ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
Casual student of continental philosophy and psychoanalysis. My views aren't real. I'm almost certainly on my lunch break.
User ID: 4030
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
7hr ago
But if they publish those exact same images themselves, it is not demeaning?
Yes. Consent and agency are necessary considerations in plenty of moral decisions/outcomes, sexuality included. It seems intuitive to me that the proactive decision to publish sexual content is a vastly different experience than having someone do it under your nose. Money need not apply.
A few (admittedly imperfect) analogies involving consent to illustrate my point:
- A billionaire choosing to donate his fortune to a developing country vs. his funds being seized by a government and donated against his will.
- You choose to donate a kidney vs. the ambulance coming to your house and taking it from you.
- You choose to tell a secret to your friends vs. a loose-lipped confidant broadcasting it to the masses despite your wishes.
In all these cases, the former option is fine when done at one's own volition, but become a problem when another actor steps in. There are almost certainly philosophical papers that provide the premise-by-premise reasoning for this sort of argument, but hopefully you get the picture.
In a way, the body, particularly the sexualized body, is something of a possession. It can be given and taken away, shown and hidden. In some sense, it is a commodity that we have "ownership" of and many consider it the sacred domain of the individual. Sexual acts are high stakes, which is why it is so terrible when they are done against one's will and why it is considered a statement when someone takes bold public action with their body, for better or worse. You could argue that it is demeaning to publish sexual content under some sort of moralist (i.e. public sexuality is inherently debasing) or consequentialist (i.e. public sexuality leads to negative behavioral outcomes), but these arguments are complementary rather than overriding to ideas of agency and consent, in my opinion.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
12hr ago
Very strong comment. I work in healthcare, and your last paragraph is especially relevant and, at least anecdotally, accurate. Working with chronically mentally ill patients, I sometimes try and follow the paper trail to see how these services are getting paid for. Occasionally there is talk of Medicare or Medicaid when it comes to specific practices, but generally, no one bats an eye at giving a homeless man a full head CT. For the worst patients who need long term care, the eye-watering cost of a 6-month bed is rounded down to a zero because they simply cannot and could never pay. I respect individual doctors who want to do no harm, but systemically it's a baffling injustice that some folks go bankrupt trying to pay for things that are doled out like Halloween candy to the underclass under the pretense of the Hippocratic oath. I have some logistical concerns with single-payer, but it should be instituted for this reason alone: as you said, insurance doesn't work when more ships are sinking than should be.
Physicians can cry about it, they'll still be a well-paid and well respected profession even with a pay cut.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
12hr ago
Lots of great responses here. I think another overlooked factor is that the generation with the most time and zeal to organize right now, Gen Z, are politically idiosyncratic. They identify much less with mainstream partisan labels, which means the usual groundswell of membership in these groups has been cannibalized by increasingly smaller factions. A twentysomething social democrat isn't joining the Young Democrats, they're joining the DSA or going to a theory reading group. A twentysomething God-and-guns conservative isn't joining the Young Republicans, they're joining TPUSA or diving down the Yarvin pipeline. No one wants to join a big tent, especially when there exist countless enclaves of online spaces where you can be surrounded by exceptionally like-minded people at all times, assuring you of the veracity and righteousness of your exact ideas. What's the draw of the YR/YD in comparison?
Further, if people want to make change and become politicians themselves, I feel like local organizing isn't the place where that's done anymore. I'm not sure where exactly it is being done, but hydroacetylene's evaluation that these groups are more like social clubs sounds about right. They're vestigial.
Organization is just a tough thing in general. With time preferences getting shorter and the continued trend of Putnamian community decline, it doesn't surprise me that these websites are poorly maintained. WordPress power users aren't exactly abundant among the political striver crowd, either. I wonder if these groups have a secondary chat, like a Slack or Discord, where the "real" planning takes place. I'm reminded of my time in college when most clubs had some decrepit website but were thriving otherwise in another chat. Submitting to the Google Form might get you an invite there, where you can participate in earnest. Best of luck and props to you for trying to get involved.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
9d ago
Gotcha, thanks for the extra detail. Interesting to hear consumer spending has had some gains despite the "vibecession."
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
9d ago
I don't have a sophisticated enough opinion on how GDP figures are collected and controlled to speak on them directly, but I agree that as an indicator they don't mean a whole lot for me as an individual citizen. Sure, overall the economy may be trending up, but it's clear that it's a tale of two cities. As far as I can tell, some sectors, mainly tech (AI) and finserv, are carrying the rest, and recent economic gains haven't been felt by most consumers. This year, the only sector to really gain jobs has been healthcare, which is hardly an economic engine more than it is an indicator of our aging population. Time will tell if these GDP gains are sustainable across sectors or just reverberations of the continued siren song of AI.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
9d ago
Very much agreed with your latter point, it would've saved everyone involved a whole lot of trouble.
As the OP from last time, I think after all the discussion my view has settled alongside yours. This case represents a failure on multiple levels and puts serious egg on OUs face. I don't blame them for acting swiftly and I think canning the instructor, while perhaps disproportionate, was advantageous for them optics-wise instead of admitting their academic standards have withered into dust. Especially as their funding is controlled by a Red legislature and Red constituents.
It goes without saying that Fulnecky is not a figure that I think should be venerated in any regard, much less as a martyr. As you said, recent interviews have been quite revealing. She happened to submit a garbage paper to an overzealous instructor and capitalized as she saw fit.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
22d ago
Thanks for doing the homework. It'll be fascinating to see how Mangione's lawyers try to thread the needle.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
22d ago
Varies tremendously from locale to locale. Federal sentencing guidelines are a bit complex but it seems unlikely he will get life in prison considering his lack of criminal history and the potential legal issues with the investigation. From a cursory reading, it seems a lot hinges on it his actions are deemed terrorism.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
22d ago
Ah, I forgot about The Man. That's a sensible explanation.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
22d ago
It's quite strange the extent to which people on Reddit believe he legitimately didn't do it. I've seen people go as far as to suggest that Luigi is a doppelganger/look-alike for the actual suspect, which strikes me as ridiculous considering all the circumstantial evidence. I can imagine not wanting him to go to jail, but if he didn't do it then what's all the excitement about? Perhaps if he's locked up then that dashes the hopes of the terminally online spinsters who are attracted to him.
What is more reasonable is the hopes that he'll get off on some sort of mistrial due to the large amounts of law enforcement tomfoolery. I wouldn't be surprised if his sentence is shockingly short (say, 20 years).
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
28d ago
For sure - the claim "women are innately driven toward XYZ," is not one I take tremendous issue with. However, the metaphysics implied in the specific statement "God gave women womanly desires" is then used throughout the rest of Fulnecky's response to justify the argument that deviating from gender norms is detrimental because it defies God's will, to negative spiritual and social consequences. That does not seem to me to be easily or responsibly "translated" into academically validated psych-speak.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
28d ago
I see. I get the sense that we might not see eye to eye but I'll give it one more go. Please give me some charity here with my phrasing - I'm in a rush.
You are concerned about improper application of authority and the negative consequences involved when applying rules selectively, arbitrarily, or in the case that the rules have been not stated. I agree with this, believe it or not.
My response was that the rule of "do not appeal solely to Scripture to support a truth-claim in psychology" is not explicitly stated because it is widely understood. A text may exist somewhere that states it, but that text is not commonly assigned or propagated because the rule is the sum total of hundreds of years of epistemology and philosophy. It is foundational to the methods of psychology. I'm sure it exists but I can't easily locate it because it's such a widely held but diffuse belief. While it would be nice for this rule to be explicitly stated often, it usually isn't because doing so would be seen as unnecessary. At most, the APA encourages "evidence-based" practice and responsible data standards, which are usually hammered in during a research methods course. Fulnecky likely took this course, as she is a junior. She would have known. There is room for Scripture in psychology, but it would be more palatable if it was accompanied by appropriate argumentation.
For Fulnecky to have made it to her junior year and not understand this represents a significant failure in some way. So significant, in fact, I am suspicious of her immediate choice to run to the media. I reject your framing of abuser-abised, as there is no evidence Fulnecky had a compromised relationship with the school. Again, if she tried the usual channels and was met with a corrupt response, then it would be more prudent to go to the media. I just think the school should have been given the benefit of the doubt.
I respect your passion and commitment to standards of rigor.
You are asking me to articulate the academic standards of psychology from first principles. I respect your demands for rigor and honestly I'd enjoy such a discussion. I simply don't have the argumentative skill, time, or knowledge in epistemology to do that. However, it seems self-evident to me that discussing matters of God is not a valid truth-claim in psychology especially as a response to another article. It's somewhat common-sense within the profession and I'm not sure I could even find an explicit statement of it in an academic text. It's hard to draw the line exactly but it's easy to know when it's been crossed - hence my reference to the reasonable person's standard. If you disagree then I would rather hear your counterargument, affirmatively stated, instead of continued needling.
It is true that institutions fail students and play "culture warrior" at times, but I suppose I would have rather Fulnecky started by going to her school instead of immediately escalating. For every controversy we hear about, there are many more cases that go successfully resolved. Especially because the instructor is an untenured grad student, it is reasonable that the school could've sided with Fulnecky. Graduate students are not gods in academia the way tenured profs are.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
28d ago
Agreed. I'm definitely not an "empiricism above all else" sort of person, especially regarding psychology. Forgive me for the sloppiness. I guess when I say "ways of knowing" I simply mean that Fulnecky's appeal to the Bible is generally not considered a valid truth claim in the field of psychology. Saying that "God gave women womanly desires" is incomprehensible with the vocabulary of psychology. Plenty of concepts in psychology are a bit fluffy on the empiricism, no doubt, but they are at least arrived at from some case study or line of reasoning. I do wonder what would have happened if Fulnecky laid out her reasoning neatly, in the "proper way," and still expressed the same viewpoint, but that's not a counterfactual we have access to. The instructor here is not a bastion of neat argumentation either and is reading the paper a bit uncharitably, but I think overall the critique, that the response is without grounding in psychology, stands.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
28d ago
I think that viewpoint discrimination is wrong AND that the essay is quite poor. The professor sounds mad AND certain impartial graders could still give the paper a zero. Separating these facts is a challenge, and I do not blame Fulnecky for her confusion and the lingering possibility of viewpoint discrimination. I don't disagree that a shitty progressive paper may slip by without major issue - that bias persists. It just does not absolve Fulnecky. I am mostly remiss that this situation has ascended to the level of a national spectacle when it could have been resolved with a simple procedure within the institution. I am upset that the first instinct was to cry foul and jump to punditry. There are multiple failure points here, and I am upset about the larger spectacle, as well. Perhaps I should suck it up.
I am not suggesting that Fulnecky needs to change her viewpoint or appease the professor outright. I am just suggesting that in an academic psychology class, it is worth speaking in a way that will be most comprehensible and reflect the standards of the field. The sentence "My prayer for the world and specifically for American society and youth is that they would not believe the lies being spread from Satan..." is meaningless to this professor, nor does it address the point of the assignment.
Unfortunately, I don't have the bandwidth or time to argue in the didactic, premise-driven way you'd like me to. Let's use the "reasonable person" standard here. Do you think the final paragraph of the essay is reasonably in accordance with the standards of writing in undergraduate academic psychology? My answer is no. If you share your thoughts on that paragraph, perhaps we can inch closer to a shared vocabulary here.
I think going to the institutional office would be effective in getting the grade changed, or at least bring more clarity and consistency, yes. I suppose I have trust in that sort of thing. It would be corrective to the extent that the graduate student would be more responsible going forward and likely illustrate to Fulnecky where her writing could improve.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
28d ago
I'm not saying it needs to be an APA-consistent academic citation. I just mean she needs to mention some particular detail from the article, which she does not. This interpretation seems most likely to me in light of my experiences with these assignments. They are basically reading checks, and the professor would not be mistaken for thinking Fulnecky didn't read the article at all. We may just not see eye-to-eye on how to read this thing. Cheers.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
28d ago
The criterion does appear, in the statement "some aspect." Fulnecky did not address a specific argument (aspect) that the article advances. This, in my experience, is a very common expectation. You are overestimating the degree to which grad student instructors and even full tenured profs are surgically specific in the way they construct rubrics - plenty goes unsaid. I will concede that my interpretation is not definitive, but the professors comments suggest that the grade was related to this lack of specific argumentation.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
28d ago
To try and address as many of your pointed rhetorical questions as possible in one fell swoop, my view is that Fulnecky should have known better than to submit an assignment with this sort of argumentation, especially as a junior. The methods used in the field of academic psychology are specific and any deviation from them, especially a major one like this, requires some justification. Learning to work in a field involves learning to speak its language, to participate in the academic community. Perhaps other professors have let it slide but I do not fault this instructor for not doing so. The rubric, especially for such a small potatoes assignment like this, need not state every single possibility nor are there really objective criteria. Plenty of professors give out zeroes for less, and my quickly jotted belief that she deserves "some points" is just because I hate to see any student get a zero for an assignment they at least submitted. They hurt. But that doesn't mean a 0 wasn't deserved.
I am speaking of this event as suspicious because there are ways it could have been handled other than immediately rushing to a political advocacy group. Most universities have mechanisms for reporting or investigating grading issues. I find it questionable that Fulnecky didn't, say, send an email, offer to discuss it in office hours, or speak to the U of O's office of institutional standards, or whatever they call it there.
I respect your logic but have to disagree with the reading of the rubric. As someone who has completed plenty of similar reflection paper assignments during my time in college, the rubrics are boilerplate and vague but imply some pretty specific meanings. I want to hone in on the second point:
Does the paper provide a reaction/reflection/discussion of some aspect of the article, rather than the summary.
In my experience, the key word here is "some aspect." This usually implies a citation or reference to a specific point made by the article, usually in the form of a quoted argument. Really, this is just to prove you internalized some point from the paper. A reading check. As far as I can tell, Fulnecky didn't do this and instead discusses the concept of "gender" in its entirety, whereas the article was very narrow in its scope. Her essay wasn't a summary, but it was hardly specific, nor did it reference findings from the article. Should a citation have been specified in the rubric as a requirement? Sure. But, personally, it goes without saying. I have received a zero or two on reflection assignments for similarly bureaucratic concerns. Live and learn.
Ultimately we are both going to have to fill in the blanks as to what the "proper" interpretation of the rubric is. I suppose it comes down to who you trust to interpret the rubric properly - the instructor or Fulnecky. In this case, I have to give a little deference to the professor, because she created the rubric and I've experienced similar grading standards in the past. I suppose this sort of thing is what the University is interested in finding out.
Just the opposite. This is a red-tribe student within the university attempting to obtain change from within.
Perhaps those are Fulnecky's motivations, though the greater media response has been more aggressive from what I've seen. I am suspicious that she took it to the media for such a small and inconsequential assignment. The more conventional action would be appealing your grade to the dean.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
28d ago
I can't imagine what a similarly-constructed paper from a progressive view would even look like. The only half-decent analogue I can think of is if the progressive response contained poorly cited infographic statistics, in which case it would at least gesture toward empiricism and the ways of knowing endorsed by the psychological sciences. I think Fulnecky has a greater intellectual burden than a similarly-abled progressive student to justify her choice to appeal to the Bible, which defies the conventions of the field. She did not meet that burden.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
28d ago
I think it's not that COVID itself is still an issue, but that it carved paths in the sand that still have relevance today. Anecdotally, I don't know a single person who was partisan during COVID who didn't get much more partisan. Those changes in attitude didn't disappear once mask mandates were lifted.
ratherblather
psychiatric help 5¢, the doctor is in
28d ago
I think it doesn't help that the industries dominated by Democrats have far worse career prognoses as the American economy is consumed more and more by financial services and information technology. I recently read a book called What Design Can't Do, wherein the author, a graphic designer, basically says the wheels have completely fallen off the graphic design profession with the proliferation of easy design tools and AI and shares polls to show that morale has absolutely cratered. I'd imagine the same is true for many filmmakers, visual artists, authors, and even teachers. I'm speculating a bit, but many Democrat-majority careers have low wage ceilings, but are compensated instead with social prestige, artistry, and feelings of ownership. Economic metrics may be up, but the well of status that many careers once offered seems to be running dry, particularly for Democrats. The partisan media effect is definitely paying a role in the discrepancy, but I think there is genuine reason to believe Democrats will fare much worse, at least in social capital, after the economic transformations currently looming overhead.
The examples I provided are not 1:1 analogues to sexuality but moreso illustrations of consent in practice. I don't believe there needs to be specific recompense in these situations for the interference of an outside actor to affect consent. In the case of a secret, you're correct that the victim has little to do other than not trust the person again. I think that's tangential, though: the secret-spreader has still committed a violation of some sort. The release of sexual explicit photos is similar. All that can be done is have them taken down, but it would be hard to argue that some principle of consent/agency wasn't violated in spite of this lack of direct recourse.
Taking a photo of someone is less of a violation than rape, sure, but a lesser violation is still a violation. Petty theft is less of a violation than grand larceny, and they're both prosecuted.
I'm not sure I totally follow your point about money. If I'm restating you correctly, you're saying that modern ideas about the acceptability of these things hinge on whether or not the woman gets paid, not the reaction of the viewer. My response to that would be: who cares about what the viewer thinks? Money is a useful moral fiat that people bend their preferences for all the time: they're employed. If someone forced me to work, that would be loathsome, but I do it for money. It is "reasonable" that many women bend their sexuality in this way, even if I find it socially problematic. I don't think it's somehow hypocritical or irrational for money to play a role in moderating peoples moral preferences. There's decades of social psychology research to support that idea. I'm not sure what your ideal outcome in that scenario would be.
The situation you paint is a bit too specific for me to argue in detail but overall I would say: if the woman sends an image accidentally and requests it be removed, doing so is basic common courtesy and respects her right to privacy. Of course, there is no mechanism whereby the recipient is obligated to do so, but it seems straightforward to me that he should do it. Perhaps in an appeal to the social contract, perhaps in respect for her autonomy - I can't argue it in great depth right now but I think you understand my point. He shouldn't be shamed if he finds it attractive - that's arguably involuntary - but doing anything to further exacerbate the uncomfortable situation is clearly morally dubious.
Yes, it is objectionable in my view to imagine someone naked without their consent. It's not a tremendous violation because it has minimal social consequences and effectively doesn't exist unless it's talked about, so I would never consider legislating it or even shaming anyone for doing it on occasion. We are human and we fantasize. That said, if I heard that someone was imagining the women passing them on the street as naked all day, I'd think less of them - a mental gooner is still a gooner. It's a matter of degree.
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