The Feminist Black Hole Swallows Non-Compliant Women Too
Postdoctoral researcher Beatriz Villarroel recounts, at Critical Mass, her persecution for working with a long-ago-accused astronomer
Last week, I wrote about the continuing mob attack on Geoff Marcy, an esteemed astronomer who was pushed out of his field in 2015 by allegations of sexual harassment. The allegations, rather suspiciously orchestrated, included such anodyne actions as giving an unwanted neck massage and kissing a woman on the forehead, along with more serious claims that Marcy has always denied (see his account here).
Marcy was never convicted—let alone investigated by police—for any sexual crime, and the Title IX college investigation that found him guilty using a balance of probabilities test (one of the lowest evidentiary standards) did not require his dismissal. He chose to retire. Yet his still-irate detractors insist that the lasting harm he allegedly caused must never be forgiven or forgotten, and they are now intent even on preventing his name from appearing on scientific papers that use his research.
A Twitter search brings up some remarkable statements by female scientists about the trauma, including PTSD, caused by merely seeing or hearing Marcy’s name. One Casey Lynn Brinkman, a self-declared “survivor of sexual assault in Astronomy,” described in detail “the mental toll,” explaining that “When I see or hear collaborators and friends of mine support Marcy in any way [including even by citing his research or discoveries in a conference paper), I feel unsafe.” One can only imagine that if such quivering Jacobins have their way, Marcy and any other man merely publicly accused will become “he who must not be named.”
As if oblivious to their own peril (or perhaps hoping that in feeding the crocodile, they will be safe), quite a few men assert their agreement. The collective hysteria beggars belief.
It is easy to recognize such overblown rhetoric and determined unforgiveness as an attack on the masculine culture of science, an attack that hurts men and unjustly empowers accusing women.
Yet it’s worth remembering that this maniacally censorious culture harms women also, in particular those women who do not wish to join in the mobbing. Beatriz Villarroel is one such person, and in a new essay, below, she writes about her experience of harassment and discrimination for co-authoring scientific papers with Marcy. For that, she has been accused of promoting rape culture and has been denied the opportunity to present her work at conferences and in journals.
Her account offers powerful evidence that the social justice takeover of Astronomy and many other academic departments has little to do with preventing harassment or enforcing fair treatment. It is about ideological orthodoxy and the shunning of all who dissent, even if they dissent simply by doing scientific work! Her appeal for decency and genuine equality makes for bracing reading:
It has always astonished me how feminists are so unaware of how their ideology ruins things for everybody, or do they simply not care how it negatively affects them? Is their hatred of men so deep that they're willing to sacrifice themselves for their movement? I still think these women actually hate themselves - hate being women - and everything they do is a kind of slow suicide.
“When I see or hear collaborators and friends of mine support Marcy in any way [including even by citing his research or discoveries in a conference paper), I feel unsafe.”
If feminists really want to empower women, these sort of comments should be met with derision rather than sympathy.