| First, let me say that your comment is thoughtful and makes many good points, and it lacks so many of the strawman arguments that some others have laid out. Thank you for that. That said… > Do you think that men were going around in the 80s accusing professors of sexual harassment? Yes. I will be sure to tell my roommate from college that you don’t think he exists. > So who was misusing this? Basically no one. Who was benefiting from it? Women. So this is not priggish in any sense. I’ve been involved directly or indirectly with the academic world since the 80s. The best I can tell, you weren’t alive then. I’m not sure who you got your information from, but it seems to be selective. There have been more than a few abusers of the “expanded definition”. First, some real articles: https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2018/12/17/harvard-zealots-... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_rape_hoax These provide some well-documented examples of questionable title ix implementation. There are many more examples if you look for them. > I have had quite literally dozens of friends tell me their experiences where professors dehumanized, belittled them I’m a straight, white male (allegedly a privileged class in these situations), and this has happened to me more than a few times, usually from professors (usually older) who were known to have a bad attitude. I imagine that a lot of these cases are not related to being a woman — it’s just general shithead behavior from the professor that should probably be addressed by the administration, but not under the umbrella of title ix or sexual harassment. Of course, crossing the line of asking for sexual favors does fall under that umbrella. As for anecdata, I know of: - a professor who was investigated for sexual harassment and inappropriate touching for… wait for it… tapping students on the shoulder to get their attention in a silent way. I was the observer. I saw what he did. When I asked the accuser if this was the behavior she was referring to, she said yes. It was a total nothingburger, but it put a massive stress on his life unnecessarily. An appropriate complaint/suggestion would have been to ask him to speak softly from a distance, which is what he did moving forward. There was no reason to put this under the umbrella of sexual harassment. - a k-12 teacher who was accused of sexual harassment for engaging in standard classroom safety procedures. Lost his job. Later found not guilty on the criminal side, and won a civil lawsuit for wrongful termination (and other things). In this case, it was the administration weaponizing title ix against a teacher while putting minors (the students) into the middle of it. - a professor was accused of sexual harassment for… again… wait for it… sliding a handout across the table to a student in a small graduate seminar… after the student decided to sit as far as possible from everyone else in the seminar. This was her statement, and it was corroborated by other students, and the action was not seen as sexual or aggressive by anyone else. This student had accused every professor she had taken a class from with some sort of abuse, so the investigation was cursory. Again, why should someone like this be able to weaponize some of the powerful systems of title ix so frivolously? Lest you believe that this is only a teacher/professor thing, similar examples exist in administration as well as the private sector. Often they aren’t spoken about publicly in order to avoid giving other bad actors ideas that they can work with. I could go on, but I will spare you. Let me be clear, I do believe that something needed to be done in the 80s to address callous behavior (both by educators and by the population at large), but I think that too many actions started to be categorized as sexual harassment that were probably better addressed in a different way (probably much lower key) and under a different label. Sexual harassment accusations end up being a scorched-earth approach to conflict resolution, and sometimes the best way to affect change of minor issues is with a deft touch. Getting back to the original point, when I read pg’s essay, my experiences jibed with his interpretation of events during that time frame. It’s fine to disagree with him, but I hope that folks will at least take a charitable read of his interpretation of the zeitgeist of that time — at a minimum, it passes the sniff test for me. |
> I imagine that a lot of these cases are not related to being a woman — it’s just general shithead behavior
I agree, a lot of these cases are just shithead behavior, but a lot of them are not, and were overtly sexual in nature (though not direct, but maybe thats up to interpretation), or just overtly sexist. E.g. discussing sexual fantasies or their ongoing sexual escapades, commenting on bodies in a sexual manner that may not be an advance but instead negative in nature etc. But I would agree even within that, title IX may sometimes be overkill, and I've said that to friends and peers myself.
But this exchange touches upon why I still think PGs essay is not worth a charitable read, and just overall more or less harmful. We both have anecdata about correct and incorrect uses of title IX, ways that title IX could be better, etc. How society should treat this and other issues relating to class and abuses of power is an important discussion to have and should be ongoing. What PG is doing is claiming that changes to title IX (along with his other examples of wokeness/priggishness) are in conflict with "truth":
>Surely if truth should prevail anywhere, it should be in universities; that's supposed to be their specialty; but for decades starting in the late 1980s the politically correct tried to pretend this conflict didn't exist.
Which, given your anecdata, is sometimes a fair assessment, and given mine, sometimes unfair. But PG does not allow this nuance in his arguments, and completely disregards the problems any of his examples were trying to treat in the first place. In fact he claims that the thought process that leads to these changes causes disaster, and need to be stopped.
So PG is not directly arguing whether or not the 1980s title IX change was effective in its goals, but instead arguing that the type of thought that lead to that change (and others) simply needs to be stopped entirely. There is no allowance in his argument to affect change, with a deft touch or otherwise, to these societal issues. The only change he suggests are ways to stop or tune out those trying to solve these issues.
Contrast that with Adrienne maree brown's essay https://adriennemareebrown.net/2018/05/10/we-will-not-cancel... Although a different type of writing for a different crowd, it also acknowledges that cancel culture (or wokeness, priggishness, whatever) is harmful and must come to an end, but acknowledges that the problems that have spawned it are real and still need to be fixed.
> We must all do our work. Be accountable and go heal, simultaneously, continuously. It’s never too late.