Helen Pluckrose...why?

No probs

Yes, as I said, I agree with you it's your choice who you agree/disagree with/pay attention to

The way you framed it previously made me clarify what was actually happening.

Gwynfluff I should have said 'some areas of' academia. I clarified in a later comment.

MillyMolly Yes, as I said, I agree with you it's your choice who you agree/disagree with/pay attention to. I definitely have seen plenty of GC pile ons though, on women who weren't saying the right GC thing. Most of them aren't nasty in the way TRA pile ons are. But it's a lot of 'can't you see how stupid you are being?' type comments which, if you get 100 of those, is just going to feel wearisome, at best. And yes, Helen P may have been trying to avoid the TRA pile on, but I think sometimes the two go together - you attract GC attention then the TRAs follow. So I imagine it all gets to be a bit much and people have got lives to live - Helen, Maya, and everyone else.

In most Western countries, there's been a move from under 10 to around 50% of young people going to University in the postwar years

Is that a good thing? There are myriad reasons why it is not.

Nearly everything you watch on TV, every novel or piece of non-fiction you read, newspaper articles, social media (certainly creators of it, though allows for a wider range of voices ), has been created by someone who has been through higher education

The increasing insularity of the views which dominate the media, the lack of diversity of political discourse, is an indictment of the education system. Not an endorsement.

I think the GC crowd on there don't always see how upsetting it must be to get literally hundreds of comments all saying the same thing and demanding answers, interspersed with a few unpleasant insults. I get the impression that Helen has got a lot of this, and then she also gets a lot of shit from TRAs and the alt-right, so I think she probably just shuts it all down.

To keep it to what this threads about, that didn’t happen with Maya. I suspect it was the TRA pile on she was trying to avoid. I didn’t see anything more than a polite patient conversation.

I also think that’s a little unfair to say any of the women on twitter who are GC don’t understand what a twitter pile-on feels like. Of course they do. Helen isn’t special, it happens to Maya, to other GC feminists... all women have issues using social media and speaking their truth.

She doesn’t owe anyone anything. That was my point above, right? Similarly nobody owes her anything and ‘writing someone off’ can just simply be a matter of, ‘ Ive not seen anything worth giving more of my time to this persons work/writings... whatever’. If you become a public person of some sort, people will discuss your position on the issues you speak about, and they will challenge you sometimes too, that goes with the territory. Obviously abuse or harassment don’t, but I don’t see angry nasty gender critical accounts following people around twitter abusing them, certainly not in large numbers.

I think that it was done to expose the absolutely piss-poor state of academia where standards and evidence don't matter so long as you say the woke thing. And they did expose that.

Agree that this is a generalisation, even in sociology and under humanities it undermines the interesting and analytical work that is done. We always need to uphold standards, and agree with Goosefoot that science publishing can be problematic - look at the recent example of the Covid study published in the Lancet in May.

Anyway, I've no beef with Helen. She's anti-idealogy (and treading the fine line now of not becoming ideologically anti-idealogy) and in many ways, I am very sympathetic to that. Nietzsche reads to me in a similar vein.

Also I think people underestimate the role of academic thought in the cultural discourse. In most Western countries, there's been a move from under 10 to around 50% of young people going to University in the postwar years. Nearly everything you watch on TV, every novel or piece of non-fiction you read, newspaper articles, social media (certainly creators of it, though allows for a wider range of voices ), has been created by someone who has been through higher education.

But that's a pretty big deal, when they didn't exist at all before

And already that legislation is threatened. Very, very few UK politicians are prepared to say that sex exists and sex based rights are necessary.

They only exist in legislation. But that's a pretty big deal, when they didn't exist at all before. I can understand people feeling that women being equal under the law is the most important thing, especially when you compare our situation in the UK with countries where women have no or few legal rights.

I agree that women will probably always have to be vigilant about ensuring our rights can be fully exercised, and that our rights aren't lost. Funnily enough, Margaret Atwood has spoken about how, when things go wrong in society, women's rights will be the first to go.

I'm not on twitter anymore, but I remember several huge pile ons to women who didn't say the right GC thing, and I think the GC crowd on there don't always see how upsetting it must be to get literally hundreds of comments all saying the same thing and demanding answers, interspersed with a few unpleasant insults.

Yes, agree - twitter is a real barrier to communication.

I don't agree entirely with her but my understanding of her position is that she thinks most of the feminist battles have been won by the previous generation

Won? Ha!

They only exist in legislation. Rights to contraception, equal pay, maternity leave etc. don't exist in perpetuity.

You don't have to know anything about class theory to recognise that women are impacted differently by e.g. a worldwide pandemic (how do you get the MAP?), access to toilets (not just who can enter the toilet, but whether there is any toilet at all) and access to healthcare.

I don't think there will ever be a point where women won't need to say "Well actually that doesn't work for us".

MillyMolly That's up to you if you find your disagreement over one thing stops you from being able to agree on anything else, or feels so fundamental that nothing else matters. Entirely your choice. I was just trying to explain why I'm "being kind" to Helen P, in response to a pp.

I do think Helen P gets a lot of crap from GC feminists on twitter. Just peeping in on the last day or so, it seems like she has felt quite embattled. I'm not on twitter anymore, but I remember several huge pile ons to women who didn't say the right GC thing, and I think the GC crowd on there don't always see how upsetting it must be to get literally hundreds of comments all saying the same thing and demanding answers, interspersed with a few unpleasant insults. I get the impression that Helen has got a lot of this, and then she also gets a lot of shit from TRAs and the alt-right, so I think she probably just shuts it all down. I think it's admirable that she is still trying to listen at all. I read a tweet yesterday where she admitted she just didn't know enough and hadn't thought enough about the issues to answer Maya's questions in a respectworthy way. I thought that was really honest, and fine to say that. She doesn't owe anyone anything.

Helen is also the editor of Areo magazine which published a positive article about JKR (someone shared it on here I will see if I can find it).Not many people would be willing to take the flack for publishing something that they didn’t agree with. She also recognises ROGD and has take a huge bashing for it from the TRAs.

just because we might disagree on some things, I'm not prepared to write her off

I guess some posters might see that the ‘some thing’ in this case is so fundamental and logically follows her line of thinking generally that it’s hard to listen to and give value to other things she might say. It’s perfectly ok to say,’ this person is inconsistent, illogical or even an idiot, so as there’s plenty of other women saying important logical things out there, I’m not going to waste time listening to this particular person’.

It’s actually perfectly ok to write someone off to the extent you don’t give them any more of your time if you find that time is wasted. No woman owes any other woman their time.

Is Helen being ‘followed around on twitter’ being called names by GC women from here? What’s the relevance of that comment? And if Helen gets so upset about being called names she won’t reflect on these issues or listen to new arguments, that is really rather silly. Other people’s behaviour shouldn’t stop you from questioning things going on in our world that affect women.

I have no problem with women not all agreeing. I don't think Helen Pluckrose, Margaret Atwood or any other woman has a duty to be a feminist or GC. I imagine Helen gets upset with being called bullshit and an idiot by hundreds of women on twitter and it probably contributes to her not really wanting to look any deeper into GC feminism than she has. It is all a bit childish and off putting to a lot of women, I think. If people don't agree with you it's really okay to just let it go. There are enough things to focus on without following some poor woman around twitter, calling her names because she doesn't see the world exactly the way you do, even though she's in broad agreement with most of what you say.

I'm not saying any of you are doing that. That was a response to the pp who applauded some for being kind. I don't think it's a question of being kind or unkind, just she's an interesting person who has a lot of interesting things to say, and just because we might disagree on some things, I'm not prepared to write her off. There are many GC feminists with whom I have literally no agreement except on one single issue. I think the idea we all need to agree and see things the same way (aka purity politics) is helpful to no one.

I applaud the posters in this thread, you are all much more kinder to Helen than I am. For me personally, anyone who doesn't see the conflict in rights or even how incredibly sexist it is to claim a man can 'feel' like a woman is quite frankly an idiot.

I have to say, I'm still pretty involved with my humanities school, and most of the academics I know were pretty horrified and embarrassed by the grievance studies hoax, though a lot of them knew things were bad they hoped they weren't that bad.

And FWIW there are serious issues with academic publishing in the sciences as well.

Some more information about what they were doing, what their motivations were, and what happened -

There are some great interviews about this on youtube, including a really in-depth one with Jordan Peterson.

Scholarly argument is not to "decide" what is "wrong" and what is "right." It's about debate and collaboration.

It's not to decide what's wrong and right in some concrete sense. But that doesn't mean it's okay to publish absolute nonsense that bears no relation to reality and has no substance or integrity, or basis in some kind of verifiable truth. If a journal was happy to publish rewritten sections of Mein Kampf then I don't think they are doing what scholars should be doing, and I don't think it reflects well on them at all. They should not be so intellectually weak and lacking in rigour that they would fall for such an obvious and laughable hoax.

I have no problem with whistleblowers, whether they be in academia or any other area of life. I don't think there's anything unethical about showing what the state of some so-called scholarly research is, especially when their academics are making careers out of pushing the regressive ideologies are we are now seeing enter mainstream discourse. People thought that academics in social sciences were studying worthwhile things - they didn't realise that they were simply writing and publishing anything that fits with a specific political agenda. That's pretty important to know about.

I don't suggest for one second that this is the whole of academia, or even the whole of the humanities. It surprises me though that anyone who genuinely cares about the state of academia would have a problem with exposing the rot in some of its wings. It is a shame because people will assume that by defending these ridiculous and dangerous elements, academics are unable to see what it obvious to everyone else, which in turn reflects badly on their own disciplines and contributes to a public perception that academia is just so much waffle and nonsense. The Grievance Studies project was doing academia a favour. While many academics have welcomed this project and what it reveals, it's a shame that some would rather cover up failures and shoot the messengers instead. By not addressing the problems that were exposed, academics have only hastened the university's decline. We are now seeing a situation where many humanities degrees are simply courses of indoctrination in ideology. Universities will not be able to survive this.

It's an absolute shame, and no one should defend these journals and academics. It's hardly the fault of Helen Pluckrose that some areas of the academy are so utterly corrupt.

He's very consistent but very few people are comfortable with that kind of view of morality.

Posie Parker's discussion with James Lindsay is worth watching. He does seem to 'get it'.