A privileged group relative to much of the population

May 6th, 2017 11:53 am | By

There’s a guest post at Crooked Timber on the Hypatia wharblegarble by Holly Lawford-Smith, a political philosopher at the University of Melbourne. She starts with a comparative versions exercise.

Something bad happened recently. Here’s what I thought it was: a member of a marginalized group within our profession (a pre-tenure woman) published a paper; a group of philosophers were angry about the paper; those same philosophers signed an open letter to Hypatia calling for retraction of the paper; Hypatia issued an apology for publishing the paper; another group of philosophers rallied in defence of paper’s author, against both the journal and the group of philosophers who were angry about the paper in the first place. This would be bad, because the way we deal with disagreement in our profession―both about form and about substance―is not to demand retractions but to write replies. Also, we generally try to encourage and support junior and marginalized scholars, not pile on in attacking them when they make mistakes.

Here’s what actually happened: a member of a marginalized group within our profession, but of a privileged group relative to much of the population (being both white and university-employed) published a paper; a few philosophers together with a great many more non-philosophers from marginalized groups within society at large were angry about the paper and expressed this in online venues; Hypatia’s initial response was dismissive; as a result of Hypatia’s unsatisfactory response an open letter to Hypatia was written, calling for retraction of the paper, and attracting more than 500 signatures; finally Hypatia issued an apology for publishing the paper; and then many philosophers rallied in defence of the paper’s author.

It’s useful, in a way, that she spells out this peculiar idea that “cis white” women are now among the oppressors. Yes, women can have many forms of privilege, as anyone can. Caitlyn Jenner makes a nice illustration of that all by herself. The house in Malibu, the gold medals, the fatal traffic accident with no prison time?

Also, that “a few philosophers together with a great many more non-philosophers from marginalized groups within society at large were angry about the paper” – really? A great many non-philosophers were angry about the paper? I don’t believe that. Philosophy papers are not a matter of interest to a great many people.

Hypatia is a journal of feminist philosophy explicitly committed to both ‘interdisciplinarity’ and ‘diversity’, positioned as both ‘accessible’ and a resource for ‘the wider women’s studies community’ (see their website). It’s true that some of the anger was directed at Tuvel, but much more was directed at Hypatia for not catching many of the offensive aspects of the paper during the review process (or, some think, for not outright rejecting the paper). The open letter was addressed to Hypatia, not to Tuvel. Journals that are explicitly interdisciplinary are bound by the norms of all of the disciplines they include, so whether a retraction of the paper is warranted is not settled by the fact that it wouldn’t be warranted in Philosophy. More importantly, Hypatia does something that no other journal in Philosophy does, with its commitment to diversity. Hypatia is like your male best friend, who calls himself a feminist and an ally, and who suddenly does something horribly misogynistic. You’re not surprised that there are misogynists in the world, you just feel betrayed because you didn’t think your best friend was one of them.

Nice illustration except that Tuvel didn’t do anything that’s the equivalent of “horribly misogynistic.” You can see examples of “horribly misogynistic” on Twitter without getting your hair mussed, and they don’t look anything like Tuvel’s paper.

What are the risks of a ‘dangerous idea’ like Tuvel’s?

First of all, trans people and activists for trans rights might worry that the structural analogy Tuvel draws between race and gender will undermine claims to the social acceptance of trans identities. That is to say, that although Tuvel herself thinks we have good reasons to accept transgender identities, and that those same reasons support accepting ‘transracial’ identities, others may take the parallel as a reductio ad absurdum. Many people find ‘transracial’ claims absurd, so drawing a parallel between the two might have the effect of weakening the former rather than strengthening the latter.

But if the two are parallel, if the two do rest on the same basic idea (a particular idea of identity for instance), then how can we not discuss them in those terms? Ideas about trans identity are very new, and it seems way too early to close off discussion of them.

Second of all, black people might worry that Tuvel’s conclusion will legitimize more Dolezal-type cases, which they find problematic for a whole host of reasons.

Ah. There we have it. Yes, so they might, but so might women. So might women, and it is not obvious that the worries of black people should be taken seriously while the worries of women should be treated as evil and contemptible.

Even if the paper had been published in Ethics, Philosophy’s problem of being dominated at all levels by cisgender white men entails that many members of marginalized groups (including trans black people) will be located outside the discipline, and so, conversely, work done outside the discipline may in fact be philosopy. In that case, the problem of whose work must be read and engaged with becomes a lot more difficult. At the very least, it should include those who identify as philosophers, wherever they work.

Really?? I thought that was one of those reductio ad absurdum claims we weren’t supposed to make, like “anybody who identifies as a pilot / neurosurgeon / dentist should be accepted as such.” There are countless Twitter jockeys who identify as philosophers; does Lawford-Smith really think their work must be read and engaged with?

Jimmy Lenman commented:

So let me see if I understand.

I write a paper which a journal’s editor, editorial board and referees agree is of the high quality to merit publication there, so they publish it. Some people then write to the journal’s editor to say my paper is offensive and incompetent. The journal’s editor is now wondering what to do. Does she rubbish my moral and professional reputation by making a public apology, endorsing the complaint? (And of course it is my reputation first and foremost that suffers here. It may have been the journal and not myself at whom the anger was targeted – “directed” – but it is me that gets the bullet as everyone concerned could very readily anticipate.) Or does she stand by me and my paper and tell the complainants to get lost?

Some will say the former. Some the latter. But here is a third view. What she needs to do is write back to the complainants and seek further information. What, she must ask, are your, er, demographics? Are you male, female, black, white, cis, trans, gay, straight, able-bodied, disabled, employed as philosophers, not so employed, whatever? Only when I have correctly put you and all others concerned in the right identity politics boxes will I be clear what would be a right or wrong course of action here. Give me one answer and hanging Lenman out to dry would be a shocking wrong and an affront to the basic norms of our profession. Given me another and doing so would really be no big deal and there would be nothing much here to make a big fuss about, “no particular need to rally in defence of our professional norms”. Because it’s really not such a big deal to kick someone in the teeth so long as you have, or the person or persons urging you on has, a special pass saying ‘marginalized group’ and they don’t.

No. Surely, that can’t be it. Can it?

Yes, sadly, it can.

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Becky

May 6th, 2017 10:47 am | By

I mentioned that doolally conversation at Feminist Philosophers over “Becky” the other day.

Prof Manners introduced Becky in her first paragraph:

I’ve watched the last few days as philosophy social media and now blogs lit up with the crisis at Hypatia over Rebecca Tuvel’s article on transracialism. (Summary of some of the commentary here.) Throughout, I have been dismayed by the way that people I respect or whose work I admire have taken out after each other, engaging in pugilistic, hostile, sneering interactions that now apparently pass for debate. Along the way I acquired a more current insult vocabulary by osmosis. I learned that calling someone “Becky” is an insult, among other things.

And again in her last:

Behaving as if solving the “Tuvel problem” will alter the deep problems we have conscripted her into personifying is, I believe, to wrong her. But even if you disagree with me about that and imagine that what she has likely endured the last few days is wholly warranted by what she wrote, consider the litany of problems above, consider the litany of systemic problems we have conscripted her into personifying and ask whether addressing her solves any of those problems. I don’t think it does. Worse, it risks certifying as acceptable laying the mountain of our profession’s problems on one untenured scholar. To be clear, we heap burdens on scholars in inequitable ways with a disturbing frequency – our professional gate-keeping is one iteration of how we do this. Treating one scholar, one untenured woman scholar, as the symbolic personification of the profession’s ills – raising petitions against her work, engaging in public insult of her (see: Becky), and so forth – will not fix what ails us. It is a symptom of what ails us. And what ails us is legion.

You’ll never guess what happened next.

Rebecca Kukla commented:

So I’m deeply sympathetic to your core point about structures versus individuals, but this bothers me: in order to not have known already that ‘Becky’ is an insult, you have to have completely insulated yourself from even the very most mainstream products of Black culture. And you sound almost proud of that ignorance here.And that’s kind of the problem, right? This is why people of color (and trans folks) are suspicious. Because they are being judged by people who kind of willfully know nothing about them.

I don’t want this to come off as hostile. There is a lot that I like about this post, but there are also points here that need to be made about white ignorance and epistemic justice.

I didn’t look up Rebecca Kukla until yesterday. When I did I was gobsmacked to learn that she’s a grownup academic, at Georgetown, with a string of publications.

Prof Manners responded:

Rebecca, I am not proud of my ignorance and admit that I only discovered the meaning of “Becky” by googling it after seeing it thrown around on Facebook feeds. It did come as a surprise to me that it derives from Black culture, as all of the many I saw using it on Facebook were white commentators. I then also asked my child about it and apparently her high school experience is similar – it has been, at least in some quarters, appropriated as a white-on-white insult. This too is apparently a cultural fact and one I find unsettling in several ways.

To the more general point about insularity though and at risk of sounding defensive, I am not at all up to date on most of popular culture of any sort. That too is an ignorance that I am not boasting about, but just a fact of my own overstretched life. I do protest the idea that fluency in contemporary insult is an expectation of epistemic justice. I am confident that my epistemic limitations are many, but this?

I protest that idea too. Well no I don’t, I point at it and say it’s ludicrous and an insult to the intelligence of everyone present.

Another commenter:

Hi Rebecca, perhaps you are epistemically well placed to learn that ‘Becky’ is an insult because your first name is Rebecca. I first learnt this about a year ago, watching Beyonce’s Lemonade video album. As bell hooks pointed out, this is a particularly well calibrated commodification of black American womanist culture. Do you have better suggestions for remedying white ignorance? Following people on black twitter? Personally, I wouldn’t hold ignorance of a twitter insult against anyone.

At that point, the other day, I googled it and the Urban Dictionary told me it has to do with blow jobs. Becky’s generous with them, or doesn’t charge much, or something along those lines.

Kukla explained why she was right:

It has nothing to do with my being named Rebecca. The insult goes back to Vanity Fair but has been live in black culture from Sir Mix-a-Lot and Beyonce. Those are two really hard popular figures to know nothing about. Look, people are not responsible for knowing about pop culture. But when something is associated with a towering, maximally mainstream icon of black culture, I think being snarky about not knowing it or acting like it is arcane knowledge is inappropriate in this conversation.

 

The conversation goes on for many more comments. It doesn’t improve.

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Will it be outsourcing peer review to social media?

May 5th, 2017 5:29 pm | By

The Hypatia thread is still going. There are interesting comments from colleagues of the Hypatia editors (in other words, philosophers).

Like this one:

Shaun ODwyer I’m writing this as someone who has published with Hypatia in the past, and who has appreciated the peer review feedback and editorial support provided for my submissions. Now I and I’m sure other authors would like to know the following: 1. Will you be retracting Tuvel’s article? 2. Will Hypatia continue to be a blind peer reviewed journal, or will it be outsourcing peer review to social media as well? 3. Will it now be your policy, from time to time, to denounce your authors’ scholarship in public, pour encourager les autres?

And this one:

Clark WolfColleagues and friends: If you signed this letter and do not regret having done so, I think you should own up and defend your position. If you regret having signed it — it was signed by people I deeply respect but I think they should regret it– I earnestly ask that you make your regret known and remove your name. Having read Tuvel’s paper, the un-peer-reviewed letter, and evaluations of this controversy in DalyNous and elsewhere, I’m driven to conclude that this is indeed an inappropriate and inexcusable attack on a serious junior feminist scholar. The critical arguments in the letter appear to me to be unfounded, poorly structured, badly reasoned, and ill considered. By contrast, I found Rebecca Tuvel’s paper interesting, intelligent, well-written, and well-argued. I found much of it persuasive. I will use it in class. But I’d be glad to pair it, in my syllabus, with credible and respectful scholarly response.

And:

Clark WolfÁsta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir, this apology from the editors does damage to the journal Hypatia. Tuvel’s paper should indeed have been published. The editorial committee’s claim that Hypatia is not the place for such a paper leads me to fear that my deep respect for the journal has been misplaced. The author might have been advised that the convention she employed might be taken as deadnaming by some people, but it is clearly not ‘deadnaming’ in the harmful or shameful sense. Deadnaming is worst when it is done by people who deny the identity of trans persons, and use the former name in an effort to express that denial. Deadnaming is an insulting effort to shame. But this is very clearly not what Tuvel was doing. It should be clear to anyone reading Tuvel’s article that she is a supporter who makes an effort to use trans-friendly language. If her usage was a misstep, it was not one that reflects animus. As for the other ‘harms’ your letter notes, they seem to me to be philosophically interesting issues. I might agree with your claims about the ways that race and gender differ, but that’s a philosophical point to be made in a philosophical reply. Such a reply should be written up and submitted for peer review. The fact that you have a counter argument is not a reason to disparage Tuvel’s well-written and well argued philosophical work.

I’m glad there are comments of that kind, because otherwise I would despair.

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There’s no excuse for not being rich

May 5th, 2017 4:53 pm | By

Robert Reich boils down a Washington Post piece on why the Republican “health care bill” isn’t.

The 2 biggest lies at the heart of Trumpcare are:

1. It covers people with preexisting health conditions. It doesn’t. Trumpcare sets aside $138 billion over the next decade to cover such people. But the estimated cost of really doing so ranges from $150 billion to $330 billion. Worse yet, states could use the money to offset the health insurance costs of healthy people who buy insurance as individuals — which is what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office expects they’ll do.

2. It’s a healthcare bill. It’s not. It’s a trillion dollar tax cut for the richest 2 percent that’s paid for with a trillion dollars of health-care cuts for the poor and middle class.

In reality, Trumpcare is a massive transfer from Americans who are poorer and sicker to those who are richer and healthier. Not being rich is the ultimate preexisting condition.

Meanwhile Trump sits there like a toad saying over and over “It will be great, premiums will go down, the care will be great.” When premiums go down because the insurance doesn’t cover anything, that’s not “great.”

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Guest post: At the pinnacle of privilege all these years

May 5th, 2017 11:58 am | By

Originally a comment by iknklast on Those theorists whose lives are most directly affected.

I hate the idea of no longer calling myself a feminist, but I also hate the idea of being associated with this brand of repressive ideology. Maybe we just need to invent a term that can let people know we stand for equality without having to take on all this baggage.

I am also white and feminist; I suffered my entire life (and still do) from the whims of people who believe that gender is essential, and that I therefore am some sort of grotesque mutant who isn’t a woman at all – but not a man, either, because reasons. As a teenager, I was forced into high heels, make up, and dresses. We were not allowed to wear anything but dresses to school until I was a freshman in high school, and even then, it had to be “pant suits” with matching tops and pants. When I was a senior, they finally (grudgingly) allowed girls to wear jeans, which the guys had been wearing all along. I was required to take Home Ec, and was discouraged from taking Calculus or Economics, for which I had to wait until college. I was shuffled into the slow Biology class because that was all I could take that didn’t conflict with honors English (the assumption being that, since girls are good at English and boys are good at Science, you wouldn’t have people who were eligible for both classes…in fact, my entire honors English class was filled with people who qualified for both, but none of us could stand the pain of going back through this is a noun, this is a verb, see John run, which is the noun which is the verb…).

I have been beaten for being insufficiently female, for reading the wrong books, taking the wrong classes, thinking the wrong thoughts. I was vilified and pressured until eventually I found someone and got married, more to prove that I was a woman than out of love (I realize that now; I didn’t then). He (my ex) was getting married to prove he wasn’t gay (he was). It was a marriage doomed, and would never have happened if I hadn’t been put into the spot of being expected to “prove” I was a woman, and he hadn’t been put in the spot of being expected to “prove” he was a man.

The young feminists doing all this screaming have no concept of what the earlier feminists went through to gain these rights, and they don’t really care, because they have convinced themselves that these rights were only gained for white, cis-hetero women. Not true – they apply to all women, even those, like my mother, who would rather die than make use of most of these rights.

Now, I find out in the declining years of my life that I have lived at the pinnacle of privilege all these years, a pinnacle apparently even higher than that of the rich white males who just took health care away from millions and continue to do everything they can to make choice an impossible option.

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Guest post: She is told to shut up about her body and experience

May 5th, 2017 11:55 am | By

Originally a comment by Myrhinme on Those theorists whose lives are most directly affected.

I recently decided to stop identifying as a feminist. This was a big decision for me but the recent developments in feminism have bothered me too much. There was a time that I would have said that any woman (and even any man) who supports equality is a feminist. I was puzzled when I heard women who often talked about equality saying that they were not feminists. I assumed it was because of negative stereotypes.

In recent years, feminism has become fashionable and I was glad to see young women becoming engaged. I still am glad that young women want to stand up against sexual violence and other problems that they face. However, I now see a situation where any woman who wants to call herself a feminist is told that she must actively support a range of causes even if she knows little about them or simply disagrees with some parts. She is told to accept orthodoxies about gender, that she may never question a trans woman’s understanding of what it is to be female but that a trans woman may question hers and trash her if it does not toe the party line. She is told to shut up about her body and experience and definitely not to utter the heresy that she only feels female because she has a female body.

If a feminist is white, she can expect to walk on eggshells. She can talk about race but if anyone disagrees they can call her a “white feminist”. This is an insult but if she protests that it is wrong to use a description of what she is as an insult she’s just demonstrating what a spoiled privileged white women she is. She can diplomatically avoid the subject of race but then she’s a white feminist who only cares about white woman things (as if no other women are raped, or suffer domestic violence or need contraception and abortion). What is the alternative? Absolute submission. She must defer absolutely to the views declared orthodox and never disagree with a person from a marginalized group. She must accept that she is racist but she can pay Everday Feminism a fee to help her atone and heal from her toxic whiteness.

I could not encourage girls to get involved in feminism if it means being submissive and letting people treat them like shit. They, like everybody else, should feel entitled to a basic level of respect. They should be encouraged to question orthodox views and form their own opinions.

There have always been feminists that I had a problem with but they were usually on the fringes. The ones I have a problem with now are dominating the discourse and I don’t want to be associated with them. I have a background in human rights activism and want to continue with that rather than waste time with people who would argue whether I am a proper feminist or a white feminist or whatever. I want to get things done that will really make a difference.

I can only add that I am female, bisexual and have suffered from a disabling chronic condition since I was a teenager that has blighted by life. I am exactly the sort of person that social justice enthusiasts claim to represent. However, I want nothing to do with people who shut down all dissent, vilify everyone they disagree with, however small the disagreement, and attack free speech. I care too much about human rights and intellectual freedom for that.

So, I’d rather not call myself a feminist. I want to go back to being a human rights activist and I’ll choose independence of thought over dogma.

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Surprise quiz

May 5th, 2017 11:23 am | By

Seen on Facebook:

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A President who is judged to be mentally unfit

May 5th, 2017 11:15 am | By

Evan Osnos at the New Yorker takes a close look at the chances for removing Trump from this job he’s incapable of doing. On the way he provides interesting details of Trump’s incapacity.

By this point in George W. Bush’s term, Bush had travelled to twenty-three states and a foreign country. Trump has visited just nine states and has never stayed the night. He inhabits a closed world that one adviser recently described to me as “Fortress Trump.” Rarely venturing beyond the White House and Mar-a-Lago, he measures his fortunes through reports from friends, staff, and a feast of television coverage of himself. Media is Trump’s “drug of choice,” Sam Nunberg, an adviser on his campaign, told me recently. “He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t do drugs. His drug is himself.”

But not only that. His recreation is himself, his job is himself, his body of knowledge is himself, his field of study is himself, his love is for himself, his respect and admiration are for himself, his hero is himself. Trump’s Self is his whole world.

Trump’s approval rating is forty per cent—the lowest of any newly elected President since Gallup started measuring it. Even before Trump entered the White House, the F.B.I. and four congressional committees were investigating potential collusion between his associates and the Russian government. Since then, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, have become senior White House officials, prompting intense criticism over potential conflicts of interest involving their private businesses. Between October and March, the U.S. Office of Government Ethics received more than thirty-nine thousand public inquiries and complaints, an increase of five thousand per cent over the same period at the start of the Obama Administration. Nobody occupies the White House without criticism, but Trump is besieged by doubts of a different order, centering on the overt, specific, and, at times, bipartisan discussion of whether he will be engulfed by any one of myriad problems before he has completed even one term in office—and, if he is, how he might be removed.

…

Trump’s critics are actively exploring the path to impeachment or the invocation of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, which allows for the replacement of a President who is judged to be mentally unfit.

The Twenty-fifth Amendment should have been invoked right after he took the oath of office. He is conspicuously and unmistakably mentally unfit to do the job he’s pretending to do.

Although some of my sources maintained that laws and politics protect the President to a degree that his critics underestimate, others argued that he has already set in motion a process of his undoing. All agree that Trump is unlike his predecessors in ways that intensify his political, legal, and personal risks. He is the first President with no prior experience in government or the military, the first to retain ownership of a business empire, and the oldest person ever to assume the Presidency.

But also the stupidest, the most ignorant, the most aggressive and belligerent, the most reckless and irresponsible, the most dangerous.

I asked Jerry Taylor, the president of the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank, if he had ever seen so much skepticism so early in a Presidency. “No, nobody has,” he said. “But we’ve never lived in a Third World banana republic. I don’t mean that gratuitously. I mean the reality is he is governing as if he is the President of a Third World country: power is held by family and incompetent loyalists whose main calling card is the fact that Donald Trump can trust them, not whether they have any expertise.”

He’s violating many rules and standards to do it, and apparently no one can stop him.

It’s not clear how fully Trump apprehends the threats to his Presidency. Unlike previous Republican Administrations, Fortress Trump contains no party elder with the stature to check the President’s decisions. “There is no one around him who has the ability to restrain any of his impulses, on any issue ever, for any reason,” Steve Schmidt, a veteran Republican consultant, said, adding, “Where is the ‘What the fuck’ chorus?”

So much for the claims that Ivanka and her husband can and do restrain his worst impulses. I never did find that very credible – not to mention the horror that the only adults around are those two shallow spoiled know-nothing rich kids.

[I]n 1973, the American Psychiatric Association added to its code of ethics the so-called “Goldwater rule,” which forbade making a diagnosis without an in-person examination and without receiving permission to discuss the findings publicly. Professional associations for psychologists, social workers, and others followed suit. With regard to Trump, however, the rule has been broken repeatedly. More than fifty thousand mental-health professionals have signed a petition stating that Trump is “too seriously mentally ill to perform the duties of president and should be removed” under the Twenty-fifth Amendment.

Lance Dodes, a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, believes that, in this instance, the Goldwater rule is outweighed by another ethical commitment: a “duty to warn” others when he assesses that a person might harm them. Dodes told me, “Trump is going to face challenges from people who are not going to bend to his will. If you have a President who takes it as a personal attack on him, which he does, and flies into a paranoid rage, that’s how you start a war.”

Like many of his colleagues, Dodes speculates that Trump fits the description of someone with malignant narcissism, which is characterized by grandiosity, a need for admiration, sadism, and a tendency toward unrealistic fantasies. On February 13th, in a letter to the Times, Dodes and thirty-four other mental-health professionals wrote, “We fear that too much is at stake to be silent any longer.”

Other professionals disagree. One says that all that fits Trump but it doesn’t make him mentally ill, because he’s not impaired. He’s not?

To some mental-health professionals, the debate over diagnoses and the Goldwater rule distracts from a larger point. “This issue is not whether Donald Trump is mentally ill but whether he’s dangerous,” James Gilligan, a professor of psychiatry at New York University, told attendees at a recent public meeting at Yale School of Medicine on the topic of Trump’s mental health. “He publicly boasts of violence and has threatened violence. He has urged followers to beat up protesters. He approves of torture. He has boasted of his ability to commit and get away with sexual assault,” Gilligan said.

Yes but it’s both, surely. He’s an evil monster, and he’s too cracked to restrain himself.

(Pause for the usual despairing question. How on earth did we manage to make the worst human being on earth president of the US?)

Here’s an interesting detail:

Bruce Blair, a research scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security, at Princeton, told me that if Trump were an officer in the Air Force, with any connection to nuclear weapons, he would need to pass the Personnel Reliability Program, which includes thirty-seven questions about financial history, emotional volatility, and physical health. (Question No. 28: Do you often lose your temper?) “There’s no doubt in my mind that Trump would never pass muster,” Blair, who was a ballistic-missile launch-control officer in the Army, told me. “Any of us that had our hands anywhere near nuclear weapons had to pass the system. If you were having any arguments, or were in financial trouble, that was a problem. For all we know, Trump is on the brink of that, but the President is exempt from everything.”

Great. Fabulous. If you have a military connection to nukes, you get strictly tested, and rejected if you fail. If you’re the guy who has the ability to send them out – no test.

I learned the other day, I forget where, that Kissinger made a new rule that if Nixon sent an order to release the nukes in the middle of the night the order was not to be obeyed without consulting Kissinger. I despise Kissinger, but I wish someone had that sort of arrangement in this administration. Only there’s no Kissinger-equivalent. Rex Tillerson? Please.

In early April, Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and a professor of constitutional law at American University, and twenty co-sponsors introduced a bill that would expand the authority of medical personnel and former senior officials to assess the mental fitness of a President. The bill has no chance of coming up for a vote anytime soon, but its sponsors believe that they have a constitutional duty to convene a body to assess Trump’s health. Representative Earl Blumenauer, of Oregon, introduced a similar bill, which would also give former Presidents and Vice-Presidents a voice in evaluating a President’s mental stability. Of Trump, he said, “The serial repetition of proven falsehoods—Is this an act? Is this a tactic? Is he just wired weird? It raises the question in my mind about the nature of Presidential disability.”

It should raise it in everyone’s mind. This is not normal and it’s not ok.

Lawrence C. Mohr, who became a White House physician in 1987 and remained in the job until 1993, came to believe that Presidential disability must be understood to encompass “very subtle manifestations” that might impair the President’s capacity to do the job. A President should be evaluated for “alertness, cognitive function, judgment, appropriate behavior, the ability to choose among options and the ability to communicate clearly,” Mohr told a researcher in 2010. “If any of these are impaired, it is my opinion that the powers of the President should be transferred to the Vice-President until the impairment resolves.”

This is what I’m saying. All of those were impaired before he took the damn oath, with the possible exception of alertness. (But even that – really? Those photo ops where he slumps next to the other head of state, looking around like a bored toddler? Not all that alert.)

In practice, however, unless the President were unconscious, the public could see the use of the amendment as a constitutional coup. Measuring deterioration over time would be difficult in Trump’s case, given that his “judgment” and “ability to communicate clearly” were, in the view of many Americans, impaired before he took office. For those reasons, Robert Gilbert, the Presidential-health specialist, told me, “If the statements get too strange, then the Vice-President might be able to do something. But if the President is just being himself—talking in the same way that he talked during the campaign—then the Vice-President and the Cabinet would find it very difficult.”

And he has the key to the nukes.

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Move over

May 5th, 2017 10:25 am | By

Here it is again, that idea that feminism is required to defer to everything else while the reciprocal obligation does not exist. Feminism, and feminism only, has to defer to all other social justice movements. What does that remind me of? Oh yes, sexism. It reminds me what has been required of women since forever.

It’s a new comment on the Hypatia grovel.

Ruth Pearce 1) I agree that this statement should have explicitly addressed the specific issue of anti-blackness.

2) A lot of people here talking about freedom of speech etc. I wonder how many of them a) are aware of how the peer review process works, b) have relevant academic knowledge and/or personal experience of racism and/or transphobia, c) have read the article?

Have you just come here from a media article that’s told you want to think in order to express the anger that said article stirred in you?

See? Feminists are supposed to have relevant academic knowledge and/or personal experience of racism and/or transphobia, but anti-racists and trans allies are not supposed to have relevant academic knowledge and/or personal experience of misogyny and sexism. Racism matters, but sexism doesn’t. Transphobia matters, but misogyny doesn’t.

Why would that be, do you suppose? Is there any reason for it other than the obvious one that even women, even feminist women, buy into the pervasive and ingrained belief that women’s concerns matter less than those of real people.

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He faced financial challenges

May 5th, 2017 9:34 am | By

We’ve been talking a little about presidential pensions, and whether or not it’s regrettable for former presidents to accept huge speaking fees from banks and other obese felines, and why presidents get such a nice golden handshake when they leave. Something I didn’t know: it’s because Truman.

Wikipedia:

Once out of office, Truman quickly decided that he did not wish to be on any corporate payroll, believing that taking advantage of such financial opportunities would diminish the integrity of the nation’s highest office. He also turned down numerous offers for commercial endorsements. Since his earlier business ventures had proved unsuccessful, he had no personal savings. As a result, he faced financial challenges. Once Truman left the White House, his only income was his old army pension: $112.56 per month. Former members of Congress and the federal courts received a federal retirement package; President Truman himself ensured that former servants of the executive branch of government received similar support. In 1953, however, there was no such benefit package for former presidents, and he received no pension for his Senate service.

Which is ok if all presidents are rich when they take office, but why would you want only rich people to be able to take the job?

Also, I’m highly impressed that even so Truman decided not to cash in on the job.

Truman took out a personal loan from a Missouri bank shortly after leaving office, and then found a lucrative book deal for his memoirs. For the memoirs, Truman received only a flat payment of $670,000, and had to pay two-thirds of that in tax; he calculated he got $37,000 after he paid his assistants.

…

The former president was quoted in 1957 as saying to then-House Majority Leader John McCormack, “Had it not been for the fact that I was able to sell some property that my brother, sister, and I inherited from our mother, I would practically be on relief, but with the sale of that property I am not financially embarrassed.” The following year, Congress passed the Former Presidents Act, offering a $25,000 yearly pension to each former president, and it is likely that Truman’s financial status played a role in the law’s enactment. The one other living former president at the time, Herbert Hoover, also took the pension, even though he did not need the money; reportedly, he did so to avoid embarrassing Truman.

Now I’m impressed by Hoover too.

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Not enormously impactful

May 5th, 2017 4:41 am | By

Jia Tolentino read Ivanka Trump’s new book and found it wanting.

In the preface to the book—titled “Women Who Work,” after an “initiative” she launched, in 2014—Ivanka emphasizes that she wrote it before Donald Trump became President. She has since announced that she will donate the profits and refrain from publicizing the book “through a promotional tour or media appearances,” in the hopes of avoiding the appearance of ethical conflicts. (Instead, she has been shilling for the book on Twitter, where she has nearly four million followers.)

Which is a conflict of interest. What on earth makes her think it’s ok to shill for the book on Twitter? She’s exploiting her name recognition as the president’s daughter to flog her shit merchandise. That is not ok.

“Women Who Work” is mostly composed of artless jargon (“All women benefit immeasurably by architecting their lives”) and inspirational quotes you might find by Googling “inspirational quotes.” Her exhortations feel even emptier than usual in light of Trump’s stated policy goals. “We must fight for ourselves, for our rights not just as workers but also as women,” Ivanka writes, and, elsewhere, “Honor yourself by exploring the kind of life you deserve.” The imagined audience for the book is so rarefied that Ivanka confidently calls paying bills and buying groceries “not enormously impactful” to one’s daily productivity.

What about eating and being able to make the rent? Is that enormously impactful?

“Women Who Work” should put an end to the idea that Ivanka is particularly self-aware. In the book’s third paragraph, she assesses her father’s Presidential run by saying, “I have grown tremendously as a person.” Later, she laments not “treating myself to a massage or making much time for self-care” during the campaign. She warns the reader of the dangers of one’s inner circle turning into an echo chamber.

Plus, she works for him, she doesn’t speak up for his many victims, she doesn’t publicly tell him to stop publicly insulting women – Alicia Machado, Elizabeth Warren, Megyn Kelly, the list is long.

Which came first, Ivanka’s women’s-empowerment initiative or her desire to sell more shoes? The initiative evolved “very organically,” she writes. And yet throughout the book she reverts to the tone of a pitch deck: “I designed my company around a larger mission. Whether you’re trying on a pair of my heels or perusing my Web site for interviewing tips, my ‘why’ is to provide you—a woman who works—with solutions and inspiration.” A few pages later, she describes her entry into the fashion business as a “market opportunity . . . ready to be seized.” The book ultimately doesn’t try very hard to obscure the fact that the Women Who Work initiative was created, as the Times recently reported, as a way to make Ivanka products more marketable.

“Female empowerment” as marketing tool – who could have seen that coming?

The book is full of random advertisements for Trump companies, like this one: “Scion Hotels offer energized social experiences and shared work spaces designed to bring people together to exchange ideas and create.” Sometimes Ivanka even deploys Trump’s comically obtuse diction: “I personally love the word ‘curious.’ I identify with it quite a bit because I am deeply curious.”

I think not.

The other quoted experts—and there are hundreds—are all over the map. There’s Stephen Covey, the business consultant and teacher who wrote “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” There’s Socrates. There’s Toni Morrison, who is quoted as saying, “Bit by bit, she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” (Ivanka does not note that those lines are from the novel “Beloved” and refer to freedom from actual slavery; in this context, they are used as the chapter divider before a section on time management, in which she asks women, “Are you a slave to your time or the master of it?”)

Oh, brilliant. Good choice. Thank god she’s “curious.”

By the end of the book, she’s basically speaking to no one. Wealthy upper managers with families don’t need to be reminded of the importance of setting goals, and Ivanka’s directives are utterly irrelevant to anyone struggling to pay for childcare and housing at the same time. Women outside the corporate world and creative class do not figure into her vision of endless upward mobility at all. In one chapter, she writes, with a sense of courage that is jaw-droppingly misplaced, “If I can help celebrate the fact that I’m a superengaged mom and unabashedly ambitious entrepreneur, that yes, I’m on a construction site in the morning and at the dinner table with my kids in the evening, I’m going to do that.” And why wouldn’t she? Who wouldn’t celebrate that level of ability and accomplishment—except, maybe, the type of man who would say that putting your wife to work is a dangerous thing? The fundamental dishonesty of Ivanka Trump’s book is clearest in the fact that she never acknowledges the difficulty of knowing, or being governed by, anyone like that.

Her book and everything else about her.

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The sheer nastiness

May 4th, 2017 5:58 pm | By

Brian Leiter collected some responses to the monstering [he calls it the defamation] of Rebecca Tuvel. They are consoling after reading the dreck from the Hypatia Associate Editors and that open letter. A few snips:

Philosopher José Luis Bermudez (Texas A&M):

I am deeply concerned about what appears, on the evidence available, to be an egregious episode of collective persecution that breaches longstanding norms, not just of academic life but of civilized behavior. I have no comments on Dr. Tuvel’s article, but the correct response to an article with which one disagrees is surely to write a response pointing out perceived flaws in argumentation and evidence.

You would think. You would especially think that in the case of academics. Standards are looser elsewhere in the intellectual world, but among academics you don’t run around demanding retractions of papers you don’t like. That’s not how any of this works.

From a PhD student in philosophy:

As a PhD student in philosophy, I wanted to thank you for taking a stand on your blog against this ridiculous thought-policing going on at Hypatia. The sheer number of “scholars” who signed that Open Letter to Hypatia was staggering, and therefore depressing; their apology was even more disappointing.

Over 500 “scholars” had signed the letter last I saw. Not all of them were philosophers though: lots were in Critical Theory and Theory of Theory and Theoretical Theorizing About Theory and the like.

Philosopher Jimmy Lenman (Sheffield):

I am deeply vexed and shaken by the sheer nastiness of l’affaire Tuvel. I seriously begin to question if I really belong in this profession. I entered it naively thinking it was a place where everything could be challenged, everything questioned, a glorious field of free inquiry where intellectual integrity counted for everything, ideological conformity for nothing. Increasingly it looks instead like a place for the enforcement of pious orthodoxies where self-righteous bullies queue up to trash the reputation of anyone foolish enough to question bien pensant received opinion, not just powerful, tenured folk like me, but vulnerable early career folk like Tuvel. I am utterly horrified and disgusted.

That rings such a bell  – that “the enforcement of pious orthodoxies where self-righteous bullies queue up to trash the reputation of anyone foolish enough to question bien pensant received opinion.” Been there, had that.

Dr. Eric Johnson-DeBaufre, librarian of the Robbins Library of Philosophy at Harvard:

I write to thank you for bringing attention to the frankly scandalous mistreatment Rebecca Tuvel has received at the hands of both the authors of the “Open Letter to Hypatia” and by the editors of that journal. Incidents like this can provoke crises of confidence in one’s choice of profession, so it has been encouraging to read on your website the expressions of support for Tuvel and outrage over the public rush to defame her.

It has indeed.

Oh this one is where I saw the number of signers:

Philosopher Graham Oddie (Colorado):

No fewer than 520 academics signed on to an inaccurate, possibly defamatory, open letter to the journal Hypatia, publicly denouncing Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Rebecca Tuvel. This is an attempt to silence a researcher with whom they disagree, through collective social media shaming.

And not just to silence her – to punish her, to disgrace her, to make everyone hate her, to humiliate her, to make her feel like shit.

Ah the life of the mind, eh?

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They had a party

May 4th, 2017 4:45 pm | By

The House Republicans were carrying on as if throwing millions of people off health insurance were an exciting football game this morning.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and his GOP leadership team held what amounted to a pep rally for rank-and-file members in the Capitol basement Thursday morning as they predicted victory in their push to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

Leaders played the “Rocky” theme song as lawmakers walked into the meeting. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) put an image of George S. Patton on the screen and read inspirational quotes from the general.

“Let’s get this f–king thing done!” Rep. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) told her colleagues, according to sources in the room.

PAR-DEE!

Then they got that fucking thing done, and had a party for real.

They had a party in Washington on Thursday. They had a party in the Capitol and then they all got into nice shiny buses to roll through the tall gates of the White House to have a party there. This was an afternoon to celebrate, and these folks were going to celebrate with their President* of the United States.

They had a party in Washington on Thursday to celebrate the fact 24 million people would be made free by losing the healthcare that has made their lives easier since 2009. This was a thing to celebrate.

They had a party in Washington to celebrate that people with diabetes, or a genetic disposition to Parkinson’s, or a congenital heart defect, would be made free because their insurance rates would be subject to the kind ministrations of Republican governors like Sam Brownback, or Republican state legislatures like the one presently sitting in the newly insane state of North Carolina. This was a thing to celebrate.

…

They had a party in Washington to celebrate that one state—Mississippi? Kansas?—could bring freedom by restoring lifetime limits on employer-based healthcare coverage for 129 million Americans. This was a thing to celebrate.

They had a party in Washington to celebrate the fact that taking healthcare from poor people was enough to give the top two percent of Americans a trillion-dollar tax cut. This was a thing to celebrate.

Scum. I hope they all get voted out and can’t get other jobs and find themselves broke and without health insurance. Every damn one of them.

Charles Pierce feels much the same way.

This was a bill constructed to be as cruel as possible to as many people as possible for the benefit of the wealthiest Americans and to give a “win” to an incompetent and vulgar talking yam that flukes and circumstance have placed at the head of a once-great republic. It is an altogether remarkable piece of American political history that should follow the people celebrating it to their graves, to which they will be proceeded by thousands of their fellow citizens, who might not have, had there not been so much to celebrate on Thursday, in Washington, among all the tomb-white monuments.

Amen.

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Grin some more, fiends

May 4th, 2017 1:29 pm | By

Just look at them.

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As he marked the National Day of Prayer

May 4th, 2017 1:06 pm | By

Trump did a little bit to damage the separation of church and state, but not as much as his godbothering fans wanted. Sad!

President Donald Trump is seeking to further weaken enforcement of an IRS rule barring churches and tax-exempt groups from endorsing political candidates, though his executive order on religious freedom is disappointing some of his supporters.

As he marked the National Day of Prayer at the White House Thursday, Trump signed the order asking the IRS to use “maximum enforcement discretion” over the rarely enforced regulation, known as Johnson Amendment.

Ah no, the godbotherers wouldn’t like that. They want him to tear up the Johnson Amendment and then set fire to it.

Trump spoke to religious leaders at the Rose Garden, where he also announced he’ll visit Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Vatican — including a meeting with Pope Francis — on his first foreign trip.

The capitals of theocracy; nicely played.

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Those theorists whose lives are most directly affected

May 4th, 2017 12:45 pm | By

There are different, clashing rules in play in this “how dare Rebecca Tuvel” issue. Let’s revisit the open letter to look at them:

Many published articles include some minor defects of scholarship; however, together the problems with this article are glaring. More importantly, these failures of scholarship do harm to the communities who might expect better from Hypatia. It is difficult to imagine that this article could have been endorsed by referees working in critical race theory and trans theory, which are the two areas of specialization that should have been most relevant to the review process.

Wait. Are they? Who says so? Why? Hypatia is a journal of feminist philosophy. Why is it expected to consult people in critical race theory and trans theory? Do people in critical race theory and trans theory consult feminists before publishing? I don’t think so. Why does feminism have to consult critical race theory and trans theory when critical race theory and trans theory don’t have to consult feminism? Why is this obligation always only one way?

A message has been sent, to authors and readers alike, that white cis scholars may engage in speculative discussion of these themes without broad and sustained engagement with those theorists whose lives are most directly affected by transphobia and racism.

But the lives of feminists are directly affected by trans ideology and rhetoric. There’s a lot of feminismphobia and misogyny in trans activism. Many trans activists on social media spend far more time verbally attacking feminists than they do anyone else. So why are feminist women obliged to consult experts in trans theory but not vice versa?

The letter gives a list of things Hypatia has to do, then explains further:

These steps are especially important, considering that areas such as trans and race theory have historically been underrepresented and excluded from the field of feminist philosophy.

But feminist philosophy is feminist philosophy. Why is it expected to represent and include trans and race theory?

Given this history, it is especially dangerous for Hypatia to stand behind an article that exhibits poor scholarship in both fields and little concern for the voices of those most impacted by “theoretical” debates on the subject of racial and trans identity.

Most affected [aka “impacted”]? What about women? Women are also affected by theoretical debates on the subject of trans identity, because those debates either rely on or dispute basic assumptions about the nature of gender and identity that are, obviously, significant to women too. Trans people don’t own gender; women have a stake in the subject too, a very big one. The duties and obligations and demands for respect in this area should not run all one way.

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Party time

May 4th, 2017 11:33 am | By

The fuckers passed it.

In a major victory for President Donald Trump, the House has voted to dismantle the pillars of the Affordable Care Act and make sweeping changes to the nation’s health care system.

The bill now heads to the Senate where it faces daunting challenges because of the same ideological splits between conservative and moderate Republicans that nearly killed it in the House.

Trump will hold a celebratory news conference at the White House, and GOP lawmakers are expected to take buses from Capitol Hill after the vote.

Yeah, you celebrate, you pampered rich boy piece of shit. You celebrate the millions of people you’re working hard to consign to premature death, untreated illness and disability, pain, isolation, bankruptcy, fear, misery. You celebrate, you speck of human scum.

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A privileged standpoint

May 4th, 2017 10:50 am | By

Here’s another example of that bizarro-world idea that women are now privileged unless they are also Of Color or trans:

I concur that it’s a mistake to treat the problem (of speaking from a privileged standpoint without full engagement with the work of those most vulnerable) as unique to any one person (or to any one group, like white cis women).

See that? We occupy a privileged standpoint now, just like that. Boom, feminism is over, women are dominant unless they are non-white and/or trans.

The author is not unique, nor is Hypatia unique in being willing to publish some work that handles race and gender identity questions in insufficiently attentive ways. Hypatia does, however, have a special commitment to taking robust engagement with marginalized standpoints seriously as crucial for feminist scholarship.

And “woman” is no longer a marginalized standpoint.

The rest of the thread veers into a deranged discussion of why “Becky” is an insult and how clueless it is or is not to be unaware of the role of “Becky” in black popular culture.

I can hear a thin little voice in my head, squeaking “Dear Muslima”…

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One of the signers

May 4th, 2017 10:10 am | By

Lisa Guenther, one of the academic philosophers who signed the letter demanding that Hypatia retract Rebecca Tuvel’s piece, explained her signing a couple of days ago.

[Jesse Singal’s] article, like the post at the Daily Nous, goes through the arguments of Rebecca Tuvel’s article, “In Defense of Transracialism,” to argue that they’re not so bad after all: no outrageous claims, no offensive slurs, nothing but reasonable arguments. But this is precisely the problem: it’s what Charles Mills critiques as “ideal theory,” which attempts (in the words of author Jesse Singal) to “pull up one level from the real world and force people to grapple with principles and claims on their own merits, rather than — in the case of Dolezal — baser instincts like disgust and outrage.”

But ideal theory is not the only alternative to irrational “baser instincts.” What ideal theory abstracts from–and this is the reason why Mills argues that ideal theory is ideology– is the network of power relations that shape particular historical contexts and meanings.

THIS is the fundamental problem with Tuvel’s article, and with all of the defenses I have read so far: It “toy[s] around” (Singal’s words again) with a few arguments about issues that deeply and viscerally affect the lives of people whose social location is radically different from her own, with no evidence in the article of an awareness of the context, power dynamics, or stakes of these issues for trans people and people of color. This is why it should not have been published in Hypatia, and why the demand for a retraction is not simply the irrational whim of an “angry” mob, but a critique of white feminist ideal theory as transphobic and anti-black ideology.

Full disclosure: I know Rebecca Tuvel, I was on her dissertation committee, I don’t think she intended to do harm by writing this article. But intentions do not determine or reduce impact. The point is not to avoid ever saying anything “wrong” or problematic. The point is to commit to accountability — both as actors and as bystanders. This is what all of us are called upon to do in this moment.

She was on her dissertation committee, but still saw fit to join the monstering.

But more basically: what I wonder is why Tuvel is raked over the coals for insufficient awareness of the context, power dynamics, or stakes of these issues for trans people and people of color, with no corresponding chastisement or even mention of awareness of the context, power dynamics, or stakes of these issues for women. What about women? Why are women being told to pay better attention to the stakes of these issues for trans people and people of color while trans people and people of color are not being told to pay better attention to the stakes of these issues for women? Why are trans people and people of color being treated as marginalized or de-privileged while women are treated as hegemonic or privileged? When did we decide that women had left the ranks of the subordinated and joined the ranks of the subordinators? When did we decide that?

Spoiler: I didn’t decide that, and lots of women didn’t decide that. It’s not true. Women are not part of the overlord class. Pasting the word “white” onto feminism doesn’t change that.

That’s not what Tuvel is talking about, but it damn well is what I’m talking about.

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The vandals are inside the walls of the city

May 4th, 2017 9:16 am | By

The House Republicans suddenly decided yesterday that oh yes they have the votes now so they’re going to hurry up and vote today to take health insurance away from millions of people.

THE BIG IDEA: Kevin McCarthy has guaranteed victory when the House votes today on a health care bill that would overhaul Obamacare. “Do we have the votes? Yes. Will we pass it? Yes,” the majority leader told reporters last night. The Rules Committee met late last night to take procedural steps and approve the compromises that have been made.

— Some guidance on timing, via Steve Scalise’s office: Around 10:30 a.m., the House will have its first votes of the day. Then the chamber will begin formal debate. Between approximately 1:15 p.m. and 1:45 p.m., the House will vote on this legislation. Members are being told they’ll be free to leave the floor by 2:30 p.m. to 3 p.m.

That’s an hour from now.

How this is working is that the Republicans are saying it will all be fine, there are fixes that will make it all fine, and that they’re lying about that. The patches to provide some subsidies are totally inadequate; the provisions for pre-existing conditions are even worse; it’s going to suck.

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