Sunday Times: "Extreme feminists" have used moderate feminism as a Trojan horse

[Unwind]

www.dylan.org.uk/fruitbat_freedom.html

supposedly published in today's Sunday Times



Evans gives his version of an internal, confidential, HR matter and then witters on about some straw man extreme feminism


he must have good connections to get that lot of tripe published



here is a less partisan summary of the fruit bat story:
www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/gene-kerrigan/gene-kerrigan-old-prejudices-rear-head-in-batsex-row-2191181.html

[Sakura]

Urgh... I needed a cold shower after reading that.
He's very.. umm.. preoccupied with women and female sexuality, isn't he

And he seems to believe he knows an awful lot about women... things that women themselves don't even know... Bordering on delusional, I would say

" Men are viewed as disgusting perverts or ? even worse, perhaps ? subtle seducers against whose devious schemes all decent ladies must constantly be on the alert."

All decent ladies? Gotta be a madonna/whore complex

[Sakura]

"my right to free speech obliges you to have a certain level of toughness and resilience"

In other words: I have the right to say whatever the hell I like to you, and you have to have the toughness to put up with it.

What is he on????

[loscann]

Ugh this guy is such a scumbag.

Love that Gene Kerrigan article - didn't even realise it existed before now. The vast majority of coverage of the story has been 'hur, hur, hur' at best and 'fucking whiny women, thinking they have a right not to be harrassed at work' at worst.

I cannot believe that 'don't make creepy jokes about blow jobs at work' is so hard to fucking understand.

The woman in question was not only named and shamed in Irish newspapers - they published pictures of her HOUSE in the Independent.

All coverage has been of the fact that the court squashed his punishment because they felt it was too severe - BUT they UPHELD the finding that it was sexual harrassment. So all this talk of being 'vindicated' blah blah blah is garbage.

[Sakura]

yes, he was very good wasn't he. Gene Kerrigan... I'm going to remember that name. Going on the list I'm compiling of feminist men (whether they like it or not )

[nooka]

I's all a bit "I can do whatever I like" isn't it? No apology to the woman who he upset so much that she felt she had to complain about it, no acknowledgment that he did anything wrong at all, or even that he was perceived to have done wrong. Most people who inadvertently cause offense are mortified.

I love the other article it's nicely worded especially: "(By the way, while fully accepting Dr Evans's claim not to have disclosed the confidential documents, I suggest he ask Mr Lukianoff to delete from the Huffington Post the claim that, "I just received the official documentation from Professor Evans". It doesn't look good.)"

So not only did he harass her (this was upheld) but now he appears to have disclose confidential papers so that the poor woman has been dragged through the media too. It doesn't seem very unreasonable to think that this chap is really quite unpleasant.

[Unwind]

mention of that "Institute of Ideas numpty" prompted me to google for

"institute of ideas" "dylan evans"


no surprise that he is a contributor

the whole Evolutionary Psychology and Living Marxism stuff is very creepy

[MillyR]

As far as I understand it the situation is as follows:

A woman said Evans sexually harassed her.

The University upheld her complaint.

Evans disputed it and it went to court.

The court upheld her complaint.

The University instigated proceedings against Evans for breaching confidentiality as there is allegedly evidence that he supplied confidential documents related to the harassment incidents to the press and posted them on the internet. This disciplinary matter has not yet been completed.

I imagine the outcome of this will be that the woman receives some kind of compensation for the breach in confidentiality, and if found responsible for the confidentiality breach, Evans will lose his job and find it very hard to get employment at another institution. Even people who supported him initially have said that he uploaded documents to the internet.

Very few people are still supporting him, because regardless of what they think of the rights and wrongs of the individual complaint, his behaviour in breaching confidentiality is insupportable. The Times is behaving badly by allowing him to air his opinions and he is behaving ludicrously by still going on in the public sphere about what should have been an internal university matter.

[sethstarkaddersmum]

The Sunday Times loves to run antifeminist articles, even more so than the Mail and the Telegraph.
The thing he seems to gloss over is that (according to the Gene Kerrigan piece) this was the culmination of a series of incidents rather than a perfectly random one-off 'bloke innocently mentions fruitbat sex to random woman and turns out to have been unlucky enough to have hit upon loony feminist' occurrence.

[Unwind]

The media are still supporting him, even though the court found that he was guilty of sexual harassment. UCC is having its name dragged through the mud, as is the woman who made the complaint.
Reading the news coverage, it is almost all in his favour. Here are the headlines from Google news:


Sanctions against lecturer in bat sex case lifted by court
Irish Times - ‎Dec 1, 2010‎
A LECTURER at University College Cork has won a High Court order quashing sanctions imposed on him following an inquiry into sexual harassment allegations ...


Sanctions against UCC lecturer quashed
RTE.ie - ‎Dec 1, 2010‎
The High Court has quashed the sanctions imposed on a UCC lecturer after he showed a female colleague a scientific paper about the sex life of fruit bats. ...


Biologist Prevails in Case of 'Fruit Bat Fellatio' Harassment Allegations
Science Now - John Bohannon, Eli Kintisch - ‎Dec 2, 2010‎
Dylan Evans is breathing a sigh of relief. The biologist at University College Cork in Ireland was required by the school to attend 2 years of counseling ...


'Fruit bat fellatio' lecturer wins legal challenge to UCC sanctions
thejournal.ie - ‎Dec 2, 2010‎
THE UNIVERSITY LECTURER sanctioned by his college for sexual harassment after he presented a paper on oral sex in bats to a colleague has had his sanctions ...


Fruit bat fellatio lecturer wins High Court case
JOE - ‎Dec 2, 2010‎
UCC behavioural science lecturer Dr Dylan Evans won a high court order to have sanctions imposed on him by his University quashed. ...


Fruit bat sex lecturer wins case against unfair penalty
Irish Independent - Tim Healy, Katherine Donnelly - ‎Dec 1, 2010‎
THE penalties imposed on a university lecturer who showed a female colleague an academic paper on the sex life of fruit ...


'Bat' lecturer succeeds in quashing sanctions
Irish Examiner - Vivion Kilfeather, Catherine Shanahan - ‎Dec 1, 2010‎
A LECTURER has succeeded in quashing sanctions imposed by his employer following an inquiry into sexual ...


Court quashes harassment sanctions against UCC lecturer
Newstalk 106-108 fm - ‎Dec 1, 2010‎
The High Court has ruled the sanctions handed down to a lecturer for sexual harassment after he showed a female colleague a scientific paper about the sex ...

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

"But the harm must be real and severe before we consider curtailing this basic right."

And no harm done to women in terms of creeping them the fuck out at work, can be considered real or severe. Because they are not people, like me, the great Dylan Evans.

Another case for the (it's a joke Dylan before you wet your pants - corresponding toughness please) hiring of a giant great man to follow the bloke around leering at him and making suggestive remarks about bumsex.

I have no idea who thinks the "feminists think that women are feeble and need protecting" argument is a goodun - er, dumbasses, most feminists are women? Unless you think there are two classes of females, "women" and "feminists" and the big butch overprotective feminists want to protect the fainting women from harm, this argument makes no sense whatsoever.

[ISNT]

Well, I have to say, that reading that bloke's defence of himself, and what he has to say, he comes across as someone I would not really want to spend time with. He comes across as very creepy, and unpleasant.

Funny that he should manage to confirm what a lot of people thought, in an article supposed to show what a top bloke he is.

That Irish Independent article is great.

I also agree that these living marxism types are outrageously dodgy, I had never even heard of them before that other thread about the radio program.

[scallopsrgreat]

I work at a university and Dylan Evans really seems to be endowed with the same sense of entitlement that a lot of academics I have come across have.

He argues "What sort of environment do we want adults to spend their working lives in? And is the kindergarten model, which treats us all as big babies in need of protection, compatible with a vigorous intellectual life?" when in fact it could be argued his behaviour was childish at best.

In fact Gene Kerrigan argues that very point: "I'm not saying I've never behaved in similar ways myself -- but I was around 14 at the time. Academic freedom my ass." which kind of sums it up succinctly really!

[Sakura]

Elephants your post was inspired haha!

[loscann]

It will be very interesting to see what kind of coverage UCC's suit against him for leaking the documents receives.

[Unrulysun]

I will volunteer to follow him around making loud remarks about tiny penises? Will that work?

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

How big and scary are you, Unruly?

Worried he will like the penis talk. Think he needs to know how it feels to think that someone he can't escape is wondering about sex with him against his will. Maybe carrying a giant vibrator called "the manetrator" would help?

[AliceWorld]

How dare he undermine and trivialise the importance of academic freedom in order to justify this?! Looking though his publications, wtf does fruit bat fellatio have to do with his research and wtf does it have to do with that of a dietician, and how can he find 12 people that that research is relevant to do in their academic work? Academic freedom is not about being able to say what they hell you like to anyone! If he wants to defend it, he should not abuse it!

And what you all said too

[HerBeatitude]

"Unless you think there are two classes of females, "women" and "feminists" and the big butch overprotective feminists want to protect the fainting women from harm, this argument makes no sense whatsoever."

Well the thing is, that's what he does think, so in his world, that argument makes total sense...

[Heroine]

You silly people - he is making a valid point, that you mostly seem to want to try to gain the moral high ground on by.. employing people to bully him!!

Its perfectly ridiculous that a comment about a biological paper about bat sex has been seen as an attempt to harass someone sexually - a bit like saying 'nice hat' is the same as rape, or that saying 'have you seen that article about suicides' means you are saying 'go ahead weirdo, kill yourself' its a bit of a stretch at best, embarrassingly knee jerk at worst. Whats frightening is that if a woman showed a man an article saying 'dormice need love' he would be laughed out of court for saying that she was obviously trying to marry him or intimidate him to marry her. Some women really need to grow out of the 'icky boys, lovely girls' paradigm that worked at infant school. I really hope we don't go back to the male-dominated prudity that meant women had to throw their hands up and faint if they saw two butterflies getting it on on a leaf. Really this [prudity is not feminism at all and this Dylan is right.

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

Did you not spot my clear "this is a joke" sign in that post, Heroine? No?

He's not right. Would you think it appropriate if a male maths teacher went around reading out papers about bat fellatio to your 13 year old daughter and other students? After previous harrassment? Or would it seem a touch - I don't know, weird, pervy and intimidating?

[HerBeatitude]

Heroine, why are you ignoring the fact that this guy had been harrassing this woman for a while (an accusation which was UPHELD btw) and the bat paper happened in that context?

Do you not understand that harrassment can be a series of events, each of which in itself is insignificant, but when added all together, builds a picture of untoward behaviour?