Another firing
Last week I wrote about Angelos Sofocleous’s resignation as President-Elect of the Durham University Humanists. Now he’s been fired as assistant editor of Critique, the journal of the Durham University Philosophy Society. He sent me the email they wrote to him explaining their reasons.
“Durham University Philosophy Society has considered your actions and reached a democratic decision”…to throw you unceremoniously out.
“You have argued,” the email goes on to say, “that risking offence should be tolerated and that feelings should not guide the nature of debates. Durham University Philosophy Society welcomes all views and endorses philosophical discussions that are fair and responsible.” You can hear the “but” coming a mile away. “However, the nature of the statement, ‘RT if women don’t have penises…’ (especially [if?] it is published on the social media platform, Twitter) escapes such responsibility and leaves no room for or [sic] to promote any fair discussions.”
Wait. Durham University Philosophy Society welcomes all views and endorses philosophical discussions that are fair and responsible, fine, great, awesome, but surely Durham University Philosophy Society doesn’t take itself to have veto power over everything all its members say in any and every medium or venue…does it? Does it monitor the twitter accounts of all its members to check for Correct Thought?
If it does it shouldn’t. Twitter is not a meeting of the Durham University Philosophy Society, nor is it a journal, nor is it even a newspaper op ed page. It’s Twitter. That doesn’t mean “bullying and dogpiling are ok on Twitter because it’s just Twitter,” but it does mean that Twitter is a far more relaxed medium than a Philosophy Society meeting or journal. And then, saying women don’t have penises is just a statement of obvious fact. So, the Durham University Philosophy Society’s decision to fire Angelos from his assistant editor job because of a tweet stating an obvious fact is…how shall I put this…not entirely reasonable or fair.
Furthermore, the public nature of your actions affects the reputation of our society and journal, because it conflicts [with] the value that this society upholds.
And that, the writer sums up, is why they made the democratic decision to give Angelos the boot.
It’s not enough to agree that people should be free to present any way they want to* without fear of harassment let alone violence; no, we’re now required, on pain of summary firing, to agree that men who like to wear dresses are women and that women themselves have “cis privilege” over men who like to wear dresses.
You couldn’t make it up.
*Although questions about Nazi uniforms or KKK regalia arise
I’ve nothing to contribute to the main body of the post: “it seems reasonable, I agree” is a boring comment. But the footnote on the Nazi uniforms and KKK regalia did remind me of something. I’m kind of hoping you already know that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_chic is a thing, because if you don’t, finding out can provoke some uncomfortable feelings (it did for me, anyway). Once I got over the initial discomfort, I *sort of* got it… In a place like South Korea, even among people who were around during World War II, Hitler’s persona just doesn’t have the same weight/significance as it does to most Europeans, and among the young people who are really the ones most likely to cosplay in the first place, it’s just a bit of weird exotic history, and any horror attached is too distant to be visceral. It’s similar to the “Little Ceasar’s” pizza restaurant and funny/cute cartoon mascot in the US: I don’t know how Julius Ceasar would stack up against Hitler on the evil/menacing scale, but I’m pretty sure that in his time his name did not evoke warm and fuzzy feelings (or a craving for pizza) for many people in many places.
And just as we Westerners have been mining “the Orient” for its exotic (to us) imagery and (bowdlerized) spiritual practices, some Easterners seem to get the same frisson of the exotic from some of our (also bowdlerized, but also, to us, mostly mundane and lackluster) cultural artifacts. Case in point: Japanese Anime not infrequently features Christian clergy, mythology, and symbols in a way that… sort of betrays that the creators genuinely find this stuff really cool and mysterious and exotic (there’s an obvious contrast with Christian Rock in US, which desperately TRIES to seem cool, and, in doing so, betrays precisely how little cachet it has).
All that said, my open-mindedness and understanding doesn’t seem to go very deep, because when I tried to watch Amazon’s Man In The High Castle, it took all of 10 minutes before I was sweating and hyperventillating and had to switch it off.
Also, since when did philosophy become a discipline that required comfortable in-group agreement as opposed to rigorous argument and examination of ideas for truth and utility? What a crock of shit.
It’s the new philosophy, Rob; I think, therefore I’m banned.
lol sob