Sexism amongst male academics

[Jeanhatchet]

Professor Steve Hall is a prominent criminologist who wrote "The Rise Of The Right" among other publications.

He also has a track record of harassing feminists who challenge him. His current target is a Senior Lecturer at Bristol named Vicky Canning.

In a discussion of toxic masculinity he dismissed her thus ...

"Victoria, the feminist perspective on violence is based on a fallacy that a reasonable bright 14 yr old could see through. The majority of men do not commit these offences or perpetrate Thea harms. It's not a masculine norm but a deviation. Time to return to serious research"

It is worrying that younger in career female academics are being told that feminist critique of male violence is not "serious".

Background - Steve Hall came for me on Twitter a couple of years ago when I challenged his writing about women and crime. In doing so he contacted others to find who I was and then exposed my personal details including a past name. He's a worry.

Imagine how many female students he has supervised who have been potentially been dissuaded from pursuing feminist research which might have benefited us all? Universities should not tolerate senior male academics behaving in this way.

the feminist perspective on violence is based on a fallacy that a reasonable bright 14 yr old could see through. The majority of men do not commit these offences or perpetrate Thea harms. It's not a masculine norm but a deviation

No; his cry of NAMALT is a shallow attempt to rebut the feminist perspective on violence: that overwhelmingly it is committed by men. Yes, a minority of men, but a large enough number, and resulting in the most serious consequences, for this not to be something that can be airily dismissed.

But why is it solely a masculine 'deviation'?

Shocked to the fucking core by outright misogyny shaping elite academia. Shocked to the core. Actuall to the core. More stories than you could care to mention. Wow. Academia is rotten in this country, TERF an indicator of it, and its really worse in our elite institutions.

@TallulahWaitingInTheRain

Exactly - he dismisses all consideration of male violence as valid academic research areas ....because not all men do it. He's spent too much time researching Tommy Robinson and the EDL and is beginning to sound like one of them.

Women aren't really falling for "LOOKIT OVER THERE AT THE SHINY THING"

Even when that tactic is used by an intellectual who should know better

I cant imagine the cognitive dissonance it takes for a man in his field to hold those views.
So if its not cognitive dissonance, it has to be an agenda.

Obviously out of context but surely, "the majority of men do not commit these offences" is a factual statement, no? Dismissing Dr Canning's research as not "serious" is extremely rude but being challenged with a factual statement is something any academic should be able to answer robustly IMO.

Academia is horrifically sexist. My own department is currently in a complete state of meltdown as the result of toxic conflicts between the male and female professors. The worst thing is that some female academics and senior managers will happily go along with the misogyny if they find a way for it to benefit them.

@LouiseCollins28

But in the context of institutional Male power it is worrying. A senior Male academic rounding upon a female junior one so publicly and in such a way is uncomfortable at best. Given the track history of this particular professor ... she may very well not feel confident to rebuff him.

The two friends I have lost of the self-ID discussion are both very successful male academics who used emotional blackmail when I tried to discuss the facts with them. One dumped me (I thought there was still some hope he would remember the importance of objective fact), I dumped the other because I thought he revealed himself to be a gaslighting misogynist who felt entitled to demand I remove my boundaries. It was all a bit of an eye-opener and very sad. Solidarity to gender critical academics.

"the majority of men do not commit these offences" is a factual statement, no?

Sure. But in this context, it's an example of the 'straw man' fallacy - because AFAIK no-one claims the majority of men commit violent offences. This is the 'fallacy that a reasonable bright 14 yr old could see through'.

keeponspinning - I’m sorry to hear that. My male academic colleagues are actually fully gender critical. They just won’t say anything publicly. Which is itself a problem.

So I can think of 3 hypotheses:

1. there is a subset of deviant men totally unlike the nice notallmen. In this case it should be possible to identify the attributes that set them apart and prevent them from accessing political power

2. men and women are about as violent as each other on average but men are more variable (less bunched together) therefore the most violent people and the least violent people are male. In this case it should be possible to show that there is a large minority of women who are more violent than a large minority of men.

3. men are substantially more violent on average and therefore the most violent men are much more violent than the most violent women. In this case discussion of toxic masculinity is absolutely appropriate.

Why doesn't Prof Hall think it's interesting to figure out what's going on here?

"the majority of men do not commit these offences" is a factual statement, no?

So is "the majority of these offences are committed by men". What would be his response to this fact?

Then there’s this argument: male violence against women and girls is a form of social control control — similar though not completely analogous to white lynchings of Black people the American south — from which all men indirectly benefit, since that violence teaches girls from a young age to circumscribe their lives in ways boys and men do not.

That sex-based sexualised violence is a form of social control is demonstrated every time a man threatens a woman with rape because in some way she’s stepped out of line — in other words, every split second on social media.

The fact that male violence functions so well as social control of girls and women is precisely the reason male-dominated legal and judicial systems do next to nothing to stop it.

Men collaborate in this social control in two ways: by being the violent ones, or by being the ones who provide girls and women necessary protection.

What, with rare exception, they don’t do is agitate and work for the elimination of the violence itself.

My DH is a male academic. He had to explain to the (predominantly female) HR department that one of his female post docs actually has rights. Right to be protected during her maternity leave, right to be offered a specific position that will open as her post doc ends etc etc. He was bloody schocked, that the female HR staff were acting in a way he considered to be misogynistic, though is probably incompetence more than it is misogynism.

Absolutely Anne

If men really believed that male violence is all carried out by a deviant group unlike men in general and that men in general are harmed rather than benefited by it, there would be a massive push on to identify that group and do something about them. There would also be a cultural rejection of the fetishisation of male violence for entertainment, advertisement or sexual enjoyment.

Instead we see 'good' men identifying with violent men every day not only in the justice system but also in the media, in films, in porn, in video games. Anyone would think there is some kind of status or power attached to it that men in general are aware of and enjoy.

He's right though. Less than 2% of women were victims of assault of any kind in 2018.

So 98% of men are obviously not abusing women.

Tallulah.

Why should all men care about the actions of less than 2% of them?

What strange logic.

Less than 2% of women were victims of assault of any kind in 2018.

Reported assaults? Or all 'assaults of any kind'?

Most assaults do not get reported or recorded if they are reported as they are dismissed for a number of reasons.

Yes Anne . Behind all the many reported cases of DV are there unreported ones, or coercive controllers where the threat of violence may not be explicit but is lurking unsaid? Women who tiptoe around the man for fear of what he could do.

2% per year ... that doesn't equate to 98% of men not being abusers.

There are some stats in here:

www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/about/data-on-violence-against-women-and-girls/