Are “Grievance Studies” a Scientific Hoax?
A friend of mine, a professor of engineering, once told me he looked down upon Psychology—“It’s not a science,” he said.
“And if they study neurology as part of their curriculum?” I asked.
I concurred with philosopher Roger Scruton that they are fake subjects “constructed around an ideology” for “the pursuit of political conformity.” All that changed when grievance studies began to report startling scientific discoveries.
“Maybe then, yes.” At the time, he and his colleagues were upset that the sociology department had secured a research grant to study nudist colonies in the French Riviera. Yet, I have always been a big fan of the social sciences (not the content when it comes to mainstream economics or philosophy, but the fact that such studies need to exist).
However, what are broadly known as “grievance studies” (where grievances are attributed to a collective and a political solution is prefabricated) seemed to me a postmodernist trick.
Thus, I concurred with philosopher Roger Scruton that they are fake subjects “constructed around an ideology” for “the pursuit of political conformity.”
All that changed when grievance studies began to report startling scientific discoveries.
Going in Through the Back Door
June 2018: A paper submitted to a prestigious peer-reviewed journal, was published without revision. (Sexuality & Culture, Volume 22, Issue 4).
Sexuality & Culture bills itself as “an international forum for analysis of ethical, cultural, psychological, social, and political issues related to sexual relationships and sexual behavior.”
Here’s the thesis of the paper titled “Going in Through the Back Door”—“That it is suspicious that men rarely anally self-penetrate using sex toys, and that this is probably due to fear of being thought homosexual (homohysteria) and bigotry against trans people (transphobia). Encouraging them to engage in receptive penetrative anal eroticism will decrease transphobia and increase feminist values.”
One of the expert reviewers suggested a portmantologism: why not combine “homohysteria” and “transphobia” into a novel concept “transhysteria?”
As we welcome this new blendword, we must apologize to readers whose sexuality lexicon has barely caught up with LGBT. Times are moving so fast, that even some online dictionaries haven’t yet registered the words from which this new portmanteau was constructed.
Meanwhile, even LGBTQI is passé. Get on with LGBTQQIP2SAA: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, intersex, pansexual, two-spirit (2S), androgynous, and asexual. If you want to appear hip, at least memorize LBGTQIAPPK: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, polyamorous pansexual, and kinky.
Let’s encourage our undergraduate males to well … try some of these “toys” through the “back door” and presto, their latent gender neutrality will be awakened!
Look, no one said grievance studies are easy. If you can’t handle this, try something less taxing like special relativity in physics or abstract algebra.
Back to the paper in question. The explorative issue was “Do men who report greater comfort with receptive penetrative anal eroticism also report less transphobia, less obedience to masculine gender norms, greater partner sensitivity, and greater awareness about rape?”
You can hear the recommendation right there: Let’s encourage our undergraduate males to well … try some of these “toys” through the “back door” and presto, their latent gender neutrality will be awakened!
It’s the biology of supposed ‘human nature’ that’s bogus. Long live social conditioning. What a discovery!
The postmodern brigade intent on nullifying gender was excited. One reviewer said: “An incredibly rich and exciting contribution to the study of sexuality and culture, and particularly the intersection between masculinity and anality” [emphasis mine].
Ever since Aristotle hypothesized that the mind lay in the heart, biologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers have struggled with precisely locating the seat of human consciousness.
Our thoughts arise in the brain. To change attitudes such as sexism or homophobia in oneself or others, we must address the mind with conceptual thought. Or so we thought. Until today.
But now they’ve shown that tickling your fanny will affect your fancy. The seat of human consciousness, it seems, is in the “seat” itself.
I mean, who can quarrel with “This study uses semi-structured interviews with thirteen men to explore this question, analyzed with a naturalist and constructivist grounded theory approach in the context of sexualities research and introduces transhysteria as a parallel concept to Anderson’s homohysteria. This analysis recognizes potential socially remedial value for encouraging male anal eroticism with sex toys” [emphasis mine]. Right there, you have it—the backdoor solution to the vexing problem of sexism.
But wait … a sample of … what? Only thirteen men?
Hang on … we have the recommendation we want. Statisticians, buzz off.
The Trojan Horse Inside the Postmodern Citadel
The author of this magnificent treatise was none other than M. Smith from the prestigious Portland Ungendering Research Initiative (PURI) of Portland, Oregon.
And who was the mysterious M. Smith? Did PURI even exist? No one asked.
Also inside the Trojan horse with the ungendered “M.” Smith were Richard Baldwin, Lisa Jones, Carol Miller, Helen Wilson, Maria Gonzalez, Brandon Williams, and Stephanie Moore, connected variously with the ivory towers of the Gulf Coast State College (GCSC), PURI, and the Feminist Activist Collective for Truth (FACT). Shame on you if you never heard of them, but our expert peer-review panels obviously had. Well, no, a blinded referee won’t see the illustrious names like Miller and Jones attached to the awe-inspiring institutions like GCSC, PURI, and FACT until after the fact (i.e. publication).
After all, peer review works best when all you can see are the merits of the submission.
Accepted (without any requested revisions or comments) by the Journal of Poetry Therapy was Carol Miller’s “rambling poetic monologue of a bitter, divorced feminist, much of which was produced by a teenage angst poetry generator,” before being edited and rewritten “entirely in slightly under six hours.”
Meanwhile, Baldwin and Williams submitted a claimed study (the conclusion was pro-feminism) of four men who watched (finally, the statistically significant) 2,328 hours of hardcore pornography over the course of one year (well … the data may have been fabricated in just a few hours). Porn Studies asked for a “revise and resubmit” which normally precedes acceptance. But one reviewer complained of mansplaining (is your postmodern lexicon catching up?)—after all, surely “Richard” Baldwin and “Brandon” Williams could not fathom the feminist truth.
Another reviewer asked them to get rid of all data and simply submit a self reflection—surely, this must be the Scientific Method at its finest.
Women’s Studies International Forum was favorably inclined toward Gonzalez’s thesis that the “… science of astronomy is and always has been intrinsically sexist and Western, and this masculinist and Western bias can best be corrected by including feminist, queer, and indigenous astrology (e.g., horoscopes) as part of astronomical science” [emphasis mine]. Stop shaking your head and read on.
Lisa Jones wanted to check “if the definition of sexual violence can be expanded into thought crimes,” with a paper that argued “when a man privately masturbates while fantasizing about a woman who has not given him permission to do so, or while fantasizing about her in ways she hasn’t consented to, he has committed ‘metasexual’ violence against her, even if she never finds out.”
Do not, in case you work with your hands (unlike the fine mentalists of grievance studies), think of someone you know.
A little aside here, gents. Do not, in case you work with your hands (unlike the fine mentalists of grievance studies), think of someone you know. Just picture “M.” I mean, M can be imagined to be whatever shape and gender you desire. Even the suave and dashing James Bond takes orders from M.
Oops. The phrase “suave and dashing” is scorned. A mention of James Bond? A masculine ideal? That too, white? Bear with me. I’m still getting used to the serious and somber world of grievance studies. Perhaps … pure mathematics is simpler.
Hypatia, bless her soul (the astronomer-philosopher was tortured to death); her name is now lent to a journal, which does “cutting-edge work in feminist philosophy.” Hypatia did not accept Gonzalez’s thesis that educators ought to “penalize the most privileged by declining to hear their contributions, deriding their input, intentionally speaking over them, and making them sit on the floor in chains …”
Had she gone too far? No. It was, said a reviewer, “a solid essay that, with revision, will make a strong contribution to the growing literature on addressing epistemic injustice in the classroom.”
Grievance Studies Dive Deep into Philosophy
“Baldwin,” having won a submission with a bald-faced lie, began to get more adventurous. He asked a deeply philosophical question—why do heterosexual men go to Hooters?
Stop it, you ignorant Baby Boomers … you have no idea, do you?
Men frequent “breastaurants” (is your grievance lexicon keeping up?) like Hooters because “the environment that breastaurants provide for facilitating this encourages men to identify sexual objectification and sexual conquest, along with masculine toughness and male dominance, with ‘authentic masculinity.’” Privately, Baldwin admitted to his Trojan colleagues that “the data are clearly nonsense and conclusions drawn from it are unwarranted by it.”
Nevertheless, the prestigious (in that field) journal Sex Roles, a “global, multidisciplinary, scholarly, social and behavioral science journal with a feminist perspective,” merrily published Baldwin’s paper—“An Ethnography of Breastaurant Masculinity: Themes of Objectification, Sexual Conquest, Male Control, and Masculine Toughness in a Sexually Objectifying Restaurant.”
Gentlemen … at least now you know why you went to Hooters when you turned one and twenty.
“Baldwin,” getting ever more brazen, topped it off by submitting the ultimate irony to Hypatia—a thesis that “academic hoaxes or other forms of satirical or ironic critique of social justice scholarship are unethical, characterized by ignorance and rooted in a desire to preserve privilege” under the title “When the Joke Is on You: A Feminist Perspective on How Positionality Influences Satire.”
Wait … had the Trojan horse warriors indicted themselves? Or was it an ironic masterstroke?
The Trojan purpose was “to see if journals will accept an argument that shuts down critiques of social justice scholarship as a lack of engagement and understanding, even if one engages fully and knowledgeably with the ideas to the extent of having a paper on them published in a leading academic journal.” Brilliant.
Hypatia embraced it.
The Trojan team deliberately included shoddy methodologies including incredibly implausible statistics. Various submissions advocated horrendous prescriptions such as training men like dogs, punishing white male college students for historical slavery by asking them to sit silently on the floor in chains, celebrating morbid obesity as a healthy life-choice, published by journal Fat Studies (“Fat Bodybuilding,”—shame on you, bodybuilders, excluding fat people!), and programming super-intelligent AI with feminist ideology because AI programmed by men is inherently dangerous and headed for a repeat of male dominance.
Was the Trap Sprung Too Early?
On Oct 2, 2018, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) outed the undercover operation (see Fake News Comes to Academia). Helen Wilson’s paper (about rape culture in dog parks and the dangers to female dogs) was ludicrous enough to claim one dog rape per hour. Yet the journal editors never flinched—they adored the “findings,” after all.
But prideful owners of dogs may have a plentiful supply of common sense. Social media went viral on this “study” and a journalist investigated. No “Helen Wilson” existed who had completed a doctorate in feminist studies in any institution that granted a Ph.D. degree in feminist studies.
An email was sent to Helen Wilson.
A Trojan horse trio came forward in response and offered to be interviewed by the WSJ. They are James Lindsay, a Ph.D. in mathematics, Peter Boghossian, professor of philosophy at Portland State University, and Helen Pluckrose, a scholar of English literature and history and editor of Areo Magazine.
To WSJ, James Lindsay said he now expects to become “an academic pariah,” barred from professorships or publications, while Peter Boghossian expected the university to fire or penalize him (he doesn’t have tenure, but as of this writing, he is still on their staff). Helen Pluckrose assumes she’ll have a hard time getting accepted to a doctoral program.
The brazen “Richard Baldwin” is real after all, a professor emeritus at GCSC, who knowingly lent his name and credentials to the sting he approved of. The other “authors” were fictitious.
The WSJ investigative journalists thought they busted a scam. The WSJ claims hoaxes are unethical. Fair enough. But the Trojan exercise was neither a scam nor a prank. In fact, a sting operation on a scam is brave and ethical. Indeed, the WSJ outed the undercover cops who were busting a scam.
But for social media smelling a rat in the “dog study,” the cover would not have been blown, more publications would have ensued, and more evidence would have been gathered.
The Snowden trio (I named them after Edward Snowden), now the subject of probing inquiries, have submitted a ‘necessity of investigation’ defense. Their purpose was to expose the scientific fraud in gender studies, using forgery and sophistry. I believe they have done exactly that. They even claim that they are all left-leaning liberals, which is all the more pleasing; clearly, it’s not a partisan political ploy.
Academe’s Snowdens submitted 20 papers, ever more nonsensical, had 7 acceptances and 7 in review (revise and resubmit typically leads to acceptance) at the top journals in the hallowed field of grievance studies. Some of the fictitious authors even got invited to “peer review” others. How come? Because they submitted papers with inferences no more outlandish than what’s already published; indeed, they mimicked what was already out there.
The multi-pronged strategy includes subverting science by inverting the scientific method—first infer, weave some “oppression” theory around it, and then write a few self-reflective papers (or with data that is either misinterpreted or downright falsified) that justify the foregone conclusion.
Now ask yourself, where is the fakery here?
I’m sorry to report that the con is still on. This is Postmodernism at its finest (or crudest, most vile). Doubting Reason was only one prong. The multi-pronged strategy includes subverting science by inverting the scientific method—first infer, weave some “oppression” theory around it, and then write a few self-reflective papers (or with data that is either misinterpreted or downright falsified) that justify the foregone conclusion.
When the truth caught up with Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff, their schemes were busted. The perpetrators went to jail. Which is what we expect to happen. In an undercover operation, the mole waits till the drug bust. If his cover is blown too early, he can get whacked. Otherwise he gets a bravery medal.
I hereby nominate Lindsay, Boghossian, and Pluckrose for national bravery and integrity medals.
So you ask … can we not just de-fund grievance studies to stop this nonsense?
When government funding of public universities declined in the United States in 2018, the complaint was that white lawmakers don’t see themselves in the diverse student bodies (you know, rising costs of tuition and state budgetary constraints are merely “constructs” of a capitalist world)—in case you hadn’t even heard this … seriously, there’s still time to change your major—quantum physics is less of a mind bender.
Are the Humanities doomed? Not at all. We must be careful not to tar all social science with the same brush. And some grievances are justified. Racism exists (see “The Old Racism and the New Racism”). Discrimination exists (refer “Is the Anglosphere Still Prejudiced against Outsiders?”)
Thankfully, there are academics and, I hope, lawmakers as well, on the side of the truth.
And there’s absolutely no reason why proper scholarship and a scientific methodology cannot be applied to real issues. But an open-minded inquiry may well lead to politically unpalatable inferences. A “science” cannot shut them out.
Thankfully, there are academics and, I hope, lawmakers as well, on the side of the truth—the battle to regain control of the soul of the university is at its zenith.
Warming the Back Door
With the discovery of the hoax, I felt dejected. This new field had held such great promise. I decided, right then, to have a warm shower. Let’s get over it, shall we?
In our bathroom, a flexible showerhead is attached quite low on the wall. The water comes in at an angle. I bent away from it to let the warmth trickle down my lower back, sore from a tennis game earlier.
Are Lindsay, Boghossian, and Pluckrose, the Edward Snowdens of academe, heroes? I say yes. What do you think?
And then … suddenly, I began to have new thoughts.
Oh, wait … maybe that was my brain warming up …
But now I would rather hear from you. Are some “grievance studies” a fake science? Are Lindsay, Boghossian, and Pluckrose, the Edward Snowdens of academe, heroes? I say yes. What do you think?
About the Author: Vinay Kolhatkar
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