Mopping Up

Just a few thoughts that I couldn't find a place for in yesterday's post.

One of the other ironies about attempts to defend inarticulate feces-flinging as an expression of Deep Manhood is that critical reason, science, philosophy, and the entire enterprise of the critical intellect has traditionally been claimed as a male preserve.  Women who tried to intrude into this sanctum sanctorum were warned that they were unsexing themselves.  I didn't quote all of that "subculture" comment; here's more of the context (emphasis added):

I think you can describe it as that Sarkeesian launched a attack on a subculture using her style of rhetoric and that many people from that subculture responded with attacks using a style of rhetoric common to that subculture.

As far as I can tell, Sarkeesian's "style of rhetoric" could be called a male style of rhetoric, not her own.  I don't consider any style of rhetoric to have a sex, but intellectual women have often been accused of having or aspiring to have male minds.  Sometimes they are complimented for it, but in any case the assumption is that rationality is a male trait and practice.  I don't deny that vituperative abuse and threats are deployed by women as well as men; but that makes the defense of these tactics by men all the stranger.  Aren't these emotional outbursts kind of ... girly?  I don't think they are, remember; it's masculists who think so, except when it suits them to think otherwise.

Some feminists have bought into the masculist characterization of rationality as a guy thing, so let me stress again that I don't think critical reason has a sex.  But one of the hallmarks of the American mythopoetic men's movement of the 90s (which seems to have faded away, though maybe it only gets less press now) was a rejection of critical reason, on some rather dubious grounds.  Around the turn of the century, I had an online altercation with a self-styled mythopoetic, who accused feminists of rejecting reason.  I pointed out that so did the mythopoetics, and he indignantly denied it but didn't refute it.  His own style of argument was short on reason and evidence, long on homophobic and misogynist abuse.  But that's not because he is male; it's because he's human.  And that's only an explanation of his behavior, not a justification.

In connection with all this, I remembered a useful quotation from Mary Midgley's Evolution as a Religion (Methuen, 1985):

The effect [of specialization] is to leave many of today’s physical scientists rather unpracticed in general thinking, and therefore somewhat naïve and undefended against superstitions which dress themselves up as science.  Creationism, for instance, cuts no ice at all with humanists and social scientists.  Nobody trained to think historically is in any danger of taking it seriously, least of all theologians.  It makes its academic converts among chemists and physicists – sometimes, alarmingly enough, even among biologists [24].

Midgley's correct about the intellectual and professional base of Creationism and Intellectual Design, and I think she's correct about many of today's physical scientists' weakness in the area of  "general" or, as I'd call it, critical thinking.  There's a popular kneejerk reaction to any criticism of scientific claims among many science cultists, whether lay or priestly, that such criticism is the doing of religious nuts or ideologically-driven irrationalists in the humanities.

But there are plenty of religious nuts in the physical sciences today, as David F. Noble has shown (see his The Religion of Technology, Knopf, 1997), and scientific racism / sexism comes from the sciences.  It's true that the criticism of scientific racism comes largely (though not exclusively) from the humanities, from the anthropologist Franz Boas onwards, but that's an indictment of the physical sciences, especially when you consider that apologists for the latest brand of scientific racism admit that earlier brands were discredited but prefer not to admit by whom.  When physical scientists do criticize scientific racism, they frequently are accused of not being scientists, and the accusations are framed in almost paranoid terms.  A prime example of this was my liberal law-professor friend (her background includes doctorates in statistics and computer science) who, when I mentioned the historian of science Thomas Kuhn, snapped that Kuhn had no scientific training.  When I pointed out that Kuhn had a doctorate in physics, from Harvard, she boldly changed the subject.  It was like arguing with a Creationist, and now I understand why.  (I've seen denials of Kuhn's scientific training before, so I surmise it's an item of folklore among scientific fundamentalists.)  If someone is properly positive and uncritical about science, on the other hand, he or she needn't have any scientific training at all.  Again, this corresponds to religious piety.  As long as you respect duly constituted authority, you don't need to know anything, and no one will criticize you for your ignorance.

Another amusing example of this tendency was an academic geneticist who fumed that a paper claiming that human beings are progressively becoming less intelligent was "Arts Faculty science."  As it happened, the author of the offending paper was also a geneticist.  While some humanities faculty do indeed hold and express risible views of science, the true fount of this kind of wackery is the physical sciences themselves.  I imagine that the accusation was a kneejerk, less-than-fully-rational reflex against the supposedly woolly-minded arts and humanities.  Far from being Arts Faculty Science, Crabtree's paper is Science Faculty Science.  Recognizing that would be too painful to bear, I suppose.

I'm not saying that all scientists are irrational or that all humanities faculty are rational; of course they aren't.  But scientists who use the humanities and even religion as a straw man on which to blame attitudes they dislike are being irrational.  It's entirely possible for a person to be brilliantly rational in one domain, and bouncing-off-the ceiling irrational in others.  Think of Edward O. Wilson's pitiable cry, "multiculturalism equals relativism equals no supercollider equals communism."  Notice that Wilson here blamed declining funding for the supercollider on multiculturalism rather than on changing post Cold-War conditions, let alone on its cost overruns and the failure of the damn thing to work.  It would not be out of line to notice too that "communism," in the Soviet Union spent lots of money on scientific research and technology.  (In the good old days, cutting-edge technology pretty much got a blank check, especially if it might have military applications.  Today's scientific revivalists miss those great days.  There were giants in the earth then, or at least giant science budgets.  Now we can only show children Star Trek reruns and hope they'll catch the fire.)  Much of the wackiest (and sometimes harmful) ideas come from the science departments, though, and get published in peer-reviewed journals.

As with religion, I often must ask whom I am to believe among those who claim to speak with authority.  What if the teacher points to his miracles, his mighty acts of power, as proof of his authority?  As a layman, I'm not supposed to evaluate religious or scientific claims; I must simply believe.  Those who Fucking Love Science point to their authorities, but jeer at those who point to theirs.  And vice versa, of course.  Even worse, yesterday the curators of a liberal Facebook page linked to a Slate article which marshalled statistics to show that states with stricter gun laws have few gun deaths, and added their own judgment: "This is not a conversation. You are not entitled to a different opinion. These are FACTS."  It is a conversation. People are entitled to a different opinion, always. Only an authoritarian dirtbag says otherwise. Statistics, especially about social phenomena and policy, are always open to question and disagreement.  For example, on the most elementary level, are we talking about correlation or cause here?  This is not the way to settle a question, or even to discuss it.

I'm presently reading Feyerabend and Scientific Values: Tightrope-Walking Rationality by Robert P. Farrell (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), which is quite interesting.  Farrell shows that many (most?) critics of the philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend misunderstand and misrepresent him.  (Like Kuhn, Feyerabend had training in physics, though unlike Kuhn he didn't complete a degree in it.)  This can't be entirely excused by the fact that Feyerabend wasn't always consistent, though like any philosopher, let alone human being, he wasn't always consistent.  Farrell shows that at one point in his career, in Science in a Free Society (Verso, 1978) Feyerabend did adopt something like that radically relativist position he was often accused of.  But the accusations also refer to (and misrepresent or misunderstand) the work he did before that book.  Granted, philosophy isn't easy at best, and I wouldn't necessarily blame a lab physicist for misunderstanding Feyerabend.  But I do blame other philosophers and historians of science, who should have been able to follow what he was doing: that is their job.

One conundrum I wasn't able to disentangle in F. G. Bailey's discussion of the moral mind in The Tactical Uses of Passion  (Cornell, 1983) was how much the public outbursts of emotion he describes are involuntary and how much they are conscious, willed performances.  For example:

Projecting from the way he has behaved in similar situations in the past, he is “beside himself” or “not himself” or “unlike his normal self” if he conducts himself as others would not have predicted: the calm man who flies into a rage, the irascible woman who remains passive when provoked, the bold person who shows fear, or the coward who confronts danger.  (Of course, if such displays happen often enough, then the definition of that particular “true self” is likely to be modified.)  Second, we may look not at the person and his unique and individual history, but at the status he occupies.  Profanity from the headmistress and sentimental tears from the sergeant major are evidence that these people are “beside themselves” or “not themselves” [51].

Supposedly people who are "not themselves" or "beside themselves" are "out of control."  The politician, the preacher, the salesman, may walk a fine line between being "carried" away by emotion and managing very carefully his or her effects.  Sometimes, however, those outbursts are surely deliberate, theatrically so:

It is a tradition, at least in the British army and I presume in others, that the drill sergeant should taunt the recruits, heap abuse upon them, and so conduct himself that, off the drill square, any normal person would reward him with a black eye.  Recruits are compared to pregnant ducks. They are told that if the Queen saw them, she would certainly abdicate. The trooper whose hair is the length of toothbrush bristles is asked if his head hurts, and, compelled to reply loudly and clearly that it does not, is told that it should, because the sergeant is standing on his hair.  All these things are formalized provocations, and the individual must learn not to fight back, not to get angry, not to show himself as an individual.  The training is generally effective. Very few people do fight back (at least openly – there are all kinds of interesting ways of doing so covertly), and those who fight back openly are heavily punished and generally judged by their peers to be stupid rather than brave ... In this performance not one iota of emotion is encouraged, unless it is collective and stage-managed.  For example, a drill was used at the funerals of important persons.  At the command “Rest on your arms reversed!” one placed the muzzle of the rifle on one’s toe, bowing one’s head.  We were told, “Look sad, you buggers!”  We were like hired mourners at a funeral, and no one expected us to feel sad.  There was also a drill for giving three cheers, laying down where the cap should be grasped (easier with the old peaked cap than the floppy forage hat), where it should be held during the “Hip! Hip!,” and the appropriate duration of the “Hurrah!”  The only occasions on which “genuine” emotion was enjoined were simulated encounters with an enemy: when thrusting a bayonet into a sandbag, one was required to shout with anger and exultation [52-3]

I think Gamergaters also walked this line: Oh, I was so angry to have my subculture vilified by that man-hating bitch that I saw red, I totally lost it, I was out of control.  And perhaps paradoxically, the person who claims to be basically rational expects to be congratulated for becoming irrational in the face of such provocation.  What else could I do, Your Honor?  The bitch was asking for it!  This is the rhetoric of the lynch mob.  The best thing about it is that if you weren't yourself, you don't have to make reparations to your victims afterward.  (The destruction was mutual: they failed to obey our orders, which was emotional violence on a vast scale, so we bombed them into the Stone Age.  It balances out!)

There's no shame in misunderstanding a complex discussion, and none in getting angry at someone for holding opinions you dislike.  But it's one thing to yell "You suck!" at the book you're reading or the post on your computer screen, and another to go public with the same words, to post them to the author's Twitter account; let alone to send the person threats of death and dismemberment.  Or, if I may speak allegorically, there's no shame in losing control of your bowels -- it happens to all of us sooner or later if we live long enough, and of course we all began our lives as incontinent, wailing babies.  There is shame in taking up those feces and hurling them at someone, and even more in defending such behavior as essential to your "subculture" or an inevitable result of your genetic makeup.  Feelings are, we were taught at the telephone crisis line where I volunteered for several years in the late 1970s; they aren't necessarily reasonable, and there's no reason why they should be.  What we do with them, how we act on them, does need to be reasonable.

When Death Threats Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Make Death Threats

I haven't written about Gamergate here, because I didn't feel like sorting through the controversy and finding out what was really going on.  Plenty of other people who knew what they were talking about, and who love gaming, have written about Gamergate competently. I am not particularly interested in gaming myself, and I have nothing to add to their analyses.

What I am interested in are issues of civility (though maybe I should put that word in quotes), sexism, misogyny, anti-feminist backlash, homophobia, and freedom of speech.  So this post at Alas, a Blog about some reactions to journalist Anita Sarkeesian's testimony at the United Nations, gave me something to write about.  Here, courtesy of Ampersand, is the relevant portion:

Ampersand showed how certain of Sarkeesian's critics misrepresented her remarks (without actually quoting them explicitly, he says).  What interested me were the defenses of Gamergate by some commenters under that post, which eschewed the more typical frenzied misogynist rants in favor of mere condescension (referring to Sarkeesian as "Anita," for example) and superficially civil calls for freedom of speech and debate.

One commenter claimed that harassment must consist only of overtly hostile, threatening behavior.  But if someone were to call this guy up every night at 3 in the morning, say nothing for thirty seconds or so, and then hang up, I feel pretty sure he'd consider that harassment before the first week was over.  It wouldn't be necessary to tell him he was going to be raped anally with a fencepost or his nuts cut off and stuffed down his throat.  I think that if an anonymous caller merely said "Hi!" in a bright, friendly tone before hanging up over and over, he still would consider it harassment.

The most useful comment for my purposes was posted later in the thread, though.  It stated a notion that had been gestured toward by others, but stated it clearly and reasonably unambiguously.  Ampersand had linked to a sample of misogynist abuse of a feminist writer and asked if such stuff was "fair game."  The commenter replied:

None of those are in the vicinity of “you suck” or “you’re a liar” which is what she was complaining about, and which are valid responses to someone’s output.

We don’t think racist, sexist, homophobic, what-have-you insults are okay, even (especially?) when directed at public figures. But we do expect them to put up with generic insults, like “you suck”.

"You suck" is not a valid response to someone saying something one dislikes or disagrees with. If anything, it amounts to a confession that one has nothing valid to say in response to them. It doesn’t show rationality, finely-honed debating skills, superior knowledge about gaming or any other subject. Saying "you suck" shows that one is an inarticulate lump who has nothing of any interest or value to say about the subject about which one has gotten all hot and bothered.  This is not necessarily a bad thing -- some of my best friends are inarticulate lumps -- but it's not the same thing as being rational or articulate. The beauty of the internet, of course, as of free speech in general, is that no one has to be intelligent, or knowledgeable, or rational to share their opinions with the world. But no one is required to pretend that the equivalent of monkeys throwing feces is intelligent discourse. Yet I’ve noticed that these shit-throwing boys not only want to be taken for rational thinkers, but want respect and sympathy for themselves and their hurt feelings.  Much like bigots in general.

"You're a liar" has more promise, but only as a beginning.  It has to be followed, or accompanied, by some evidence for the claim it makes.  Not too surprisingly, that doesn't usually happen, and as in this case, when the attempt is made, the evidence is mostly or entirely false itself.

If you feel that you really and truly must say "You suck" to someone else, saying it once is enough.  You'll achieve nothing positive or constructive by saying it over and over, let alone escalating from there to dismemberment fantasies and threats.  (Bear in mind that the threats were not a response to escalating feminist criticism of gamer culture -- rather the opposite.  If their targets didn't respond in kind, they took that as license to come up with more baroque and vivid dismemberment and rape fantasies.)  And if you discover in yourself a certain ambition to be something more than an inarticulate lump, you can begin by seeing how many people have already told the offending person that he or she sucks.  You get zero points for originality after the first dozen or so.

The Gamergate notion that being a Gamer is an "identity" that must be defended at all costs was significant, I thought.  It ties into to the claim by another comment that Sarkeesian was not an innocent victim after all: she had criticized a subculture, and "many people from that subculture responded with attacks using a style of rhetoric common to that subculture."  This was intended to be a defense of the vitriolic attacks, by the way, though the commenter also claimed that they were the work of only "a few bad examples."  This kind of equivocation is common as a distractive tactic, I've noticed: first, the behavior was appropriate to the culture; second, it was not typical but the work of a few bad apples; third, criticizing those few bad apples strikes at the heart of the entire subculture.

Another thing about “subculture”: it’s one thing (though not above criticism and censure) for the members to engage in these antics among themselves, and quite another to direct them against those who didn’t ask, and don’t want to play. The funny thing is that the people who are here (and elsewhere) defending the monkeys are thereby inadvertently confirming everything derogatory anyone could say about boy-culture and gamer culture in particular.

The same commenter later accused me of misandry for comparing the more intemperate Gamergaters to feces-throwing simians.  I don't think so, though I'd pay attention to a rationally argued case for the accusation.  (Need I tell you that he didn't attempt one?)   But I think he missed something.  If I were to say that all human males are feces-throwing monkeys, and offered no compelling evidence to support the allegation, then yes, an accusation of misandry might well be called for.  But I didn't even compare all Gamergaters, or video-game players, to feces-throwing monkeys: I compared those whose total and mildest collective retort to criticism of the gamer subculture was "You suck" to feces-throwing monkeys.  I might have other characterizations of the scum who spammed their opponents with death threats.  Rabid feces-throwing monkeys, maybe.

There's an entertaining irony here that I've noticed before.  It's not I who am saying that the innate nature of human males is to screech "You suck" when someone criticizes (no matter how rationally) their little ways, it's the angry males who defend and justify their behavior by attributing it to male nature.   A friend told me that in a video of Jane Elliott's blue-eyes/brown eyes exercise, a white man expostulated that he didn't like being told he was ignorant because of the color of his eyes.  According to my friend, Elliott replied: "Oh no, sir -- your ignorance has nothing to do with the color of your eyes."  (There's a lot of feces-flinging in some responses to Elliott in this article from Smithsonian magazine.  From people of both sexes, by the way: it's not just a guy thing, only some guys claim that it is.) I myself have dealt with white people who claimed they were called racists simply because of the color of their skin; Christians who claimed they were called bigots merely because of their faith; heterosexuals who claimed they were called homophobes merely because of their sexual orientations; men who complained that they were called sexists just because they had a penis.  Oh no, sir -- your sexism has nothing to do with your penis.  At most it has to do with your conviction that having a penis (or a melanin deficiency, or an erotic fixation on the other sex, or you worship images of a crucified man) impels you to behave in certain ways, and should entitle you to certain privileges.

On the other hand, I doubt that the Gamergaters would have responded the same way to, Harvey Mansfield's association of violence with manliness, just as no conservatives accused Phyllis Schafly of hating men when she claimed that men wouldn't support their children unless the law made them do it.  As Callie Khouri, the writer of Thelma and Louise, pointed out, no one sees ultraviolent gangster or action or horror movies as defamatory of men.  What's unacceptable is to say that male violence is a bad thing, and even worse: merely to suggest that ultraviolence is not part of the essence of manhood, and that men don't have to be violent to be good men.  That's what sets off the flying feces.

Even when I speak of Boy Culture (I choose Boy to imply my belief that it's a construct of some immature males, not an expression of adult maleness), I cheerfully admit that not all males conform to it or support it -- indeed many are victimized by it -- and that many women also embrace and endorse it.  That's a big part of my point: that would-be alpha males are not only a small minority of men but that many or most men aren't interested in being at the top of a heap.  (As others have noticed, researchers have an unseemly tendency to focus on the cool kids and ignore the others who constitute the majority.)  The dominant (hegemonic, to use the jargon) model of manhood, like other dominant models, is often true of only a minority in a society, but it will be paid lip service as 'natural' or 'the way things are' by the majority.  That's a datum, but it doesn't make the dominant model true.

The most interesting response I got in the comments thread sought to catch me out in my own logic.

Would you ever apply this criticism to (using a group I identify with) gay activists who use intemperate, insulting language? Or do they get a pass because they never claimed superior rationality? I’m not actually a fan of people telling others “you suck” online, but I also don’t think it’s a particularly strong insult at all – consider the arguments about language changing above – and I think you’re articulating a double standard.

Hey, I identify with gay activists too!  I have been a gay activist myself, and may be one again (activist, that is; I’m still gay). And yes, I would criticize gay activists for using intemperate language, etc., though I'd have to see each case to evaluate. In fact I do criticize my fellow queers and our allies when they say “you suck” and “fuck you” and the like, because nothing says enlightenment and opposition to misogyny and homophobia like homophobic/misogynist language. Sometimes I tell people who say “fuck X person” that I’m glad they love Kim Davis (or Donald Trump, or whoever) and want to give her pleasure, but I don’t think that’s the message they are trying to convey. And yes, my people do like to present themselves as rational and enlightened compared to those stupid fundamentalist Bible thumpers who are fat and stupid. It’s painful to be reminded, constantly, that so many of my fellow gay people and liberals and leftists are stupid, bigoted swine. But I soldier on.

I’m not so much concerned with “insult” or how “strong” the insult is, in this case — I think he missed the point about that. I said that saying simply “You suck” to someone you disagree with is not a valid reponse to them. Yes, language changes, but “you suck” and “fuck you” still seem to me to convey the sense that being penetrated is debasing, and therefore throwing those words at another person effectively means to feminize and debase them. I’ve noticed some straight guys trying to argue that “faggot” isn’t really antigay, it’s a putdown of those who “bend the knee,” which is of course nonsense. And I must point out that the same excuse about changing language gets made for the kind of raving abuse that women like Sarkeesian are targeted with. They’re accused of being too sensitive, etc. One commenter on an article on Gamergate actually claimed that if he’s not allowed to make death threats online, all “our” freedom will have been stripped away by the feminazis.   (No permalink that I could find: see Atavax, 10/20/2014 9:00 PM EST.)

But leave that aside. It doesn’t really matter whether I’m right about the misogynist/homophobic punch of “You suck.” The important thing is that someone who says it is declaring his or her refusal to debate rationally. He or she is expressing his or her feelings, I suppose; but they’re not interested in anyone else’s. Over the years I’ve run into numerous homophobes online who’ve tried to discredit what I say by insinuating that I must be a homosexual, or by trying to “out” me. You can’t “out” someone who’s already out, and it drives them up the wall when homophobic shaming doesn’t work on me. If someone says “You suck” to me in such a situation, I’m likely to say, “Why yes, I do. What is your point?” I’m not interested in censoring them, but I am interested in censuring them, mocking them, deriding them, and withholding respect from them. That’s not a double standard; the double standard is held by people who want to hurl abuse at other people, threaten them online, etc., but panic and whine that they’re being persecuted when someone throws the abuse back at them. If they want me to tiptoe around their tender little feelings, they need to show the same consideration to others. And as I’m afraid even this relatively reasonable thread shows, there are many men who can’t see any discussion of sexism as anything but a call to castrate them, as shown by the misreadings of Sarkeesian that Ampersand has to keep correcting. Just as there are many whites who can’t see any discussion of racism as anything but a call to drive The White Race into the sea. And many heterosexuals who see the legalization of same-sex civil marriage as opposed and hostile to heterosexual marriage. I can sympathize with their irrationality and the pain that drives it, but I see no reason to call it “valid.” It’s not.

So no, I don't think I was articulating a double standard.  My interlocutor couldn't have known my history of criticizing my own side, of course, but it's significant that he chose to suppose that I don't do it.  I think he revealed a double standard of his own, however: that for ostensibly straight boys to attack their critics in these terms is at least understandable, but for gay activists to behave in the same way is not.

A curious thing, though, about that other commenter's claim that the frenzied response to Sarkeesian and other feminist critics of gamer culture was that the gamers used "a style of rhetoric common to that subculture."  It follows that Sarkeesian and her colleagues would have done better to use the same style of rhetoric in reply.  I doubt it would have worked.  I've occasionally experimented by responding to right-wing bigots with their own style of discourse.  They always attack me for incivility, irrationality, and dishonesty -- for sinking to their own level, in effect, though they're careful not to recognize their manner in the mirror.  The gamers conform to this pattern, though since their targets mostly do not respond in kind, they have to invent horrific feminist calls for the subjugation, castration, or elimination of all men.  Are they happy that women are learning to use the style of rhetoric common to the gaming subculture?  They are not; they are distraught that man-hating feminists are brutal misandrists.  Even the comparatively mild humorous trope about "male tears" is cast (see the comments) as a foreshadowing of the Androcide to come if feminists have their way, because of course women fear male violence, and males fear female laughter.  But isn't it misandrist to accuse feminists of sinking to men's level?