The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct: A Sokal-Style Hoax on Gender Studies

 There is a big problem in what passes for science these days  That problem is no real, verifiable science and too much agenda. Scientism reigns supreme

  • excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques. Hoaxing Gender Studies Journal  The scientism hoax will be posted at the very end for you to read entirely- I'll post some direct quotations from the scientific study also

That these individuals had this hoax published at all speaks to us of many problems with what passes as science these days. 1-Pay for play: Very, very common in science/medical journals etc., (I’ll address that with a bit more depth further down the post2-Peer review: What’s the value of claiming peer review if... a) it’s not reviewed with a skeptical eye or not reviewed at all? b) it’s published based on agendas and the peer review label serves as a type of appeal to authority rather then anything truly legitimate?c) a hoax can actually receive two glowing peer reviews  After reading through the many, many comments some points of interest stood out. Some of commenters claimed, because the authors had paid for publishing, this took away from their success in outing the fakery & agenda inherent in far to much science, Gender science included- As in haha you spent money to get this published.  It was lost on these very critics that there is a problem when it’s as easy as paying a fee to be published- no legit science necessary. Profit trumps real, provable, factual, reproducible, observable science.Others claim that since other scientific journals have been hoaxed this is not a negative on the  specific journal that published this specific hoax- Yikes, so hoaxes have been published in more then one peer reveiwed, pay to play or otherwise journal, obviously, and that’s not a bad thing, entirely? Suuuurreeeee...Then there are the penis envy commenters... of course, there are the you feel threatened commenters? (not worth my time addressing ad hominem attacks)The very problems these commenters down play regarding this hoax makes even more obvious the problem of gibberish/agenda being passed off as ‘science’. In a range of scientific fields, not limited to ‘gender studies’. Which is a social science aka society shaping/manipulating science. The medical journals are full of ghost written pharmaceutical paid for ‘scientific studies’ I would say the AGW field is chock full of the same gibberish aka glossalalia as the ‘gender studies’ field, as the medical journals.. You will read the authors of the gender studies hoax actually blame the male sex organ for anthropogenic global warming!Before we get to the gender science, pay for play hoax,  let’s talk about yet another AGW glossalia/science claim has bitten the dust.The Great Lakes are going to dry up...Being from the Great Lakes region this is one years ago we were informed of repeatedlyDec 22/2009 “Climate change models suggest that temperatures will increase over the next century over the Great Lakes.

“ The truth is likely somewhere in between, with water levels falling between 0.23 meters and 2.5 meters.”

Temperatures haven't increased and water levels haven't fallen.

2012- “lake levels dropped to less than two inches (4 cm) above record lows”

Of course the claim is this is due to AGW and carbon “pollution” ( Carbon;The bedrock of all life on the planet) No explanation on what caused the previous record lows or when they occurred but lots of boogabooga.The National Geographic article also claims the Great Lakes are at near ‘record high temperatures’ but fails to back up that claim- Recall in my previous post I mentioned the Great Lake temps are no longer reported on or publicly mentioned?? - SecretReality, because REAL SCIENCE is observable.   The Lakes are at near record or perhaps record high levels with flooding all over the place- And expected to stay there. Exactly opposite of what was claimed by the AGW scientists and their forecasting (crystal ball reading)Lake levels high- Breitbart with external links outward- check the outward links and don't shoot the messenger. If that won’t do it for you I’ve more links in the comments, previous post linked above, regarding flooding all around Lake Ontario..Toronto Islands flooded- Carp swimming in the baseball diamonds- Buildings threatenedIf AGW science had ever gotten it right I would be writing here today about how much bigger Toronto’s Islands have grown- And how much more prime beach front suddenly came up for sale- But that’s not REALITYPay to play from medical to science journals

If a gender studies hoax can be published, payment or not, and glowingly reviewed what might this tell us about all so called peer reviewed science? AGW science? Medical science? Biology? Etc.,? I question the validity of the many scientific claims I've read over the years of having this blog- particularly when they've turned out to be so dam wrong!SkepticPremise:

 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.

Quotes from the paper:

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

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 action are the predictable results of a raping of nature by a male-dominated mindset. This mindset is best captured by recognizing the role of [sic] the conceptual penis holds over masculine psychology. When it is applied to our natural environment, especially virgin environments that can be cheaply despoiled for their material resources and left dilapidated and diminished when our patriarchal approaches to economic gain have stolen their inherent worth, the extrapolation of the rape culture inherent in the conceptual penis becomes clear.

And like this, which we claim follows from the above by means of an algorithmically generated nonsense quotation from a fictitious paper, which we referenced and cited explicitly in the paper:

Toxic hypermasculinity derives its significance directly from the conceptual penis and applies itself to supporting neocapitalist materialism, which is a fundamental driver of climate change, especially in the rampant use of carbon-emitting fossil fuel technologies and careless domination of virgin natural environments. We need not delve deeply into criticisms of dialectic objectivism, or their relationships with masculine tropes like the conceptual penis to make effective criticism of (exclusionary) dialectic objectivism. All perspectives matter.

If you’re having trouble understanding what any of that means, there are two important points to consider. First, we don’t understand it either. Nobody does. This problem should have rendered it unpublishable in all peer-reviewed, academic journals. Second, these examples are remarkably lucid compared to much of the rest of the paper.

Read all you want at the Skeptic link above