So tiresome
Just a few responses…
“Jill Biden should think about dropping the honorific, which feels fraudulent, even comic.” Really, is there no end to men affronted by women’s authority? Is it worse with women who’re successful (and so, often, legitimized) by standards optimized for male success? SO TIRESOME. https://t.co/oCUl3dYBJZ
— Soraya "You Sound Angry" Chemaly (@schemaly) December 12, 2020
A man who does not have a PhD says Dr. Jill Biden is “fraudulent” and “comic” to use her title because her doctorate isn’t in medicine.
✔️ Filed as “Men threatened by women smarter than them.”https://t.co/PuYV5P7yK4
— Trish Zornio (@trish_zornio) December 12, 2020
Lots of dunking going on of this insane piece. But not enough attention being paid to a WSJ opinion piece aiming to be taken seriously referring to the soon-to-be First Lady as “kiddo.” https://t.co/NdT14cw0ti pic.twitter.com/o6lSl3uZxm
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) December 12, 2020
It’s paywalled so I couldn’t track down the original article, but apparently Epstein wrote a piece back in 1970 about how the worst thing he could imagine for one of his sons was to be gay, because it would mean a life of “niggardom among men.” The elusive homophobia/racism combo. (To be clear, it wasn’t just “that would be sad for them because other people are homophobic,” he threw in the usual cliches about unnatural and immoral as well.)
I’ll grant you it was fifty years ago, but this is not a guy who should be lecturing people about decorum.
I don’t think criticizing “Dr.” is by itself sexist or condescending. I have have been interested in some of the theories of Ophelia’s old buddy (ha!) Richard Carrier and he gets knocked for going by Dr. Carrier all the time. Any informal criticism of his work has about a 75% chance of putting “Dr.” in sneer quotes.
But, yeah, when coupled with “Jill” and “kiddo”, then it’s quite obnoxious.
Personally I really couldn’t care less if somebody wants to be called “doctor” as long as they have any sort of plausibly legitimate claim to it. I think it’s mostly people who find out that the rule is (allegedly) supposed to be only medical professionals get the title smarmily showing off their (alleged) knowledge. But, come in, in a world where we’re expected to refer to men as women, etc., it doesn’t seem outrageous to call someone with a doctorate “Dr.”.
WOW. He really did tweet or say that? I’ve been out of the loop. PROFESSOR Biden has earned all the accolades/honorifics that she is addressed with. (I’ve posted this before on facebook, and many have disagreed with me, and that’s okay–but “Dr” is lower in protocol than “Prof” in my field. So at the very least, she deserves to be addressed as “Dr. Jill Biden”. At the very least.)
The man’s gall and nerve are amazing.
I saw where Northwestern removed him from their website >> https://www.foxnews.com/media/wsj-op-ed-on-dr-jill-biden-gets-writer-canceled-by-northwestern-university (sorry for the Fox link, but still…)
Maybe if he starts calling himself ‘Hon. Dr. Soandso’ he can get reinstated.
#1: Only one? And this from a bachelor?
Skeletor:
It’s not outrageous in anyworld. When one earns a doctorate, one earns the honorific. In fact, it’s disrespectful not to use it.
Skeletor again:
Hehe. Well, he’s a skeez. That is likely why people disrespect him, despite his background. His last public post at the former blog aggregator (which I shall not name) pretty much sealed his fate.
#6 I agree on this, a hard earned doctorate definitely earns you the right to the title. Whether someone wishes to be called ‘doctor’ informally is largely up to them. I also agree with Epstein that PhDs were more prestigious in the past when they were much more difficult to achieve. This of course doesn’t give him the right to criticize Dr. Biden, as she has every right to the title, but it’s a good point.
Skeletor @ 2 –
Well NEITHER DO I. Obviously. How could it be? If you criticize it by itself then it can’t be sexist, by definition, because the sex is not specified.
I thought you were getting out of the habit of informing me of the obvious.
The question of whether to go by ‘Dr.’ is a bigger deal for women because a) we typically don’t get respected for our work and skills and b) there’s no good choice of ‘title’ for women, so if we can legitimately use ‘Dr.’ to get out of the ‘Miss or Mrs.?’ question a lot of us will. There’s no equivalent conundrum for men.
Another more recent piece of Epstein history — he wrote a cover story for The Weekly Standard in which he declared that, until 2008, every President had earned his position, but that Obama had not, and Hillary would become the “second affirmative action president.”
I find it difficult to come up with any non-racist chain of reasoning by which one could say that, for example, George W. Bush “earned” his presidency on merit but Obama did not.
Wow, this guy ticks all the boxes–!
Where does Dr. Dre fit into all of this?
Thanks Screechy @ 1 – I found a copy of the article:
http://mudcub.com/homophobia/homo_hetero.htm
I was thinking I might do a post on it but…it’s too boring. He’s just a boring writer. There’s nothing in particular wrong with his writing, but it’s just dull. It was dull in 1970 and it’s dull now. That wouldn’t matter, it wouldn’t even show, if he were a reporter, but for opinion writing and essays it’s fatal.
Bjarte @ 13: Well, clearly Epstein forgot about Dre.
Screechy @ 1:
Not to be That Pedant, but … Ah, who am I kidding?
Wouldn’t the racist phrase employ “niggerdom” rather than “niggardom”? I mean, I haven’t read the article in question and have no interest in doing so, so the whole thing may drip thinly veiled racism.
NiV,
No, I’m ok with pedantry.
I may have copied it erroneously, or it may have been an editing error.
I’m aware that, though some people have erroneously believed otherwise, the word “niggardly” is unrelated to race. But that couldn’t have been what Epstein meant. “Niggardly” means cheap or in limited supply; Epstein was not saying that homosexuals are overly frugal. He meant a lowly status comparable to black people.
Now you can, I suppose, say that Epstein was just “observing” the fact that black people are mistreated in America, without intending to condone that treatment. But given the rest of the piece — which Ophelia kindly supplied a link to — I’m not inclined to be that charitable towards him. I also note that he uses the slur at the beginning of the piece; to be fair, he does so in the context of “my father taught me never to call people …” but that’s a suspicious piece of bookending.
Checked the article and, yep, looks like a copy-pasta problem. It’s most definitely the slur in the original.
From what I gather from that final paragraph, he viewed homosexuals as creatures to be pitied beyond any other. Their very existence is a tragedy of suffering and pain, for them and for everyone else. Thus, if his son were to be gay, that son would be a source of sorrow in the same way as if he were subject to crippling brain damage.
It’s a strange read, partly because it’s so of its time. Partly because he seemed to have a degree of cognitive dissonance on the subject, of the sort that devout children and adolescents experience when they first realize that their faith condemns their friends to eternal torture, and this conclusion is in conflict with their beliefs about both faith and friends.
I’m honestly not sure what to make of it.
Well, he draws a distinction between men who have homosexual desires but refrain from acting on them (whom he merely pities), and those who act on them and even (gasp!) consider themselves healthy and normal, for whom he has contempt.
It’s the same old shit that the religious right peddles — we’ll forgive you if you stay closeted and chaste, but don’t you dare think you can live a “gay lifestyles.”