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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   16361 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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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.

We did have recent Darwin discourse, if you want in-the-wild examples.

I'm not sure that 'the ways of knowing endorsed by the pyschological sciences' are anywhere near what you want to motion toward as a different class of thing, or that it's clear from either the rubric or the typical essay in this category of course that such empiricism is actually supported or required, given the quality of academic psychological research. Maybe if schools weren't treated the Stanford Prison Experiment like a real experiment rather than a play it would have bite.

But ignoring that for now, there's a lot of pretty well-regarded sources that are respected in modern psychology and have little more than ipse dixit behind them. I'm extremely skeptical that a writer pulling from Julia Serano to talk about trans rights would have gotten this style of response, but they've got about the same experimental foundation.

That's... kinda the problem. If the quality of thought and writing from the graduates of these programs were better, you could just motion about this slop being slop. But then you look at the professor's response, and it's not like it's doing any better, either! Look at the middle lead from the professor:

You argue that abiding by normative gender roles is beneficial (it is perfectly fine to believe this), but to then say that everyone should act the same, while also saying that people aren't pressured into gendered expectations is contradictory, especially since your arguments reflect a religious pressure to act in gender-stereotypical ways. You can say that strict gender norms don't create gender stereotypes, but that isn't true by definition of what a stereotype is. Please note that acknowledging gender stereotypes does not immediately denote a negative connotation, a nuance this article discusses.

There's a lot of this whole disagreement that makes me want to slap everyone involved -- including the student -- in the face with an embossed copy of "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cFzC996D7Jjds3vS9/arguing-by-definition", and I get that a) they probably haven't read it, and b) the professor has to write comments on a lot of bad essays and is only getting in national news for the worst. But look at that claim, and compare:

Gender roles and tendencies should not be considered “stereotypes”. Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts. The same goes for men. God created men in the image of His courage and strength, and He created women in the image of His beauty. He intentionally created women differently than men and we should live our lives with that in mind....

Gender roles and tendencies should not be considered “stereotypes”. Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts. The same goes for men. God created men in the image of His courage and strength, and He created women in the image of His beauty. He intentionally created women differently than men and we should live our lives with that in mind.

Yes, this is just ipse dixit and incompetently written, but it's not making the argument that the professor is criticizing; to rephrase it in left-friendly terms the student's argument is that a lot of what people present as the result of stereotypes are really underlying interests (aka the Damore), and people would enjoy their lives better if they were allowed to act in alignment with those goals. This might be (almost certainly is) wrong! But it's not the same as "to say everyone should act the same". Worse, the professor's contradiction between "everyone should act the same" and "while also saying that people aren't pressured into gendered expectations" is a textbook philosophy error.

Or, later, compare the professor's:

Additionally, to call an entire group of people "demonic" is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population." You are entitled to your own belief, but this isn't a vague narrative of "society pushes lies," but instead the result of countless years developing psychological and scientific evidence for these claims and directly interacting with the communities involved.

to

Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth. I do not want kids to be teased or bullied in school. However, pushing the lie that everyone has their own truth and everyone can do whatever they want and be whoever they want is not biblical whatsoever.

The latter is written very poorly, so for a casual reader, the confusion is understandable. But diagram the sentence out. "Society pushing the lie" "is" "[D]emonic", not an entire group of people. There's a fair critique that the student isn't engaging with the argument being presented, but in turn, it's undermined if the academic measuring this stuff can't do much better.

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.

"God gave women womanly desires" is incomprehensible with the vocabulary of psychology.

With a little bit of critical thinking you can tell it's the equivalent to "women are born with" or "women are innately inclined towards". Of course the obfuscation is not ideal but if you actually engage with the work it has a meaning from a psychological perspective.

In general the mainstream christian views on science don't believe that god has a personal involvement in reproduction. They believe that god created life with intelligent design, but biology, chromosomes, eggs and sperm ... heck even natural selection and evolution are all real phenomenon that stem from god's original design.

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.

You keep talking about what is considered a valid truth claim within psychology as if that’s meaningful.

First, fields can be wrong. Appealing to consensus is bad form.

Second, psychology is a bullshit field. Most of the famous theories don’t hold up to scrutiny. With respect to gender, most of the literature is just bullshit ipsie dixit. Besides many arguments not raving being empirical, the empirical studies are riddled with failure to replicate or publication bias. Even the NYT acknowledged that WPATH was hiding studies that cast doubt on trans agenda.

So the professor is literally casting stones from a glass house. But alas, I think the professor is probably too retarded to even know that. There was a massive logical error in literally every sentence the professor wrote. The university should fire her for being so stupid.

PS the paper sucked but probably sucked about the same as a number of other papers.

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