On philosophy and sexual harassment

Submitted by el cid on Thu, 2014-02-20 06:00

Story here. It concerns a report recently issued by the American Philosophical Association that male professors at the University of Colorado Philosophy Department engaged in widespread sexual harassment. The first story concerns the response by female staff members, who say the report may hurt innocent male graduate students from their department. The second is an opinion piece arguing that the reported facts are too vague to reach any definite conclusions. Both articles touch on a common feminist principle: if one man is guilty, all men are guilty. Excerpt:

'Six women with ties to the department released a joint statement Tuesday that describes the negative impact the report's release has had on male philosophy faculty members and graduate students.

"We are all distressed that the report may damage the reputations of male colleagues who are completely innocent of sexual misconduct," the statement's authors wrote. "It could also harm the prospects of our male graduate students currently on the market."'

An opinion article here. Excerpt:

'It is hard to know just what to make of the contretemps over the University of Colorado Philosophy Department that broke a couple of weeks ago. But from the publicly available information (and I have no other), there should be serious misgivings about the narrative. The determination of what occurred in the Philosophy Department deserves more transparency that it received, and it is possible that the sweeping characterizations of the department are unfair and unjust, and some of the remedies disproportionate. And I say this of a department faculty whose political outlook mostly differs from mine.'

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For background on this story, see the following:

http://www.denverpost.com/cu-news/ci_25035043/cu-sexual-harassment-philosophy-department

Also, I have to give kudos to the women in the department who made the reasonable stand that not all men in the department were guilty or should be assumed to be. In this instance, at least, they recognized the problem with these kinds of investigations is that they leave the impression all the men are guilty. As in the "rape culture" theory, the assumption is made that rape occurs because men allow it to happen--not because a few individual men are bad actors. As one woman quoted in the article says, it's "institutionalized." In short, if one or a few men act badly, all the other men are guilty. This failure to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent is inherently unfair.

In addition, in the modern world, there are lots of rules for male sexual behavior but almost none for female sexual behavior. So the men are always presumed guilty and the women presumed innocent. Of course, anyone who's lived long enough discovers women aren't as innocent as they pretend to be. But being presumed innocent is a whole lot better than being presumed guilty, so women are okay with the deal.

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Submitted by el cid on Fri, 2014-02-21 16:13