[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.

[coderc]

>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!

I have no reason not to believe that Title IX in the 1980s was misused in a priggish sense, other than what you've told me just now.

He doesn't give any examples of how it was misused in the 1980s, but says "...but since for a professor merely being the subject of a sexual harassment complaint would be a disaster whether the complainant was reasonable or not..."

Did this mechanism support women? Perhaps. Was it also misused? Perhaps. Does it support his argument? I don't think I agree that he has an "argument", so much as he is merely telling a story that he believes to be true, and this bit of history is part of that story.

Even if this was never misused in the 1980s, it laid the groundwork for the future.

>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?

Well, I wouldn't trust anyone, in any time period, to have all the power of a judge, jury, and executioner. What I quoted above from footnote 5 indicates that. If there is any kind of accusation, it should be taken seriously, but it should also go through the proper procedure for determining guilt while presuming innocence.

Handing the female students of the 1980s virtually unlimited power to ruin the lives of others with just a word could be said to be "supporting" them, sure, but that comes at the cost of everyone else.

> So who was misusing this? Basically no one.

He gives no examples of this being misused in the 1980s, but he does give an example from the 21st century with Larry Summers.

> I have not heard of any professors suffering from false accusations of sexual harassment.

What can I say to your anecdotes, except... "Great!" Or perhaps it's not great that dozens of your friends have had such bad experiences with their professors.

[csa]

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.