“The conceptual penis as a social construct”

Discussion in 'Religion & Philosophy' started by Durandal, May 22, 2017.

  1. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    I'm throwing this in here since it relates to philosophy. Wasn't quite sure where it might fit best.

    www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/

    The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct: A Sokal-Style Hoax on Gender Studies
    by Peter Boghossian, Ed.D. (aka Peter Boyle, Ed.D.)
    and James Lindsay, Ph.D. (aka, Jamie Lindsay, Ph.D.)
    Note from the editor: Every once in awhile it is necessary and desirable to expose extreme ideologies for what they are by carrying out their arguments and rhetoric to their logical and absurd conclusion, which is why we are proud to publish this expose of a hoaxed article published in a peer-reviewed journal today. Its ramifications are unknown but one hopes it will help rein in extremism in this and related areas.
    —Michael Shermer

    “The conceptual penis as a social construct” is a Sokal-style hoax on gender studies. Follow the authors @peterboghossian and @GodDoesnt.

    The Hoax
    The androcentric scientific and meta-scientific evidence that the penis is the male reproductive organ is considered overwhelming and largely uncontroversial.

    That’s how we began. We used this preposterous sentence to open a “paper” consisting of 3,000 words of utter nonsense posing as academic scholarship. Then a peer-reviewed academic journal in the social sciences accepted and published it.

    This paper should never have been published. Titled, “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct,” our paper “argues” that “The penis vis-à-vis maleness is an incoherent construct. We argue that the conceptual penis is better understood not as an anatomical organ but as a gender-performative, highly fluid social construct.” As if to prove philosopher David Hume’s claim that there is a deep gap between what is and what ought to be, our should-never-have-been-published paper was published in the open-access (meaning that articles are freely accessible and not behind a paywall), peer-reviewed journal Cogent Social Sciences. (In case the PDF is removed, we’ve archived it.)

    Assuming the pen names “Jamie Lindsay” and “Peter Boyle,” and writing for the fictitious “Southeast Independent Social Research Group,” we wrote an absurd paper loosely composed in the style of post-structuralist discursive gender theory. The paper was ridiculous by intention, essentially arguing that penises shouldn’t be thought of as male genital organs but as damaging social constructions. We made no attempt to find out what “post-structuralist discursive gender theory” actually means. We assumed that if we were merely clear in our moral implications that maleness is intrinsically bad and that the penis is somehow at the root of it, we could get the paper published in a respectable journal.

    Manspreading — a complaint levied against men for sitting with their legs spread wide — is akin to raping the empty space around him.

    This already damning characterization of our hoax understates our paper’s lack of fitness for academic publication by orders of magnitude. We didn’t try to make the paper coherent; instead, we stuffed it full of jargon (like “discursive” and “isomorphism”), nonsense (like arguing that hypermasculine men are both inside and outside of certain discourses at the same time), red-flag phrases (like “pre-post-patriarchal society”), lewd references to slang terms for the penis, insulting phrasing regarding men (including referring to some men who choose not to have children as being “unable to coerce a mate”), and allusions to rape (we stated that “manspreading,” a complaint levied against men for sitting with their legs spread wide, is “akin to raping the empty space around him”). After completing the paper, we read it carefully to ensure it didn’t say anything meaningful, and as neither one of us could determine what it is actually about, we deemed it a success.

    Consider some examples. Here’s a paragraph from the conclusion, which was held in high regard by both reviewers:

    We conclude that penises are not best understood as the male sexual organ, or as a male reproductive organ, but instead as an enacted social construct that is both damaging and problematic for society and future generations. The conceptual penis presents significant problems for gender identity and reproductive identity within social and family dynamics, is exclusionary to disenfranchised communities based upon gender or reproductive identity, is an enduring source of abuse for women and other gender-marginalized groups and individuals, is the universal performative source of rape, and is the conceptual driver behind much of climate change.

    You read that right. We argued that climate change is “conceptually” caused by penises. How do we defend that assertion? Like this

    ...

    Read the rest at the link! www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/
     
  2. scarlet witch

    scarlet witch Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    We'll I think in answer to The Conceptual Penis, we require a paper titled "Is the constructed boob an conceptual abuse of natural resources"...referring to natural resources as breast milk in abstract
     
  3. cerberus

    cerberus Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    WTF is this about!
     
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  4. Just_a_Citizen

    Just_a_Citizen Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I conceptualize me todger as a MIGHTY OAK....

    I'm pretty sure I'm off topic.... Soz....
     
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  5. scarlet witch

    scarlet witch Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    :roflol: no actually I'd say you nailed it... conceptually of course
     
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  6. cerberus

    cerberus Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  7. Dirty Rotten Imbecile

    Dirty Rotten Imbecile Well-Known Member

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    https://www.cogentoa.com/article/10.1080/23311886.2017.1330439


    An article, “The conceptual penis as a social construct”, published in Cogent Social Sciences on May 19th 2017, has been revealed by its authors as a hoax.

    We understand the authors’ intention was to question the field of gender studies, and the fact it came to be published in one of our journals is disappointing and has led us to conduct a thorough investigation.

    Early findings indicate the article was originally submitted to NORMA – International Journal for Masculinity Studies, published by our parent company, Taylor & Francis. The editors of that journal considered the article was unsuitable for publication and intended to reject it outright as unsound, at which stage it should have left Taylor & Francis’ submission system.

    Instead, upon rejection it was inadvertently referred to Cogent Social Sciences via the electronic article transfer process in place between Taylor & Francis’ Social Science journal program and our own. Article transfer is common within journal publishing and can provide researchers with a valuable and efficient route to publication in an alternative journal. It allows an editor to recommend an article to other journal editors for their consideration, where the editor believes the article is worth considering for publication but is unsuitable for the journal to which it was originally submitted.

    The article was received by a Senior Editor and sent out for peer review as is standard. Two reviewers agreed to review the paper and it was accepted with no changes by one reviewer, and with minor amends by the other. On investigation, although the two reviewers had relevant research interests, their expertise did not fully align with this subject matter and we do not believe that they were the right choice to review this paper.

    Peer review depends significantly on trust between authors, academic editors, peer reviewers and publishers, supported by appropriate systems and processes. While we continue a thorough review to ensure these are as robust as possible, we are taking three immediate steps:

    • We are working closely with the academic editorial teams of all our journals to review our processes and make changes where necessary to minimise the risk of such a situation happening again.
    • We are reviewing our academic editor and peer reviewer education program to ensure editors and peer reviewers are fully equipped with the skills they need to assess whether a paper is fit for publication.
    • We are working with colleagues at Taylor & Francis to examine our peer review systems and workflow so that articles deemed unsuitable for publication cannot be transferred inadvertently to another journal’s submissions system.
    Emma Greenwood
    Associate Editorial Director
    Cogent OA

    For more information please contact: newsroom@taylorandfrancis.com
     
  8. ChrisL

    ChrisL Well-Known Member

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    So the paper was submitted as a joke and was actually taken seriously, peer reviewed and published.

    It's always best to just ignore the whackos of the world who feel like they don't belong so they want to "make a place" for themselves by forcing others to conform to their views at the risk of being labelled.
     
  9. vman12

    vman12 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I had to briefly scan it a migraine was starting to set in.

    You have to have a certain level of brain damage to understand the material I think.
     
  10. Dirty Rotten Imbecile

    Dirty Rotten Imbecile Well-Known Member

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    It's akin to posting an article on Wikipedia and then claiming the entire encyclopedia format is invalid as a result. It's open access. Anyone can post anything.
     
  11. btthegreat

    btthegreat Well-Known Member

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    I know I have a penis because most of my senses tell me that I do. I know that my birth certificate refers to me a male, because I see it so marked on the third line. I know that my parents believed that I was male, because they told me so repeatedly. I know that they thought these circumstances were all interconnected because they consistently taught me that as a child.

    The fact that they are correlate in my experience and my parents, does not mean they correlate universally however.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2017
  12. Concord

    Concord Well-Known Member

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    You have no idea what "open access" means here.

    It was reviewed by two reviewers, the same as any other article in the journal.

    This kind of thing has happened before, because these kinds of social scientists are a joke.
     
  13. Dirty Rotten Imbecile

    Dirty Rotten Imbecile Well-Known Member

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    What did the reviewers say? Is there a copy of their reviews somewhere?
     
  14. Concord

    Concord Well-Known Member

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    They didn't "say" anything, they posted the article.

    "Reviewer" in this scenario means someone who reviews and vets material to be posted. It's not like a movie review.
     
  15. Dirty Rotten Imbecile

    Dirty Rotten Imbecile Well-Known Member

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    According to the comment I posted it in post #7, it was rejected by the original publisher that it was submitted to and "inadvertently" sent to this website which, yes, anyone can submit to.

    Post your own article here.
    https://www.cogentoa.com/journal/social-sciences

    The point of the website is to post your manuscript so that other people in the social sciences can tell you what they think of it. Your article is only rejected if it's posted in the wrong section or is presented poorly. The merit of the ideas presented isn't judged by the academic editors.

    So a publisher basically said by their actions "this isn't worth publishing, let's send it to this review board so that the author's peers can tell him what to do to improve his paper."

    Then when they found out it was just an online troll trying to ridicule them they deleted the article.
     
  16. Dissily Mordentroge

    Dissily Mordentroge Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Last edited: Jun 1, 2019
  17. vman12

    vman12 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What do your chromosomes say.
     
  18. btthegreat

    btthegreat Well-Known Member

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    I have not asked them.
     
  19. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It's all about feelings, no sensical logic.

    As long as it drives the basic message pushed by the party line.
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2019
  20. xwsmithx

    xwsmithx Well-Known Member

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    There should probably be a dedicated top-level forum, "This week from the Loony Left".

    I've read a few gender studies papers, and this one isn't at all that far removed from what those papers say, so I'm not at all surprised this got through. It hits the right scholarly tone, it hits all the left-wing buzzwords and feminist prejudices, and it's utterly devoid of any meaningful content. This kind of empty-headed, vacuous nonsense is exactly the kind of thing the uber-liberal elite like to pump out. It's perfect. The only thing I'm surprised by is that numerous feminist publications didn't discover it and run with it as if it were the latest greatest thing since sliced bread.

    Ha, I should do an article on how sliced bread is a symbol of the patriarchy. 1) Before sliced bread, women made bread in their own homes. 2) Men run the companies and invented the vibrating bread slicer. 3) Men put women out of jobs baking bread in their own homes. 4) Men invented cellophane wrapping sleeves. 5) Men run the grocery stores where women have to shop instead of growing the wheat themselves. 6) This goes all the way back to mills to grind wheat when before women would do the grinding at home, until some MAN invented the mill to grind grain. Women should go back to growing wheat, grinding wheat, and baking bread at home as a way to protest the patriarchy that has given us sliced bread.
     
  21. vman12

    vman12 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    They hold the key to reality.
     

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