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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32785 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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I'm moving to a job on a campus in the US. The question of what to do about social justice, political conversations, and social justice training requirements has been vexing me for a while. I just got my first email from someone who has pronouns in their email signature, with a link to the campus policy on pronoun use. (Tl;dr: staff are "encouraged," to use pronouns and "expected" to treat people in accordance with their claimed pronouns.)

Here are my options:

  1. Poe's strategy: Agree and amplify. I use all pronouns as claimed. I believe we should racially segregate as much as possible because that would be good for making Black communities into safe spaces for Black bodies, but we should do this by forcibly unhousing white people, because anything else would be gentrification. I take full responsibility for the racism of all the people of my race, and think we should give full reparations to all Black bodies. This probably codes as high-class, but there is a large chance of being unable to keep up with the charade and a small chance of being cancelled as a result. There is also a chance of value drift and the mental risks inherent in living a lie.

  2. Mainland Chinese strategy: I don't talk about politics or social issues at all. If asked, it's because I can't keep up with it. (This is mostly true!) Probably codes as low-class in the US, but I won't be cancelled for my opinions, because I don't have opinions... at least until BLMII (LGBTQIA+ boogaloo) comes around and everyone who doesn't fly the Rainbow-BLM flag is cancelled.

  3. Mask strategy: I don't talk much, but when pushed I shrug and concur with moderately pro-SJ shibboleths that I still believe. When in private with a trusted interlocutor, it's mask off. This is what I currently do, but SJ isn't a significant factor at all in my current social environment, so I am able to spend more time mask-off than mask-on.

  4. Earnest SJW strategy: This is the highest-class option, but I don't think I can pull it off. I don't know the language, I'm doomed to stumble, and don't want to break my reasoning capacity that much, and it goes directly against my values, interests, and tribe.

  5. Earnest Mottizan strategy: True honesty. I oppose SJ (because it is in direct opposition with my values) and I'm not afraid to say so... in a friendly way with a smile on my face. I support equal rights, but not equality of outcomes, which I don't think is ever possible. I think most SJ is just an elite conspiracy to shift focus away from class issues, with the richest of the rich supporting it because they are wealthy enough to avoid its negative side effects... which hurt black people too. I think unfettered immigration is bad for blacks in America, and I don't think SJ really helps the people it seeks to help, instead infantilizing them and removing their agency. I think the biggest problem facing black america is lack of interest in education, and the biggest problem facing women in STEM is that STEM careers suck: the pay is for tools, and no smart woman would enter them when other careers are low stress and more lucrative. My experience living in a more conservative society has taught me that most SJW claims are false in traditional societies, etc. Etc.

So, I guess what I'm asking is: what's the safest strategy, what's the best for my career, and what's the best way to spread my values? For those of you in US academia, what approach do you follow, and what works or doesn't work?

I work on campus, I just ignore it. Even when people introduce themselves with pronouns and ask mine I give my name and don't answer the pronoun question. I leave them wondering if I didn't hear them or if I'm purposefully ignoring the question, and I don't care.

Do 2. Most people are apathetic about most political issues, which means your concern about possibly being cancelled for not caring is almost certain to never come to fruition. Extreme ideologies like modern SJWism cannot force everyone to believe in them; the only way they keep power is by tolerating people who don't care one way or the other.

Doing 3 (i.e. silence to most people, then revealing your anti-SJW nature to people you trust) feels better because you can be honest about your real opinions to some people, but is very risky. Some people you trust might backstab you (sounds crass, but it does happen sometimes) or might simply get careless and let slip details about you with no ill intentions that still end up screwing you in some ways. Alternatively, those people you trust could get outed as anti-SJW themselves in which case you'll be tarred by association and might be forced to denounce them in tandem with everyone else, which feels awful. You can use sites like this one to let off steam instead (it's what I do).

1 and 4 (which are basically the same) are basically doomed to fail unless you relentlessly keep up with changing SJW jargon and shibboleths. If you don't then you'll get sniffed out pretty quickly by those who do, and fakers are generally viewed pretty negatively. You probably won't be cancelled outright by doing this, but people might avoid you and think you're weird which could hurt you in some ways. It also sucks to live a blatant lie.

Absolutely never, EVER do number 5. Maybe you have some degree of protection at a university, but plenty of people will dislike you nonetheless. It's not just being cancelled that you have to worry about, it's what people do behind your back as well. People could spread rumors that screw with your reputation, deprioritize you for promotions or other perks, refuse collaboration, or some people who you've barely interacted with could actively try to sabotage you. Initially you might think 5 is fine when nothing overtly bad happens, but sooner or later (maybe months, maybe years) you'll hear that somebody succeeded in hurting you without you even having realized it.

I've tried all of these strategies myself and I'm certain that 2 is by far the best.

Not sure what your role is but unless it’s something directly tied to DEI stuff this will probably never ever come up for you. I’m a faculty member at a big progressive university in a very progressive area and nobody has ever brought any of this up with me. A few random staff have pronouns in their signatures and that’s it.

Thank you. This is encouraging.

Why focus so much on class in your options?

Why focus so much on class in his options for dealing with tricky class signaling games?

I think the likelihood and severity of repercussions in case you go 5 is overstated. Honesty should be the default, and we wouldn't be in this much of a mess if people didn't kolgomorov and greengroce all over the place. If asked, just tell them. 99% of the time, they will simply go on with their day with an ever-so-slightly improved view of the demonized outgroup. Although I must confess I don't work in academia, and it's a mystery to me why many people act so spinelessly all the time (eg, lie on pain of mild awkwardness, apologize when 'called out', etc) .

Somewhere between 2 and 3. But beware that these people are backstabbers. Not that I mean to dunk on them for being bad, but they seriously have a norm of outing and ruining people for wrongthink. So don't mask off too easily.

Go 2, unless you you want to live the life of a martyr for the cause, then go 5. Not wanting to discuss politics in not low-class in the US anywhere but maybe on campus, and I'm not sure you really want to suck up to classist SJWs on campus - they'd feel your are not of their tribe anyway, and will despise you for it anyway. If they try to force the issue, play the diversity angle and claim you have your own political and cultural concerns and you aren't obligated to participate in US-local struggles and trying to put you into the US political mold frankly looks a bit like cultural imperialism. Of course you know they wouldn't really do something so horrible, they just didn't know, so you are willing to accept the apologies and move on.

I'd recommend No. 2. Havel's Greengrocer the shit out of it. When saying that it's a lot for you to try and keep up with, be sure to include how much you are looking forward to learning more. That way, you'll be able to identify who are the zealots (when they give you an hour long lecture) and be sure to avoid them, and who are just mouthing the pieties in the expected manner. If you insist on having opinions, don't mention them at work at all.

Good luck!

A mix of 2 and 3 - cant accidently hit the wrong button if you dont hit any buttons. But if someone asks, your political/social/economic views are "same as you". This is more or less what I do in a "woke" F500 firm, the pay is worth the mental burden of living/working with the elephant in the room at all times.

Maybe this isn't very helpful, but have you considered not taking the job? I know non-woke workplaces (especially for academics) are increasingly hard to find, but speaking from personal experience, moving to a conservative non-profit explicitly opposed to DEI has been a massive benefit to my mental health. All of these concerns and the heartburn they cause just disappeared over night. Granted, this is probably not a great career move if you ever want to re-enter academia or more elite corners of the private sector, but not being constantly surrounded by people who openly hate you is a pretty great feeling.

Just don't list your pronouns, and don't make a big deal out of it. If somebody asks you to list your pronouns specifically, agree to do it, but then just don't, and if they press you on it later claim you forgot and then just again don't do it.

If somebody wants to escalate "rokmonster won't put pronouns in bio" all the way to you getting fired, then just claim bewilderment when their boss asks you to do it, do it, and then quit and get a different job somewhere else.

Seconding this.

The edgier options are giving your enemies rope with which to hang you.

Learn who will hate you if you are not woke and take appropriate precautions.

Best strategy would be to not take the job. Best strategy for not being cancelled is #2. #5 will just get you fired. #1 and #4 are counterproductive with respect to values and sanity. #3 passes "to thine own self be true", is more risky than #2, but allows the possibility of spreading your values or at least building up a little silo or cell.

I work at a small private US liberal arts college. When I was part of a search for a tenure-track candidate, we asked the candidates to include in their application a DEI statement, because it was expected for all searches at the college.

Then we threw out any candidates who clearly drank the Cool-Aid.

Out went the candidate who said she moved all her black students to the front of the class, and all her white students to the back of the class. Out went the candidate who said he had a special study group only for his LatinX students.

In went the candidate that said she volunteered at a tutoring program for the local Title I school with majority of student black or latino. In went the candidate who said he stepped up his office hours for everyone, and personally reached out to invite each student who struggled in his class, many of whom were black.

If you are working in academia, having a reasonable amount of fluency in the current etiquette of the Professional-Managerial Class is a requirement of the job. Knowing when to not get carried away with the rhetoric is also part of the job. The candidates that we tossed out (like the ones above) actually discriminated against some students, so they were a legal liability for their employer.

You mentioned in another comment that your goal is personal career progress, and that you'll be with this employer for only a few years. Good, focus on that. Don't fall for anyone claiming that you should be able to "bring your whole self" to work. You are expected and required to only bring your professional self to work. So: if your employer requires X, you do X or quit. If your employer recommends X and you don't want to do X, quietly don't do X. If other employees ask you why you are not doing the recommended X, ask them politely to explain the benefits of doing X, and consider their explanations. Even if their explanation is a stream of religious/woke prosthelytizing, you can get some value from it by seeing what new terms or etiquette is going around. But someone may actually tell you something more useful (e.g., X is something your boss really cares about and pays attention to).

Unfortunately not everyone takes this approach when grading submissions. NSF requires that you address the 'broader impacts' of your grant proposal, which means in essence what you are doing to promote diversity.

I took the approach you described and wrote about things that I was doing to improve stem outreach and training in general, as well initiatives I was involved in at a nearby hbcu. I got solid scores from two reviewers, which would be well in the range of an acceptance, and got absolutely hammered by the third reviewer, who insisted I wasn't doing enough for minorities.

Ultimately my proposal wasn't funded. Thankfully I've been having better luck with NIH, who don't have this requirement.

Congratulations on getting the NIH grant!

You are right to point out that a significant portion of gatekeepers in US Academia are very much into the DEI/woke ideology. I would guess that in some fields, they are the majority of gatekeepers. In other fields, they may yet be a minority. Since most fields in US are liberal/left, and DEI/woke ideology evolved specifically to spread in or dominate such spaces, I would expect to encounter such gatekeepers in pretty much any academic field. I would also expect to encounter gatekeepers who retain classical liberal ideals that are at odds with discriminatory aspects of the former.

Getting a specific job, getting a specific grant, those have always been a crap shoot and involved guessing the priorities of whoever comprised the hiring / grant committee. It also is, deliberately, a status game. We would like to think that academic status is about merit, but it's still status, and thus susceptible to status-affecting politics. DEI/woke has been quite effective in that game, in the milieu of liberal/left spaces. So I would expect their representation within the academic gatekeepers to increase.

To anyone who is personally worried about this trend, I recommend considering life outside of academia.

When I was part of a search for a tenure-track candidate, we asked the candidates to include in their application a DEI statement, because it was expected for all searches at the college.

Then we threw out any candidates who clearly drank the Cool-Aid.

Why didn't the same people who expected the DEI statement in the first place also insist on accepting the kind of DEI statement they wanted?

We did.

That is: there was a general pressure from administration and other professors to have some kind of DEI statement; we (the search committee) wrote the prompt ourselves, and nobody outside of the search committee read these statements. We deliberately avoided DEI/woke jargon in our prompt, which went something like: "Describe how you have adjusted your teaching based on considerations of your students' various backgrounds. Give specific examples." We wanted applicants who have a track record of appropriately adjusting their pedagogy to fit the students that are actually in their course, and that's what we looked for.

Quite a few applicants phrased their statement with lots of DEI/woke jargon--probably because they were applying for other academic positions as well and DEI statements got pretty common then. That wasn't a drawback for those whose examples were actual useful pedagogy, like the guy who made a point to reach out to struggling students, noted that many of them were black ( but also conveyed that he reached out to all struggling students). Showing facility with currently-fashionable jargon is a definite plus at a small liberal arts college, because it means students aren't going to out-jargon you. However, we did scrutinize such statements for signs that the candidate was a possible liability (like those that supported actual discriminatory treatment based on protected categories) or poor collegiality (like those who made a point to publically "call out" various shit at their institution without even approaching people in private).

Also dont have sex with any woman who you have "power" over in your department. Didnt end well for quite a lot of Academics. Workplace relationships seem to be a nascent taboo in the US.

Indeed: https://www.thefp.com/p/he-was-a-world-renowned-cancer-researcher?s=w

Sabatinis case really boils my blood. Its outrageous that someone of his calibre can be taken out over such a nonissue, something no would would bat an eye over in a sane world. The contrast in those two things is hard to accept. It's hard to fathom this actually happened.

I dont know what he is upto now, but I were him I'd just defect to China or Russia and continue researching. There is no pride in sticking around in the country that fucked you over so blasely.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for Sabatini. Anyone who sleeps with someone as obviously repulsive and immoral as Knouse has whatever he gets coming. Yeah, yeah, whatever, "consent" is the only basis for morality in 2023, but nothing about their arrangement sounds like a good idea. It reminds me of that Bruce Hay guy at Harvard who had a similar thing happen to him.

What enrages me about the story is that Knouse's behavior was effectively endorsed; she was given a job by MIT and apparently had widespread support from the administration and the activist-students at NYU. It suggests a massive systemic failure in academia that goes far beyond one narcissistic woman.

Well China and Russia came calling but he turned them down, from the article.

It's a clownworld thing. I don't believe this is a functional way to run a civilization, how can it be competitive in the long run?

I was just having a look at suicide rates by country and there's an enormous gender gap in most but not all countries (China, India and parts of North Africa have nearly equal rates). I remember once getting a lecture from some NGO about the wage-gap and thinking in my head 'what would your response be if I produced statistics that showed men were twice or three times as likely to kill themselves and concluded that this was due to oppression by women, how can you justify prioritizing your own statistic out of all possible statistics'.

I remember once getting a lecture from some NGO about the wage-gap and thinking in my head 'what would your response be if I produced statistics that showed men were twice or three times as likely to kill themselves and concluded that this was due to oppression by women, how can you justify prioritizing your own statistic out of all possible statistics'.

Well, I asked several feminist activist types this exact question so I can reproduce their invariable answer for you:

This is because of Toxic Masculinity and because The Patriarchy Hurts Men Too. The solution is more feminism. It boils down to this handy 3-step plan:

  1. Give more special privileges and freebies to women, give women more power over men

  2. ??????

  3. Profit.

This is because of Toxic Masculinity and because The Patriarchy Hurts Men Too.

This part of feminist theory always amuses me. Like apparently men specifically set up society to benefit themselves by oppressing women but I guess men were so shit at it they created a society that also harms themselves so no one really benefits. This is supposed to make sense apparently.

Like apparently men specifically set up society to benefit themselves by oppressing women but I guess men were so shit at it they created a society that also harms themselves so no one really benefits. This is supposed to make sense apparently.

To be fair, this is a common criticism of feminism itself as well. Oft evil will shall evil mar.

Very fair point actually.

Religion is not an exercise in rigorous thinking, it is an exercise in piety.

He's taking money from private billionaires now. With any luck his new lab will have a sign on the door.

That's just good sense, though. If it's college students, they're young and dumb (because of their age) and so you will inevitably get into trouble when some lassie decides you raped her, because her friend clique told her it was rape. If it's your peers, workplace romances can turn nasty if it's a bad break-up, and even if it isn't, may incur resentment amongst other colleagues. An ex-lover who is still a colleague, especially if it was a bad break-up, may well turn all their efforts to destroying you. If you can't keep it in your pants, date outside the college completely.

"It was non-consensual so it was assault" happened to a nephew of mine, after some drunken kissing but nothing more, and the little bitch's friend persuaded her that because they were drunk she was incapable of consent so this was sexual assault. At least he had supportive friends and the college didn't try to boot him out without due process, but it's too damn risky.

Also dont have sex with any woman who you have "power" over in your department.

I would just say "woman in your department", for the reasons you suggest later: PMC people in the US seem to strongly frown on workplace relationships. It's quite a contrast with European academia, which in my experience feels like a badly written porn film half the time.

for the reasons you suggest later: PMC people in the US seem to strongly frown on workplace relationships.

You will use the swipey swipey app and you will like it!

PMC people in the US seem to strongly frown on workplace relationships.

They don't, actually, as long as the woman in question is happy with it. It just gives her a nuclear option should the relationship sour. Or whenever she feels the need to chase victimhood clout on twitter years later.

TBH I would say "don't have sex with anyone at the school at all".

Better but the safest option is "don't have sex with anyone at all".

Even in a college town, there are lots of residents who aren't part of the school. But let's say you're at some weird purpose-made place where every single resident works for the school... it's still good advice. It shouldn't be the case that you put your career at grave risk by having a relationship within the school, but unfortunately it is the case.

If you didn't ever mix with the locals that's really more of your thing than it being impossible. Plenty of students when I was in school knew some of the locals, if only from hitting up the same bars.

Also note that we are very much not talking about students here. We're talking about staff/faculty, who are going to mingle with the locals because... they are locals too.

Especially when it gets extended to "don't have sex with anyone in academia (e.g. that you meet at conferences) at all."

Sure, because these bogus rules are designed to filter out the "less than desirable" and "socially anxious".

I suppose there are scandals concerning male-male sex at universities, but I don't hear about them.

I work in an extremely woke department. I was paranoid when I started. But it very much surprised me how much you can actually get away with if you're seen as an honest, helpful person AND NOT A THREAT TO THE POWERS THAT BE.

Now, I shut up most of the time and don't embarass my colleagues by publicly disagreeing with their opinions. But in smaller settings, when asked by a person I trust, I don't hide my positions much anymore. They have to be phrased in a very abstract way of course, but you'd be surprised what kind of opinions are still fine to express as long as everybody knows you won't challenge department policy on anything. Pretty much anyone in my department knows I find pronouns silly, I don't believe in handing out freebies to women (but will still do it when forced to), I believe in social contagion wrt the trans issue, and I don't believe in the "social construction" of race. Being married to a "PoC" might have helped me with the last item on that list, though.

What you really have to look out for, as always, are sociopathic assholes and narcissistic cunts. They will use anything against you if they think it either helps their career or just to feed their feelings of self-importance. Learn to spot them, be polite to a fault to them, and keep as much distance as possible. Never speak your mind when they are in earshot. This is a matter of personality type, not professed ideology, so these people are still a relatively small minority. Identifying them is key for your survival.

I agree with this advice.

From my own experience, you can mostly disregard the calls for woke signaling as long as you do not do it overtly at all. Do not explicitly disagree with anyone on woke-related issues (it can end REALLY badly if you do, keep your mouth shut and know when to pick your battles), just simply ignore their requests. If it comes to it, feign ignorance but never follow through with their requests. You can just ignore the email telling you to use pronouns and just don't put them in your email. Specifically in my case in Australia, I also avoid putting any 'Acknowledgement of Country' in any of my work as much as I can get away with.

You do have to be careful around true believers, who will notice your lack of participation and will try to ostracize you, and you might not even realize it. It probably heavily depends on your specific context, but just avoid them at all costs.

The plus side of this strategy is that fellow covert conscientious dissenters will likely notice your lack of participation and will hopefully network with you.

From my own experience, you can mostly disregard the calls for woke signaling as long as you do not do it overtly at all.

I agree. I am technically obligated by university policy to use "genderjust" language (think LatinX, but for every third word or so). I simply don't do it. Nobody has complained so far. Granted, I don't make a big fuss about it either. It does get a bit awkward though when colleagues helpfully "correct" my texts without consulting me.

deleted

Sigh, I guess this merits an effortpost as it is rather complicated. But since you asked a lazy bastard with a chip on his shoulder, you will get a biased rant instead:

Die, Bart, die

German has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Der Baum (the tree), die Pflanze (the plant), das Haus (the house). These loosely map to biological sex, but not always. For example, das Mädchen (the girl) is neuter. And die Person (the person) is feminine.

This gets complicated when it comes to professions. Most words for professions take the masculine grammatical gender. If you want to point out that a specific professional is female, there is a derivative form of that, mostly ending in -in (or -innen for the plural). For example, der Lehrer, die Lehrerin (the teacher, the female teacher).

It was long-standing convention to use the masculine plural when referring to groups of people of a certain profession, rather than the longer feminine form. Die Lehrer can refer to a group of male teachers or to a group of mixed-sex teachers. Die Lehrerinnen refers to a group of female teachers exclusively. The astute reader will have noticed that the nominative article for plurals of all genders, die, is identical to the nominative singular article for feminine nouns. This will be important for sneeding later.

Now, it has long irked German feminists that they would be referred to as Die Feministen rather than Die Feministinnen. Clearly this is a conspiracy to undermine the belief that women, too, can excel at any job they put their mind to! We are brainwashing little girls into wanting to become Hausfrauen rather than Raketenwissenschaftlerinnen! Mind you, there was never much evidence for any of that and the few studies I have seen are so comically bad I wonder how they ever passed peer review.

Anyhow, so the social engineering began. First we just said everything twice: Die Lehrerinnen und Lehrer. Then we started to get more efficient (we are Germans after all) and just put a capitalised "I" in the middle of words for professions: Die LehrerInnen. But this, too, was boring. And you can't really show how progressive you are when you are butchering the language in the same way even the most boring conservative Journalistin is. So we started referring to Lehrer_innen. Or just used the participle, even when it made no sense at all: Die Lehrenden (those who are currently in the process of teaching). Doesn't that look nice? But Halt! What about Die Transpersonen? Shouldn't they be included as well? So now we currently settled on Die Lehrer*innen until next week when some Professorin der Geschlechterforschung needs a new grant. How is that pronounced, you ask? Easy, with an audible pause in the middle of the word. Which suits German about as well as the click sound would Irish. So if you ever asked yourself why German academics sound as if they had a terminal case of the hiccups, you now know why.

Of course, all of this is entirely unprincipled. Nobody is complaining about a man being referred to as Die Person, or wondering why we use feminine articles in the plural. In the beginning, it was a way to show group allegiance. And no, nobody will force you to use that kind of language if you don't want to. Don't be silly, you paranoid right-winger. Now it has become a way to show the pesky peasants who's boss. So you better start on your hiccups if you don't want to be suspected of hating Die Frauen.

As always with German it’s the Mädchen I worry about. They must be very confused.

What are your goal? Survival or subterfuge and sabotage?

Mostly survival and personal career progress. I'm planning on leaving after a few years, but I would prefer to do my small part to improve the culture.

No politics at work is a tried and true Carrer strategy. Limited upside in political arguing and high downside.

Isn't the main problem with woke departments that they insist on shoving their politics on everyone's face?

I would second this. An apolitical workplace is a happy workplace, there's no point discussing politics with colleagues, even ones you trust.

If you can, don't put your own pronouns in your email signature. When referring to students in the third person, always call them 'they' or 'the student'. That's what I do (I work in a university) and it has served me well, albeit in a less crazy UK context.

I am not in a good position to offer advice, I am in a moral quandary of a similar flavor myself. Some ideas come to mind:

  1. pronouns is easy (for me at least) just use the pronouns people prefer to avoid conflict and rationalize it after the fact however you want (poe, mask, being kind, sjw)

  2. Avoiding politics in your work setting seems like a great idea. Stick to the motte and work to build a community outside of work where you can talk politics

  3. get tenure, then disregard 1 and 2

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If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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