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The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 9:25:32 AM

Kirata

Posts: 15477
Joined: 2/11/2006
From: USA
Status: offline

Cogent Social Sciences

SOCIOLOGY | RESEARCH ARTICLE
The conceptual penis as a social construct

Abstract:

Anatomical penises may exist, but as pre-operative transgendered women also have anatomical penises, 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 social construct isomorphic to performative toxic masculinity. Through detailed poststructuralist discursive criticism and the example of climate change, this paper will challenge the prevailing and damaging social trope that penises are best understood as the male sexual organ and reassign it a more fitting role as a type of masculine performance.

Subjects: Gender Studies - Soc Sci; Postmodernism of Cultural Theory; Feminism
Keywords: penis; feminism; machismo braggadocio; masculinity; climate change

Source: Lindsay & Boyle, Cogent Social Sciences (2017), 3: 1330439

The Hoax

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.

Note: If the paper is taken down, you can read it here.

Source: Skeptic

K.

Post #: 1

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 9:43:22 AM

outlier

Posts: 1111
Joined: 10/22/2005
Status: offline

Another good example of bad science, this time tinged with sexual politics and bias.
But it is not the first or the worst, I am sad to say.

"If you follow the headlines, your confidence in science may have taken a hit lately.
Peer review? More like self-review. An investigation in November uncovered a scam
in which researchers were rubber-stamping their own work, circumventing peer review
at five high-profile publishers. Scientific journals? Not exactly a badge of legitimacy, given
that the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology recently accepted for
publication a paper titled “Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List,” whose text was nothing more
than those seven words, repeated over and over for 10 pages. Two other journals allowed an
engineer posing as Maggie Simpson and Edna Krabappel to publish a paper, “Fuzzy, Homogeneous
Configurations.” Revolutionary findings? Possibly fabricated. In May, a couple of University of
California, Berkeley, grad students discovered irregularities in Michael LaCour’s influential paper
suggesting that an in-person conversation with a gay person could change how people felt about
same-sex marriage. The journal Science retracted the paper shortly after, when LaCour’s co-author
could find no record of the data.

Taken together, headlines like these might suggest that science is a shady enterprise that spits out a
bunch of dressed-up nonsense. But I’ve spent months investigating the problems hounding science,
and I’ve learned that the headline-grabbing cases of misconduct and fraud are mere distractions. The
state of our science is strong, but it’s plagued by a universal problem: Science is hard — really fucking hard.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/#part1

_____________________________

Avatar from xkcd.com

"A happy sex life may take years to achieve, but it’s worth it in the long run.
Worth the time, the thought - or rather, the thoughtfulness - and, often,
the waiting." Pete Seeger

(in reply to Kirata)

Post #: 2

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 10:18:14 AM

PeonForHer

Posts: 19612
Joined: 9/27/2008
Status: offline

I've got to admit, this kind of dribble looks almost as bad as the climate denialist stuff that keeps getting published out there in the US.

What on earth is happening with science your side of the pond, K?

_____________________________

http://www.domme-chronicles.com

(in reply to Kirata)

Post #: 3

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 10:20:13 AM

Kirata

Posts: 15477
Joined: 2/11/2006
From: USA
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: outlier

Taken together, headlines like these might suggest that science is a shady enterprise that spits out a
bunch of dressed-up nonsense. But I’ve spent months investigating the problems hounding science,
and I’ve learned that the headline-grabbing cases of misconduct and fraud are mere distractions. The
state of our science is strong, but it’s plagued by a universal problem: Science is hard — really fucking hard.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/#part1

It wasn't my intention to attack scientific research per se. Rather, I was directing attention to the utter absurdity of the biased pseudo-scientific nonsense that afflicts certain currently fashionable fields of study.

K.

(in reply to outlier)

Post #: 4

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 10:28:05 AM

Kirata

Posts: 15477
Joined: 2/11/2006
From: USA
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

What on earth is happening with science your side of the pond, K?

Cogent Social Sciences is published by Taylor & Francis.

Taylor & Francis Group
2&4 Park Square
Milton Park
Abingdon
OX14 4RN

That's your side of the pond, big fella.

K.

(in reply to PeonForHer)

Post #: 5

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 10:41:46 AM

Edwird

Posts: 3558
Joined: 5/2/2016
Status: offline

... and so, the trawlers cast their nets, with knots of 'isomorphic' and strands of 'performative toxic masculinity,' and thus do seek wide and far the vast swarms of tiny fishes to these nets, so as to stand up in 'righteous indignation!' and wriggle their tiny fins just before the last moment.

You got anything to say, here? or just finding whatever excuse to piss your pants again?

(in reply to Kirata)

Post #: 6

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 10:48:32 AM

PeonForHer

Posts: 19612
Joined: 9/27/2008
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

What on earth is happening with science your side of the pond, K?

Cogent Social Sciences is published by Taylor & Francis.

Taylor & Francis Group
2&4 Park Square
Milton Park
Abingdon
OX14 4RN

That's your side of the pond, big fella.

K.

Ouchies! Still, Taylor and Francis are a pretty famous publishing group. They'll publish stuff from all over the globe. I'm probably revealing a prejudice, though, admittedly: I kind of expect the nutty and far out stuff to come from the USA - this sort of thing, plus creationist-inspired lunacy, climate-chnage-denying-zaniness, etc. Unfair of me, of course ....

_____________________________

http://www.domme-chronicles.com

(in reply to Kirata)

Post #: 7

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 11:01:33 AM

Kirata

Posts: 15477
Joined: 2/11/2006
From: USA
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

Unfair of me, of course ....

Yep.

Edited to add:
Well, except for "creationist-inspired lunacy".

K.

< Message edited by Kirata -- 5/20/2017 11:06:15 AM >

(in reply to PeonForHer)

Post #: 8

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 11:10:21 AM

WhoreMods

Posts: 10691
Joined: 5/6/2016
Status: offline

Is this why rm spends so much time whining about how women don't give him no respect, then? His penis is purely a conceptual construct with no objective reality, and girls just laugh at that?

_____________________________

On the level and looking for a square deal.

(in reply to Kirata)

Post #: 9

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 11:37:06 AM

Kirata

Posts: 15477
Joined: 2/11/2006
From: USA
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: WhoreMods

Is this why rm spends so much time whining about how women don't give him no respect, then? His penis is purely a conceptual construct with no objective reality, and girls just laugh at that?

I don't recall him ever complaining about women as a class, and I'm afraid that I don't share your curiosity about his penis. But maybe he would be willing to help you out, if you ask him nicely?

K.

(in reply to WhoreMods)

Post #: 10

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 11:52:14 AM

PeonForHer

Posts: 19612
Joined: 9/27/2008
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata
I don't recall him ever complaining about women as a class

True, he's always been very careful to avoid explicitly doing that.

_____________________________

http://www.domme-chronicles.com

(in reply to Kirata)

Post #: 11

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 12:12:30 PM

Musicmystery

Posts: 30259
Joined: 3/14/2005
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata

Cogent Social Sciences

SOCIOLOGY | RESEARCH ARTICLE
The conceptual penis as a social construct

Abstract:

Anatomical penises may exist, but as pre-operative transgendered women also have anatomical penises, 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 social construct isomorphic to performative toxic masculinity. Through detailed poststructuralist discursive criticism and the example of climate change, this paper will challenge the prevailing and damaging social trope that penises are best understood as the male sexual organ and reassign it a more fitting role as a type of masculine performance.

Subjects: Gender Studies - Soc Sci; Postmodernism of Cultural Theory; Feminism
Keywords: penis; feminism; machismo braggadocio; masculinity; climate change

Source: Lindsay & Boyle, Cogent Social Sciences (2017), 3: 1330439

The Hoax

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.

Note: If the paper is taken down, you can read it here.

Source: Skeptic

K.

Something here doesn't pass the smell test. That much of academia needs a serious examination, no doubt. But this seems pretty over the top.

So in taking a look, here's the problem: "Cogent Social Sciences" is hardly a professional journal (remember, just because the magazine "Ladies Home Journal" contains the word journal, it's not an academic publication). In fact, it's a vanity publishing site: authors pay to publish.

That many people are quick to believe bullshit, true.

That a serious academic journal published this piece is part of the bullshit they're quick to believe.

Cogent is an "open access" site that doesn't even specialize: Cogent has 15 such "journals" from Engineering to Physics to Arts & Humanities to Medicine. They "put the authors' interests at the heart of everything."

https://www.cogentoa.com/

< Message edited by Musicmystery -- 5/20/2017 12:13:45 PM >

(in reply to Kirata)

Post #: 12

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 12:19:11 PM

Musicmystery

Posts: 30259
Joined: 3/14/2005
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: outlier

Another good example of bad science, this time tinged with sexual politics and bias.
But it is not the first or the worst, I am sad to say.

"If you follow the headlines, your confidence in science may have taken a hit lately.
Peer review? More like self-review. An investigation in November uncovered a scam
in which researchers were rubber-stamping their own work, circumventing peer review
at five high-profile publishers. Scientific journals? Not exactly a badge of legitimacy, given
that the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology recently accepted for
publication a paper titled “Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List,” whose text was nothing more
than those seven words, repeated over and over for 10 pages. Two other journals allowed an
engineer posing as Maggie Simpson and Edna Krabappel to publish a paper, “Fuzzy, Homogeneous
Configurations.” Revolutionary findings? Possibly fabricated. In May, a couple of University of
California, Berkeley, grad students discovered irregularities in Michael LaCour’s influential paper
suggesting that an in-person conversation with a gay person could change how people felt about
same-sex marriage. The journal Science retracted the paper shortly after, when LaCour’s co-author
could find no record of the data.

Taken together, headlines like these might suggest that science is a shady enterprise that spits out a
bunch of dressed-up nonsense. But I’ve spent months investigating the problems hounding science,
and I’ve learned that the headline-grabbing cases of misconduct and fraud are mere distractions. The
state of our science is strong, but it’s plagued by a universal problem: Science is hard — really fucking hard.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/#part1

It's not bad science -- it's not science at all. It's a hoax.

It's bad science literacy on the part of the readers.

(in reply to outlier)

Post #: 13

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 3:18:51 PM

Kirata

Posts: 15477
Joined: 2/11/2006
From: USA
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

here's the problem: "Cogent Social Sciences" is hardly a professional journal (remember, just because the magazine "Ladies Home Journal" contains the word journal, it's not an academic publication). In fact, it's a vanity publishing site: authors pay to publish.

That many people are quick to believe bullshit, true.

That a serious academic journal published this piece is part of the bullshit they're quick to believe.

Cogent is an "open access" site that doesn't even specialize: Cogent has 15 such "journals" from Engineering to Physics to Arts & Humanities to Medicine. They "put the authors' interests at the heart of everything."

https://www.cogentoa.com/

Nice try, but no cigar. You should have read the second link. I'm not disputing that predatory "pay to publish" journals exist, or that they will publish anything for a buck. But Cogent Social Sciences isn't one of them, and Taylor & Francis doesn't publish any that are.

First, Cogent Social Sciences operates with the legitimizing imprimatur of Taylor and Francis, with which it is clearly closely partnered. Second, it’s held out as a high-quality open-access journal by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which is intended to be a reliable list of such journals. In fact, it carries several more affiliations with similar credentialing organizations. These facts cast considerable doubt on the facile defense that Cogent Social Sciences is a sham journal that accepted “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” simply to make money.

The paper was subjected to multiple peer-review before being accepted for publication.

The reviewers were amazingly encouraging, giving us very high marks in nearly every category. For example, one reviewer graded our thesis statement “sound” and praised it thusly, “It capturs [sic] the issue of hypermasculinity through a multi-dimensional and nonlinear process” (which we take to mean that it wanders aimlessly through many layers of jargon and nonsense). The other reviewer marked the thesis, along with the entire paper, “outstanding” in every applicable category.

They didn’t accept the paper outright, however. Cogent Social Sciences’ Reviewer #2 offered us a few relatively easy fixes to make our paper “better.” We effortlessly completed them in about two hours, putting in a little more nonsense about “manspreading” (which we alleged to be a cause of climate change) and “dick-measuring contests.”

And also relevant to your claim...

In 1996, Alan Sokal, a Professor of Physics at NYU, published the bogus paper, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” in the preeminent cultural studies journal Social Text which is in turn published by Duke University Press. The publication of this nonsense paper, in a prestigious journal with a strong postmodernist orientation, delivered a devastating blow to postmodernism’s intellectual legitimacy . . . Sokal exposed an infatuation with academic puffery that characterizes the entire project of academic postmodernism.

Apparently things haven't changed much.

K.

(in reply to Musicmystery)

Post #: 14

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 4:59:24 PM

PeonForHer

Posts: 19612
Joined: 9/27/2008
Status: offline

quote:

You should have read the second link. I'm not disputing that predatory "pay to publish" journals exist, or that they will publish anything for a buck. But Cogent Social Sciences isn't one of them, and Taylor & Francis doesn't publish any that are.

I'm not so sure, Kirata.

"The journal boasts also that it is very “friendly” to authors (a clear sign of a suspect outlet) and notes that it doesn’t necessarily reject things that might not have any impact. (!) It also only uses single blind review. The whole thing just screams vanity journal.

Now, the hoaxers are aware of all of this. But they try to duck the “facile” objection that they submitted to a junk journal by noting that it’s part of the Taylor and Francis group, and that it’s “held out as a high-quality open-access journal by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)”. Yet even a quick perusal of the journal’s website makes it clear that it operates entirely independently of Taylor & Francis, and that its publishing model is utterly different to theirs."

....

"UPDATE: The first journal that Bognossian and Lindsay submitted their hoax paper to, and that rejected it, was NORMA: The International Journal for Masculinity Studies. This journal doesn’t even hit the top 115 journals in Gender Studies. So, what happened here was that they submitted a hoax paper to an unranked journal, which summarily rejected it. They then received an auto-generated response directing them to a pay-to-publish vanity journal. They submitted the paper there, and it was published. From this chain of events they conclude that the entire field of Gender Studies is “crippled academically”. This tells us very little about Gender Studies, but an awful lot about the perpetrators of this “hoax”…. and those who tout it as a take down of an entire field."

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2017/05/conceptual-penis-hoax-just-big-cock/

_____________________________

http://www.domme-chronicles.com

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Post #: 15

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 5:18:21 PM

MrRodgers

Posts: 10542
Joined: 7/30/2005
Status: offline

Well this almost says it all: 'absurd paper loosely composed in the style of post-structuralist discursive gender theory.'

Send any women who slobber over this, my way. I'll give them a 'post-constructionist' gender (penal) theory. that...isn't theory at all.

_____________________________

You can be a murderous tyrant and the world will remember you fondly but fuck one horse and you will be a horse fucker for all eternity. Catherine the Great

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
J K Galbraith

(in reply to PeonForHer)

Post #: 16

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/20/2017 6:24:25 PM

Kirata

Posts: 15477
Joined: 2/11/2006
From: USA
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

"UPDATE: The first journal that Bognossian and Lindsay submitted their hoax paper to, and that rejected it, was NORMA: The International Journal for Masculinity Studies. This journal doesn’t even hit the top 115 journals in Gender Studies. So, what happened here was that they submitted a hoax paper to an unranked journal, which summarily rejected it. They then received an auto-generated response directing them to a pay-to-publish vanity journal. They submitted the paper there, and it was published. From this chain of events they conclude that the entire field of Gender Studies is “crippled academically”. This tells us very little about Gender Studies, but an awful lot about the perpetrators of this “hoax”…. and those who tout it as a take down of an entire field."

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2017/05/conceptual-penis-hoax-just-big-cock/

In other words, an unranked journal rejected it but a ranked journal reviewed it and published it. Thanks.

We didn’t originally go looking to hoax Cogent Social Sciences, however. Had we, this story would be only half as interesting and a tenth as apparently damning. Cogent Social Sciences was recommended to us by another journal, NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies, a Taylor and Francis journal. NORMA rejected "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct" but thought it a great fit for the Cogent Series, which operates independently under the Taylor and Francis imprimatur. In their rejection letter, the editors of NORMA wrote, "We feel that your manuscript would be well-suited to our Cogent Series, a multidisciplinary, open journal platform for the rapid dissemination of peer-reviewed research across all disciplines."

Apparently the first journal didn't think it was a good fit for their publication. Heh. Maybe they were being kind. But the fact remains that it's a peer-reviewed article that was published in a ranked open-access journal, and what I find most amusing about your quote is that the Wordpress blog you cited slights the journal that rejected the manuscript!

Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. ~Dorothy

K.

< Message edited by Kirata -- 5/20/2017 7:23:25 PM >

(in reply to PeonForHer)

Post #: 17

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/21/2017 6:20:32 AM

Musicmystery

Posts: 30259
Joined: 3/14/2005
Status: offline

Well, you and I clearly have different ideas about what constitutes a respectable professional journal.

In this case, the 15-discipline online pay to publish site is run by...what university? what professional group?

So who are these "peer reviewers?" And who are these editors to judge the results?

Are these sources you'd go to for any serious research information? Especially as a professional?

Enshrine it if you want. But it's crap. Ridiculously crap.

...which is how the story found its way to Skeptic.

Now, as I said earlier, I'm not going to defend the current state of academic publishing, which is indeed a mess. But this particular incident was crafted to succeed -- show me such an example in respectable journal. But then, what that means is apparently where we differ.

As for bad science and bad studies, hell, we could post for pages. Studies with small samples. Studies without independent research. Studies with subjective data. Studies where the results don't justify the conclusions. Anecdotal proof treated as a study. Surveys of the literature that merely collect flawed studies to aggregate their flawed data and results.

But this one, as I said earlier, doesn't pass the smell test.

Enjoy the aroma if you like.

< Message edited by Musicmystery -- 5/21/2017 6:22:30 AM >

(in reply to Kirata)

Post #: 18

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/21/2017 9:08:16 AM

WinsomeDefiance

Posts: 6719
Joined: 8/7/2007
Status: offline

I think the "peer reviewed paper," published as it was, is a decent example of cherry picking and lazy rationalization used by individuals who seek a particular source to validate their point without having to evaluate their own bias.

I'm not saying the OP is doing this, I'm saying the hoax was an interesting way of going about illustrating how a published paper shouldn't be the cornerstone of ones structured POV. At best, it should be a reference point for further research and introspection.

Too often a single verse, or philosophical quote or chapter from a book is pointed to and quickly followed by a, "yeah, but!"

(in reply to Musicmystery)

Post #: 19

RE: The conceptual penis as a social construct - 5/21/2017 9:13:15 AM

Edwird

Posts: 3558
Joined: 5/2/2016
Status: offline

This from the same guy who adduced an arms dealer to police forces and their conspicuously selected population poll as 'evidence' that all police were in favor of increased citizen gun ownership.

Give credit where credit is due; he's nothing if not relentless in effort to 'creating reality' of his own imagining.

(in reply to Musicmystery)

Post #: 20

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