the female students may not be creeped out. Some of them may find certain types of male attention pleasant. Amanda assumes too much. Yet at the same time Amanda cannot discern the motivations of the professor who looks at female students. It is odd that your powers of knowing things come and go so quickly, Amanda.

Men in shorts ever feel oppressed in your classroom, Althouse?