Re: [Vo]:Two scientists wrote a fake article about genitals causing Climate Change; "peer-reviewed" journal publishes it.

[Terry Blanton]

On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 9:06 PM, Kevin O'Malley  wrote:

> http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-
> social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/#0
>
>
Bobby Henderson addressed the true cause of climate change ages ago in this
infamous letter to the Kansas School Board:

https://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/

However, recent activity by Samolis indicate a reversal in the trend.  Hail
Semolina!

Re: [Vo]:Two scientists wrote a fake article about genitals causing Climate Change; "peer-reviewed" journal publishes it.

[Alan Fletcher]

On Sun, 21 May 2017 18:06:23 -0700
"Kevin O'Malley"  wrote:

> http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/#0

http://crookedtimber.org/2017/05/22/prickly-questions/   has a different take 
on the "hoax".

They got an auto-reply from very-low-rated  NORMA: The International Journal 
for Masculinity Studies -- refering them to co-owned pay-to-play vanity site 
nobody's ever heard of.

In general, I'd say the peer-review process isn't (in general) discredited by 
this hoax.
-- 
Alan Fletcher 

[Vo]:Two scientists wrote a fake article about genitals causing Climate Change; "peer-reviewed" journal publishes it.

[Kevin O'Malley]

http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/#0


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 article today. It’s ramifications are unknown but one hopes
it will help reign 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:

Destructive, unsustainable hegemonically male approaches to pressing
environmental policy and ac