If you have been anywhere near Twitter this week, you will have seen the scandal of the masturbation paper. In April, the Qualitative Research journal published an article in which the author described masturbating whilst looking at pornographic drawings of young boys. This was the work of Karl Andersson, a PhD student at the University of Manchester. The paper has now been removed, but
Hang on. You can get a paper published in a serious journal by writing about wanking over comics? This looks like a standards of scholarship issue more than anything, to me. And yet this world arguably drives the political realm.
It is unclear why you think the essay in question is a "promotion of child pornography." The images discussed were drawings and not photographs; nor would the author's sexual arousal by them necessarily be construed as an exhortation to others. Or is your point that masturbation is not an appropriate subject of inquiry for the ivory tower?
For the same reason that I don't think men in Washington should be getting to decide what women can do with their bodies, I don't straight people should try to determine what queer theory is, or what it should be. Let Anderssen be judged by a jury of peers and not a non-academic journalists hankering for juicy gossip.
This article confirms my worst fears about current academia - groupthink has gone to extremes and now anything with a leftish viewpoint is acceptable but anything of a rightish viewpoint is absolutely not. I was involved in academic philosophy 15-20 years ago and this political groupthink wasn’t nearly as pronounced. The Sokal/Bricmont scandal had occurred and was perhaps the first uncovering of the groupthink tendency to find acceptable just about anything that included a soup of the right words. To my mind this masturbation paper is a proper representation of current academic sociology - mainly worthless rubbish.
It's embarrassing that you've seized on this to somehow link it into trans people and other groups you don't like. Correlation equaling causation is highly frowned upon, this would get you even les far in academia than that nutjob's methods. And at that, you can scarcrely justify the connection beyond there being pushback during discussion, the very thing you are supposedly advocating for! You should take a good long look in the mirror.
"Many academics proclaim commitment to justice and truth, activism being fashionable."
"Justice" of a sort, activism undoubtedly. But most of the disciplines you are talking about long junked the idea that there is even such a thing as truth.
Why the masturbation paper indicts academia
Hang on. You can get a paper published in a serious journal by writing about wanking over comics? This looks like a standards of scholarship issue more than anything, to me. And yet this world arguably drives the political realm.
Bravo, Thomas!
It is unclear why you think the essay in question is a "promotion of child pornography." The images discussed were drawings and not photographs; nor would the author's sexual arousal by them necessarily be construed as an exhortation to others. Or is your point that masturbation is not an appropriate subject of inquiry for the ivory tower?
For the same reason that I don't think men in Washington should be getting to decide what women can do with their bodies, I don't straight people should try to determine what queer theory is, or what it should be. Let Anderssen be judged by a jury of peers and not a non-academic journalists hankering for juicy gossip.
This article confirms my worst fears about current academia - groupthink has gone to extremes and now anything with a leftish viewpoint is acceptable but anything of a rightish viewpoint is absolutely not. I was involved in academic philosophy 15-20 years ago and this political groupthink wasn’t nearly as pronounced. The Sokal/Bricmont scandal had occurred and was perhaps the first uncovering of the groupthink tendency to find acceptable just about anything that included a soup of the right words. To my mind this masturbation paper is a proper representation of current academic sociology - mainly worthless rubbish.
It's embarrassing that you've seized on this to somehow link it into trans people and other groups you don't like. Correlation equaling causation is highly frowned upon, this would get you even les far in academia than that nutjob's methods. And at that, you can scarcrely justify the connection beyond there being pushback during discussion, the very thing you are supposedly advocating for! You should take a good long look in the mirror.
"Many academics proclaim commitment to justice and truth, activism being fashionable."
"Justice" of a sort, activism undoubtedly. But most of the disciplines you are talking about long junked the idea that there is even such a thing as truth.