[ajbt200128]

Read his essay again, past the first two paragraphs. Look at the social movements he describes as priggish, woke, politically correct etc.

> There was at this time a great backlash against sexual harassment; the mid 1980s were the point when the definition of sexual harassment was expanded from explicit sexual advances to creating a "hostile environment."

> In the first phase of political correctness there were really only three things people got accused of: sexism, racism, and homophobia

Going by the examples pg gives, anyone willing to support women, or LGBT, is a prig. Don't let his abstract theory cloud the rest of the essay. He says it in black and white, his problem is with minorities standing up for themselves.

[coderc]

I don't think that's a fair reading of it.

Consider, for example, expanding the definition of sexual harassment to also include creating a "hostile environment".

I think that pg's point is that this expansion to include a "hostile environment" makes it fall under the "eye of the beholder", which makes it a lot more vague and arbitrary. Something being vague and arbitrary is the perfect playground for a prig, because they can essentially invent new rules and enforce them. For one example: Microagressions. What are they? They could be anything, really.

"Supporting women" and "enforcing arbitrary rules" are not necessarily the same thing. One can claim that they're doing the former when they're really just doing the latter.

If you were to make up a new rule and say that men need to bow to every woman within a 10ft radius in order to show respect, is that really "supporting women"? Is that what women want? This is an intentionally ridiculous hypothetical (in certain cultures), but I think it demonstrates the issue that an arbitrary rule is not necessarily "support".

Remember Donglegate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681

Did this joke create a hostile environment? Did the shaming of these people make anything better, or did it make things worse? Was this an example of "supporting women", or was this just an example of punishing people for not following arbitrary rules?

>He says it in black and white, his problem is with minorities standing up for themselves.

Someone who acts priggishly may not be a part of the minority that they are 'standing up' for.

[ajbt200128]

I agree with the definition pg gives in the first two paragraphs of what a prig with, which is why I suggested you reread past that section. As OP said, DEI initiatives are regularly hollow and performative. Re: dongle gate and the other hypotheticals, sure, not great, I agree enforcing arbitrary rules isn't good for society, and we really gain nothing.

Let's look at this essay critically, and let's not doing any legwork for PG. He has an opening statement about priggishness that, again I agree with, and then (eventually) dives into examples that we're discussing re: hostile environment. Does this example support his argument about what wokeness is?

You claim that the goal of this example is for PG to provide evidence

> that this expansion to include a "hostile environment" makes it fall under the "eye of the beholder", which makes it a lot more vague and arbitrary. ...

Which i agree is PGs point in introducing this example as he says so himself

>But the vagueness of this accusation allowed the radius of forbidden behavior to expand to include talking about heterodox ideas.

So we have this example, and we can clearly identify how PG /thinks/ it supports his argument. This is where I disagree, and like almost all of the examples in the essay, it does not support his argument.

Do you believe that, as PG says, in 1986 and the following few years, (not now, we'll save that for later, he specifically is talking about the 1980s) this title IX ruling that expanded the definition was misused in a priggish sense, to punish people arbitrarily, and that it did not support women? Talk to some women who were alive at that time, and you'll soon realize that yes, outside of direct sexual advances there are many things that professors would do or say to dehumanize female students. So by giving these students a mechanism to hold professor accountable for dehumanizing them, we are... supporting them!

Now maybe you believe that is the minority case, and that in general this was misused. Would you trust women in the 1980s to decide for themselves whether or not they were being sexually harassed by a professor in this expanded definition? Remember, the original definition was just when a professor/whoever would make a direct sexual advance. Ok, so say we trust women to know when they themselves are being sexually harassed. Do you think that men were going around in the 80s accusing professors of sexual harassment? Yea probably not. So who was misusing this? Basically no one. Who was benefiting from it? Women. So this is not priggish in any sense.

As far as today goes, I went to university within the past few years, at a very woke school even by my standards, and even with this expanded definition, I have not heard of any professors suffering from false accusations of sexual harassment. I have had quite literally dozens of friends tell me their experiences where professors dehumanized, belittled them, or have even blatantly asked for sexual favors or been assaulted by them. And of course these reports go through title IX, with this expanded definition, and even today rarely is a professor's career upended. So even today, not priggish.

You can rinse and repeat this for almost any example pg gives. His examples do not support his argument at all. So either his initial argument is wrong, or this essay is just plain bad. Either way it's worthless as a way to defend the argument we both agree on. OP explains why it's also harmful.

[mixmastamyk]

As it frequently happens, such interpretation says more about your own mindset than the piece itself, and sounds embattled.

That is, if you can’t consider complaints against folks who share your position but but took things too far.