So I scoured the feminist literature for any statement to the effect that my fears were as silly as I hoped they were. Of course, I was smart enough to realize that maybe this was silly, maybe I was overanalyzing things. Anything, really, other than the curse of having been born a heterosexual male, which for me, meant being consumed by desires that one couldn’t act on or even admit without running the risk of becoming an objectifier or a stalker or a harasser or some other creature of the darkness. My recurring fantasy, through this period, was to have been born a woman, or a gay man, or best of all, completely asexual, so that I could simply devote my life to math, like my hero Paul Erdös did. I left each of those workshops with enough fresh paranoia and self-hatred to last me through another year. You can call that my personal psychological problem if you want, but it was strongly reinforced by everything I picked up from my environment: to take one example, the sexual-assault prevention workshops we had to attend regularly as undergrads, with their endless lists of all the forms of human interaction that “might be” sexual harassment or assault, and their refusal, ever, to specify anything that definitely wouldn’t be sexual harassment or assault. I was terrified that one of my female classmates would somehow find out that I sexually desired her, and that the instant she did, I would be scorned, laughed at, called a creep and a weirdo, maybe even expelled from school or sent to prison. (sigh) Here’s the thing: I spent my formative years-basically, from the age of 12 until my mid-20s-feeling not “entitled,” not “privileged,” but terrified. To have any hope of bridging the gargantuan chasm between us, I’m going to have to reveal something about my life, and it’s going to be embarrassing. Alas, as much as I try to understand other people’s perspectives, the first reference to my “male privilege”-my privilege!-is approximately where I get off the train, because it’s so alien to my actual lived experience.īut I suspect the thought that being a nerdy male might not make me “privileged”-that it might even have put me into one of society’s least privileged classes-is completely alien to your way of seeing things. I check Feministing, and even radfem blogs like “I Blame the Patriarchy.” And yes, I’ve read many studies and task force reports about gender bias, and about the “privilege” and “entitlement” of the nerdy males that’s keeping women away from science. A few days ago, in response to a discussion of sexual harassment at MIT, Aaronson reluctantly opened up about his experience as a young man: In my heart, there is a little counter that reads “XXX days without a ten-thousand word rant about feministm.” And I had just broken three digits when they had to go after Scott Aaronson.įor those of you who don’t know, Scott Aaronson is one of the nicest, smartest, and most decent people there are. Not meant as a criticism of feminism, so much as of a certain way of operationalizing feminism. Note that although our names are very similar, I am NOT the same person as Scott Aaronson and he did NOT write this article. Trigger warning: social justice, condemnation of some feminism, tangential reference to eating disorder. There’s a whole list of Top Posts on the Top Posts bar above. I stand by a lot of it, but if somebody links you here saying “HERE’S THE SORT OF GUY THIS SCOTT ALEXANDER PERSON IS, READ THIS SO YOU KNOW WHAT HIS BLOG IS REALLY ABOUT”, please read any other post instead. I wrote it because I was very angry at a specific incident. EDIT: This is the most controversial post I have ever written in ten years of blogging.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |