I have just released a new YouTube video, an interview with Helen Pluckrose, one of the scholars who pulled off the extraordinary Grievance Studies hoax. Helen, with two other scholars, James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian, wrote 20 fake papers and managed to get them published in high-profile peer-reviewed journals in fields including gender studies, queer studies, and fat studies.
What really interested me in this great coup was not just that it exposed the corruption at the heart of so much of what passes for academic literature today, but it revealed the appalling anti-male bias in the academe and the really dangerous ideas about men being promoted in universities which have found their way into mainstream culture.
The classic was their paper about dog-humping as evidence of a rape culture which was published in the prestigious journal, Gender, Place and Culture. This paper, which was honoured for excellence as one of 12 exemplary pieces in feminist geography, included discussion of whether we could train men the way we train dogs, to prevent rape culture. How frightening that this misandrist rubbish is held up as exemplary scholarship.
In another of Helen’s fake articles, “Rubbing One Out: Defining Metasexual Violence of Objectification Through Non-consensual Masturbation,” she argues that men who masturbate while thinking about a woman without her consent are perpetrators of sexual violence. Just think about the implications of that. In her literature search she had no difficulty finding a wealth of feminist literature to support this notion that an everyday act for many men is proof they are prone to sexual violence.
My interview with Helen reveals many pernicious ideas about men being promoted in our universities which then seep through into our society. I hope you enjoy the interview. Please like it and help me promote it. Unfortunately, the picture of Helen is very blurry due to internet problem at her London home but what she has to say is really important.