I don’t know who ‘Jane’ might be, but she/he shows exemplary patience and wisdom for someone commenting below the line on a philosophy blog. The reply from ‘Grace’ who thinks that the hounding of a wrongdoer is a ‘natural consequence’ of his wrongdoing is chillingly reminiscent of Victorian attitudes to malefactors found in the pages of Dickens and Hardy. Thanks, Grace, for returning the philosophy blogosphere to its normal role as a home for absolutely dreadful and long-discredited ideas. (13.07.2016)
For those who don't want to wade through the comment thread (I haven't the strength or tolerance myself to read most comment threads on philosophy blogs), here is "Jane":
For weeks now, there’s been one article after another bringing up Pogge. There seems to be no merit in their publication, other than to continually drag his name through the mud.
The guy’s alleged transgressions are already well known. This seems to be an extended exercise in moral signalling, in stomping down on the back of someone’s head as he already lies in the mud, bringing up the topic again and again whenever people are bored of it so that nobody ever forgets how horrible Pogge is. We get it. And yet, it doesn’t stop.
Now we’ve read an article translated from German that discusses the old facts yet again. Is that enough, editors of Daily Nous? Can we move on?
I’m all for open discussions of sexual harassment policies. I just don’t see the merit in running down particular individuals or exulting in their shame.
And then "Grace" and other follow-ups:
Hi Jane,
The natural consequences of his actions are public shaming and exile, among other official forms of retributive justice. It is not permissible to continue to insulate a sexual criminal from those natural consequences, which academia has done for decades in this particular case and many others.
The well-being of survivors must be the primary concern. If their abuse narrative is nothing more than a sensational “story du jour” that has become tiresome rather than a tool to bring actual justice, survivors are further devalued and harmed. The purpose of continued publication of this case is to ensure that this man no longer escapes justice.
Thank you, Justin, for continuing to write about this case and the topic of sexual assaults within our discipline.12
Hello, Grace.
Thanks for your reply. You talk of retributive justice. But please let’s not forget that, even if we accept that as a desideratum (which I don’t — I’m interested in preventing social harms, not avenging people for them), retributive justice must be administered judiciously. There must be balance. There is such a thing as too much shaming. If this were brought before a judge or some proper committee, stock could be taken of what Pogge did in fact do and what sort of shaming, exile, etc. are appropriate. But that’s not the sort of thing that can be administered properly by a crowd of people who just have the attitude “Not much seems to have been done yet, and it seems to me that he’s guilty as charged, so I’ll add this much shaming to the mix.” That is not retributive justice, but just chaotic mob retribution.
I find your comment about the well-being of survivors being your primary concern to be puzzling. Yes, we should look after the well-being of anyone who survived sexual harassment at the hands of Pogge or anyone else. But how does repeatedly linking to editorials about Pogge help them? They would already know to avoid him, as does everyone else at this point. And the credibility of their story does not become any stronger merely by publishing editorials by other people who read the same accounts we have already read. It’s not as though there are people out there defending Pogge’s right to sexually harass people.
Some have suggested that there is reason to believe that Yale or Columbia were remiss in their duty to properly vet Pogge or investigate the allegations against him. If there is good evidence that that is the case, then that is of general interest. Why don’t we talk about the broader issue of what those universities ought to have done, instead? We could have good and intelligent discussions about that.
I’m dismayed, in general, that many strands of feminism appear to be turning away from the most successful days of the movement, when we were fighting for social change and discussing the big issues. Instead, we seem to have gone down the rabbit hole of social media and to be fixated on the shaming of particular individuals. But that’s not only unjust and tawdry: it’s ineffective. Individuals come and go. What matters are policies and general understanding. The most important ends of social change are at best tangentially related to the shaming and humiliation of individuals.
41
Hi Jane. Is this sort of shaming of Bill Cosby too much, too?: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/08/naked-bill-cosby-statue_n_6632932.html. You need to check your privilege before you cry “pile on.”
4
Sea Cucumber, do you know me personally? I don’t believe you do. So whence this talk about my privilege? Why don’t you check your own privilege, if that’s what you’re into?
As I was saying in my last post, I lament the fact that some branches of feminism seem to be devolving from a movement aimed at social change to a movement aimed at attacking particular people. This ‘check your privilege’ ad hominem motif, when inflicted on other people in order to silence their views, is a case in point. I know it’s trendy to say such things, but I find them very unhelpful.
60
For those keeping track, calling someone who has not been convicted of a sex crime a "sexual criminal" is per se libel (though in context, Grace's lawyer will argue it was meant metaphorically not literally). The significance of per se libel is that one does not need to prove damages to recover against the defamer: damages are presumed.
Leave a Reply