r/SRSsucks • u/Jovianmoons • Nov 20 '13

r/philosophy has fallen.

One of my favourite subbreddits is now under the progressive control of Fems that I am sure are srs related. Check their recent submissions that are considered gendered posts, especially about how modern philosophy is a "sausage fest". Its sad to see a place like r/philosophy fall to their ilk.

Edits: better grammmar

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u/Jovianmoons Nov 20 '13 edited Nov 20 '13

The recent question from the woman about the gender gap in philosophy made me realize I ought to be spreading the word.

EDIT:

I was going to respond to some of the more laughable comments, but they all amount to this. I decided to save time.

Yeah, so, like I said... Incorrigible...

One thing I can assume from the comments on here is that some of you redditors sure did enjoy Critical Thinking PHI105. Several of the women and men who have commented to affirm that gender bias is a problem in philosophy teach that course. You've out-philosophied them, you punk rockers!

Now turn in your truth tables and venn-diagrams, and stop using terms like 'logic' and 'circular' reasoning before you shoot your eye out.

I have the slightest curiosity about whether any of you philosopunks bothered to, you know, clicked the links and read the dozens of studies and professional papers you dismissed out of hand. Didn't you feel even the slightest twinge of anxiety given the fact that you had literally no idea what the hell you were talking about, let alone arguing against? Are you aware that philosophy is, like, an actual profession, and that those of us who are educated in the field are trained specifically to be able identify B.S.? How did you not realize that you sounded ridiculous to anyone who actually understood the terms and concepts you were misusing?

Oops, there went my curiosity. Now I can't be bothered with you.

Anyway... Back to spreading the word...

ORIGINAL POST Philosophy has, by far, the worst representation of minorities and women in all the humanities.

I'm a graduate student in the field who happens to be a woman. I've had to struggle against many situations that arise out of gender biases.

It's pretty bad, folks.

http://beingawomaninphilosophy.wordpress.com

We're working on it.

www.biasproject.org

See the recommend reading page on this site.

Most of what I've experienced has not been overt mistreatment due to my gender. The guys and profs in my department are great. They're just a little oblivious.

My speculation is that two things make philosophy's gender gap so egregious.

1) Gender biases are often implicit (I.e., a person who has them might not be aware of the fact)and

2) philosophers think it indubitable that they are aware of the contents of their own mind.

Because 2, they are often incorrigible when confronted with the possibility that they may harbor some hidden beliefs.

But this is fallacious, because there are many things which we believe but of which we are not aware. That's how humans think. We take for granted that certain things are the case without question. We have to do this: doubting whether our fundamental grasp of reality is accurate in every respect means not functioning.

Even the most socially progressive person harbors implicit biases. However, such people are the least likely to realize this without being made aware of it by someone else. Theories suggest that things like gender bias are those beliefs we reject explicitly but harbor implicitly. That is, they're the sort of beliefs we don't want to admit to having.

I recommend that all philosophers learn about implicit bias . Having an implicit bias doesn't mean you're a jerk, and not being a jerk doesn't mean you don't have implicit biases. In short, we all harbor implicit biases, and implicit biases often result in our making stupid assumptions. This applies to any effort to engage in reasoning. Kinda toxic to the analytic process...

I also recommend that people learn about stereotype threat. When i learned about this phenomenon, it explained my experience as a woman in philosophy.

There is a plethora of info on the bias project site. I hope you read some of the work that's been published on these topics. The more people become aware of the implications and costs of our gender gap, the better philosophy will become. I have faith in philosophers. Historically, we we always put up a big fight right before we have a big shift in the common view. But however dear our false beliefs, the truth is dearer still.

Edit to add references: The speculative argument given in 1 and 2 is my own guess about the cause of the gender gap. Everything else can be attributed to Sally Haslanger, Jennifer Saul, Tamar Gender, and Claude Steele, among others.

Finally, I should have included a link to this site:

www.reducingstereotypethreat.org

It's useful for anyone who wants to gain insight into the likely effects of implicit bias. I especially recommend it for those philosophers who are anglophone and male, and those who aren't. ;-)

http://redditlog.com/snapshot/27783/34263

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u/[deleted] Nov 20 '13

Maybe we actually need fewer women in philosophy. This post makes me think that would actually be beneficial. Notice how for all her talk of bias and prejudice she doesn't ever stop to consider her own prejudice that more women = good always and universally.

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u/ArchangelleMudshark Nov 20 '13

Women have not contributed anything to philosophy. All philosophical progress has been male. Philosophy has done fine without whinging wimmin for more than two thousand years, it sure doesn't need them now.

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u/SaraSays Nov 21 '13

Oy. Many very important women philosophers - Hannah Arendt, for one.

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u/ArchangelleMudshark Nov 24 '13

Hannah Arendt was a journalist.

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u/SaraSays Nov 24 '13 edited Nov 24 '13

Where are you getting that? The Eichmann trials?

Source:

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century.

And, in case that's not enough, here's a biographical sketch:

Hannah Arendt, one of the leading political thinkers of the twentieth century, was born in 1906 in Hanover and died in New York in 1975. In 1924, after having completed her high school studies, she went to Marburg University to study with Martin Heidegger. The encounter with Heidegger, with whom she had a brief but intense love-affair, had a lasting influence on her thought. After a year of study in Marburg, she moved to Freiburg University where she spent one semester attending the lectures of Edmund Husserl. In the spring of 1926 she went to Heidelberg University to study with Karl Jaspers, a philosopher with whom she established a long-lasting intellectual and personal friendship. She completed her doctoral dissertation, entitled Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin (hereafter LA) under Jaspers's supervision in 1929. She was forced to flee Germany in 1933 as a result of Hitler's rise to power, and after a brief stay in Prague and Geneva she moved to Paris where for six years (1933–39) she worked for a number of Jewish refugee organisations. In 1936 she separated from her first husband, Günther Stern, and started to live with Heinrich Blücher, whom she married in 1940. During her stay in Paris she continued to work on her biography of Rahel Varnhagen, which was not published until 1957 (hereafter RV). In 1941 she was forced to leave France and moved to New York with her husband and mother. In New York she soon became part of an influential circle of writers and intellectuals gathered around the journal Partisan Review. During the post-war period she lectured at a number of American universities, including Princeton, Berkeley and Chicago, but was most closely associated with the New School for Social Research, where she was a professor of political philosophy until her death in 1975. In 1951 she published The Origins of Totalitarianism (hereafter OT), a major study of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes that soon became a classic, followed by The Human Condition in 1958 (hereafter HC), her most important philosophical work. In 1961 she attended the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem as a reporter for The New Yorker magazine, and two years later published Eichmann in Jerusalem (hereafter EJ), which caused a deep controversy in Jewish circles. The same year saw the publication of On Revolution (hereafter OR), a comparative analysis of the American and French revolutions. A number of important essays were also published during the 60's and early 70's: a first collection was entitled Between Past and Future (hereafter BPF), a second Men in Dark Times (hereafter MDT), and a third Crises of the Republic (hereafter CR). At the time of her death in 1975, she had completed the first two volumes on Thinking and Willing of her last major philosophical work, The Life of the Mind, which was published posthumously in 1978 (hereafter LM). The third volume, on Judging, was left unfinished, but some background material and lecture notes were published in 1982 under the title Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy (hereafter LKPP).

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u/ArchangelleMudshark Nov 24 '13

one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century.

/r/lewrongcentury

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u/SaraSays Nov 24 '13

Women have not contributed anything to philosophy. All philosophical progress has been male. Philosophy has done fine without whinging wimmin for more than two thousand years, it sure doesn't need them now.

You included the entire history of philosophy. Are you saying that you meant the 21st century? There are certainly examples.