Friday, October 2, 2015

October

266 comments:

  1. Wardrober. Not sober. Sky.

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    1. Nice poem. Did you stay up all night?

      The video below is apparently a message to NSA types.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=panT9P_VdyE

      Should someone do something similar for complicit academic philosophers, complicit bankers etc.?

      But maybe philosophers have relatively clean hands, insofar as we teach students how to think philosophically.

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    2. http://www.wired.com/2015/09/campaign-help-surveillance-agents-quit-nsa-gchq/

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  2. So, convicted rapist Anna Stubblefield is a convicted rapist. I wonder if Jennifer Saul still thinks it's all so very "complicated".

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    1. I feel sad for Stubblefield and family. She probably genuinely thought this D.J. consented. Now she is subjected to the unimaginable cruelty of the U.S. justice system.

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    2. I kind of agree, 7:51. Of course, the same is true for many other rapists - including those who commit "statutory rape", which is, for pragmatic reasons, a strict liability offense in most jurisdictions.

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    3. 7:51

      How charitable you are to the convicted. I feel not just sad for all victims of assault, but angry at the perpetrators. And given the data on facilitated communication--no reflective person could think there is anything to it--it hides at best a self-deluded (and thus subject to personal desires) attempt to help, and at worst manipulation.

      Shame on Stubblefield. Shame on her supporters, if any.

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    4. I agree with 7:51 and with 8:14 too. Although she did a terrible thing, anger at her doesn't feel quite appropriate -- or anyway, not if it's untempered with pity. The mens rea seems to be missing.

      Human brains are very easily duped about things like 'facilitated communication'. People believe ouija boards, for god's sake.

      And, of course, there's her 15 year old daughter, now without parents. Just terrible.

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    5. But how would you feel 4:02 if she had been a man, and the victim a woman? This is a genuine question, not some dickish slight. I am genuinely conflicted on the Stubblefield case, but here I feel I would be angry. But then what does that tell us about the case when the genders are reversed?

      I also think that part of the discussion is about the way we name "facilitated communication". According to the judge it is "non communication". If that is right, then "facilitated communication" isn't really the right term.

      I hate to say it, but had a man used a technique that he knew was disregarded by the scientific community to facilitate sexual intercourse with a vulnerable female patient, most of us would be ready to string him from the rafters.

      So where is the difference?

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    6. I don't know for sure what I would think, 8:31. I like to think I would feel the same (you have to keep the 15 year old daughter in the equation, remember), but I have not yet achieved perfect Socratic self-knowledge.

      I have no illusions about "facilitated communication". I agree completely with the judge that it is not communication at all. What I thought two commenters above me were remarking on, and I meant to agree, was that Stubblefield thought she was communicating. So it's comparable to a case of statutory rape in which the perpetrator honestly but perhaps stupidly thought the victim was of legal age. (This is what I took 8:14 to be saying, and what I was agreeing with.) When I think of male perps in that situation, I don't feel angry at them -- it seems inappropriate. Perhaps you do?

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    7. 8:37

      You don't understand the nature of this particular case. Legally this case may be 'assault' but if you think about it for even a second you realize we have a highly contentious case even from a perspective of what's called 'statutory rape'. There is no law which says you can't have sex with anyone whom we can only communicate with (if we can communicate at all) through FC. Whether this case is even assault is murky unless you're a professor who has assessed all the evidence and articles (and even then, as we have seen with Stubblefield...). So there's that, and there's the absence of what 4:02 calls 'mens rea'. Finally, though definitely not unusual, she was convicted by a jury of laymen. Is that reasonable? Do you really want (say) a plumber to make such decisions?

      So first of all, this is, as her lawyer rightly mentions, a truly exceptional case. This isn't your run-of-the-mill sexual assault case, Stubblefield is not the kind of perpetrator you make her look like.

      Second, there's what I call the 'unimaginable cruelty' of the U.S. justice system. We can read in the nj.com article that she faces 'between 10 to 40 years' in an American prison. Does anyone think this a reasonable sentence for this offence and that's it's not insanely cruel? I mean, if she were some psychopathic mass murderer, fine, lock her up for 30 years or so (40 still seems excessive). But does anyone think it was clear from the outset that she committed a crime and needs punishment, and that she's the kind of criminal for whom this punishment is adequate? It's simply inhumane to put someone of her stature in prison for so many years, let alone imprison her at all. She just isn't the right person for prison. I'd say this is a case for a largely symbolic punishment, just to signal as a legal precedent that what she's done is not allowed (we didn't even know that much before). So give her, say, a suspended sentence of 2 years, because it's a murky case and there is no mens rea. Also, she wasn't even allowed to remain released until sentencing to make provisions for her daughter. Who else than an unempathetic judge would think she poses any kind of threat to the community? And who else than such a judge would think the gravity of this case merits immediate imprisonment? And notice also the judge simply presumes there is a risk of flight.

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    8. I agree that this case is odd, and the punishment seems utterly out of proportion.

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    9. Oh, the empathy of you folks! Funny, I don't recall much empathy being expressed for people like Ludlow, Barnett, Hannah, or McGinn when their careers were destroyed for much lesser charges, in one case simply for defending a student. But those were men and this is a woman.

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    10. It is not "murky". Stubblefield raped a disabled man who was powerless, and unable to consent. It is clear that there is mens rea, under common law definitions ("negligence", "recklessness", "knowingness"), and in particular, what a "reasonable" person would think.

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    11. One point overlooked when appealing to the mens rea thing is that it really can't, and shouldn't be, invoked in legal cases as fully or, often, even partially exculpatory.

      There are many heinous crimes that are committed under a delusion which doesn't remotely excuse the perpetrator. One example would be murders committed by people who are under the sway of a religious cult, and who believe that, say, the people they are killing are going to go immediately to heaven after being killed. They might believe this with utter sincerity. Yet no one would excuse their crimes in the least on that account.

      We generally regard people as responsible for putting themselves in a delusional state under these circumstances, and responsible therefore for the crimes they commit under those delusions.

      So it is with Stubblefield.

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    12. I'd further add that the Stubblefield case differs from many statutory rape cases in that in many statutory rape cases, it is actually genuinely hard for a perfectly rational person to infer that their sexual partner is below legal age. If that partner says, for example, that they are 20, and go to college, etc., and look to be of legal age, it is hard to see why a rational person would not generally conclude they are of legal age.

      But delusions are not rational, of course.

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    13. 8:53 wrote: "I mean, if she were some psychopathic mass murderer, fine, lock her up for 30 years or so (40 still seems excessive)."

      Someone has been reading too much of that genius Ta-Nehisi Coates. Anyone who thinks 30 years is the proper sentence for a "psychopathic mass murderer" is frankly dangerous.

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    14. Amplifying what 10:00 says, the claim there was not mens rea is false. There was mens rea in this case. Stubblefield did not plead insanity or delusion; and even if she had, it would have made no difference, unless she could have presented an expert diagnosis of her undergoing a major psychotic breakdown - as is clearly not the case.

      Anna Stubblefield negligently, knowingly, and recklessly engaged in actions which a reasonable person would have regarded as sexual assault: that's mens rea.

      So, one continues to wonder what motivates the excusers and apologists. If it is "empathy", then why did we not see it when a number of men had their lives publicly and permanently ruined for, at very worst, minor infractions? Do these people also not have families?

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    15. The analogy between Stubblefield's crime and that of those in a religious cult is pretty much on target generally, I think.

      One might regard her views on facilitated communication as an extreme manifestation of a kind of identity politics, focused on certain types of disabled people. Certainly she seemed to argue her case in her writings this way. It really became an effectively religious belief, utterly ungrounded in any reality, even if others in her "community" believed like things.

      But it was and is all a delusion. And she is responsible for her acts under that delusion.

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    16. Yeah, I'm not shedding any tears for Stubblefield. There's all sorts of levels on which what she did was wrong.

      But I'm not happy about the reporting. The emphasis on DJ's physical limitations and the bogus FC confuse some of the issues, IMO:

      1) Pretty much every report highlights that he's in diapers and can't talk or walk and needs help with daily activities like eating and dressing. That, in significant parts, describes Stephen Hawking, too, and many other people who are obviously intellectually competent to consent to sex. The lawyers rightly tried to tease that out, but the coverage still dwelled on that.

      2) The fact that FC is bogus is only partly relevant. In my mind, it's only relevant in the assessment of his intellectual age. If there was no question that he was intellectually an adult, then consent might be able to be given in the same way that he might express a preference for one food vs another.

      3) Regardless of intellectual ability and reliability of communication aids, people with this level of disability are extremely vulnerable to assault and exploitation. A fully cognizant person could not prevent a rape. Their only hope for justice would be to communicate it after the fact. If they had a reliable method, like Hawking's voice thing, they would probably be believed and vindicated. But given the level of vulnerability, it seems that all the "rules" about therapist/patient or professor/student relationships need to be respected in spades. IMO, Stubblefield, if she believed what she testified to, should have made the relationship public at the affection stage, and proceeded in a way that made sure she was reading him right. That she didn't seems to me to be clear sign of exploitation.

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    17. One further point.

      One suspects that one big reason many feel such sympathy with Stubblefield is that they believe in a similar religion to hers -- they are Identity Politics parishioners, but more in the mainstream.

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    18. "Anna Stubblefield negligently, knowingly, and recklessly engaged in actions which a reasonable person would have regarded as sexual assault: that's mens rea."

      That's your claim, 10:16, but Stubblefield, who was (is?) an expert on FC disagrees. So you must be an expert too, I guess, as this is not an affair to be judged easily by non-experts? Or will you simply appeal to other experts disputing Stubblefield's account? And as an expert you believe that any reasonable person should regard the act as such? Why? And can we expect everyone to be an expert before they infer consent to sexual intercourse from someone whom they communicate with (and can only, if at all, communicate with) via FC?

      (As an aside: some may be using 'mens rea' in a strictly legal sense while others use it in a more informal sense.)

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    19. I suppose my sympathy is not only with Stubblefield but also with her supposed victim and people like him. Sex is one of life's central pleasures and, frankly, one of its central purposes. Deprivation of sex can literally drive people to kill. The belief that there are adult humans who simply cannot consent to sex - and therefore cannot legally have sex - seems harmful and dangerous to me for that reason. I have no doubt that similar thoughts crossed Stubblefield's mind at one point or another.

      If you're worried that my reasoning is motivated, I can assure you that I am one of the more ubiquitous anti-feminist and anti-identity politics anons here, that I do not believe there is a campus rape crisis or a rape culture, that I do not believe statutory rape should be a strict liability crime, that I do not think there is anything surprising or wrong about grown men being attracted to teenage girls, etc. I have even floated the idea privately that attractive women may have a moral responsibility to sleep with the involuntarily celibate, to help avoid incidents like we saw in Oregon this week. In short, I am simply not a "feminist" about sex, so your "suspicion", while understandable, is not on the mark.

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    20. @10:11:"If that partner says, for example, that they are 20, and go to college, etc., and look to be of legal age, it is hard to see why a rational person would not generally conclude they are of legal age."

      This is off-topic, but your comment reminded me of a funny incident:

      I used to teach at an elementary school that was located a block from the big state U. Many of the students had faculty parents, and some of them frequently rode the city bus to school, as did many university students. One of my students, I'll call her Amy, did this frequently. Amy was tall for her age and just barely starting to enter puberty. She was a serious student who always dressed in jeans and baggy t-shirts and she was a voracious reader. So on the bus each day, she always had a huge book, probably fantasy or sci-fi, that she would read during the bus ride.

      One morning, she told me that on the way in that day, a university student sat beside her and started talking to her about her book. He then asked her her major and she told him she's not in college. She said he looked surprised and nervous, and then asked her which HS she went to and what age. She said "I'm in 5th grade". The guy, to his credit, just said "excuse me" and quickly got up and slinked off to another spot.

      It's a shame we live in a world where they couldn't continue to chat about the book, and of course, they really could have. But all things considered, it seems like both Amy and the student handled things in the best possible way.

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    21. "Oh, the empathy of you folks! Funny, I don't recall much empathy being expressed for people like Ludlow, Barnett, Hannah, or McGinn when their careers were destroyed for much lesser charges, in one case simply for defending a student. But those were men and this is a woman."

      Yeah, hm. I wonder if there's a difference between ten years in prison and losing your job.

      Nah. It must be the genders.

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    22. Hold on -- I *am* sympathetic with Ludlow. I think I said one or two sympathetic things on this very blog maybe a year ago -- though it's possible that I didn't, maybe it was somewhere else.

      Not so much McGinn, but that's for special reasons.

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    23. "I have even floated the idea privately that attractive women may have a moral responsibility to sleep with the involuntarily celibate, to help avoid incidents like we saw in Oregon this week."

      I'm as anti-feminist as the next person, but this is completely insane.

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    24. "One suspects that one big reason many feel such sympathy with Stubblefield is that they believe in a similar religion to hers -- they are Identity Politics parishioners, but more in the mainstream."

      Yup.

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    25. "Oh, the empathy of you folks! Funny, I don't recall much empathy being expressed for people like Ludlow, Barnett, Hannah, or McGinn...:

      I do. Lots of people expressed empathy for them here. I recall many, many more sympathetic comments about those people than we have seen about Stubblefield.

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    26. "... here ..."

      Quite. In the "cesspool"? You need to get your moral priorities straight.

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    27. Who the hell are you talking to, 3:44? Quoting one word out of context doesn't really help to identify who you are responding to. 3:27 (me) looks the most likely, but then the rest of your comment makes no sense. I didn't say anything about a cesspool, and I didn't say anything that indicated what my 'moral priorities' are, or that they are not straight. I merely made an observation about the kind of comments I recall seeing here. So calm down.

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    28. Whatever you think about the murkiness or lack thereof of this case, 10 to 40 years seems crazy. You could walk up to somebody and break their nose with your fist and get off with far, far less than that as a first offender. It's an example of the craziness of America around sex, which also feed some of the campus sex stuff.

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    29. "'I have even floated the idea privately that attractive women may have a moral responsibility to sleep with the involuntarily celibate, to help avoid incidents like we saw in Oregon this week.'

      I'm as anti-feminist as the next person, but this is completely insane."

      I'd agree that this is completely insane, but I can imagine plausible non-insane variations. It wouldn't be insane to suggest that states might have a moral obligation to assist the involuntarily celibate in obtaining sex.

      It wouldn't be that far from, for example, from state funding of prostitutes for the disabled in some Scandinavian countries. If not insane, it's still more impractical, since it's harder to diagnose "involuntary celibacy" than most disabilities.

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  3. "Facilitated communication" could be an interesting metonym for the attempts by academic identity politicians to speak for large groups of people. For example, we might say that the old SPEP-affiliated Climate Guide was using "facilitated communication" for the women at Rutgers.

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    1. Climate guide? Global warming is a fact. Time now to act to mitigate the worst effects.

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  4. I notice that there is no editorialising on the FP announcement go the conviction

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  5. Great new post at the Pilos with some really challenging and insightful words on the profession.

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  6. So Stubblefield wrote an article arguing that criticism of facilitated communication constituted hate speech. http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1729/1777¨
    No, not a blog post, an article, which a peer reviewed journal saw fit to publish. There is an epigraph from John Stuart Mill.

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  7. 11:22,

    That's a very sad item. And it reminds me that there are two very different ways in which much--though not all, to be sure--of the current discourse surrounding rape and sexual assault dangerously misrepresents people.

    On the one hand, it often implies that young adult women are emotionally and physically more vulnerable and fragile, less autonomous and responsible than they are.

    On the other hand, in its portrayal of all young men as potential rapists and all accused men as guilty, it portrays young adult men as much *less* vulnerable and fragile, more autonomous and responsible as they really are.

    One reason not to default, as some extremists would have us do, to the assumption that every charge of rape is true, is because the accused are often very young and emotionally vulnerable themselves, and the harm of false accusation much greater than it might be for an older, more mature individual.

    "I got the impression he was well liked and mature in some ways, but was a sensitive young man and vulnerable in some respects and he found it difficult to cope with the police investigation."

    It's all very sad all around, particularly the way that both extreme sides in these sorts of issues are happy to crucify when it's the opposing team but let anyone off the hook when it's their own. Everybody loses.

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  8. This story won't make you feel sympathy for the 15 year old daughter.
    http://downtrend.com/robertgehl/did-this-white-philosophy-professor-rape-a-crippled-black-man-who-wears-diapers

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    1. 7:49, she is losing her mother for years and years, and she is fifteen. Again, have a heart.

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    2. How quaint. Philosophers have families. What a remarkable discovery! You don't think philosophers recently crucified by the femphils have families? Do you "have a heart"?

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    3. Do you have a brain, 8:16? I'm gathering not, because nothing else would explain why you seem to think it is inappropriate for 7:59 to express sympathy for a 15-year-old girl who is losing her mother for years and years simply because you believe that some other group of people did not express sympathy for the families of people who have not been sent to prison.

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    4. I said nothing of the sort. I merely asked you if you have a heart. Do you?

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    5. No you didn't. You asked 7:59 if they 'had a heart'. And as is clear from my comment at 8:34, I'm not 7:59. But just to be clear, then, when you asked 7:59 if they "had a heart" this was a question that was completely unrelated to the other sentences in your post? You weren't assuming that they either did or didn't 'have a heart' based on anything else that had been said in the conversation, either by other people or by you, up until that point? You might want to make this clear in future. Because normally when people ask questions in a conversation, the usual assumption is that those questions have some relevance to what has happened in the conversation so far.

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    6. This teenage boy was also "not sent to prison". He was driven to suicide by false allegations. How do you think his family feel? So do you have a heart, 8:34?

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    7. Answer the question, 8:34, you fucking manipulative liar.

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    8. It's like PMMB bingo round here. We've had the standard "accuse someone of being a hypocrite because they said something that looks vaguely like something a feminist philosopher might say, and the feminist philosophers have/have not done something". "Deny that your comment had the intention it clearly did have" "Insist your interlocutor answer questions about random cases, attempting to imply that they must be a heartless monster because they have not expressed the appropriate sympathy about some case that is now appearing in the conversation for the first time", "Accuse someone of being both manipulative and a liar for no good reason" "Demand someone answer some question while simultaneously insulting them."

      Someone needs to buy the ARG a new coloring book to distract him for a while.

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    9. 9:27, I see. Both the lack of empathy shown to Ludlow et al was raised earlier, and the case of falsely accused teenage kid committing suicide also raised earlier.

      You make jokes about it. Very funny. So do you have a heart?

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    10. Not only did I not make jokes about it, I'm not the one using a case of someone else's suicide to deliberately troll people on blogs because I am an ideological nutcase.

      You know, I thought of pulling your trick: finding a case in which someone had had something terrible happen to them, linking to it, and asking questions like "You don't think X had a family? How do you think X's family feels? Do you have a heart?" But I'm not an asshole.

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    11. Good - so we have the conviction of a feminist rapist, for repeatedly sexually assaulting a disabled man - aptly described as "incredibly complicated" at FP. How do you think the family of the severely disabled victim of rape feels? And daring to mention the lack of empathy shown to Ludlow et al is clearly a big no-no. After all, they don't have families, do they? And mentioning the suicide of a falsely accused teenager is just like "bingo" - a big joke. How do you think his family feel? I guess they're ok, because he wasn't "sent to prison".

      So glad to have learnt your deep moral insights.

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    12. "I guess they're ok, because he wasn't "sent to prison.""

      You're the only one who said that, 9:58. Are you totally heartless?

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    13. Yeah, you're dead right, 10:04. It's delightful to see innocent people destroyed. Always a great pleasure.

      Again, thank you so much for your deep moral insights and your hilarious joke responding to a falsely accused teenager's suicide.

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    14. What I want to know is this: if I want to express sympathy for someone in a terrible situation, how many other people who are also in terrible situations do I have to explicitly express sympathy for at the same time in order not to be considered heartless?

      For example, if I express sympathy for the Syrian refugees, but do not express sympathy explicitly for people who lost families in 9/11, it is appropriate to question whether or not I 'have a heart'?

      Because one of my friends expressed sympathy for the Syrian refugees the other day. I didn't immediately demand to know whether she thought the students who were recently shot in Oregon had families, and ask her whether or not she had a heart. But maybe I should have assumed that she just didn't give a shit about those people, because she hadn't explicitly expressed sympathy. I should have assumed that she thought it was wonderful that those people were shot.

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    15. @7:49 - (by-passing the intervening conversation)

      Actually, that article, if it is accurate, increases my sympathy for the daughter. She's picked up those attitudes from somewhere, and her home is a not unlikely source. Having her mother serve time is, of course, going to be hard on her. But given that her mother is a criminal, and possibly delusional, being raised for a time by someone else in the family might well be much better for her.

      The courts need to make those decisions independently: sentence Stubblefield based on the usual criteria for doing so; assign custody for her daughter based on her best interests as determined by whatever child protection services are relevant in cases like these.

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    16. Yes, 10:19, we should compare a convicted rapist Anna Stubblefield to Syrian refugees fleeing IS. That's apt. Where do you gain these nuggets of moral wisdom?

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    17. @ 10:28: This is also a case where it seems like interviewing an publicizing those comments was a pretty shitty think for the journalist to do. The girl is a child, who hasn't actually done anything wrong herself. and is going through and incredibly stressful situation. 15-year-olds in times of great stress often say stupid things. I imagine (and I hope that) she'll come to deeply regret those comments. The case is going to follow her around for the rest of her life anyway probably, and the fact that those comments are now on the internet forever is not going to help.

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    18. @11:06 - I (10:28) agree, and I kind of regret having commented about it all. The daughter and the rest of the family shouldn't be part of this discussion at all.

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    19. It is remarkable, isn't it, that the racial angle on this story has been so ignored by the coverage among philosophers? Here's a white person who's been convicted of sexually assaulting a vulnerable black person, and the outrage from the usual outlets (i.e., Feminist Philosophers) is, well, not there at all. The social justice warriors should be all over this, but they are silent. This reveals a lot about their own motivations and values. And by the way, I don't deny that the way its been discussed here also reveals a lot about the motivations and values of the PMMB commentariat, too!

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    20. 10:28 and 11:11, I also thought along those lines when I read the article.

      3:37, I didn't know the victim was black until I read that article. I assume many other people only marginally familiar with the case didn't either.

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    21. I had no idea what race the major players were until I saw the article linked to on the top of this thread. But I haven't been following the case all that closely - is it obvious to anyone who's read a bit about it?

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    22. I had no idea the victim was black until reading the recent Daily Mail article.

      I agree, though, 3:37, that the silence from the SJWs is deafening. My sense is that one (even under the age of majority) can't really get away with saying things like this these days without getting raked over the coals and doxxed on Twitter and the usual blogs. But for whatever reason that's not happening in this case:

      "Stubblefield’s daughter, Zoe Stubblefield, told DailyMail.com today that the victim's family, who are black, were targeting her mother because she was white and they were 'money-hungry idiots'. Speaking at her mother’s home in West Orange, New Jersey, Friday, the younger Ms Stubblefield told DailyMail.com that D.J.’s relatives were 'huge a**holes'. She said: 'They have done this because my mom is white and we used to have a lot of money and they're poor.'"

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    23. "In response to Plant's questions about how the two communicated during sex, Stubblefield explained that D.J. ... could bang on the floor if he wanted to stop."

      Whatever happened to affirmative standards of consent? Instead, we have consent until DJ bangs on the floor?! Imagine applying this back to consent until a girl says no? FemPhil would crucify you, and rightly so!

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    24. For people using this case to bang on about the nefarious SJWs and how they don't a shit about consent except when it involves one of their tribe:

      https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/update-on-the-stubblefield-sexual-assault-case/

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    25. I saw that before and agree, 7:55. The one I'm a bit surprised about is the "disability and disadvantage" blog which (I think) has had nothing to say, at least on the scholarly issues. "Facilitated communication" seems to be a big deal within some parts of disability studies. Shouldn't there be some reflection going on about the journals that promoted that stuff?

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    26. @5:24 - quoting the bit with the child's name is the kind of thing that can contribute to internet raking over the coals. The article link is enough to let PMMB readers know the story. The additional quotation just serves to raise the visibility of a minor child who has committed no crime. I'd say, leave her out of it and let the adults in her life deal with her anger and racist attitudes (again, assuming the article is accurate)

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    27. 7:55, I think most people's complaint about FP was the edit to "incredibly complicated" when the story first came out, which I think it's fair to say was probably caused both by the "disability" context and by the gender of the perpetrator. The linked article comes about a month later, which means those at FP had plenty of time to get "on message" after deciding what that message should be.

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    28. I don't know why the FP post above is being portrayed as some kind of indication as to how balanced and reasonable they are on Stubblefield. It is about as anodyne a discussion of the underlying issue of sexual assault as is possible. Does anyone seriously doubt that, if the who and whom of this particular sexual assault were different, any number of posts in the FP would be denouncing the crime, and decrying the lack of appropriate outrage in the larger philosophical community? Do you think that, say, Ruth Chang wouldn't be telling people that they shouldn't wait until the court has made its ruling before they express their opinions to their colleagues and students? Do you think that the very post linked to here would not directly reject the idea that something as lamebrained as "facilitated communication" should ever be treated as genuine assent? Really, the same people who think that "yes" uttered when even slightly inebriated can't be taken as genuine assent will have any serious argument that "facilitated communication", with all its evidential problems, should be?

      And where is the outrage on FP over this sexual assault now that the court -- despite all the obstacles that the legal system supposedly puts in the way of getting a conviction -- has actually found Stubblefield guilty?

      They and their followers are a pathetic, hypocritical bunch over at FP.

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    29. @9:41 -

      I'm not 7:55, but I don't entirely agree with your analysis/recollection of the issue.

      I do agree that the "complicated" edit was what primarily bothered people here about FP's reaction.

      I don't agree that it's fair to say that gender was part of FP's reason for calling it complicated. I remember nothing they said that implied that either directly or indirectly. But maybe I'm misremembering?

      I'm not sure I understand your last point. Their first posting was unambiguously critical, referring to the situation as sexual assault. They later, through a link, pointed out that the disability community didn't all see it that way. You say it's an article that came out later (I don't remember), but maybe that's the reason for the later link, rather than waiting to get on message.

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    30. I think the reason people believe the "it's complicated" line was gender-caused is simply the contrast between the way FP discusses male-accused-rapists and the way it discusses female-accused-rapists.
      Of course, Stubblefield's case is different in other ways and I'm not saying I agree, but that seems to be the basis. It isn't anything that anyone on FP said explicitly.

      Delete
    31. We should keep in mind that Stubblefield's daughter also has a father. He was estranged until now, but he will probably provide a better parent from now.

      Delete
    32. It's funny how the stauch anti-feminists berating Stubblefield would agree with the arguments put forward in that socially conservative comment thread on FP 7:55 is referencing. The angry anti-feminists turn out to be the most ardent Feminists. LOL. But -let's make a move they would now make as to what motivates this- only when it fits them. And of course it wasn't until 7:55's link that they even limited their attack to one (very defensible) FP post with the word 'complicated' (yes, their whole attack was based on ONE word).

      Delete
  9. I think @8:43 am raises a really good point, so I'm pulling this out to it's own subthread: "...'facilitated communication'......shouldn't there be some reflection going on about the journals that promoted that stuff?"

    I've seen Syracuse mentioned a few times as a place that is a center of FC study, so I'm just throwing out this link as a starting point for discussion. They seem to be using "Supported Typing" as an alternate descriptor:

    http://soe.syr.edu/centers_institutes/institute_communication_inclusion/default.aspx/schoolsofpromise/

    ReplyDelete
  10. It's obvious that both DN and FP have put up minimal links to this story because of Leiter and PMMB. And still they can't bring themselves to editorialize and gloat as they normally would do if the perpetrator had been male. The Ghent/Amsterdam balloon remains silent. They are a bunch of pathetic hypocrites who took on this crusade simply to big themselves up.

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    Replies
    1. Maybe this was already mentioned, but some of the previous FP posts on the case have been deleted. I consider myself a feminist, but I find the FP blog intellectually dishonest.

      Delete
    2. I don't know that your first statement is quite true: DN has been regularly linking to major developments all along, when there was no mention here, at FP or at Leiter. Both DN and FP have comments open, with little or no discussion (at the time I write this). Gender of perp might be a factor, but I think there are others:
      - the case is resolved with a conviction, as perhaps most people thought it should do, so not generating much "outrage"
      - case is (I hope!) more of an outlier, since a relatively small # of philosophy professors work with human subjects. Compare this with cases involving advising grad students or dating former undergrads. Most profs do both of the latter things, so there is a lot of interest/discussion about policies and practices when those cases come up.

      (I don't understand your last sentence: I don't see that anyone in the philosophy community has taken on a crusade related to this case, so I can't tell who/what you're referring to.

      Delete
    3. Can someone find cache versions of the deleted FP posts about Stubblefield?

      Delete
    4. These aren't cached, but here are the currently live and active ones that I found by using FP's search box. I don't remember what might be missed.

      https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2014/04/20/another-philosopher-accused-of-sexual-misconduct/

      https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/update-on-the-stubblefield-sexual-assault-case/

      https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2015/10/03/stubblefield-convicted-of-sexual-assault/

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    5. Whether the Stubblefield case is an "outlier" depends entirely on how one chooses to frame it.

      What Stubblefield obviously has in common with other cases of sexual assaults in academe is the abuse of differentials in power. We are told, endlessly, that that is the precise reason that it is unforgivable when a professor sexually assaults, or even in any way harrasses, his students. Yet what could be a greater abuse of this power than what Stubblefield did? Now, suddenly, the important thing isn't the abuse of power but something else?

      Really, try to ask yourself this question, and try to answer it honestly: if Stubblefield had been male, and his charge had been female, do you doubt that FP would be making this very point, and relentlessly?

      Delete
    6. My apologies. I searched "stubblefield," which didn't bring up the first link. Nothing that I know of has been deleted. Thanks for the correction.

      Delete
    7. Why should we think FP posts about Stubblefield have been deleted? I thought an earlier charge was that FP was too silent about Stubblefield.

      Delete
    8. @11:30 -

      I thought I responded, but it doesn't show up, so a shorter version:

      The Stubblefield case is a much greater abuse, and is right in FP's wheelhouse, as they've posted other times on disabled students as victims of sexual assault. But even then, the particular cases seem to be only posted about once, even with male perps and female victims.

      What gave the other cases traction, IMO, is that the audience was more engaged. I think it's because they involved kinds of academic relationships that are ubiquitous and so policies and practices were being questioned and, in some cases, changed. That was the subject of most of the follow up discussion, as far as I recall, across the blogosphere. The posts simply noting a trial date or result were similarly short and without much discussion.

      As far as your last question, I'm agnostic. Their coverage seems similar to their coverage of female disabled victims and male perps. But those didn't involve professors, so that might not be a good parallel. If we get a stereotypical "prof allegedly assaults student" case where the prof is female, we'll have a better reading.

      Delete
    9. Anna Stubblefield has been convicted in a court of law, by her peers, of raping a diaper-wearing disabled man with the mental age of a toddler (according to his family and medical practitioners), a repeated assault she justified by saying he had consented via a ouija board ("facilitated communication"), and could have expressed non-consent by "banging on the floor".

      Jennifer Saul's editorial comment was that this repeated sexual assault was "incredibly complicated due to the disability issues involved". And that is pretty outrageous. A reasonable person would conclude, at minimum, that Stubblefield must be a delusional crank.

      Stubblefield is a feminist philosopher, a member of the SJW/Identity Politics tribe and a Faculty member of the same Ethics and Value Theory group at Rutgers as Ruth Chang (who has publicly recommended the removal of due process rights for the accused). Stubblefield even has published an article, "Sound and Fury" When Opposition to Facilitated Communication Functions as hate Speech" - saying that scientific criticism of the use of ouija boards is "hate speech"! This is delusional crackpottery, and it's amazing it could have been published - it begins with epigram from a notorious opponent of free speech, Rae Langton.

      Obviously, if Stubblefied had been a male professor and her victim a disabled woman with the mental age of a toddler, then FP would have been be up in arms. It isn't.

      This is because Stubblefied is a woman, and the victim she raped is a man.

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    10. Ruth Chang (who has publicly recommended the removal of due process rights for the accused).

      This is false.
      I would say it's a lie, but if this is (as I suspect) ARG, it's more of a delusion than a lie.

      Delete
    11. I was the one who posted about the deleted FP posts. I was mistaken because the search for "stubblefield" didn't bring up one of the key posts. That post never gave her name.

      Delete
    12. In a 3AM interview, Ruth Chang wrote, "Now I’m a lawyer, and I love due process probably more than most philosophers, but I really think that these attitudes and reactions are misplaced. .... So I think each of us has to make our own judgment, on the basis of whatever data we can be reasonably expected to get, including our understanding of how things typically roll in the world .... It’s time to stop pretending that we are university disciplinary committees and quit creating a passive ‘due process’ professional culture."

      Delete
    13. "Their coverage seems similar to their coverage of female disabled victims and male perps. But those didn't involve professors, so that might not be a good parallel."

      Yes, one would think that the fact that Stubblefield was not only a professor, but a professor of philosophy, would render it all the more compelling for FP to address the case. Obviously, FP considers their particular mission to be addressing the culture of the community of philosophers.

      Again, if Stubblefield had been a male philosopher, and had engaged in such criminal activity, I don't think there's any doubt that we'd be hearing an unending sermon from FP about what it shows about the culture of philosophers, and the utter abuse of power that male philosophers feel they can get away with. I'm sure it would have been argued that, if anything, the relationship between Stubblefield and the disabled individual in his charge exhibited a vastly greater power differential than between a professor and a student, yet he didn't let that interfere with his abusing his charge, so morally deficient is the culture of philosophy.

      Please, if you wish to have any credibility, try to be honest about how this would have played out.

      Delete
    14. I'm sure you'll simply dismiss me as having 'no credibility' simply because I disagree with you, 12:50, but there is at least one major difference between this case and all the other prominent cases involving male philosophers: in the cases involving male philosophers, their students were the alleged victims.

      I'm not saying (obviously) that this makes what they did 'worse' - but it is clear that cases of sexual harassment involving professors and students are of more professional interest to philosophers than cases not like this. Here's why: philosophers are unlikely to have any role in determining policy, for example, about cases that take place outside of a university context. But they are likely to have a role in - and there has in fact been ongoing debate about - what kind of relationships are or aren't appropriate between professors and students.

      So yes it's true that Stubblefield was a philosophy professor - but it wasn't in her role as philosophy professor that the sexual assault took place, it was in her role as carer/psychologist (this itself brings up a lot of issues, but not ones philosophers are likely to be particularly well versed in). Her case also wasn't part of a pattern: (thankfully) there are not large numbers of cases of philosophy professors abusing intellectually disabled people in the care, and it is not something that is likely to be an issue in lots and lots of departments, in the same way that student/professor relationships are clearly an issue in lots of departments.

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    15. 5:58, that's what I was trying to say at 11:10 and 12:17, but you've said it much better.

      If we ever get a case of a female prof accused of assault against a student, the reaction may go as some here predict, with FP being largely silent. But said professor might also get the Laura Kipnis treatment. I think FP has a fairly predictable stance about faculty-student harassment/dating/relationships. I think gender of the prof is a much less reliable predictor of their reaction. Given how few cases we're even talking about, that's hardly surprising.

      Delete
    16. The 'prediction' is about the reaction of FP if a male philosophy professor were to do what Stubblefield did, not "what if a female prof had allegedly assaulted a student". The second is at best partially relevent.

      Delete
    17. People keep harping on the gender issue, but another important difference is that the women who've accused male philosophers of rape have all been white. Stubblefield's victim is black.

      It is not surprising that a bunch of white people don't care as much about a black victim as a white victim. I think the FP's lack of indignation is quite good evidence of this. They have so much in common with the perpetrator, and almost nothing with the victim. We get angry when people like us are victims.

      Delete
    18. You've got a good point, 3:49, if the race was known, but did anyone even know the victim was black before that article mentioned here this weeK? I've been reading pretty much all the trial coverage and also the earlier new articles and I never saw mention of it. Was DJ's race part of the narrative earlier, and I just missed it?

      (and fwiw, I believe the undergrad woman who accused Ludlow is Asian. )

      Delete
  11. Speaking of due process, I'm surprised that the Safe Campus Act hasn't been more widely discussed. It seems pretty sensible to me. Here's a link to some details:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/07/29/do-students-get-a-fair-hearing-an-effort-to-change-how-colleges-handle-sexual-assaults/

    Some key elements of the House bill:

    • Students alleging sexual violence could decide whether to report the incident to law enforcement or not. If a serious crime were alleged and the student preferred not to involve police in an investigation, campus officials would not launch an internal investigation. But they could provide protections to the student, such as requiring the accused to avoid the accuser.

    • All students involved, both those reporting an assault and those defending themselves against the charges, would have the right to hire lawyers at their own expense. Both sides could ask questions of witnesses.

    • Those accused would have the right to know the charges they’re facing, and see the evidence against them.

    • Colleges could choose what standard of evidence to use. For several years, a federal directive has held such campus proceedings to a “preponderance of evidence” standard, less stringent than would be required in a judicial proceeding and less than many colleges had previously used.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Oh, and a revealing quote by an opponent of the bill. It's amazing that the discourse is at a point where people feel free to voice these kinds of thoughts out loud.

    Schools often want to preserve their perfect public image, and rape is not a part of that image; often, sexual assault prevention activists and survivors are treated as adversaries to a college’s public face.

    We are not at a point to analyze “due process,” when many survivors are publicly shamed on their campuses, when charges against assaulters can be dismissed out of hand by administrators, when an assaulter is allowed to sit across from a survivor and shout down their story.

    If we are to truly believe in due process for all, we must prioritize the needs of survivors first and foremost.

    ReplyDelete
  13. This blog has got way too narrowly focused to be of any interest. I now see it as some wannabe cowboy's hobby horse, someone young enough who does not know how to stand back and look at the big picture. The complaining hereis full of petulance and self-obsession. It is as bad as it accuses the FPers or NCs of being, no worse. Can't the people or person who writes here notice anything else that is going on in the world relevant to philosophers and philosophy besides this mra schtick?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Boring and self-centred as shit.

      Delete
    2. Summary of 1:02:

      If you're criticizing FP, you're engaging in "mra schtick" and so narrow that you're not of any interest.

      But I'm certainly not going to make the obvious observation that FP is an entire blog devoted exclusively to these issues, which, somehow, doesn't seem to me be too narrow.

      Delete
    3. In general, how many times do we have to listen to versions of this stupid argument against any criticism of the feminist ideology?

      All such criticisms are dismissed as obsessive, or boring, or narrow, or "mra schtick", or a million other things, but those who support the ideology that is being criticized are never deemed to be obsessed, or boring, or narrow, or engaged in some kind of shtick.

      Basically the argument is: Shut up! I don't want to hear from you anymore!

      But if you really want one side to shut up, the best way is to get the other side to shut up too, because the first side won't feel much need to express their opinion if they don't feel the other side is pushing their views down everybody's throats.

      Delete
    4. Actually I was not giving an argument against "any criticism of feminist ideology".

      I wasn't trying to give an argument at all.

      I was expressing frustration with this blog, and pointing out how extremely narrow it is.

      Because it is so narrow, and often so hate-filled sounding, I don't at all feel stimulated by it. It doesn't seem like a creative endeavor to participate in it. This is different from how things used to be.

      So again, no reason to attack my "argument" because I was not intending to make any argument. I was expressing frustration with this blog as turning out after all to be pretty useless. Too bad, because I'm all for anonymous philosophical blogs, in theory.

      I have tried to start other topics and I have noticed other people trying to. But those comments mostly get ignored and all the energy goes into ARG-ing. (There, I turned it into a verb.)

      Perhaps this is a false flag, to deflect any backlash against the one case in the recent years that philosophers actually should be making a big song and dance about. (And no, when I say "the one" I am not saying that there was only one case that might be argued to have been procedurally unfair. )

      What I say here will all get hidden by ARG-ing.

      Delete
    5. "Perhaps this is a false flag, to deflect any backlash against the one case in the recent years that philosophers actually should be making a big song and dance about"

      A "false flag"? So you're a conspiracist. And this "one case" was?

      Delete
    6. 2:16,

      Look, please get over yourself, if possible.

      If you come on the scene now, and declare that all that has been said in recent comments amounts to "mra schtick", as you did, then you can't pretend to be some neutral party to the issues being discussed here. Certainly a good majority of the arguments in these comments are perfectly reasonable objections to how the ever present and ever powerful (everywhere in prominent positions in the APA) feminists in philosophy have refused to address or acknowledge in any serious way the issues raised by the Stubblefield case.

      Again, do you have an equal problem with FP as a blog, given its even more narrow and exclusive focus? Don't you think you should do so, if these sorts of issues just bore you to tears, and show no promise of all the creativity and innovation that you live for?

      Again, your post amounts to: Shut up, I tell you, shut up! I don't want to hear your side of the story!

      Delete
    7. "A "false flag"? So you're a conspiracist."

      Right because only a conspiracy theorist would expect such a thing as a false flag attack. (sarcasm)

      Delete
    8. Tell us about the "one case".

      Delete
    9. The one case is Anna Stubblefield, convicted two days ago for the statutory rape of a man who cannot communicate and whose mental maturity is that of a three-year old.

      Delete
    10. Eh? 2:16/2:57 is ordering people to shut up about Stubblefield, calling discussion of it "mra schtick", saying that PMMB is a "false flag attack" to "deflect attention" from the "one case".

      So, I'd like to know what 2:16/2:57 thinks is the "one case".

      Delete
    11. It is not the case of Stubblefield.

      Outrage about that is the false flag.

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    12. Outrage about that and several others. This whole blog.

      Delete
    13. I am truly intrigued about your belief in the "one case" that philosophers should be "making a big song and dance about". Do enlighten us.

      Delete
    14. Everyone knows which one it is.

      Delete
    15. Still no clue what you're talking about, 6:54. Not going to enlighten us?

      Delete
    16. 7:54, you and I are clearly not among the cool kids.

      Delete
    17. I'm not a cool kid. I just read alot. signed 6:54

      Delete
  14. Apparently the PMMB censors believe that Christina Hoff Sommers is forbidden philosophy and must be removed. Here's a second try.

    Who Stole Feminism?

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    Replies
    1. If it has a URL, 3:08, it probably got swallowed by the spam filter. That sometimes occurs.

      Delete
    2. Sorry in that case. It had two URLs.

      Delete
    3. Yet another reason why the Blogger platform sucks, poor spam filtering. Can we please please move this operation to something else? Like WordPress?

      Delete
    4. Wordpress gives an IP address with every comment.

      Delete
  15. So here is what's posted so far in the FP thread on the Stubblefield conviction:

    Anonymous Says: October 4, 2015 at 4:37 pm
    What if D.J. really can use FC to express his thoughts?

    noetika Says:
    October 4, 2015 at 8:21 pm
    I’m publishing the comment above hesitatingly, and I will publish no more comments that express the same content. I think this kind of question is extremely unhelpful, and hurtful to the victim (and victims elsewhere). D.J. was not found to be able to consent according to the court, and even if he were able to use FC successfully (something for which we have zero evidence for beyond the testimony of his convicted assailant), it would be utterly inappropriate to rely on communication in which he was assisted by the very person who took advantage of him. There’s a reason why there are rules governing relationships like that of doctor/patient, therapist/client, and so on. It’s ripe for exploitation and manipulation, and that’s before we add in the fact that Stubblefield was, supposedly, his only means of communicating with the world beyond some basic physical movements, the fact that FC is not an established means of communication, and the fact that FC has been shown to be used in the past in ways where the purported facilitators were shown to be influencing or entirely creating communications that resulted from the process.

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    Replies
    1. Oh, I thought the identity politics view was that "opposition to Facilitated Communication" is "hate speech"? Isn't noetika's comment an example of "hate speech"? Did this change? When?

      "On the sixth day of Hate Week, after the processions, the speeches, the shouting, the singing, the banners, the posters, the films, the waxworks, the rolling of drums and squealing of trumpets, the tramp of marching feet, the grinding of the caterpillars of tanks, the roar of massed planes, the booming of guns — after six days of this, when the great orgasm was quivering to its climax and the general hatred of Eurasia had boiled up into such delirium that if the crowd could have got their hands on the 2,000 Eurasian war-criminals who were to be publicly hanged on the last day of the proceedings, they would unquestionably have torn them to pieces — at just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally." (George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four, ch 9)

      Delete
    2. There's no monolithic "identity politics view" on the topic. It's one argument Stubblefield herself put forward in an article and that no-one here or anywhere else in philosophy has tried to get people to rally around. You're being paranoid and intellectually dishonest, you deluded bizarro-Stubblefield fool. Stop gloating about things that don't exist or haven't happened.

      Delete
    3. You're right. What's needed is a "rally", maybe with some drums, trumpets, marching and public executions.

      Delete
  16. Did anyone see the pictures of the all-female "feminist ontologists" conference that were doing the rounds on FB today? Nice in-crowd with some well placed people, I'm sure it's big enough for their papers to have easy rides at journals. We need to start discounting publications that promote these political perversions of subfields of LEM.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes. Ethics is a lost cause but we can't get politicized truth denialism into the core areas.

      Delete
    2. I didn't see it. Can you give a link to the conference site?

      Delete
    3. https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/workshop-on-feminist-ontology-mit-2nd-3rd-october/

      Delete
    4. "Feminist ontology" is a nonsense area, right? Is anything serious being done there?

      Delete
    5. I don't know in any detail what people working in the area are doing, but yes, I can see serious stuff being done there, There are any serious ontological questions to ask, for example, about the individuation of actions which seem to require social roles being filled; about whether explanations of various social phenomena reduces to explanations of individual actions; about the extent to which cultural differences are constituted by differences in values; about whether madness is a social construct; about whether we should be realists or not about patterns that seem to supervene on societies of various types. Sociology is ripe for getting straightened out by ontologists. (Sorry, sociologists. I mean know offense and have learned from you.)

      Delete
    6. Sorry for the grammatical errors:

      There are serious ontological questions to ask, for example, about the individuation of actions ..., about whether explanations of various social phenomena reduce...

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    7. Very serious metaphysics! Consider the Thigh Gap issue: how can the thigh gap--just an empty space, be a something rather than a nothing? Maybe the gap is really just the stuff that surrounds the gap.

      Delete
    8. So is "feminist ontology" just social ontology? I guess in that case I don't really understand why there's a new name. None of those seem like new questions. Many have been addressed for decades by philosophers of social science and by social scientists themselves (the question of individualism being a very prominent one).

      Delete
    9. Feminist ontology?

      Quantifiers now range over womyn and feelz?

      Delete
    10. Can womyn be reduced to quantum feelz theory?

      Delete
    11. Hi 6:52. Yes, that's what I sort of think. Feminist ontology would be social ontology for the most part. It would count as feminist insofar as it would be feminist to take the action of pushing social ontology towards the front of the line of problems to be addressed. Maybe there are additional ontological questions that are feminist but not to do with social ontology, but these would be the main ones, I would think.

      Tell me if you think I'm mistaken.

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    12. 6:56, you have something against feelz? What are you, a robot?

      Delete
    13. Feminism is the idea that men are wicked and the feelz prove it. How is this related to ontology?

      Delete
    14. Hi 9:19. That seems like part but not all of it. Some or another draft of Barnes' "classic" (lol) article can be found at http://aristoteliansociety.org.uk/pdf/barnes.pdf and it mentions gender specifically. I don't think it'll surprise you that I read much of Barnes here as foot-stomping: something is fundamental, and gender isn't it, and that's not okay! Let the girls play too; you never let us play! Indeed, the paper seems to take it as a premise that gender should find a place in deep metaphysics rather than to argue for this. I don't know if that's New Consensus, New Infantilism, or what, but I don't like it.

      Delete
    15. Do gluons have chromosomes?

      Delete
    16. Thanks, 9:28. I'll take a look at it when I have a chance.

      Delete
    17. No rush. I'm just some fucker on a horrible anon blog.

      Delete
    18. Barnes had to place that paper in PAS, a prestigious invited venue with bonus trip to London, because even her powerful network didn't manage to find a spot in a normal journal for that collection of unsubstantiated assertions.

      Delete
    19. 5:41 you are right those are important questions, but for precisely that reason letting them get tangled up with left/feminist political ideologies is a terrible idea. Ideologues are going to prioritize political advantages for their favorite groups over thinking clearly about this stuff.

      Also, from what I see sociologists are still better at thinking about this than a lot of philosophers

      Delete
  17. This place is a cesspool, but I can't stop reading!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Though the literature on FC is worth reading - FC is a dangerous pseudo-academic religion - the wikipedia page on FC has a good summary,

    "There is widespread agreement within the scientific community and multiple disability advocacy organizations, that facilitators, not the person with the communication disability, are the source of messages obtained through FC. Most experts in the field consider FC to be an invalid form of communication that causes great risk to people with communication disabilities, their families and their caregivers. Scientific consensus is that FC is devoid of scientific plausibility and became discredited by the late 1990s. In 2015, Sweden banned the use of FC in special needs schools"

    "Sexual abuse allegations and facilitator misconduct

    One of the more disturbing aspects of Facilitated Communication is when a person, through FC, seems to disclose experiences of sexual or physical abuse. Often, the alleged abuse is sexual and contains "extensive, explicit, pornographic details." While facilitators are taught to expect their communication partners to reveal sensitive, personal issues, it is not known whether FC generates more abuse allegations than other suggestive techniques.

    Researchers suspect that facilitators involved in this type of case may, mistakenly, believe there is a link between early abuse and autism or, for other reasons, suspect familial abuse. As Green wrote in a 1995 article, "suggestions about sexual abuse permeate the culture. Just watch Oprah or Phil [Donahue] almost any time or scan the pop psychology section at your local bookstore. Couple that with mandatory abuse reporting laws, mix in a little bit of crusading zeal to 'save' people with disabilities from mistreatment, and you have a potent set of antecedents for facilitators to produce allegations."

    In 1993, Frontline's Prisoner's of Silence featured the story of Gerry Gherardi of North Carolina who was accused, through FC-generated messages, of sexually abusing his son. Despite protestations of innocence, Gherardi was forced to stay away from his home for six months. The charges were dropped when court-ordered double-blind tests showed that Gherardi's son could not write. In the same year, Rimland reported in a New York Times article that he knew of about 25 cases where families were accused through facilitated communication of sexually abusing their children.

    By 1995, there were five dozen known cases, with untold numbers of others settled without reaching public visibility. Since then, the number of cases continues to increase. In addition to accusations of sexual abuse, facilitators, reportedly, have fallen in love with their communication partners and, relying on FC for consent, initiated sexual, physical contact with people in their care, raising serious ethical and legal problems for facilitators, protective service agencies, law enforcement, court officials, educators, and family members alike.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ah, a link to the "memory wars," which I recall was a fiasco for certain philosophers.

      Delete
  19. This pretty much represents everything that is wrong with infantilism, victim culture, political correctness, bureaucracy, and race obsession. An entire book could be written about this letter.

    http://www.mhradix.org/on-campus-1/2015/9/24/the-power-of-tenure

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    Replies
    1. This isn't my favorite example. The professor's behavior sounds downright strange and not particularly related to any interesting educational agenda.

      Delete
    2. The professor is likely a race-obsessed leftist like most faculty, and probably wouldn't have undertaken his weird exercise if he wasn't myopically fixated on race like most leftists in academia and the US. So, in that way, he is another part of this story. But as far as his behavior being inappropriate, even if it was, it hardly warrants anything like the reaction that that this tyrannical infant displayed.

      Delete
    3. I think that is actually unlikely, 8:33. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/facultyprofiles/eugene_hill

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    4. Why do you think it's unlikely, 8:39? Are you denying that most academics are race-obsessed leftists?

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    5. First of all, yes, although he's an English professor, and it's possible that you're right where English professors are concerned. Second, he is old and seems to study the canon - exactly the sort of professor the race-obsessed ones are trying to push out.

      That said, even FIRE doesn't seem willing to stand behind him this incident. The Inside Higher Ed piece quotes them saying that he may have crossed a line.

      Delete
    6. What I'm saying is that he probably wouldn't have been interested in making some point about racism in his odd way if he wasn't a typical race-obsessed leftist (i.e., someone who thinks that the problems of racial minorities in the US are primarily explained by oppressive racism and that this is a huge problem that deserves a huge amount of attention). But I realize that many people on here are what I would consider myopic race-obsessed leftists themselves. So, many on here won't agree with me on that point. However, that is just one relatively small aspect of this episode. The attitude of the student, the administration, and the way that the student reacted are all hugely problematic and representative of the contemporary culture.

      Delete
    7. He was making a point about anti-Catholic bigotry by comparing it to ethnic bigotry, wasn't he? So I guess he must be a religious nutjob. I certainly can't think of any alternative explanation (because I have an impoverished imagination).

      Delete
  20. "Anna Stubblefield, a jury of your peers has found you guilty of raping a diaper-wearing, infant-brained man. You will experience punishment buffet style. You will be isolated, raped, and harrassed by lesbian bitch dykes for 10 to 40 years. You will have minimal contact with the outside world and will spend your free time regretting the rationalizations, and hamsterings that lead you to justify your abhorrent actions. May God have mercy on your soul you bastard, you."
    (Spoken in Judge voice)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're perpetuating PMMB's cesspool status by giving in to brute feelings of revenge and unwarranted cynical assumptions about Stubblefield's motivations.

      Delete
    2. It's called Kantian Retributivism.

      Delete
    3. Hahaha. I'm not sure you can really justify punishment in Kantian terms.

      Delete
  21. 9:08 here. Relax, it's a spin on a quote from Wrongfully Accused.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Wise words from Twitter:

    "Next time you feel like writing something shitty about someone online, write it here: http://screamintothevoid.com"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. not sure if posted in a sarcastic bullying way or complete sincerity

      Delete
  23. Jan 2013 FB status (public) by Judy Bailey defending FC, and describing Stubblefield's being charged. Here is the article "written" by DJ. and published in an academic journal: "The Role of Communication in Thought", Disability Studies Quarterly 2011.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Just a thought, but has anyone run the DJ article through one of those author-identification programs to see whether his and Stubblefield's prose styles match up?

      Delete
    2. Well, DJ's article is clearly written by Stubblefield. Given that FC is known to be pseudo-science, I'd say this is pretty serious academic misconduct. It also raises a serious question of academic misconduct by the journal Disability Studies Quarterly - who should at minimum retract the article.

      Delete
    3. Hey 10:50, Stubblefield begs to differ with you on that, and she's an expert.

      Delete
    4. Shouldn't it be incredibly easy to test whether FC works? Just take the facilitator out of the room, ask the person a question that he/she knows the answer to, then let the facilitator come back in and help the person type out the answer. Do that ten or so times. If the answer is consistently right, then FC works. If it's consistently wrong, then FC doesn't work.

      This seems so obvious that I feel like I must be missing something.

      Delete
    5. 4:16 PM,

      There have been studies like that, in fact...guess how they turn out.

      Delete
    6. How do proponents of FC explain that?

      Also, any links?

      Delete
    7. 4:16,
      Take a look at the Wikipedia article on FC.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication#Validation

      One quick quote:

      "This issue of testing the messages obtained through Facilitated Communication has, historically, been problematic for those in the FC community who support its use. Proponents claim that testing is demeaning to the disabled person,[6] that the testing environment creates performance anxiety,[107][98] or that those being facilitated may purposely produce nonsense, refuse to respond or give wrong answers to counteract the negative attitudes of those who are skeptical of the technique.[108]"

      Paging Dr. Popper!

      Delete
    8. 11:42 again.

      I wonder why people don't always go to Wikipedia first when faced with questions like those regarding FC. That's always my first move.

      Wikipedia has some real defects and gaps of course. But you shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the not bad.

      Delete
    9. It would be pretty easy, at the least, to prove that FC was working in a given case. Interesting that this hasn't been done.....

      Prediction: if technological innovations allow some of these people to start really communicating in a few years, theres going to be hell to pay....

      Delete
  24. From the Cocoon, by one "Joana":

    "What if the mentee notices that the mentor has less prestigious pedigree than her/him, and decides s/he doesn't want to be mentored by someone who applied for positions and was hired by institutions s/he believes are not worthy of her/his time? Of course the mentee would not give this reason for not beginning the mentorship. Why? Well it strikes most people as a less than satisfactory reason and reflects poorly on the mentee. So s/he will likely offer some other lame excuse (e.g. I'm just too busy this term) instead. Given this possibility, you might want to match mentors and mentees with similar pedigree, or at least make sure the mentor is better pedigreed than the mentee. It could happen in reverse, but I assume it is less likely given the power dynamic of the relationship. Unfortunately the dick-ish nature of our profession emerges even in well-intentioned projects to help job market participants."


    For fuck's sake, people!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. During the discussion of the womyn only program (they should rename it Budding Waynflettes) some of the organizers more or less implied that if the hyper-exclusive high pedigree version had to be expanded then it would de facto become a tiered system. Don't ask me for the link. It was somewhere in the previous incarnation of this place or on the Daily Noose, can't remember.

      Delete
    2. Don't think it was DN, I just checked there. I vaguely remember something similar somewhere, though.

      Out of curiosity: for those of you who aren't well-served placement-wise, how badly served are you?

      I'm just trying to assess whereabouts I fit on the spectrum. My placement director is just enjoying his course release and hasn't bothered to even respond to my queries (made several times over several months) about even basic things like who handles uploading our letters here (let alone actually looking at my materials). Oh, and I'm the only new job market candidate this year. And the guy is labouring under the illusion that no deadlines have passed yet, and none will for another month or so. It feels horrible, and like a total departmental abrogation of responsibility, but I also feel like things could be worse (although my self-pity prevents me from imagining how). Especially since there's now a lot of job market info on teh intarwebz, and my stuff has been more or less ready for months (as in: it exists and was revised a lot, even if it's still shit). But, like... probably some people are doing an even worse job, right?

      Delete
    3. It is hardly controversial that the Waynflete Program ("mentoring" for rich womyn) is being pushed by some of the most privileged people on Earth (Saul, Barnes, Harman, Leslie et al), and is targeted at some of the other most privileged people on Earth - i.e., upper-class women. Its aim is to promote the interests of a privileged, networked elite at the expense of everyone else. If you do not belong the elite - the network of those with privilege and power to select and promote - then, probably, you're out.

      Delete
    4. 6:26: satire or serious? Anyone willing to place a bet?

      Delete
    5. I lay my cash on option 3: ARG.

      Delete
    6. I kind of slid past it, but now looking it over, it might be satire. Capitalizing 'earth' is a little suspicious, like 'teh'.

      Delete
    7. So, wait, Saul, Barnes, Harman, Leslie et al are NOT among the most privileged people on earth?

      Perspective, anyone?

      One moment we are lectured as to our tremendous and undeserved privilege as white people in the richest country on earth, and the next moment we are not supposed to notice that all these women are from the most privileged upper middle class white culture in that richest country on earth?

      Delete
    8. Definitely ARG.

      Delete
    9. Great answer, 4:12.

      How feminist of you.

      Delete
    10. Did someone steal a bunch of "Check Your Privilege" signs from FP?

      Delete
    11. Well, he stole 'em, so he might as well use 'em.

      Delete
    12. Let me continue the point about the privilege of the Saul, Barnes, Harman, Leslie et al contingent.

      It is only half of the picture that they are, by any objective measure, among the most privileged creatures in all of human history. The other half is that, at the same time, they also receive great advantages in virtue of some imagined "oppression". They have already commanded positions in excess of their merits, as the job statistics make clear to any rational person. Yet this means nothing to them. They demand more, in a bottomless pit of dissatisfaction and in delusions of grandeur as to their own abilities and contributions.

      If this doesn't elicit disgust with their sense of entitlement, what will?

      Such are the grotesqueries of contemporary feminism which we are forbidden to notice.

      Delete
    13. Haslanger and Barnes: overplaced spousal hires with the nerve to complain about their "oppression". Harman: tenured at Princeton by birthright. And so on.

      Delete
    14. Why the personal attacks? It's so mean, dirty, and cynical. If you don't like these philsophers' ideas, debate them straight-up.

      Delete
    15. 10:53, there is such a thing as a reasonable ad hominem argument.

      Delete
    16. 10:53, how is this any different from a "gendered conference campaign"? "Look at the cute boys doing metaphysics, thinking they're serious when they're really just reiterating patriarchy" or whatever the titles of those bullshit FP and NA threads have always been?

      Delete
  25. I think most philosophy today is neither interesting nor important, even if it can be intellectually impressive. I imagine many people agree. Do anyone of you have a favorite philosopher who's not just producing more bullshit? I'd like to hear who you like.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. lots of people in aesthetics
      some people in philosophy of science
      a few people in ethics/moral psychology

      Delete
    2. 5:30am,

      Would you be willing to name a few of them?

      Delete
    3. No, 4:51. In fact, I think "philosophical" questions are by nature intractable. It is strange that we still lack an account of how and why. The best thing philosophers can do is use these intractable questions to teach students to think critically about why their first, second, and even third guesses have to face debilitating counterarguments. There are philosophers out there who care about teaching, but most of them are not famous, I think.

      Delete
    4. 6:45,

      No, you don't think anyone is producing non-bullshit? I think it's possible to do good work on intractable problems, so I guess I don't quite see the connection.

      Delete
  26. Another gem from AJJ: "there are many gaps between being a progeny and being known at all well as a genius."

    Perhaps there are. Or perhaps there is one very large gap.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 12:23:

      I think you just gave birth to a mis-quote.

      Delete
  27. Oooh. No, I didn't misquote; I cut-and-pasted.
    But she's changed it. (You can still see the original in the google cache, though probably it will be replaced soon.)

    Hm, I wonder. You don't suppose she read my comment??

    Nah.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No, disappointingly it's more straightforward: someone called 'delft' pointed out the mistake in the comments. A "misspelling", apparently.

      Delete
    2. I'm 3:34--

      Good on you 12:23--bad on AJJ--I apologize. "Progeny" indeed. Maybe she watched too much Bugs Bunny and polluted with the hare's love of "stragedy"!

      Delete

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